Last week I spent some time going over my proposed monster book.  Presently I have about 240 monsters and sitting at 170 pages without art.  Respectable but I am certain to make some cuts.   I have gone through all my Witch books and the majority of Monstrous Mondays.

The biggest issue at the moment is that I have done Monstrous Mondays for so long there are at least five OSR systems I have used, not to mention original monsters I created for other systems.  I can use those monsters, but just like the OSR ones I need to convert everything to a single system.

For a while, I was working on the notion that I should do this as an "Advanced" era book.  Trouble is I really don't see a lot of Advanced era books for sale on DriveThru.  It is pretty much dominated by Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry.  I want to make the book I want, but if I want to pay for art it also needs to be a book people will buy.

Advanced Labyrinth Lord seems like the best compromise, but even then it is missing a couple things I want. Well. That is where Monstrous Mondays come back in!

I think I'll use this space to workshop a few monster stat blocks that work with what I want.
In particular, I want to have something similar to what I was doing in the early 80s; the free mixing of "Basic" and "Advanced" eras.

Something that plays like this.



I could start with a standard Labyrinth Lord stat block, add-in ability scores or ability score adjustments like Blueholme does.  Maybe include some of the OGC elements I like best from Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary and OSRIC.

To be honest, I have not quite made up my mind just yet.
But let's try something out.

Here is a good test. I'll convert a Ghosts of Albion creature to this new format.  A good choice is one that was inspired by a 1st creature that was in turn inspired by the mythical fairy creature.
So here is my Monstrous Monday version of the Cù Sìth.

Cù Sìth
Cu Sith by NyssaShawFaerie Animal
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Enc.: 1 (1), Pack 1d4 (1d6+1)
Alignment: Lawful (Chaotic Good)
Movement: 150' (50') [15"], Run 210' (70') [21"]
Armor Class: 7 [12]
Hit Dice: 4d8+4 (22 hp)
Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d6+5
Special: Blink, Detect Magic, Hide (5 in 6), takes 2x damage from cold iron
Size: Large
Save: Monster 4
Morale: 12
Treasure Hoard Class: Nil
XP: (working on this, see below)

The Celts were well known for their love of dogs. But the Cù Sìth (“coo shee”) or “Fairy Hound” has a special place in Celtic lore. Often described as a large hound that is either all green or all white with red ears. They have been alternately seen as bad omens, horrible stealers of children, or a fierce and loyal protector, the Cù Sìth features in many tales.

Tales feature the Cù Sìth as a spectral hound, one that forebodes doom like the Barghest, though those hounds are more often black in color and their malevolence is more universal than that of the Cù Sìth. Also, the Cù Sìth is more commonly associated with the Faerie and sometimes valiant, but tragic, warriors and the Barghest is more closely associated with witchcraft.

The Cù Sìth can be found most often near or around fairy mounds. A good sign that a mound is, in fact, a faerie mound is the proximity of a Cù Sìth to it.

Cù Sìth can also interbreed with other dogs which will typically produce one Cù Sìth per liter; sometimes more, sometimes less. Odd are the ways of the faerie folk.

Cù Sìth pups are rarely if ever tamed. If one wishes to remain with a non-faerie then it is of their own choosing.

--
OK.  Let's talk through this stat block.

Creature Type: Faerie Animal

I am going to include a creature type. This will be a short-hand for a few things.  Faerie in this case means can speak elven and sylvan, takes double damage from iron and *maybe* need silver or magic weapons to hit.

Frequency: Very Rare

I like frequency.  One of my favorite Advance era stats that we don't see in Basic era.

No. Enc.: 1 (1), Pack 1d4 (1d6+1)

Fairly self-explanatory.

Alignment: Lawful (Chaotic Good)

I want to include the Good-Evil axis along with the Law-Chaos one.  Both will be listed.

Movement: 150' (50') [15"], Run 210' (70') [21"]

Movement is listed for Basic era Turns and (Rounds) and [Advanced era].  Special moves will be spelled out.  So no //# /# to confuse anyone.

Armor Class: 7 [12]

Armor Class is listed with both Descending and [Ascending] types.

Hit Dice: 4d8+4 (22 hp)

For HD I am going to include the die type, any extra hp and hp (the average of the die type).

Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d6+5

Attacks and Damage are split up.  Though I could easily put these on one line.

Special: Blink, Detect Magic, Hide (5 in 6), takes 2x damage from cold iron

Special attacks, moves, and defenses are here.  This is vaguely Basic era, but also from other games I have used.

Size: Large

I like including size here. Also, I am considering using size to change HD type as it does in newer games.

Size HD Type Space Examples Tiny d4 2½ by 2 ½ ft. Imp, sprite Small d6 5 by 5 ft. Giant rat, goblin Medium d8 5 by 5 ft. Orc, werewolf Large d10 10 by 10 ft. Hippogriff, ogre Huge d12 15 by 15 ft. Fire giant, treant Gargantuan d20 20 by 20 ft. or larger Kraken, purple worm
Save: Monster 4

Most often monsters save as monsters, but sometimes a class might be used for special cases.

Morale: 12

I really enjoy Basic era style morale.

Treasure Hoard Class: Nil
XP:

These two are trickier since they rely a lot more on the game they are emulating AND the specific rules.  For the book I might create my own Treasure Type but I am also considering just going with the LL Horde Class and repeating the table in an appendix.

XP will really vary from system to system.  I have a Google Sheet that calculates for different games based on HD, special abilities, and the like.

Here is the output for the Cù Sìth for various games.

Base+hp*/ SA1**/ SA2***/SA3TotalBasic75123070187Advanced75783070253LL802405555430BF24004040320OSRIC75783070253SW1200120120360SS4010420300194OSE755050175289mean253median253mode
Not at all the same is it.

I might forgo putting in XP and letting Game Masters calculate it themselves based on their game of choice.  Mind you there might even be some error in my sheet above.  I built it years ago and have added to it but I have not back-checked my math in a while.

How often do you all use the XP line?

So I have ways to go just yet.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

For the most part, the current wave of fanzines is all fantasy orientated, a great many of them dedicated to and supporting the Old School Renaissance in one form or another. Essentially an Old School form of support for an Old School style of roleplaying game. So when a new fanzine appears dedicated to a different genre it can be a breath of fresh air and when that fanzine approaches its subject in more thoughtful and detailed fashion, then that breath of fresh air might be more than a little minty fresh. So it is with Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games. This is a Science Fiction fanzine dedicated to all types of Science Fiction gaming, so roleplaying and miniatures, for example. It is also a Science Fiction fanzine dedicated to Science Fiction in all of its many subgenres—urban (Cyberpunk and dystopian), post-apocalyptic, interstellar travel, Victorian and Edwardian, and so on. It is also a Science Fiction fanzine which is very British in its approach to Science and it also a Science Fiction fanzine that when necessary, is prepared to examine the issues posed when gaming with a particular Science Fiction genre.

Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is entirely written and edited by David Haraldson and you can tell that it has a serious intent from the moment you open the front cover. He takes the time to credit all of the artists, the fonts used for each article, and the particular games. This is not necessarily interesting, but it points to an aspiration towards a professionalism and a seriousness. Then flip through the pages of the fanzine and there are copious footnotes, often links to outside sources of research and the like. In terms of presentation, the fanzine is clean and tidy, perhaps slightly cluttered in places, with artwork used judiciously. The use of different fonts for article titles is very eighties, as is the organisation of the contents into different departments. So ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrows’ for Edwardian and Victorian scientific romances, ‘Bright Lights, Mega City’ for urban Science Fiction, ‘Into the Ruins’ for post-apocalyptic Science Fiction, and so on, which is all very White Dwarf magazine.

The first department is ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrows’ and ‘The Green Hills of Venus’. This is the write-up of the first from the Challenger Distinguished Lectures given by Professor Octavian Black. It presents his findings on the successes and failures of the first few expeditions to Venus, starting with the 1889 Chadwick expedition. In classic style, it presents Venus as a hothouse jungle planet, complete with lizardmen and megafauna, but also hints at secrets deep within the planet. Complete with a story hook and lots of knowing Easter eggs if you know the genre, its gets the fanzine off to a good start.

‘Manchester, So Much To Answer For’ is the first entry for the ‘Bright Lights, Mega City’ department, presenting two Manchester-inspired gangs—the Rusholme Ruffians and Frank’s Gang a.k.a. the Sidebottoms. The former is a gang inspired by the eighties band, The Smiths, whilst the latter a gang inspired by the papier-mâché mask-helmet wearing media personality/artist, Frank Sidebottom. More attention is paid to the latter than the former and it shows with more ideas on their gang structure and how to use them. Certainly, Frank’s Gang makes for a fun prank/performance gang to add to a Cyberpunk roleplaying game as well as the Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD Roleplaying Game and Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. ‘Me And My Melancholy Motor’ for ‘Into the Ruins’ provides the TEdison Razorback, a vehicle with an A.I. and a personality for getting around a post-apocalyptic world akin to that of Gamma World or Mutant Crawl Classics. Complete with a personality table and mental health crisis table, it provides a fun NPC for Game Master to bring to her campaign and roleplay.

The highlight of Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is ‘Mx. Land & Dr. Britling See It Through’. The longest article in the issue, it explores the nature and problems of the Steampunk genre and how it applies to gaming as well as how the Steampunk movement regards gaming. In the first case, rarely as a ’punk genre and typically as a neo-colonial, imperialist celebration, and in the case of the latter, badly. Of the roleplaying games available, it highlights Marcus L. Rowland’s Forgotten Futures as probably the best roleplaying game of Victorian and Edwardian scientific romances and it also presents a manifesto for exploring the genre in the pages of Back to the Spaceport. This is an absolutely splendid read, interesting and thoughtful, certainly all but worth the price of the fanzine alone.

The articles for the departments ‘STL Signals’ and ‘Standing Orders’ are more personal and prosaic in nature. ‘STL Signals’ looks at PBM—or ‘Play by Mail’—games and the author’s experience with a couple of PBM games, Riftlords and Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire. It is diverting enough and again harks back to the heyday of the hobby in the eighties. ‘Standing Orders’ is devoted to Science Fiction miniatures wargaming and ‘21st Century Fighting in Built-Up Areas’ looks at urban conflict scenarios in miniatures games where the line of sight extends across the whole of the playing area. Written for use with Ground Zero Games’ Stargrunt II rules, the rules and suggestions here can adapt to any rules system the reader prefers, the article is useful for anyone running these types of games, but is otherwise just a little esoteric in comparison to the other articles in Back to the Spaceport.

Of more use perhaps is ‘Art Crime’. Written for the ‘Under Other Constellations’ department, it is a set-up and a cast of supporting NPCs suitable for any Science Fiction roleplaying game in which interstellar travel is possible. Here the idea is that the transportation of ordinary goods is too expensive to make it worthwhile, but the shipment of luxury items, including art, does not. It consists of four detailed NPCs—The Thief, The Investigator, The Amateur Sleuth, and The Collector—around which the Game Master can build a scenario or encounter. Written for use with FrostByte Books’ M-Space and Design Mechanicsm’s Mythras Imperative, it would easily work with any number of Science Fiction roleplaying games and adapting the plot and NPCs should be easy enough. Lastly, ‘Music for Spaceports’—a nice nod to Music for Airports—reviews three albums of music suitable for use as background sounds in Science Fiction games. Of the eight articles in Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1, this feels like filler.

—oOo—
In addition to the fanzine itself, Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 comes with an Old School Renaissance Science Fiction pullout. ‘On Xanadu, A Stately Pleasure Sphere!’ is written for use with White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying and similar Science Fiction roleplaying games, as well as Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, it presents a Space Opera-style scenario/hexcrawl on the planet Xanadu, the best source of the Star Flowers, a delicacy amongst the galaxy’s elite. The planetary governor, Magnus Dominus, spends his time in seclusion in his imperial palace whilst working the planet’s population piteously hard growing the precious star flowers. The set-up is open to multiple plots, including assassinating the governor, abducting him and putting him on trial, stealing something from his art collection, fomenting rebellion, and so on. This could easily be mixed in with the ‘Art Crime’ article from the issue. Overall, this is a nice extra to the actual issue and easy enough to add to a Game Master’s campaign.

—oOo—
It is a pleasure to have a fanzine which covers a genre in the variety of its subgenres and one which does so in as high a standard across all of them. It sets the bar high for future issues, one that we can only hope that the author can maintain for the second issue and also when other contributors write for it. Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is an engaging piece from beginning to end, thoughtful and interesting, the article Steampunk a superb highlight.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. 

Another fanzine, another different fanzine. Time & Tide is a fanzine dedicated, to SLA Industries, the 1993 Scottish roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism, recently expanded with the supplement, SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1. Published by Tanya Floaker following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of the first Zine Quest, Time & Tide is subtitled ‘A fanzine examining why people love SLA Industries and the World of Progress’. It is of course not the only fanzine for SLA Industries. In the early noughties, tTH bIG pICTURE showcased another role for the fanzine, that is serving as a focal point for a roleplaying game’s fandom and support, often when that roleplaying game is between editions or out of print. As was the case with SLA Industries.

Time & Tide comes as thick sheaf of paper, a wodge of white text blocks on all dark photo backgrounds and scrappy art which screams late eighties, early nineties do-it-yourself layout. It is all filler, no game, but nevertheless all love, no hate. As the subtitle says, this is a fanzine about the love that the fans have for SLA Industries. At a hundred pages in length there are actually very few articles in the fanzine—just eight in all. There is also quite a bit of white—and more often than not—black space. The fanzine includes fiction, interviews, cake recipes, and more.

Time & Tide opens with ‘So Dark it’s U.V.’, a discussion of just why SLA Industries continues to be popular in spite of its sporadic publishing history. It also looks at the elements and themes of the game—of constantly changing technology, of suppression of knowledge, and of a truth that has its own dangers in knowing, overlaid by a Splatterpunk sensibility that reinforces the notion that life is cheap, that death can be comical, and that thrills meaning ratings (until the next thrill gets better ratings). It is a solid opening piece which lays the groundwork for the rest of the fanzine.

The highpoint of the fanzine is the ‘Interview with Nightfall Games’. The first of two interviews in the Time & Tide, this is with Jared Earle, co-author of SLA Industries and Mark Rapson of Word Forge Games, the new publisher of the roleplaying game. Conducted before the publication of SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1, this is a lengthy piece which looks at the history of the game and its future, in particular, its evolution as a war game setting in addition to being a roleplaying game. This is an informative and entertaining piece which really explains both Nightfall Games and Word Forge Games in the run up to the publication of SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 and SLA Industries, Second Edition. The other interview is ‘Real Time’. This is with Ste Winwood about his involvement in running SLA Industries fan groups. Again, this is another personable interview highlighting the effectiveness of the fans in keeping a game alive with their support.

Between the two interviews is a much longer article, ‘The Mall of Progress’ by Ed Hill. This supports the new wargaming aspect of SLA Industries as the author takes the reader through the evolution of the terrain that he used to fight confrontations between the various factions in the World of Progress. So it goes from Cannibal Sector One over the Wall into Downtown and onto Garbage Alley and out again into the Ruined Mall and the Mall of Progress, and then back in again to a wretched housing block called Grim House. The step-by-step process looks at construction methods and the changing technology used and is accompanied by innumerable photographs. Unfortunately, these photographs hamper the article at every turn, being too dark and too murky to discern any detail. Whilst murk fits the World of Progress, it is not what you want in a wargames article where photos should bring to life what the designer has been doing. Worse, the layout of the article means extends the article over and over, and at a quarter of the fanzine’s page count combined with the poor resolution of the photographs, it just feels bloated and boring.

Tamsyn Kennedy’s ‘Underneath It All’ is the first of two pieces of fiction in Time & Tide. It tells of an Ebon’s almost worker drone existence before an encounter forces her awake and brings her to the notice of those that make her take the next step in ‘evolution’. This balances the humdrum with the eventual realisation that there is an alternative path in the ‘World of Progress’ to climbing the corporate ladder. The other piece of fiction is ‘Your Hole/Their Hole/My Hole’ by Roger Duthie which is very much the opposite of ‘Underneath It All’, telling of the wet, dank, stagnant, often horrifying nature of living on the dole in Downtown. It is quite a creepy piece, capturing life in the Mort City equivalent of a 1980s Glasgow council flat—elements of SLA Industries being a reaction to growing up and being unemployed in Thatcher’s Britain—from multiple points of view, intruders mundane and monstrous, as well as the dwelling’s occupants.

Quite literally filler, Coz Winwood’s ‘Cake Sector One’ gives recipes for SLA-themed baked goods. Three recipes are given—in oddly American measurements given the roleplaying game’s Scottish origins—and their inclusion would have been fine if they had there to offset something more substantial in terms of content in the fanzine. As it is, ‘Cake Sector One’ is all too light and fluffy in all too light and fluffy issue. Nice wordplay on the title though and there really ought to be a cooking show aimed at Shivers on duty in Cannibal Sector One within the game itself. Lastly, ‘The Bigger Picture’ is a more personal piece about SLA Industries played a role in his life and helped him when times were difficult. Hopefully the new edition of the roleplaying game and the chance to play again will make his better.

Physically, Time &  Tide is scrappy and scruffy as mentioned earlier. It certainly echoes the style of fanzines from their heyday in the eighties. Overall, it is difficult to come right out and recommend Time & Tide. It is just too light and fluffy in its content—even if that content is dark and oppressive in tone, but then what would expect, it is for SLA Industries after all—to be anything more.Time & Tide will of course appeal to devotees of SLA Industries, but it is nothing more than a diverting read as it does not include any support for the roleplaying game or the war game rules. Had it done so, then there might have been reason enough for the reader to look at it more than just the once. Time & Tide is very much not essential to playing SLA Industries and so nice enough to have if a fan, but you will not miss it from your gaming shelves if you don’t have it.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and  Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. 

Delayed Blast Gamemaster is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published by Philip Reed Games following successful Kickstarter campaigns, Delayed Blast Gamemaster is a fanzine dedicated to supporting roleplaying fantasy games, but a particular style of fantasy roleplaying games—Dungeons & Dragons. Yet the issues are entirely systemless, which means that their contents can be used in Dungeons & Dragons, any of the fantasy roleplaying retroclones you care to name, and most fantasy roleplaying games with a little effort. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of the inaugural Zine Quest, the first issue of Delayed Blast Gamemaster was published in  September, 2019.

What strikes you first about Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1 is its graphical design. It is all white art and text on matt black pages. Now before anyone complains that this might be ink heavy when comes to the printing out of the PDF, the fanzine is sold in both heavy and light ink formats. The effect though is striking, almost jauntily creepy and oppressive in its artwork’s depiction of skeletal archers, oozes, and overly ocular creatures. The text is both heavy and large, so is a lot easier to read than it otherwise might have been.

As to the concept behind Delayed Blast Gamemaster it is simply that of inspiration scattered subject by subject across nine tables. So ‘OneDTen Urban Locations’, ‘OneDSix Forgotten Spellbooks’, FiveDSix Unusual Treasures’, ‘OneDEight Dungeon Oddities’, ‘OneDSix Magic Shields’, ‘TwoDSix Potions’, ‘OneDSix Warped Monsters’, ‘OneDTwelve Adventure Hooks’, and ‘OneDFour Dungeon Doors’. So all that the Game Master has to do is pick a table or subject, roll the die, check the relevant entry, and use it as inspiration to create something of her or adapt the entry to the roleplaying game of her choice. The most obvious choice to adapt the entry to, is of course, Dungeons & Dragons, due to the similarities in language, but other roleplaying games would work too.

For example, roll a three on ‘OneDEight Dungeon Oddities’ and you get a Necromancer’s Chest, a combination trap-monster. It is simply a necromancer’s chest which he has trapped with several ghosts. Disarm the trap or use the key and of course, a Thief opens the chest without any problems; fail and two or more ghosts are unleashed to hunt the Thief and alert the chest’s owner! Roll a four on the ‘OneDSix Warped Monsters’ and the result is the Skeletal Mage, which simply suggests giving a standard skeleton monster a spell or two or more, all to add a simple twist on a classic monster. Roll a seven on ‘OneDTen Urban Locations’ and you have found yourself at Pies (and Lies) which describes a pie shop which sells cheap, moderately tasty, meat pies. The shop also does a nice sideline in rumours and secrets, which its owner and his family either sells off to the underworld or uses to blackmail the subject of those rumours and secrets.

Now there are a lot of entries and ideas in Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1, which is the point. Perhaps though, the design of the oddities and monsters dwell a little upon Oozes and monsters like the Mimic, with entries such as the Mimicspawn, Oozegoblin, and Weremimic, but the author at least is upfront about his fascination with such creatures. The main issue is that there no index, either of the entries or the tables. Otherwise, the fanzine is well written, easy to ready, and easy to use. Physically, there is a certain heft to it both in terms of production values—which are high for a fanzine—and its feel in the hand.


Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1 is simply lots of ideas a Game Master can bring to her game. She will need to do some work to bring them into her campaign, but the ideas will work with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as much as they would with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy , and whatever your choice of fantasy roleplaying game, further inspiration is never unwanted.

It's been a while since I did one of these, but I just discovered that the entire seasons of Carmilla have now been collected into single videos, so I thought it might be a good time to revisit some old friends.

Outfits based on this picture.
Characters created with ePic Character Generator
I think for these versions I am going to set it a little after the Carmilla movie and long after the end of Season 3. So I guess three years now.  Wow.

In a Mutants & Masterminds game, Laura is now a world-renown reporter in the Lois Lane mold, with a knack of uncovering supernatural goings-on.  Carm is still living on a fortune that has also collected 340+ years of compound interest. And of course, helping Laura, because she knows that in true Lois Lane fashion, Laura is going to get herself into trouble.

Given the number of adaptations of Carmilla over the years I might even riff on that with one of her less than savory relatives show up.  Maybe an older brother. Someone who is evil, threatens her fortune and whom Carmilla would hesitate to kill outright at first.  That is till he puts the moves on Laura.

For these builds, I am going to rely heavily on the Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Hero's Handbook,
Power Profiles, and of course the Supernatural Handbook.

I figure that Laura is a bit higher in PL than your average reporter.  She has saved the world and she knows Krav Maga.   Carmilla is a very, very old vampire (340 years old!) and she has seen a lot in her years.  She was alive for a while thanks to a "gift" from Inanna and is a vampire again.

Laura Hollis
Creampuff

Strength 1, Stamina 2, Agility 2, Dexterity 1, Fighting 1, Intellect 3, Awareness 1, Presence 1

Advantages
Krav Maga (Accurate Attack, Agile Feint, All-out Attack,  Close Attack, Contacts, Defensive Attack, Improved Disarm, Inspire,  Power Attack, Precise Attack (Close, Concealment), Prone Fighting)
Attractive, Languages 2, Skill Mastery: Expertise: Journalism

Skills
Acrobatics 1 (+3), Athletics 5 (+6), Close Combat: Unarmed 6 (+7), Deception 1 (+2), Expertise: Journalism 5 (+8), Insight 5 (+6), Investigation 5 (+8), Perception 5 (+6), Persuasion 1 (+2), Stealth 1 (+3)

Offense
Initiative +2
Grab, +2 (DC Spec 11)
Throw, +1 (DC 16)
Unarmed, +7 (DC 16)

Complications
Obsession: Find the truth!
Relationship: Carmilla

Languages
English, French, German

Defense
Dodge 3, Parry 2, Fortitude 3, Toughness 2, Will 1

Power Points
Abilities 24 + Powers 0 + Advantages 15 + Skills 18 (35 ranks) + Defenses 3 = 60

Validation: Unarmed: Attack Bonus exceeds Power Level limit by 1

Height: 5'2"
Weight: 119 lbs
Hair Color: Brown/Blonde
Eye Color: Brown
Age: 25

Carmilla, aka Mircalla, Countess Karnstein
Useless Vampire

Abilities
Strength 5, Stamina -, Agility 2, Dexterity 3, Fighting 5, Intellect 2, Awareness 2, Presence 4

Advantages
All-out Attack, Animal Empathy, Attractive, Fascinate (Deception), Improved Critical 3: Vampire Bite: Weaken 9, Improved Hold, Improved Initiative 3, Languages 4, Power Attack

Skills
Acrobatics 2 (+4), Athletics 2 (+7), Close Combat: Unarmed 3 (+8), Deception 5 (+9), Expertise: Languages 6 (+8), Insight 6 (+8), Intimidation 4 (+8), Investigation 1 (+3), Perception 8 (+10), Persuasion 2 (+6), Ranged Combat: ???? 3 (+6), Stealth 10 (+12)

Powers
Alternate Form (Moonlight) (Activation: Move Action)
   Flight: Flight 1 (Speed: 4 miles/hour, 60 feet/round)
   Immunity: Immunity 0
   Insubstantial: Insubstantial 2 (light, Gaseous; Absent Strength)
Cat form: Variable Attack 2 (animal, DC 12, Advantages: All-out Attack; Action: move, Attack: Dodge)
Spider-Climb: Movement 1 (Wall-crawling 1: -1 speed rank)
Undead Invulnerability
   Immortality: Immortality 5 (Return after 1 day; Limited: Not when staked or beheaded [0 ranks only])
   Immunity: Immunity 30 (undead, Fortitude Effects)
   Regeneration: Regeneration 8 (undead, Every 1.25 rounds)
   Vampiric Protection: Protection 9 (+9 Toughness; Limited 2: Not against Holy or Magic)
Vampire Bite: Weaken 9 (undead, Affects: Weaken Stamina, Resisted by: Will, DC 19)
Vampiric Senses: Senses 3 (Acute (Type): smell, Detect: smell (blood) 1)

Offense
Initiative +14
Grab, +5 (DC Spec 15)
Throw, +3 (DC 20)
Unarmed, +8 (DC 20)
Vampire Bite: Weaken 9, +5 (DC Will 19)

Complications
Blood Dependence: Needs blood to live
Relationship: Laura
Weakness: Can't use vampire powers in sunlight.

Languages
Ancient Sumerian, English, French, Hungarian, Latin, Romanian

Defense
Dodge 2, Parry 5, Fortitude None, Toughness 0, Will 2

Power Points
Abilities 36 + Powers 74 + Advantages 15 + Skills 26 (52 ranks) + Defenses 0 = 151

Height: 5'3"
Weight: 121 lbs
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Brown (red when enraged or feeding)
Age: 340

Links

• Hero Lab is a Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at https://www.wolflair.com
• Character images created with ePic Character Generator
  
• Carmilla Season One, Complete (2:26:10)
• Carmilla Season Two, Complete (3:01:37)
• Carmilla Season Three, Complete (3:36:06)

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, an Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Published by Straycouches Press, Crawl! is one such fanzine dedicated to the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Since Crawl! No. 1 was published in March, 2012 has not only provided ongoing support for the roleplaying game, but also been kept in print by Goodman Games. Now because of online printing sources like Lulu.com, it is no longer as difficult to keep fanzines from going out of print, so it is not that much of a surprise that issues of Crawl! remain in print. It is though, pleasing to see a publisher like Goodman Games support fan efforts like this fanzine by keeping them in print and selling them directly.

Where Crawl! No. 1 was something of a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 was a surprisingly focused, exploring the role of loot in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and describing various pieces of treasure and items of equipment that the Player Characters might find and use. The good news is that Crawl! #3 is just as focused, but the subject of its focus is not loot or treasure. Instead, it is magic, for the issue’s subtitle is ‘The Magic Issue!’. Published in February, 2013, Crawl! #3 includes new spell systems, new spells, a new old creature, and more. It is a serviceable rather than a good issue and for one particular reason may not be of interest who are coming to issues of Crawl! fanzine for the first time.

There can be no denying that the magic system in Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game is fun and flavoursome, but it can be cumbersome. The issue is that because every spell has its own page and its own table, the play of the game is slowed whenever spells are cast, whether by the Player Characters or NPCs. So, ‘NPC Magic and Spellcasting’ offers a more streamlined means of handling spells. The Judge still rolls for the NPC spellcaster, but rather than doing this against the standard table, the Judge is given three results—either a Fumble, a Standard, or a Critical result. For example, on a Fumble, the classic spell Magic Missile inflicts damage on the caster, hurls between one and four missiles at a target on a Standard result, and on a Critical result, the caster can target multiple opponents. The piece includes a couple of offensive spells, several defensive spells, and several spells which fall into the category of ‘Other’. Rounded out with a pair of cultists as sample NPCs given these streamlined spells, this is a fantastic option to help the Judge run her game.

Sean Ellis’ ‘Consider the Kobold: A different take on the traditional kobold’ presents a traditional take upon the Kobold. Not the tradition of Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games, but that of traditional folklore. Here the Kobold is a household fairy who carries out domestic chores as long as the family respects him, although an alternative has it working the mines. The write-up includes full stats as well as various pranks—or cantrips—which the Kobold may play upon those who do not pay it enough respect.

Brett Miller’s ‘Patron Spells of the Supernal Archmage’ presents the patron spells for ‘Van den Danderclanden: A Patron from the Imminent Future’, the Supernal Archmage of Empyreal Aptitude in a distant, but parallel future. Previously detailed in Crawl! No. 1, here his favourite chaotic effects of Spellburn are detailed as Van den Danderclanden’s Hateful Blemish, Snafufubar, and Elastic Reality. The first inflicts the corruption of heavy magic use upon a target, the second focuses and inflicts bad luck upon the target of the spell, and the third can change aspects of a target or an item. There is no denying that these are fun spells to play around with and inflict some chaos upon a campaign, but problematically if the reader has already got the Special Edition of Crawl! No. 1 which collects both patron and patron spells, which makes their inclusion in either redundant.

‘Magic Wand – A 4th-level Wizard Spell’ by Daniel J. Bishop introduces the spell, Raven Crawking’s Magic Wand. This provides a means for a wizard to store spell effects in a wand of the wizard’s choosing, typically one spell, but at higher castings of the spell, up to three spells as well as granting a bonus when casting the spells from the wand. What in effect it allows a wizard to do is cast the spell worked into the wand a second time each day, but always at the Level at which the spell was worked into the wand. This means that the wizard can cast Raven Crawking’s Magic Wand again and again as he gains Levels to improve the ability of the wand. Of course, a wizard cannot simply create wand after wand for all of his spells, but a few spells it expands his arcane arsenal.

‘The Talismans of Anti-Magic – Anti-Magic Items’ by Jon Wilson details items which can prevent magic being cast upon the wearer. Whether they take the form of rings or amulets, totems or fetishes, and whomever has hold of them, they are always linked to spellcasters. They take an action to charge, but when charged they inflict a penalty equal to that given for the anti-magic talisman upon the spellcaster targeting the holder, so reducing their ability to successfully cast a spell. Unfortunately, this is not without repercussions in that the spellcaster linked to the anti-magic talisman must suffer the same effect when next casting a spell before the talisman can be sued again. This is a powerful item, but one that pleasing comes with a price which to paid by someone in the party… Lastly, Colin Chapman’s ‘Let’s Get Familiar: Expanded Familiar Entries’ simply expands the ‘Familiar Confrontation Configuration’ tables to be found in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game rulebook. It does this for the Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic tables and enables the player to roll on a table of twenty options rather than fourteen.

Physically, Crawl! #3 is clean and tidy, uncluttered and easy to read, much like Crawl! No. 2. However, there is less art and its look is all the poorer for it. Unfortunately how good Crawl! #3 is depends on which edition of Crawl! No. 1 the reader has. If it is the Special Edition which combines ‘Van den Danderclanden: A Patron from the Imminent Future’ with ‘Patron Spells of the Supernal Archmage’, then not so much and not so useful. Which to be fair is more than likely if the reader is picking the issue up since their original publication. If it is not the Special Edition, then Crawl! #3 will be more useful as its inclusion of ‘Patron Spells of the Supernal Archmage’ readily supports ‘Van den Danderclanden: A Patron from the Imminent Future’. Overall, Crawl! #3 provides solid content, but the repeated content means it is just not as useful.

Doesn't quite roll off the tongue like "Which Witch is Which?" does it.

My new Warlock book is out for Old-School Essentials and it is natural to want to know what is in the book.  More to the point do you need this book if you already own my The Warlock for Swords & Wizardry OR The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition for OSE.

Very valid questions.

Let's go over the Warlocks first.



The classes are the same XP, HP progression wise save for where B/X and S&W differ.

• There are few overlapping spells, but I wanted to go with new spells for the book.
• There are few overlapping Invocations, again plenty of new and a couple revised ones here.  For example, both books have an Arcane Blast, the bread-and-butter attack of all warlocks.
• There are no overlapping Patrons or Pacts. If you play OSE and use this Warlock book, but want a demon pact you can import it from the S&W book with no changes needed.  Same if you play S&W and want a Dragon pact.
• There are no overlapping lodges.  I wanted to include the Masters of the Invisible College warlocks from S&W for the OSE book, but space ran out.  Instead, I am going to the Masters here at a later date with the text that was going into the book on how you play them with OSE and these Pacts. The Masters also take Cosmic Warlocks.

I wanted both books to complement each other.  I am very keen on people not thinking "hey, I already bought this book two years ago!"

For the two Old-School Essentials books, the biggest potential overlap was the spells.


I mention in the Warlock book that witches can take warlock spells and the other way around.  That is depending on your Referee. There is the subtle notion that the witches of the Pagan Tradition are at odds with warlocks.  Granted this idea works best with the demonic pacts, but it is there for players to use.  This can limit access to spells the others might "steal".

In both books, I also add new spells for Clerics, Druids, Magic-users, and Illusionists.  How they get those spells is of course up to the Referees.

I have made all the spell names and levels available for you to see in this Google Sheet.
Spell names in Red are from the OSE Warlock.  Blue links take you the book the spells appear in.



You can also link to it here:  Old-School Essentials Spells.
This sheet has ALL the Old-School Essentials spells, not just mine.

I guess the question of "why is there any overlap at all?"  Well, some spells are so ubiquitous to witches that not including them would be strange. A good example is Bestow Curse, which interestingly enough is not in these two books.

So here is a break down of all 1,078 spells I have used and 229 monsters.  Again spell names in Red are brand new to the OSE Warlock book. This sheet helps you see the spell overlap.

Witch Books - Google Sheets



My goal is always to give you something new with each book while making it playable.
So any book can be your "first" witch book and it will work AND be 100% compatible with your "second" or "third" book.

I am currently drafting my next book which will be all monsters.  After that, the plan is to do what I am now calling my last witch book, the High Secret Order Tradition.

Looking to do something a little different this time for my Featured Artist post.

Pamela Colman Smith, aka "Pixie", might the most recognized artist you have never heard of.  Recognized in the sense that you know her work, even if you don't know it belongs to her and she certainly was not recognized in her time for it.

Born February 16, 1878, and died September 18, 1951, at the age of 73 Pixie spent her time among all sorts of artists, Bohemians, Suffragettes, and occultists including members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which she would later join.

She produced art for William Butler Yeats and Bram Stoker.

It was while she was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn she would meet Arthur Edward Waite.  He commissioned her to produce art for a Tarot deck.   Not just the Major Arcana, but all the Lesser Arcana cards as well.

This deck became known as the Rider-Waite Tarot deck after the publisher and the A.E. White.

Pixie's name was never associated with it, until very recently, and she was only paid a flat fee for her work.


In fact, these days many Tarot aficionados who like Pixie's art will opt for the Smith-Waite Tarot deck instead.

Much of her art reflects the esoteric lifestyle she lived. All of it feels like an Art Noveau fever dream from an Authrurian age, or Pagan age, mixed with what Middle Earth must have looked like in Tolkien's minds eye.






She would often do her art while listening to music, allowing her to create without other outside distractions.






And she did covers for Bram Stoker.



Links
The Divine Mystery of Pamela Colman Smith
Reviving a Forgotten Artist of the Occult

Well. April was kind of crazy.

I thought I take a moment to catch my breath and discuss some future projects here at the Other Side.

The Warlock
First up, I want to get the POD version of The Warlock out to you all. I am going to try for softcover and hardcover options. That way they can fit into whatever collection you like.
The printing is a little slow at DriveThru at the moment, so as soon as I get the proofs I'll get them up to you all.

Once I get that done I am going to release another Warlock book, this time for 5th Edition D&D.  No set date on that right now, but optimistically this Summer.

BECMI Month
Another big project I am starting now but won't start to roll out till June is my month-long overview of the ONLY D&D I never really played; BECMI.  I am going to spend roughly a week on each boxed set. Doing detailed reviews, overviews, and related topics. It should be fairly enlightening for me and I hope you all enjoy it.  I am looking forward to learning something new about this system.


If you know of anything BECMI related you think I should cover, let me know!

Monsters
Another project with no specific date in mind yet is the book-form of my Monstrous Mondays' posts.
The posts have been in a variety of formats and systems over the years, so I think I am going to opt to do this book to be compatible with "Advanced era" gaming, or some Basic/Advance hybrid.  So not really OSRIC compatible and not really Advanced Labyrinth Lord compatible, but something of an OGC combination of the two.  Much like how my Basic Witch is not designed for any single system, but an amalgam of Basic-era OGC.

So this would not be a simple "copy and paste" deal, I would want to rework all the monsters to fit the Advanced play better.  My goal is to have a book that would sit next to my Monster Manuals and Fiend Folio and play just like them.


Still workshoping names, but I think my own OCD requires that the name be an alliteration.

In truth, I am looking forward to trying out a "new" system for a change.

The High Secret Order: The Book of High Witchcraft
Ah. Now this one is a big one for me.  Why? Well. I am going to use this to get back to the witch class I was playing circa 1986, the dawn of my fully realized witch.  But more importantly, this will very likely be my last of the Old-School Witch books.
While I wanted this book to be the last of my Back to Basic books, this one might also need to be an Advanced Era book. Or some mix. I am not sure yet.

No date on this one either.  But this one will include the High Secret Order Witches, the Academic Warlock (with expanded Secret Masters of the Invisible College Lodge),  Hermetic Wizards and more.
I am also going to finally get my spell creation rules into one place, the same ones I have been using for years since the goals of the High Secret Order and the Invisible College is to create more magic.

This book, along with the monster book above, will represent my transition period from Basic-era to Advanced-era.   I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

The Books of the D_____
This is a brand new project. 100% Advanced-era with maybe parallel versions for 5th Edition.  Don't want to say to much about these just yet but they represent a new direction in my writing and I can't wait to get started on them.

So. I have enough to keep me busy for some time to come now.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the  Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford's mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.


—oOo—
What is it?
Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass is the first in a series of guides to the role, types, and items of treasure in Glorantha.

It is a sixty-four page, full colour, 20.50 MB PDF.

Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass is well presented, decently written, and includes a wide range of artwork. The front cover is fantastic.

Where is it set?
Dragon Pass and Prax in Glorantha.

Who do you play?
The section on ‘Medicine Bundles’ will be of interest to shaman characters, but Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass will be of interest to most characters in the region.

What do you need?
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary for its information on spirits and Dragonewts at the very least.

What do you get?
Forty years on since RuneQuest II received its own supplement dedicated to the subject of treasure in the form of Plunder, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha receives its own supplement dedicated to treasure in the form of Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass. Like Plunder, this supplement presents some notable treasures of Glorantha—in the case of this volume, treasures of Dragon Pass—some thirty of them in total. Unlike Plunder, what it does not do is present the means to generate treasure, whether that is in terms of coinage, jewels, and gems, or special items. This very much reflects the differing approaches to treasure between different editions of RuneQuest, and instead, Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass offers up a discussion of the nature, place, and role of treasure amongst the Orlanthi, followed by two essays on particular types of ‘treasure’ to be found in the region.

The supplement opens with ‘Treasure Among the Orlanthi’, which explores the attitudes that the Orlanthi have towards treasure and its types. These are physical—classic coinage, jewels, and gems; social—increased Reputation, new privileges and responsibilities, and so on; and magical—spells and boons, and other gifts from priests, gods, and spirits. The essay also examines how and why they might be rewarded as well as the outcome of such rewards. It suggests how such treasures might come into the possession of the adventurers and how they might be awarded to the adventurers. The author suggests several options, one of which he suggests is the Orlanthi method, but then goes on to point out that the all good Orlanthi adventurers are expected to pay a tithe to their clan and temple. All of the essay falls within the realms of ‘Your Glorantha May Vary’, but it is a fantastic read, well thought out and reasoned.

The first specific type of treasure examined in Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass is ‘True Dragon’s Blood’. As the title suggests, this is the blood of True Dragon, either molten direct from the body of a damaged True Dragon or found set in ruins where they have been, including those of the Empire of Wyrms Friends. More recently it could be found at the site of the Dragonrise. Despite being anathema to the gods and elements, it can be attuned to and so grant fragments of draconic powers, including being able to use Dragonewt Roads and use Firebreath. This is not without its dangers since it also unhinges the attuned from reality itself... The second type is ‘Medicine Bundles’, essentially collections of items, whether skin, bones, twigs, stones, roots, and so on, given sacred power. These are examined from the traditions of the various Praxian tribes and sacred societies, as well as Daka Fal, Erithia, and Waha. Numerous types of bundles are given, such as for contacting ancestors and spirit weapons which extra powers when user is in the Spirit Realm. This essay offers numerous items and options of interest for anyone roleplaying a shaman, as well as enhancing the spiritual aspects of a campaign. Of the two essays, this is probably the more useful.

Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass is not only connected to Plunder in terms of shared subject matter, but also in the format followed used for listing each of the treasures. That is, the new supplement uses the same format as the old, listing its description, relationships with various groups and cults affiliated and unaffiliated, who has knowledge of it, its history, the procedure necessary to create or find the item, and what powers it has. The supplement also includes an appendix listing the new Rune and Spirit magic spells to be found in its pages.

The numerous items include Adder Stones, which made from the poisoned bodies of earth elementals grant greater protection against poison when held in the hand; Bones of Luck & Death, bone dice marked with the Luck and Death Runes found in the possession of those who survive the heroquest to become the next body of Belintar, the God-King of the Holy Country, which can be rolled to grant bonuses or penalties to the owner’s next actions; Debt-Coins of Etyries, simple lunar coins enchanted and exchanged to signify that the cult of Etyries will repay a debt that one of its worshippers is unable to; and Hippoi’s Feather, a shimmering feather taken from Hippograf’s wings and woven into a horse’s mane to make it’s spirit more aware. The selection of magical items does include a few weapons, such as Fallen Star, a spear in the shape of a four-pointed star which a Yelmalio worshiper can attune to and advance its capabilities to ultimately become a master of the spear, a Son of Light, and a fierce opponent of Chaos, but whether weapons or other items, they are all interesting and come with detail enough for the Game Master work them into her campaign and use them to tell fantastical stories with.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass is fantastic treatment of treasure in Dragon Pass, combining thoughtful and interesting essays on the subject with numerous relics to help the Game Master weave treasure into the fabric of her Glorantha campaign.
No. Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass may simply not play an important role in your campaign.
Maybe. Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass is only as useful as the role that treasure plays in your Glorantha campaign and you may want to wait for future volumes if your campaign is not specifically set in Dragon Pass.

Although the Old School Renaissance has been primarily driven by Dungeons & Dragons and its iterations, it has been accompanied by an interest in the other games of the period, so there have been new editions of Top Secret and Gangbusters, the latter with a Gangbusters Introductory Set and supplements such as Welcome to Rock Junction and GBM-1 Joe's Diner. Mark Hunt, the new publisher of Gangbusters has followed this with a roleplaying game which combines Old School Renaissance mechanics with roleplaying in the Roaring Twenties and Dirty Thirties. The result is Gangbusters B/X Edition.

Gangbusters B/X Edition or Gangbusters 1920s Roleplaying Adventure Game B/X Edition combines the mechanics of the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay—as seen most recently in Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy—with all of the setting elements of Gangbusters. So it is a Class and Level game with Hit Points and Armour Class set in the Jazz Age and the Desperate Decade of Prohibition, mob bosses, Tommy gun-toting thugs, flappers and floozies, speakeasies and swanky gin joints, small crimes and big crimes, ‘Scarface’ Al Capone, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, ‘Ma’ Barker, Bonnie & Clyde, Eliot Ness and the ‘Untouchables’, and J. Edgar Hoover. This is a roleplaying game of classic cops and robbers in player take the roles of cops, criminals, private detectives, and reporters in a town where crime and corruption is rife, almost everyone is looking to make it big or get lucky, crimes and cases are solved, and more.

A character in Gangbusters B/X Edition is defined by the traditional six abilities—Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. He also has a Class and Level as well as an Alignment and Description. The four Classes are Brutish, Connected, Educated, and Street Smart and each Class has six Levels, complete with ‘Titles’ for each Level! The Brutish Class is strong and can make multiple attacks against opponents of one Hit Die or less, are more intimidating, and effective when using improved weapons. The Connected Class knows people from particular fields such as City Hall, Society, Underworld, Sports, and so on, and can gain favours from them. The Educated Class are intelligent and knowledgeable in a particular area of expertise, such as Accounting, Forensic Analysis, Gun Smithing, Safe Cracking, and so on, and also has two Vocations. The Street Smart Class has great Dexterity and has abilities like Nimble Fingers, Move Silently, Hide, and Word on the Street. Of the four Classes, the Brutish is most like the Fighter of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst the Street Smart is like the Thief, but also encompasses the grifter and the con man. 

There are a couple of oddities in the Class designs. So the Educated Class receives two Vocations, but what exactly a Vocation is, is never explained in Gangbusters B/X Edition. The Street Smart has Thief-like abilities, but does not gain access to a skill like Safe Cracking.  Alignment in Gangbusters B/X Edition is suitably updated to reflect the period—so Law Abiding, Neutrality, or Dishonest. Character description options include Assimilated, Blue Blood, City Slicker, Hoodlum, and so on.

Our example character is Dudás ‘Slim’ Henrik, an immigrant from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire who came to America following the end of the Great War. He is looking to make his way in the new country and if the incentive was right might look the other way. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the war and is trained to use a rifle. It has been several years since he used one though. Currently he works as an accountant for a number of neighbourhood businesses.

Dudás ‘Slim’ Henrik
First level Educated (Smart)
Alignment: Neutral
Description: Immigrant
Armour Class: 5
Hit Points: 2
THAC0: 19

Strength 13 (+1, +1 Open Doors)
Intelligence 14 (Literate & Eloquent)
Wisdom 09 
Dexterity 12 
Constitution 09 
Charisma 08 (-1, Max. Retainers: 7, Morale: 10)

Languages: English, Hungarian
Area of Expertise: Accounting
Vocations: ???
Equipment: $100

Unfortunately, Gangbusters B/X Edition is rather muddled in terms of its mechanics. Now of course, Gangbusters B/X Edition is an Old School Renaissance design and there need not possess a unified mechanic, a one roll for everything, but includes several different ones for different types of actions. So for the Special Abilities of the Educated and Street Smart Classes, a player rolls a six-sided die and succeeds if he rolls three or more. If a one or two is rolled, the character fails or succeeds, but is spotted in doing so. For any action not covered elsewhere, Gangbusters B/X Edition calls for an Ability check, which presumably is to roll under the player character’s value for the appropriate Ability. Unfortunately the rules do not state this, but instead have the player roll under a number assigned by the Judge, modified by +4 or -4 depending on the difficulty.

Then there is combat. Combat in Gangbusters B/X Edition works much like Basic Dungeons & Dragons B/X of 1981, but allows for unarmed combat and the use of firearms and their capacity for burst and spray fire, firing both barrels, and rates of fire. As you would expect, the player or Judge has to roll a twenty-sided die and roll high to beat an Armour Class. That Armour Class though, is descending not ascending, from ‘9’ to ‘-3’ and thus each character has a THAC0 rating. One difference between Basic Dungeons & Dragons B/X and Gangbusters B/X Edition is the lack of armour. This is, of course, to be expected, given the historical time period, but Gangbusters B/X Edition suggests that the better or the fancier the clothing worn, the higher the Armour Class bonus, so Armour Class 7 for poor quality clothing, Armour Class 5 for typical clothing, and Armour Class 3 for luxury or thick clothing.

Lastly, there are the rules for Saving Throws. These work as you would expect in Dungeons & Dragons, but like Alignment have been updated to Moxie, Quickness, Toughness, Driving, and Observation. Moxie covers grit and willpower, Quickness covers reaction speed and agility, Toughness covers endurance and durability, Driving covers all non-combat vehicle actions, and Observation covers spotting and searching for things. Like all Saving throws, these are modified by a character’s Ability modifiers. Altogether, this feels like a clash of mechanics rather than something that is easy to learn and easy to play, but while the rules and mechanics are easy enough, they do feel as if they could be easier.

In terms of what the Judge—as the referee is sometimes known in Gangbusters B/X Edition—can run, Gangbusters B/X Edition suggests several campaign types. These are Criminal, Detective, Law Enforcement, Reporter, and Strange Mysteries. Of these, Detective refers to a campaign involving Private Detectives a la Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, whilst Strange Mysteries pushes Gangbusters B/X Edition into the realms of horror, cosmic horror, and the Pulp superheroes of the nineteen thirties. Of all the campaign concepts in Gangbusters B/X Edition, Strange Mysteries is the least supported, although Gangbusters B/X Edition does offer the option of player characters being masked crime fighters in addition to their standard Classes. Each masked crime fighter receives a random Mysterious Power, such as Bolt of Power or Obscuring Mist, but will have more if any ability has a value of eighteen. Each Mysterious Power can only be once a day. The great advantage of Strange Mysteries campaign is that it is compatible with a lot of Basic Dungeons & Dragons B/X and similar content, so that monsters can easily be imported and various scenarios might work too if the Judge picks carefully.

The other campaign options are covered by their own chapters. So for a Criminal campaign, ‘PART 3: Piece of the Action’ covers criminal activities including bootlegging and racketeering, running a gang, as well as running a normal business, whilst ‘PART 5: Investigations’ covers enquiries made into crimes and mysteries which comes about as part of ‘PART 3: Piece of the Action’. Once the police and the judiciary gets involved, then ‘PART 6: The Long Arm of the Law’ comes into play and explains arrests, plea bargains, bail, trials, witnesses, and law enforcement resources. For the Judge, scattered amongst this there is a list of adversaries and advice on handling encounters, as well as an introduction to the U.S.A. of the period and to the publisher’s default setting of Rock Junction, a steeltown in the Midwest some sixty miles from the Lakefront City of Gangbusters, as well as advice on building adventures and running the game.

What Gangbusters B/X Edition does not include is advice on running long term campaigns. Now this is in part due to the fact that player characters can only achieve six Levels and so the roleplaying game is not designed for long term play. It is really also only designed for two broad campaign types, ones in which the player characters are the criminals and one in which they are not. This is because it is hard to bring the character types together and not have an adversarial relationship.

Physically, Gangbusters B/X Edition is nicely illustrated with lots of period black and white artwork. Now whilst Gangbusters B/X Edition has been proofread, it has not been edited and it very much shows. When it counts, the phrasing of the roleplaying game’s many core rules is often just odd enough to wonder what exactly the author intended, and terms get used interchangeably, such Judge, Referee, Game Master, and so on. Worse, the organisation of the book can be best described as shambolic or scattershot. Now each of the individual sections is self-contained and complete, but ordered in random fashion. So ‘PART 3: Piece of the Action’ which covers criminal activities comes before ‘PART 4: Acting as Judge’, followed by ‘PART 5: Investigations’, ‘PART 6: Long Arm of the Law’, and so on. Lastly, ‘PART 9: Combat’ comes right at the end of the book. There is just no logic to this pattern.

As a toolkit to run an Old School cops and robbers game, Gangbusters B/X Edition could have been easier to use and it could have been easier to read. In spite of this, there is no denying its scrappy charm and there is no denying that Gangbusters 1920s Roleplaying Adventure Game B/X Edition gives a Judge everything she needs to run an Old School Renaissance cops and robbers game—just not necessarily in the right order. 

New Direct to Video DC Movie is hitting the "shelves" next week.
Of course, it has my attention.


Justice League Dark: Apokolips War deals with the Justice League deciding they need to stop Darkseid once and for all.


Among others, we are getting John Constantine (voiced by Matt Ryan again), Raven (Taissa Farmiga of AHS fame), Rosario Dawson as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman, and Camilla Luddington as Zatanna Zatara (reprising her JLDark role) and more.

Yeah I guess Superman and Batman are in it too.

The big news though that this is supposedly the final film in the DCAU, or DC Animated Universe.
Did it fall prey to Crisis too?

I'll let you know next week.  I got my pre-order in.


IMDB, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11079148/
Amazon, https://smile.amazon.com/Justice-League-Dark-Apokolips-War/dp/B085DY6GY6

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the  Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford's mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.


—oOo—


What is it?
A Rough Guide to Glamour is a guide to the capital city of the Lunar Empire.

It is a one-hundred-and-ten page, full colour, 31.31 MB PDF.

A Rough Guide to Glamour is well presented, decently written, and includes a wide range of artwork and a reasonable map.

Where is it set?
Glamour, heart of the Lunar Empire.

Who do you play?
Nothing specific. Much of A Rough Guide to Glamour is written as a tourist guide to the city for pilgrims.

What do you need?
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, although RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary might be useful for its more Chaotic features. Cults of Glorantha will also be useful. 

What do you get?
If you are roleplaying—or have roleplayed—in the fantastical, mystical, mythical world of the Glorantha, then the likelihood is that the enemy of choice is the Lunar Empire. Said to be the greatest civilisation in the known world, glorious and glamorous, knowledgeable of both sorcery and religion, fair in its treatment of women, charitable in its largess and treatment of the poor, welcoming of all who accept its all-encompassing faith, carried by the proselytising cult of the Seven Mothers, the Lunar Empire seeks to expand and extend its reach far and wide. Yet the Lunar Empire is an empire of monsters and demons, an empire which embraces and accepts Chaos, which stamps its faith on the territories it conquers, punishes lawbreakers harshly, sends those who fail to pay their taxes to hell dragged by Tax Demons, and commands the Crimson Bat. This great Chaos demon is fed prisoners, slaves, and rebels daily and their souls are lost forever, it constantly wanders the provinces feeding on sacrifices, and is used as a weapon of war against the Lunar Empire’s enemies. 

The latter view is held by a great many of the peoples of Dragon Pass—of Sartar, Old Tarsh, Prax, the Holy Country, and more. Yet as far as the Lunar Empire is concerned, this is the view of rebels and barbarians, of upstarts who would slap the hand extended to them, and for the most part, a minor issue in the far-flung provinces. The Lunar Empire, personified by the Red Emperor, son of the Red Empress who ascended into the Middle Air four centuries ago to become the Red Moon, has other concerns. To carry out the will of his mother, to expand the empire, to maintain its very obvious greatness, and to ensure that Glamour—capital city of the Lunar Empire—keeps its lustre as the shining ruby-red jewel of the empire. It is Glamour, the city at the heart of the Lunar Empire, which is the subject of A Rough Guide to Glamour.

Originally published in 1997 by Reaching Moon Megacorp to support its ‘Life of Moonson’, a fifty-player Live-Action Role-Playing game, it has since been greatly expanded for this new edition to throw a scarlet-hued spotlight on a city that is in many parts Rome, many parts Las Vegas, but both by way of Soviet-era Moscow, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Progressive Rock, Glam Rock, and Punk Rock. Glamour is glamour by name, glamour by meaning—any and all of them, and the authors are also trying to put a glamour on the reader in detailing the city, making it sound enticing and of course, glamorous, whilst also also hinting at the darkness behind that glamour, but unfortunately do not quite pull the trickery off. That said, A Rough Guide to Glamour is informative, interesting, and shot through in places with an incredibly tongue-in-cheek sense of humour which leaves the reader wondering if they just read what the authors had written.

A Rough Guide to Glamour includes a  gazetteer, guidebook, and map to the capital of the Lunar Empire; information and portraits of the city’s and thus the empire’s most important personages; an overview of the Lunar Empire, its history and geography; details of the cults of the Red Emperor and the goddess Glamour for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha; description and map of the Sultanate of the Silver Shadow where Glamour is located; details of the secrets of Kalikos Icebreaker, the Lunar College of Magic and the Imperial Monopolies of the Etyries cult; write-ups of the intimate doings of the Red Emperor himself and his court; a handful or two of rumours—scurrilous or otherwise; fiction, poetry, and song lyrics; and silliness.


A Rough Guide to Glamour is a performance with an astounding cast— with Elvis Presley as Moonson Argenteus, the Red Emperor; Danny DeVito as Ivex Devouring Dog, Chief Tax Collector; Eva Green as Jar-eel the Razoress, Fourth Inspiration of Moonson; Margot Robbie as The Red Dancer of Power, Chief Missionary; Cate Blanchett as Asvedava the Black, Dean of the Field School of Magic—and more. Ostensibly written as a guide to the city for pilgrims, its primary focus is on what is the front half of the Lunar Empire’s circular capital—the City of Glamour, rather than the City of Dreams behind it with its route beyond to the Crater where the Red Goddess ascended. It thus introduces the city and guides the potential tourist round the city, its great buildings such as Red Square paved with polished stone brought down from the Moon and upon which thousands of pilgrims each year to prostrate themselves on the material body of the Red Goddess, and Hideous Zoo where all manner of exotic and weird—even Chaos—beasts are put on display. Where to stay and where to eat—such as Moon Rock Café for breakfast; customs such as always taking more than a few extra Lunars in the case of on-the-spot fines; and other facilities, like the lime-washed buildings marked with the Man Rune and staffed by Broo that are there for the Pilgrims’ convenience. A ‘Major Holidays & Festivals’ guide suggests when the best time is to visit the city and for anyone out of town, there is an introduction to ‘Let’s Speak New Pelorian!’, the local dialect designed to be less hierarchical, racially stereotypical, or gender biased, but definitely more Orwellian. Then there is the advice that Glamour is currently under Xaroni Law due to the depredations of a masked vigilante known only as ‘the Bat-Man’…

The nature of the City of Dreams beyond Glamour is best explored in various pieces of fiction which the depiction of the dissolution of Moonson Argenteus, the Red Emperor, parallels are strongly made between him and the last years of Elvis Presley. A Rough Guide to Glamour does go beyond the walls of the city itself, specifically to look at ‘The Sultanate of the Silver Shadow’, the region directly ruled by the Red Emperor and his family and to look at the empire in broader detail with ‘A Brief History of the Lunar Empire’, which will provide context for much of the rest of the supplement. Two cults and their roles in Glamour and the Lunar Empire are detailed in A Rough Guide to Glamour. These are ‘The Red Emperor: Governing Cult of the Lunar Empire’ and ‘Glamour Goddess of the Capital of the Lunar Empire’, both quite local cults, but given detailed write-ups for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. They are the only game mechanics content to be found in A Rough Guide to Glamour. There is of course much more to be found in the supplement, but special mention should be made to ‘Pelorian Rhapsody’ and the praise poem to Glamour inspired by Eurythmics lyrics!
On the downside, the focus on the glamour and glitz of Glamour in A Rough Guide to Glamour means that its ‘rough’ side is all but ignored. There are hints given, such as the chain gangs forced to work nightly repairing the paved streets for the following morning and the inevitable fate of those who do not pay their taxes. Similarly, it does not explore the life or place of the average citizen or peasant of Glamour, but to be fair, that is not the purpose of A Rough Guide to Glamour—in 1997 or 2020. Nevertheless, anyone awaiting a comprehensive guide to the city will have to wait a while yet.

Finally, of course, there is the fundamental problem with A Rough Guide to Glamour. Which is that whilst its contents are interesting, they are not necessarily directly useful. At the time of publication it would be extremely challenging for the Game Master to bring the material the supplement contains into play because essentially, its focus is simply several hundred miles and a fundamentally different culture away from where RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is being played and being supported by Chaosium, Inc.—currently. Now doubtless that will change, but being until playing and campaigning within the Lunar Empire is explored by the roleplaying game doing so with the current rules and supporting material is difficult. That said, for long time Gloranthophiles, this presents less of a challenge as they are likely to own supplements released by previous publishers and so are likely to have the means and the context to be able to explore Glamour.

So whilst a Game Master new to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and Glorantha, is unlikely to have immediate use for A Rough Guide to Glamour, this does not mean that it will not be of interest to her. It at least provides further context to the current conflict between the Lunar Empire and Startar and beyond, and the empire’s attitudes towards the upstart provinces. Perhaps for that newcomer, the inclusion of a glossary would not have gone amiss at the back of A Rough Guide to Glamour.

A Rough Guide to Glamour lives up to its name, all glitz and showmanship, not to say the chutzpah of including showstopping comparisons between Elvis Presley and the Red Emperor in their last days and rewrites of lyrics to classic British rock songs. It is brilliant  in describing the mythical, mystical nature of Glamour, but there is always feeling that there should be something more to, or at least, beyond that brilliance—and that requires another book or supplement, leaving A Rough Guide to Glamour more the tourist or pilgrim’s guide rather than a full gaming supplement.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. A Rough Guide to Glamour is a guide to the capital city of the Lunar Empire and not only details the greatest city in all of Glorantha, but expands information about the world itself. (Please note: This could be Imperial propaganda courtesy of the Seven Mothers cult.)
No. A Rough Guide to Glamour is irrelevant to most RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha campaigns and difficult to bring into a campaign without further source material. (Please note: This has been marked as heretical propaganda spread by rebel scum in the southern provinces. A representative of the cult of Danfive Xaron will be with you shortly to assess your punishment.)
Maybe. A Rough Guide to Glamour is a solid introduction to the city of Glamour and provides some context to the actions of the Lunar Empire in the southern provinces. Plus more information about the world of Glorantha is always good. (Please note: Upon receipt of the proper donations, a Lhankor Mhy scribe will be available to read this document for you once it has been located in the temple archives. Unfortunately the requested document is not a comprehensive guide to the city and there are many omissions, or at least, much that is apocryphal. More information may be available at a later date.)

Well.  I was not expecting to make this post today!

Two weeks ago I got my early access to Hero Forge 2.0 Color Mini creator.
I applauded the interface and was very thrilled to see all the options that were already up and running.
I praised them for their successful use of Kickstarter to get up and running and to reward those that have supported them over the years.

I ordered my minis and was told that they would be delivered around mid-June.  Sweet! Just in time for my birthday.  Guess what I got in the mail yesterday?


That's a month and a half early.   Now I am not saying everyone will get in this fast.  I have a feeling I got mine before it got super busy.  But still.

Let's look at these in detail.  As I expected they are a bit paler than they appear in the software and a little less detail, but still, they look fantastic really.  They are also a little bit heavier than previous prints.


Here is my iconic witch with different generations of the prints.  The first, white one, is from their original Kickstarter. Not a lot of detail and kind of "sandy" feeling.  The second in the newer and current plastic, painted by my wife.  The third one is the new color 3D print.   If you look really close you can see print lines, but you have to be looking for them.  The last all blue one is an STL download and printed on my printer here at home using PLA.


Of course, I HAD to do Willow and Tara.  These are the new color 3D mins and the slightly older premium plastic.  Same poses.  You can see that the bases on the color minis are larger.
You can feel the lines on the color ones and not on the premium plastic.
So if I ever get these painted it will be interesting to see the differences.

Comparing the prints:


To the images in the software:


You can see there is some loss of color and detail.  BTW this is an older pic of Willow, I changed the color of her top when I went to have the print made.

But none of that is a deal-breaker for me.  I am going to assume they will get better and better with more detail.


I included a figure of my Keribum version of Tara too.  I wanted to see the size differences translated to 25mm.

I am very pleased with the results. 
I think I might wait a bit before I get more.  Partially to let others get a chance to get their's and partially to see what sort of upgrades they are planning.

You can get yours at https://www.heroforge.com/

The last thing you should do is say no to a dragon, right? This is a situation in which the Player Characters find themselves in To Free the Storm, a short, one or two session scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Written by Andrew Peregrine, author of The Seventh Doctor Sourcebook as well as contributor to and author of many other roleplaying books, it is an adventure for characters of Fifth to Seventh Level. It is setting neutral, but whatever the setting the Dungeon Master decides to use it with, that setting requires an area of dead and barren land with a volcano at its heart, and a village near the area. As written, the volcano at the heart of the barren land in To Free the Storm is Mawspire Mountain. Now only home to a few hardy mountain goats, local legends say that the region was blasted into lifelessness by a dragon, but since no one can recall having seen a dragon, no one believes the legends. Beyond the barren surrounds of the mountain, the region is fertile, which has drawn settlers who farm the land and loggers who work the forests. One village in the area is Carverton.

As To Free the Storm opens, the Player Characters are staying in Carverton, perhaps because they are en route to somewhere or between adventures, and enjoying a drink and decent food when suddenly, the village is attacked. Which is not that unusual when it comes to villages and adventures in just about any Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy world as it goes. What is unusual is the fact that the attacker asks for them by name. What makes the situation worse is that the attacker asking for them is a dragon! Not only that, the dragon has a favour to ask of them, a favour which he suggests that the Player Characters fulfil lest he continue blasting the village to bits. Which is perfectly in keeping with the attacker—Zzaladar—which happens to be a Blue Dragon.

The favour is this. Zzaladar has long been tied to the area by an arcane manacle, placed on him by a mage many years ago. The manacle is tied to an orb kept deep in a ruined temple on Mawspire Mountain and as Zzaladar has grown in size and power, the effectiveness of the orb has weakened and he thinks that with a little of help, he can break free. Which is where the Player Characters get involved. Zzaladar  wants them to go to the temple and destroy the orb that keeps him prisoner. In  return, Zzaladar promises to not only not destroy Carverton, but also not harm a single sentient creature for a year. Which sounds like a not unreasonable deal—at least for the following year. After that, who knows?

The bulk of the adventure takes place in the ruined temple on Mawspire Mountain. Here the adventurers will have to contend with the volcanic temperatures, the ancient and undead knights of the Order of the Orb who have sworn to protect the orb—and some who have not, and how the god of the volcano, Darmaw, was worshipped before the temple was abandoned and his faith forgotten. The latter is where the dungeon—consisting of just fourteen locations—is at its most interesting. There are a number of elements here which look a little like traps, but may well help the Player Characters in their quest, whilst others will at first seem to be of use, but will ultimately hinder their efforts.

The dungeon offers a reasonable mix of puzzle like elements and plenty of combat along with some roleplaying. Certainly, the Dungeon Master has a couple of fun NPCs to roleplay, after all, what Dungeon Master does not relish the prospect of roleplaying a dungeon? Yet the design of the dungeon is really linear and not all interesting and were it not for the roleplaying elements and how the worship of Darmaw is brought into play, would have little to recommend it.

Available via the DM’s Guild, To Free the Storm is a fifteen page, 2.06 Mb file full colour PDF. It is generally well written, but does need another edit. The cover is nice, but is the only illustration. The map though, is dull and murky, and leaves the reader wishing that the author had drawn it himself or got someone else to do so. This does not mean that the map cannot be used, for it can. It is simply the case that the map is unattractive.

Rounding out To Free the Storm is a quartet of further adventure ideas which raise further questions and suggest as to the consequences of the Player Characters’ actions. Now one obvious oddity with the scenario is that it involves a Blue Dragon and has the Player Characters going to a temple on a volcano. This seems an odd choice, when possibly a Red Dragon with its fire association or even a White Dragon with its icy disassociation might have been more strongly thematic choices. That aside, there is no denying the strength of the set-up to the scenario with the monster coming to the Player Characters rather than the other way around. Similarly, the handling of worship of Darmaw is well done, but unfortunately this is done in an uninteresting, linear dungeon and on decidedly unattractive maps, which all together does not make for a pleasing combination.

There is a lot of potentially good story in To Free the Storm and as the introduction to a campaign of thwarting a threat which the Player Characters were forced to unleash, is actually a good set-up. It would be fantastic to see the consequences of their actions explored in sequels to this scenario as well as have Zzaladar return again and again so that the Dungeon Master can roleplay him as he develops into a memorable villain. Overall, To Free the Storm is a serviceable adventure which feels as if it deserved better, but is still good enough to ask what happens next.

Exhibit / April 30, 2020

Object Name: The Gods from Outer Space
Maker and Year: Magnet/Methuen, 1978-1982
Object Type: Comic Books
Image Source: Komiksy Online, exhibit author’s copies
Description:  (Richard McKenna)

In the summer of 1980, a 9-year-old child was made privy to startling revelations regarding the origins of the human race. Namely, that in the distant past, a scientific expedition had ventured from its homeworld of Delos to what was then known as the Blue Planet for the purpose of making genetic changes to the genomes of one species of that planet’s inhabitants in order to speed up the development of intelligent life—and that this spurring on of intelligence was a galaxy-wide tradition that had been going on for millennia, as advanced species tinkered with the biology of less-evolved species in an ongoing chain of giving each other a leg up the evolutionary ladder. The child also learned that the figure of Satan was actually a memory distorted by its passage down through the generations of a rogue Delosian named Satham who, along with his helper Azazel, had rebelled against the edicts of the mission, and that the cherubim with flaming sword set to make sure Adam and Eve didn’t try and sneak back into the garden of Eden was actually a Delosian spacecraft known as a “sonde” firing its thrusters.

The medium through which these awesome facts were divulged was not some august tome but four slim volumes of remaindered comic books retailing at the low, low price of 80 pence for the lot, the site of their communication no solemn temple but a cash&carry outside Doncaster, and that 9-year-old child was—surprise!—me.

Its Polish title also containing the accuracy-improving addendum of “According to von Däniken,” The Gods from Outer Space, as it was called in Britain, was an eight-part (though only the four I bought that day were available in the UK, the eighth volume published many years later) comic that took as its point of departure Erich von Däniken’s silly “theories”—read “pervy racist fiction”—about extraterrestrials having influenced humanity’s development in the distant past, the basis of which Carl Sagan identified as being “that our ancestors were dummies.” In 1977, with von Däniken mania still thriving, Alfred Górny of Polish publishing house Sport i Turystyka—Sport and Tourism—made an agreement with Econ Verlag,  the publishers of the German edition of Chariots of the Gods?, to create a series of comics based around von Däniken’s crackpot concepts. Polish journalist and Auschwitz survivor Arnold Mostowicz was brought in as writer, and when Grzegorz Rosiński, the artist originally intended to realize the comic, was snaffled by French comic Tintin, he suggested his fellow pupil at art school and Polish comics veteran Bogusław Polch as the man for the job. Górny, Mostowicz, and Polch spent the next four years detailing the adventures of the expedition to the Blue Planet.

The leader of the expedition and the protagonist of the series is the only Delosian woman we meet, but confusingly—despite the sexism implicit in having literally only one speaking female character (though she is later joined by a clone of herself)—Ais (as she is called in the British version) is pretty much the equal of all the male characters put together: quick-witted, bold, intelligent, beautiful, not above laser-blasting a few bad guys and dedicated to the values of the mission but ready to rebel when necessary against the eugenicist dictates of the “Great Brain,” the emotionlessly logical super-intellect that dictates Delosian decisions.

From the moment they set up their first base in the Andes where they (natch) build the Nazca Lines as a landing strip, Ais’s expedition is plagued by setbacks, from rebellious Delosians and Robocop-ed reptiles to insectoid aliens who plan to strip Earth of its natural resources. The plot spans centuries and goes on to include Atlantis, the Pyramids, the Tower of Babel, Hindu gods, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, the crossing of the Red Sea, the Nephilim, crystal skulls, the Book of Ezekiel, and the chariot of Yahweh, as well as the aforementioned Ur-Beelzebub—the dastardly Satham, and his army of mutants and robots. The story is an enjoyably confusing nonsense minestrone, but the story is entirely secondary to what makes The Gods from Outer Space so compelling: page after page of Polch’s lyrically beautiful artwork. His sure, clean line and mastery of shade and form create a credible and coherent visual world with its own technologies and aesthetics that in its way is as intense and visionary as the images generated by Jack Kirby’s infatuation with ancient astronauts. Polch died at the beginning of 2020, but the work he leaves behind him—which also includes the wonderful Funky Koval—ensure him a place in comic book history.

While still fairly dodgy, what with logic-driven technocrats imposing their “mission” on a bunch of unsuspecting primates, The Gods from Outer Space‘s interventionist ethics are perhaps closer to those of 2001: A Space Odyssey than to von Däniken’s reactionary gobbledegook. Despite its links to his deeply ambiguous schtick, though, The Gods from Outer Space was also a handy primer for young minds re: the idea that humanity’s myths and legends might in reality be nothing more than the misunderstandings and misrememberings of events or inventions long past, and that even the god we sang hymns to in school assembly every morning, even the idea of “good” and “evil” themselves as discrete and mysterious forces instead of the results of circumstance, history, and environment, might all just be a load of bollocks we’d made up over the millennia because it was easier than actually trying to understand things. Is it possible that, in its way, The Gods from Outer Space hinted at some burgeoning awareness that the historical narratives foisted on us by the establishment were perhaps not totally trustworthy? That the missing element was aliens meddling with our DNA might be pushing it a bit, but maybe there was a kernel of healthy skepticism in this particular take on von Däniken’s delirium—though as we’ve witnessed in recent years, skepticism without actual knowledge can easily metastasize into something as unhealthy and dangerous as unquestioning belief.

It might seem a stretch to accept now that there was a time when many adults believed—with varying degrees of conviction—in the cosmic theories of a Swiss hotelier with criminal convictions for fraud, as well as the Bermuda Triangle and Bigfoot. But this paranormalia was absolutely a part of the texture of everyday life. Though given that forty years later we are living in a world increasingly defined by the bellicose beliefs of reactionary fantasists willing to believe in anything that will provide them with the solipsistic buzz of victimhood, it’s not really so hard to credit the hold these strange ideas exerted over the collective imagination. In comparison, maybe The Gods from Outer Space‘s contention that our ancestors got made clever by aliens doesn’t seem so bad.

Once again evil witches gather to celebrate Walpurgis Night and good witches celebrate Beltane.

And once again the Warlocks join the festivities.

The Warlock for Old-School Essentials



Mine is the Power!

Power. Humans have always sought it.
Clerics pray for it. Wizards study for it.

Warlocks take it.

Introducing the Warlock class for your Old-School RPGs.

- Four new warlock pacts: Chaos, Cosmic, Death, and Dragon.
- 78 Warlock spells including Cantrips
- 13 new spells for clerics, druids, illusionists, and magic-users each.
- 55 Warlock Invocations, the ultimate expression of their power!
- Magic items and warlock patrons.

Fully compatible with Old-School Essentials and other Basic-Era Games.
Fully compatible with other witch and warlock books from The Other Side.

Requires Old-School Essential Core Rules.

Cover Art by Conner Meek.  Some interior art by Jeff Dee.

POD version on the way.

This book is 100% compatible with The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition also for Old-School Essentials. In fact it is written so warlocks can use witch spells (up to 5th level) and witches can use warlock spells.   The two groups of classes are also natural antagonists for each other.

This book is also 95%(*) compatible with The Warlock for Swords & Wizardry. 
Both warlock books feature pacts, invocations, spells, and lodges.  There is some minor overlap (invocations like Arcane Blast, some spells) but otherwise, each book adds to the other.  Expand the warlocks spell list and invocations.

Exhibit / April 28, 2020

Object Name: Brought To Light: Shadowplay—The Secret Team and Flashpoint—the La Penca Bombing
Publisher and Year: Eclipse Books, 1989
Object Type: Graphic novel
Image Source: Archive.org (Shadowplay—The Secret Team and Flashpoint—The La Penca Bombing)
Description (Michael Grasso):

In 1989, at the very end of the Cold War, a group of four prominent mainstream and alternative comic book writers and artists created a double volume graphic novel exposing the rampant injustices, assassinations, and terrorism facilitated by the CIA and its creatures worldwide, ostensibly to fight global communism in the years following World War II. This pair of books, sold under the shared title Brought To Light, came courtesy of one of the only justice movements since the Church Committee to successfully take on the American deep state and confront the CIA’s historical criminal behavior.

Founded in 1979 as an outgrowth of its founders’ work to achieve justice for presumed-murdered nuclear worker and union activist Karen Silkwood, the Christic Institute took as its inspiration the Christian mystic/philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his concept of a “christic” cosmic energy that he penned a mere month before his death. Danny Sheehan (a lawyer who had been involved in the Pentagon Papers case), Sara Nelson (a former television journalist and labor secretary for the National Organization for Women), and the Reverend William J. Davis (a Jesuit priest who would go on to spend most of the early 1980s in Latin America observing the crimes of reactionary regimes from Pinochet’s in Chile to the Contras in Nicaragua) founded the Christic Institute to provide legal and investigative aid to resist right-wing terrorism and corporate malfeasance across the globe. In the early 1980s, Christic would go on to bring a lawsuit against the Nazi and Ku Klux Klan terrorists in Greensboro, North Carolina who murdered four left-wing protestors in November 1979, including as defendants in the lawsuit federal law enforcement officials and the many Nazi collaborators within local law enforcement who allowed (and even encouraged) the Klan violence to take place.

As the Reagan years unfolded and a resurgent CIA found its footing again interfering on the global stage (especially in Central America), Christic found itself at the center of the case that would paradoxically lead to both its greatest publicity and the Institute’s eventual downfall and dissolution. In 1984, at the height of the Nicaraguan civil war between the revolutionary Sandinista government and the Reagan CIA-backed right-wing Contra rebels, a hastily-arranged press conference was put together to allow a disillusioned Contra official named Edén Pastora to speak to the press. For months, CIA officials had allegedly been tracking Pastora, a former Sandinista who had gone over to the Contras and now found himself at odds with the Contras’ alliances with foreign forces in the form of both the CIA and drug traffickers from South America. A purported “photojournalist” named Per Anker Hansen (believed by some to be CIA-allied Libyan agent Amac Galil) attended the Pastora press conference at a remote guerilla camp at La Penca on the border with Costa Rica, suspiciously guarding a package with “photographic equipment” that was actually full of C-4 explosives. Hansen/Galil left the building and allegedly detonated the package remotely. Three journalists and four guerillas died in the resulting explosion, and 21 were injured.

In the months following the bombing, American journalist Tony Avirgan (who was injured in the La Penca bombing) and his wife Martha Honey engaged in their own investigation, finding the CIA’s fingerprints all over this assassination attempt on Pastora (who survived the bombing with injuries and ended up eventually reconciling with Daniel Ortega’s Sandinistas). In 1986, as the Iran-Contra affair was in full swing, the Christic Institute filed a RICO suit in federal court against Oliver North and several other members of “the secret team” responsible for dirty tricks, weapons smuggling, and targeted assassinations in Central America throughout the 1980s. Christic ended up losing the case, its 501(c)(3) status, and its very existence thanks to “frivolous lawsuit” penalties levied by a Nixon-appointed judge whom Sheehan would find was associated with both Meyer Lansky’s Miami National Bank, a center for CIA-Mafia funding throughout the ’60s and ’70s, and the CIA itself as a “CIA [trained] attorney.”

While the La Penca bombing case was in full swing, the Christic Institute collaborated with indie comics scribe and political activist Joyce Brabner—who had attended one of Sheehan’s lectures and been inspired by his work—on a comic book retelling of the La Penca/Pastora case. Avirgan and Honey dictated the details of their investigation to Brabner, and she and comic artist Thomas Yeates put together an illustrated version of the La Penca bombing. It was published on indie comic imprint Eclipse (home of the Iran-Contra trading card set) and paired with a second comic detailing the CIA’s overall Cold War activities by writer Alan Moore and artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Yeates’s art style evokes war and adventure comics of an earlier era, much along the same lines as his future work on venerable newspaper serials like Prince Valiant, Zorro, and Tarzan, to simultaneously effectively convey and subvert the web of CIA intrigue that converged in that camp on the Costa Rica border.

Moore and Sienkiewicz’s Shadowplay—The Secret Team offers a broader history of the CIA’s interference and a much more hallucinatory visual and narrative experience. The comic centers on an avatar of the CIA and American imperialism in the form of a maniacal, drunken bald eagle who “represent[s] the Company,” the common sobriquet for the CIA, and who explains American intelligence interference abroad in terms of the brutality and murder necessary to protect American (business) interests. “I like to think I’m sellin’ folks a dream,” the eagle says, before accepting the fact that he’s responsible for “swimming pools full of blood” to keep that American dream—the international machinery of commerce—moving. Moore explores early Cold War CIA interference in elections from Italy to Iran to Guatemala before delving deeply into the Mafia- and corporate-aided CIA programs of assassination, illegal invasions, narcotics trafficking, and mass murder from Cuba to Southeast Asia to the Middle East, ending with an explanation on how the heirs to these earlier Cold Warriors were behind the Reagan era’s affairs in Central America and Iran.

Where Brabner and Yeates rely on the specific chilling details of the events leading up to the La Penca bombing op to illustrate the danger of the CIA’s activities, Moore and Sienkiewicz’s work evokes larger, more mythic themes, conveying the danger of the “American way of life” for much of the rest of the world. They subvert all-American symbols like the Statue of Liberty (crowned in rifles and carrying a giant dollar sign in the place of her tablet), baseball (CIA “trading cards” featuring Mafia don Santo Trafficante and Cuban exiles), and Pepsi (implicated in the manufacture and refinement of CIA heroin in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War). Sienkiewicz, by 1989 an established comic artist whose avant-garde, impressionistic style had given new life to Marvel titles like The New Mutants, and who had worked well within the political and mystical intrigues of limited series like Frank Miller’s Elektra: Assassin (1986-1987), here channels not only his own dazzling impressionistic style but the freaked-out hallucinatory caricatures of Hunter S. Thompson illustrator Ralph Steadman. Alan Moore’s own political stances on American imperialism and fascism had, of course, found full expression in his own pair of 1980s opuses, Watchmen (1986-1987) and V For Vendetta (1982-1989).

The two Brought to Light volumes stand as a final testament to both the Christic Institute’s vital work and as a signpost for the end of the Cold War, a time when nearly all the secrets of the CIA’s outrageous Cold War activities had become well-known—not thanks to America’s mainstream newspapers and television media, but because of independent, politically-engaged voices working diligently in underground media to strip the veils away from the rot and endemic corruption at the center of the nation’s politics.

Well. The books are off to the printers and we will start sending out copies to our Kickstarter backers.

But if you missed our big Kickstarter last fall I have some good news. We are now taking preorders of Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.

The shipping date for the hardcovers from the Printer is June 10, and we will then be sending copies out to the Kickstarter backers. After that, we will fulfill all pre-orders.

Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Pre-orders of the Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars rpg are OPEN! Grab a hardcover/PDF bundle and get your PDF right away! https://elflair.com/nightshift.html 


Get your pre-order in here: https://www.elflair.com/nightshift.html

If you want to "try before you buy" there are the Quick Start rules here.

I plan on having a lot of fun with this over the Summer.

Been wanting to do this beastie for a while!



The Hodag

In the wilds of Wisconsin there lives, or rather lived, the fiercest to ever run on stubby little legs.  The Hodag.  This monster has a wide face full of razor-sharp fangs. Its head is topped with a pair of horns and spikes running down it's back.  It's four legs are short (and it has no knees) and also end in razor-tipped claws.  It is fierce, vicious, and mean-spirited.

The hodag is seven feet long and about two-and-half feet tall. It is almost supernaturally strong, but are not fast runners.  They have to sleep leaning against a tree since it has no knees and their own spikes would impale them if they were to lie down. Because of this, they can't be surprised. This also might explain why they are so cranky.

Hodags are believed to have died out due to a lack of their primary food source, pure white bulldogs.

Hodag (NightShift)
No. Appearing: 1
AC: 4
Move: 30ft.
Hit Dice: 6
Special: 4 attacks (2 claws, bite, 1 tail spike), can't be surprised
XP VALUE: 150


Hodag (Old-School Essentials)
Armor Class 4 [16]
Hit Dice 6 (27 hp)
Attacks [2 × claw (1d6), 1 × bite (2d6)] or 1 × tail spike (1d6) or 2 x horn gore (1d4+1)
THAC0 14 [+5]
Movement Rate 90' (30')
Saves D10 W11 P12 B13 S14 (6)
Morale 11
Alignment Chaotic
XP for Defeating 500
Number Appearing 1 (1)
Treasure Type None

• Horns. The hodag can rush an opponent to attack.  The horns are sharp and cause piercing damage.
• Nasty Mood. Hodags are always in a foul mood. They can't be charmed nor subdued. They always attack.
• Tooth and nail. The preferred attack of a hodag. Razor-sharp claws and fangs.

Hodag (shadow creature) (Blue Rose)

Abilities (Focuses)
3 Accuracy (Claws)
1 Communication
3 Constitution
2 Dexterity (Stealth)
1 Fighting (Fangs)
-1 Intelligence
2 Perception (Smell)
3 Strength
2 Willpower

Speed 16
Health 40
Defense 14
Armor Rating 0

Weapon Attack Roll Damage
Claws +3 1d6+1
Fangs +2 1d6+2
Horns +1 1d6

Special Qualities
Favored Stunts: Defensive Stance, Lightning Attack

Threat: Moderate


Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Pre-sales of the Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars rpg are OPEN! Grab a hardcover/PDF bundle and get your PDF right away! https://elflair.com/nightshift.html