The AMC-222 Report is a scenario for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, the roleplaying game of Blue-Collar Science Fiction horror published by Osprey Games. It is written by the roleplaying game’s designer and presents a short scenario which combines strong elements of action, investigation, and roleplaying and which could be played in a single session—two at the very most. It takes a traditional type of Science Fiction setting and gives it a horror twist which echoes that of the slasher film subgenre. It can be played as a training simulation to determine the suitability of the Player Characters for working between Earth and the frontier of space as part of the application process as described in Those Dark Places, or it can be run straight as an assignment during their years of employment. This also means that it can be run with new Player Characters or more experienced ones, but if played as a training simulation or early in their careers, its horror elements may foreshadow their eventual fate if the Player Characters spend too much time in space… However it is used, The AMC-222 Report will take relatively little time for the Game Monitor to prepare for play.

The setting for The AMC-222 Report is Asteroid Mining Catch 222 in the Peller System, a facility operated by Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. The head of facility has recently sent an emergency request for help. Two of its mining crew have been killed and a member of staff is missing, and worse, as far as the company is concerned, the deep space mining facility is not currently operating at full capacity, and that means it is losing money… The Player Characters—the crew of the DSRV Grahams, a light and fast Deep Space Reconnaissance Vessel typically used by many Duster and Arbiter crews for fast dispatch and first responder missions. They receive an emergency briefing and are reassigned to investigate and resolve the emergency. Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. wants Asteroid Mining Catch 222 back operating at full capacity as soon as possible.

The players and their characters should realise that there is something different about this mission from the off. Each member of the team is assigned a Dazer pistol and a medkit. When they arrive, the Player Characters find the station to be a bleak, dark, and depressing place. It seems to be in a constant state of power saving and this has affected the personnel assigned there. The staff are weary and worn out, even uncaring in the face of the current situation. This presents the Game Monitor with some entertaining NPCs to roleplay and some frustrated and frustrating NPCs for the Player Characters to interact with—or not!

The AMC-222 Report is divided into two acts, with each act being set on a different level of Asteroid Mining Catch 222. In the first act, the Player Characters arrive at the habitable level and investigate recent events and interrogate the base personnel as to recent events. In the second act, the Player Characters descend to the mine workings on the lower level. Here they encounter malfunctioning machinery, a less than ideal working environment, and worse…

Support for the Game Master for The AMC-222 Report includes deck plans of the DSRV Grahams and floor plans of Asteroid Mining Catch 222, the deck plans also being useful as a sample ship for the Player Characters in the long term. All of the scenario’s NPCs are given detailed backgrounds to accompany their often moody responses and explanations as to what is going on in the facility in the scenario’s first act. In addition to details of the Deep Space Reconnaissance Vessel, the other new item of equipment given is the Armoured Space Suit.

Physically, The AMC-222 Report is reasonably well presented. The deck plans and floor plans are simple, but clear, whilst the artwork is at best described as rough. If there is anything missing, it is perhaps a set of ready-to-play Player Characters which would both speed up the scenario’s already quick preparation time and make it suitable as a convention scenario.

The AMC-222 Report is more obvious in its plotting and in its inspiration as a horror scenario than the earlier The Ana-Sin-Emid Report. It might even be termed simple, but that should not necessarily be held against it. The AMC-222 Report is straightforward, but that does not mean it is not atmospheric and does not mean it cannot deliver a short, sharp shock of horror.

Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror which explores themes of guilt, morality, and mystery. It asks each Player Character what it was that he did wrong and how he feels about it, what is wrong—or right and who says so, and presents him and his companions with a strangeness and mystery around them, that somehow, they must survive. It is a game of ordinary men and women, protagonists thrust into unsettling situations and nightmares, and exposed to mysteries that perhaps will push them to confront their own secrets. Published by Cobble Path Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it comes in two volumes—Player Guide and Director’s Guide*—and is inspired by psychological horror films such as The Descent, Triangle, Shutter Island, and others, rather than classic slashers like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th.

* Note: Neither the Player Guide nor the Director’s Guide are sold separately.

The Player Guide presents everything—well, almost everything—that a player needs to create and roleplay a character in Locus. It covers character creation, equipment, and mechanics, as well as providing examples in terms of both rules and Player Characters. The Director’s Guide re-examines various aspects of each before beginning to really explore and explain what Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror is about. Outside of the Player Characters, Locus is about Broken Places, locations where the line between reality and the horror and emotional truth of a story has thinned to the point that they have become damaged or broken, and transformed into something else. Each is or has a Genius Locus, that in becoming damaged or broken, is transformed into a Malus Locus, a bad place which feeds off negative energies and emotions. The Malus Locus draws in outsiders and residents alike, using reminders of their old wounds and bad memories to inflict fear, terror, and pain. It manifests Monsters which remind the victims trapped inside the Malus Locus of their dark secrets and feelings of guilt, and if the monster can kill them, they leave behind Echoes of their guilt that the Monster can feed off for years. Echoes are likely to be interpreted as ghosts, and when the Player Characters enter a Malus Locus, it may already be inhabited by Echoes.
A Malus Locus consists of a single location and is actually composed of layers. The location can be large or small, and might be a single house, a neighbourhood or housing block, an oil rig or space station, or even a whole town. The layers are Layers of Reality, each layer a reflection of the one above, the same but different, darker, weirder, scarier, and worse… The deeper the Player Characters venture into the Malus Locus, the further away from reality they move, the closer to the heart of the Malus Locus they get, the greater the manifestations and signs of the unreal and the Player Characters’ Haunts—or guilty secrets—appear, and the more openly the Monster will move against them. Each Layer is separate, but bleeds into the one above and the one below, though they become more and more distinct as the Player Character descends.
There is a certain fluidity between Layers, but what determines which Layer of Reality the party is on is the number of cards they hold in their Hands. The more cards they have in their Hands, the deeper the Layer of Reality they are on or can access. This, it turns out, is the primary mechanic effect of the cards in play. In the Player Guide, the player is told that having too many cards in his Hand is not a good thing, but not why. The Director’s Guide explains that each player’s Hand of cards represents the crushing weight of the world and guilt from his secret, which whilst merely oppressive in the real world, in the Malus Locus serves to pull him further in and down… 
In play, this means that the Director will need to keep track of how many cards the players hold in their Hands, so that she can tell when they transition between Layers, whether that is without their knowing or with a set piece scene. So they may need to be open about that during play. Also, as much as the players need to be rid of their cards, they also want to have a certain number of cards in their Hands in order to access the lower Layers, especially if they want to confront the Monster. It also brings in an element of Hand management into the play of Locus as each player works to reduce the number of cards in his Hand. This comes about through both roleplaying and mechanical means.
At the beginning of the scenario, a player has two cards in his Hand. He will acquire more at each hour of play; when his character experiences a jarring vision or hallucination; and when he roleplays his character acting in accordance with his Vice—which is associated with his Haunt, and thus his Secret and his Guilt. Fortunately there are more ways of discarding cards than acquiring them. For non-Haunt cards, this is a player roleplaying his character in accordance with a Virtue not his own or rolling a critical success on an Outcome Check. For both non-Haunt cards and Haunt cards, this is a player roleplaying or having his character act in accordance with his Virtue, having his character resisting the urge to act in accordance with his Haunt, and roleplaying his character actively opposing his Haunt.
Throughout, the onus is on the player to not just roleplay his character in accordance the Virtues—Temperance, Motivation, Community, and Compassion, and roleplay avoiding giving into the Vices—Temptation, Apathy, Discord, and Malice, but to be seen to do it, to signal to the Director that he is doing so, and therefore, can discard a card. Meanwhile, the Director will be presenting situations where a character can gain cards, whether they are fraught or jarring scenes or incidents where the character gives into his Vice.
What there is not though in Locus is a path to redemption. There is no real way in which a character can assuage his guilt for his Haunt, at least not in the long term. Thus it will always remain part of the character. In the short term, that is, in the limits of the scenario or campaign and its Malus Locus, there are always opportunities to act against it through the means of discarding the cards and thus reducing the potential for confrontation with the Monster. This again emphasises the brutal nature of play in Locus, which is already present in the Death Clock measuring a Player Character’s physical health and the limited degrees of Stress a Player Character can suffer and limit his drive to succeed in dangerous and horrific situations.
Throughout the Director’s Guide, the Director is supported by tools and advice to create and run a game of Locus. For the players, this includes managing their expectations and respecting their limits in what is by design a roleplaying game which has the Player Characters confronted by regrets over past events and circumstances. There is a complete guide to creating and running Monsters from the concept and the keywords—the latter tied into Locus’ four Vices, to applying the mechanics and balancing those against the Player Characters. It advises that Monsters which are too weak or too strong be avoided since one represents no challenge, and the latter too much of a challenge. It is backed up with not just a fully worked through example, but a quartet tied to the four suits of the Haunts and Vices.
Similar advice and guidance is given for setting up a game of Locus, scenarios being constructed as mysteries which first hint that something is supernaturally wrong and then second, draw the Player Characters into the Malus Locus to determine what exactly is wrong. The third and final mystery involves finding out the cause and hopefully coming up with a solution. However, the exploration of the Malus Locus may not necessarily result in identifying and repairing the issue at its heart, although that is the ideal outcome. Instead, the Player Characters might flee the Malus Locus having failed to identify or deal with its horror, plumb its depths to reach its heart and confront the Monster—hopefully to defeat the Monster, or get caught with its confines, becoming denizens who might be encountered by others later on… At the core of the Mysteries should be clues that the Player Characters can find without rolling Outcome Checks, the aim being to give them information necessary to solve them were it not for stress and their own insecurities.
Beyond some decent advice on handling Outcome Checks, conflicts, spot effects (which affect a single Player Character) and set pieces (which are primarily location-based), and how a Locus Malus reacts to the presence of the Player Characters and their actions, Locus gives the Director a lengthy—almost a third of the Director’s Guide, ready-to-play scenario. This is ‘The MFV Mulligan’. This takes place in 1995 in the North Sea with the Player Characters cast as members of the crew of the MTS Gannet, which picks up a distress call from and goes to the rescue of the fishing trawler, the MFV Mulligan. Instead of four read-to-play characters, the scenario includes detailed templates which the players are expected to customise. All four should be interesting to roleplay.
Of course, the rescue attempt takes place in the middle of a storm and on first coming aboard the trawler, it seems that the crew are missing. The trawler, initially adrift, provides the scenario with the closed environment necessary for a good Malus Locus and the descriptions of the various locations aboard the MFV Mulligan are given in general as well as Layer by Layer. Various items aboard are detailed as are the Spot Effects and Set Pieces which the Director can throw at her Player Characters. The scenario is rounded out with an introduction for the players and their characters, and cards for its Monsters, equipment, and more. The deck plans for the trawler are a little small, but easy to read still.
‘The MFV Mulligan’ is a really engaging scenario, providing what is effectively a haunted house (at sea) style Mystery and showcasing how a typical scenario is constructed for Locus with its layering of clues, mysteries, and the Malus Locus. It should engender a strong sense of atmosphere too, although it does note that the fishing industry operating out of Scotland in the nineteen nineties is not as diverse as a modern gaming audience might prefer. The scenario overall, should provide two good sessions at a minimum, and hopefully will not just serve as an example for the Director to create her own, but also as the basis for the publisher to release more
Like the Player Guide for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror, the Director’s Guide is a slim hardback, but roughly double the length. It is again done in deep blacks and shades of grey with slashes and splashes of red and white. There is a greater use of photographs too, but not always exactly appropriate, and some of the artwork is not quite as good a quality as in the Player Guide. The layout is perhaps slightly rough in places, and although it can be difficult to find things occasionally, there is a solid index. The game and its play is nicely supported with several examples of play and the mechanics, plus a decent summary and glossary at the end of the book.
The Director’s Guide for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror brings to life its world of Malus Loci, Haunts, and Monsters feeding off the guilt of others far more than the Player Guide does. Of course, that is the point of the Director’s Guide, but there is no real hint of this in the Player Guide and that is an omission which would have given the play of Locus context for the players. Nevertheless, the Director’s Guide does a fine job of exploring and showcasing its exploration of guilt and morality in the face of reality warping, if localised horror, and then its potentially quite nasty, brutal mechanics coupled with strong roleplaying potential in the Virtues and Vices. All backing them up with satisfying examples, a decent scenario, and solid advice for the Director to help her create her own Monsters and Malus Loci and tailor them to her players’ protagonists.
The combination of the brutal nature of its mechanics and its focus upon the Player Characters’ guilt and secrets means that Locus is best suited to a playing group with some roleplaying experience under its collective belt and mature players. Further, that combination, together with the fact that the guilt and secrets never truly go away and the highly localised nature of its Malus Loci means that it is also best suited to one-shot scenarios or short campaigns. For a gaming group that wants to explore the personal horror of the fallible and even the failed, Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror pulls the players and their characters deeper and deeper into a confrontation with their characters’ guilt and its manifestation, and presents them with a fraught roleplaying challenge and experience.

Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror which explores themes of guilt, morality, and mystery. It asks each Player Character what it was that he did wrong and how he feels about it, what is wrong—or right and who says so, and presents him and his companions with a strangeness and mystery around them, that somehow, they must survive. It is a game of ordinary men and women, protagonists thrust into unsettling situations and nightmares, and exposed to mysteries that perhaps will push them to confront their own secrets. Published by Cobble Path Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it comes in two volumes—Player Guide and Director’s Guide*—and is inspired by psychological horror films such as The Descent, Triangle, Shutter Island, and others, rather than classic slashers like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th.

* Note: Neither the Player Guide nor the Director’s Guide are sold separately.

A Player Character in Locus is defined by eight Attributes, a Haunt, a Virtue, an Attitude, and skills. The eight Attributes are Frailty, Clumsiness, Carelessness, Impatience, Cowardice, Ignorance, Repulsion, and Temper. What is interesting about this octet is that they are negative, almost anti-Attributes. They represent the worst features of a Player Character, such that the higher value they possess, the greater difficulty a Player Character has in overcoming them and the greater the possibility, the Player Character will be let down by his weakness. For example, Repulsion represents how uncharismatic the Player Character is, so the higher it is, the more likely the Player Character is to be unpersuasive or unpleasant in terms of personality. Rated between one and five, they do require a player to invert how he thinks about the role of attributes in a roleplaying game.

A Player Character’s Haunt represents a significant event in his past when he did something wrong, or caused harm, whether that is morally or legally wrong, or simply through negligence. Initially a known only to the Player Character, Haunts are classified into four categories—Temptation, Apathy, Discord, or Malice. A Player Character’s Virtue is his predominant redeeming feature, and like Haunts, are classified into four categories—Temperance, Motivation, Community, and Compassion. The four Haunts and the four Virtues are also associated with a suit from a standard deck of playing cards. A Player Character’s Attitude is how he views his Haunt.

To create a character, a player first assigns sixteen points to his character’s Attributes, which already start with a value of one. He then selects a Haunt, a Virtue, an Attitude, and skills. A Player Character starts play with two of these, either Trained, Knowledge, Speciality, or Expertise. Throughout the creation process there is decent advice, especially in detailing the Haunt, and what that might be. Particularly good are the descriptions of the eight types of Attitudes, whether Pessimistic or Optimistic, that otherwise might have been difficult for a player to really express. The Virtues are given a similar treatment. Player Character creation is simple enough mechanically, but the choices involved are not necessarily as simple, especially when it comes to the character’s Haunt, Virtue, and Attitude, as they all strongly influence who the character is and how he will be roleplayed.

Our sample character is Chantelle Lowder. As a teenager she rebelled against her middle-class background and became part of a gang. The gang got involved first in petty crime and then more serious activities. This led to rivalries with other gangs and ultimately a feud which would lead to outright fights and the death of a rival gang member. Chantelle did not strike the killing blow, she was a witness and when she did not co-operate, she was convicted as a participant. She was sentenced to a term in prison, but was paroled for good behaviour. Since then she has tried to build a life different to her time as a gang member. She works in a software development studio and tries to not think about what she did and the fact that she attempted to cover for the murder, but is still wracked with guilt and occasionally drinks too much as a result. She tries to make up for it with kindness, but derives no real happiness from such acts.

Name: Chantelle Lowder
Attitude: The Conflicted Pessimist
Haunt: Apathy (Spades)
Virtue: Compassion – Kindness (Heart)

Attributes
Frailty 4 Clumsiness 3 Carelessness 3 Impatience 2
Cowardice 4 Ignorance 3 Repulsion 3 Temper 2

Skills: Computer Coding (Trained), Lockpicking (Speciality)

Stress: Unaware/Tense/Stressed

Locus uses two sets of mechanics. The first involves dice. Locus uses four different types of dice rolls to determine how a Player Character overcomes a challenge, all involving the roll of three six-sided dice. The standard or Outcome Check is rolled against one of a Player Character’s Attributes, attempting to roll higher than the Attribute, essentially trying to overcome one of his worst features, at least temporarily. Only one die is counted. The lowest die if the difficulty of the task is Hard, the middle die if the difficulty is Medium, and the highest die if the task is Easy. A roll of six on all three dice counts as a critical success, but even if the roll is a failure, then the Player Character still succeeds, but at cost. So, “Yes, but…” Contested Checks are also rolled against an Attribute, with each participant attempting to roll higher than the Attribute on more dice than the others. If a Player Character has a skill, it either allows him to attempt an Outcome Check because he is Trained or because his Expertise reduces the Attribute being rolled against. Untrained Checks cover situations in which a Player Character has no training, and require a Hard Ignorance Outcome Check to work out what to do, followed by a Hard Outcome Check with the appropriate Attribute.

Conflicts are handled via Opposed Checks and cover movement, hiding, attacking and defending, and the like. Damage—or rather injury types—when suffered, is brutal. Each Player Character has the same Death Clock, which is filled in whenever he suffers an injury, either Minor, Major, or Grievous. If the Death Clock is filled in, the Player Character dies. Major and Grievous Injuries make successful Checks harder to achieve. Injuries can be treated, not to reduce the segments filled in on the Death Clock, but to negate their effects on Checks that a Player Character might attempt. In addition, a Player Character can suffer a Condition, such as Blind or Entangled, their effects interpreted by the Director and roleplayed by the player. In addition, the brutalism of the setting is extended to equipment as many items also have a durability value.

The second mechanic in Locus involves one ordinary deck of playing cards, Jokers removed, per every four players. Each player begins play with a Hand of three cards. Further cards are drawn every hour of actual game play, when a player’s character experiences jarring visions or hallucinations, or acts in accordance with his Vice. When the card drawn matches the Character’s Vice (or suit)—a Haunt card, it is discarded and the Player Character gains three Willpower Points. Otherwise, a non-Haunt card, which does not match the suit of the Player Character’s Vice, is retained in the player’s Hand. Cards can be discarded from a player’s Hand through certain actions, for example, when a Player Character acts in accordance with a Virtue not his own, when he resists the urge to act in accordance with his Vice, when his player rolls a critical on the dice, and so on. One of the mechanical aims in Locus is for a player to reduce the size of hand through play, as the rules state that having a larger Hand size is a bad thing. The rules advise the player to be proactive about this, to not actively pursue it in play, but with the Director, who confirm whether or not the cards can be discarded.

Like any good horror roleplaying game, Locus has a mechanic for handling scares and the deleterious effect upon the mental well-being when confronted with the unknown, fraught situations, and other dangers. This is Stress, rated Uneasy, Tense, and then Stressed. A Player Character’s degree of Stress can be raised as a result of a failed Stress Check, seeing a monster, taking damage from an Injury, and other situations at the Director’s discretion. Instead of a set stat being rolled against for a Stress Check, a player rolls a check against the appropriate Attribute, for example, Cowardice when his character confronted is by a monster or Impatience when his character is being chased and is slowed by an obstacle.

Locus also uses Willpower Points, representing a Player Character’s drive to succeed. Its only use is to purchase rerolls, which cost one Willpower Point each time, the number of dice which can be rerolled varying according to the degree of Stress a Player Character is suffering. So all three dice if the Player Character is Uneasy, just two if he is Tense, and only one if he is Stressed. Willpower Points are gained when a critical result is rolled on the dice, when a card matching the suite of Character’s Vice is drawn, when Stress is lowered, and others. A Player Character begins play with five Willpower Points.

There are two interesting aspects to the Stress mechanic. The first is that there is no mechanical effect upon a Player Character except to reduce the number of dice that can be rerolled with the expenditure of Willpower Points. Thus mechanically, Stress does not have an effect on what a Player Character can do, but instead has an effect on the purchasing power of his Willpower Points and thus on his drive to overcome difficult or dire situations. Plus of course, it should ideally influence how the Player Character is roleplayed. The second is that Locus has no insanity or madness mechanic, so that in terms of its rules, a Player Character cannot go mad or insane. That possibility is best left to the player roleplaying his character. Further, the combination of the no insanity mechanic and the brutal Death Clock gives Locus much more of an immediacy in its play, rather than the long effects of confronting the unknown as seen in other horror roleplaying games.

Physically, the Player Guide for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror is a slim hardback, done in deep blacks and shades of grey with slashes and splashes of red and white. The artwork tends towards the blocky, but is generally fairly decent. The layout is perhaps slightly rough in places, and although it can be difficult to find things occasionally, there is a solid index. The game and its play is nicely supported with several examples of play and the mechanics, including a trio of sample Player Characters, plus a decent summary and glossary at the end of the book.

However, there is the one thing that the Player Guide for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror does not do, and that is, tell the players and their Director what the Cards do in play. Fundamentally all that player knows is that having too many cards is bad and that they are keyed to his Virtue and his Vice. He can roleplay to the cards and the Virtues and Vices they link to, to an extent—and is encouraged to do so, since it is not the Director’s remit to keep track of such things—in order to get rid of them. Yet he does not know what they do otherwise nor what their effect is in the game, or the effect of having too many or too few. That is left up to the Director’s Guide to explain, but surely some explanation could have been included in the Player Guide?

The Player Guide for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror does, in general, give a good explanation to the majority of the roleplaying game’s core rules. It does feel fussy in places, as if there are too many mechanics for what it is trying to do, and the lack of any explanation as to the use of the playing cards is a major omission. Of course, the Player Guide is going to need the Director’s Guide, but there is the basis here for what Locus sets out to be, ‘a roleplaying game of personal horror’ with a set of potentially quite nasty, brutal mechanics coupled with strong roleplaying potential in the Virtues and Vices. To bring those out fully though, along with the elements of guilt and morality at the heart of each Player Character, the Director’s Guide is a definite must.

—oOo—
A review of Director’s Guide for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror appears tomorrow.

Macdeath is an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Published by Critical Kit, it is designed for a party of four to five Player Characters of low- to mid-Level and is intended to be played in a single session, either as a one-shot or as part of an ongoing campaign. It involves a theatre troupe, a fairy circle, a performance, and a murder! Whilst self-contained, it would be easy to adapt Macdeath to the setting of the Dungeon Master’s choice, so long as the setting involves the fae and fairy-kind. Most fantasy roleplaying settings—especially for Dungeons & Dragons—feature this, but the Ravenloft setting would be particularly appropriate, as would any with a Renaissance feel. However it is used, Macdeath is fairly straightforward and involves a mix of investigation and interaction, with almost no combat.

The adventure revolves around the Orb Theatre Troupe, which in recent years has become renowned for its highly entertaining theatrical productions. This is due to the prolific output of the troupe’s founder and bard, Willard Rattlesword. Both his fame and that of the troupe have even spread beyond the Material Plane and so Titania, Queen of the Summer Court has commissioned Rattlesward to write a play and have the troupe give her and her entourage a command performance. This is due to take place in Whimsel Grove, a demiplane half way between the Material Plane and the Emerald Plane. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. The Queen and her companions arrive, but are disappointed to find not the troupe’s lead actor, Penrod Peppin, performing the lead role in that evening’s performance, but his understudy, Ned Hackett! Worse, not only is Ned’s performance wooden and stilted, when they are directed to find out where Penrod Peppin has got to between acts in the hope that he can come back and save the play, the Player Characters discover him dead in his trailer! Even worse than that, Penrod Peppin has been murdered!! And even worse than that, when the faerie queene discovers that the performance is going to be cancelled, she still demands an entertainment—find out who killed Penrod Peppin, find how Penrod Peppin was killed, and why Penrod Peppin was killed. Then present her with a trial at her court!

Macdeath is thus a murdery mystery play set at that most classic of locations—it could only be more classic if it was set at a country mansion—a theatre. The Player Characters must search the locations, question the witnesses and suspects, gather the evidence, and form a hypothesis, and present it to Queen Titania. With just a cast of just six suspects, eight locations, and a handful of clues, this is not a very difficult mystery to solve, and to be fair it is not meant to be. This scenario is meant to be played in a single session or evening, which means that everything, including the murder should be wrapped up within that time. Short though, does not mean that it is not entertaining. The cast are sufficiently detailed and along with the members of the troupe, the Dungeon Master is given a handful of pixies, rarebits, will-o’-wisps, and dryads to play, the latter able to give clues and nudges as necessary. These veer very much into the whimsical and should be fun to roleplay.

Much like a Shakespearian play that Macdeath is a ‘play’ upon, the scenario is a three act play and the Player Characters are very much doing different things in each one. In the first, they are performing the first of act of the play, which itself is called Macdeath; in the second, they are investigating the murder; and in the third, they are presenting the evidence at the trial. It is also both a locked room murder—the victim’s trailer is locked, and a locked room investigation and trial. Or rather, a locked Whimsel Grove murder and a locked Whimsel Grove investigation and trial. The Player Characters have to perform the play, investigate, and litigate all within the limits of the Emerald Plane.

The scenario is supported with full NPC descriptions, though not necessarily with full stats as they are not intended for combat, details of the Emerald Plane and its various fairie denizens, as well as fae gifts that Queen Titania can hand out, the best being a Bag o’ Cats, from which a cat can be drawn at random and to stay, it must tell a secret. There are several good handouts too, including the full four-page script for the first act of the play.

Physically, Macdeath is decently done. It needs an edit here and there, but the artwork is excellent. The handouts are decent too.

Macdeath—and to be clear, it has nothing to do with The Tragedy of McDeath for Warhammer Fantasy Battle—does have a problem, and that is in its set-up. It requires the Player Characters to be actors and performers, part of the Orb Theatre Troupe. This may not sit well with every player or indeed every Class, and it also means that it might be harder to set up and use, especially in an existing campaign. This may make it difficult to run. That said, there are Classes which would work well with this set-up. The Bard obviously, but also any Class which relies on Charisma. Unfortunately, Macdeath does not support either set-up, so no real advice on using existing Player Characters or pre-generated Player Characters for use when it is run as a one-shot. A good Dungeon Master should be able to come up with either though.

The short length of Macdeath means that it does not outstay its welcome, keeping its plot fairly simple and mixing in plenty of whimsy along the way, so that it has the feel of a television series murder mystery, though of course with magic and fantasy flavour. Overall, Macdeath is an enjoyable different scenario, emphasising and showcasing the interaction and investigation aspects of Dungeons & Dragons, and in the process, the roleplaying too.

How small can a hex crawl be? The Isle of Glaslyn manages to fit a seven-hex hex crawl onto the equivalent of four pages and then present it on a pamphlet which folds down to roughly four-by-six inches. Yet when it folds out (and is folded over, slightly), it can sit on the table between the players and the Game Master, with all of the player-facing content—the hex map of the island and the town map—on the one side, and the Game Master content—random monster tables, NPC details, and more, on the other. It is the very definition of a clever little design.
The Isle of Glaslyn lies off the coast, its hills and forests enshrouded in mists, covering rich veins of a metal found nowhere else—strands of woven copper entwined with gold. These unique formations have brought men and women to the island hoping to strike it rich and so set themselves up for life. Yet few who have ventured beyond the walls of Caer Emyrys, the small fort on the south side of the island, have returned, and fewer with the desired wealth. Those walls are a frontier and on the other side lies a rough wilderness, full of dangers yet to be encountered and secrets to be discovered. There are rumours of an ancient guardian watching over the mines, of islanders who eat men, and a magical sword swathed in golden ichor which sleeps in the many barrows to be found on the island. Lady Morgan, commander of Caer Emyrys and representative of the Emperor, has been directed with securing the mine and making it safe, then opening it back up. To that end, she has decided to employ adventurers bold who will explore the island, deal with its dangers, and ensure that its riches can be mined.

The Isle of Glaslyn is thus a classic set-up for an adventure. Caer Emyrys and the Isle of Glaslyn—the island barely eighteen miles across—are described succinctly, the maps nice and clear, and accompanied by tables of rumours, wilderness encounters, an evening at the ‘Itchy Hole’ tavern in Caer Emyrys, and more. Beyond the fort, each of the hexes is fully detailed with several specific adventure sites across the island, such as an abandoned tower and the village of bones. These are scaled down to fit the size of the island, but accompanied by the tables of rumours and encounters, and so on, and The Isle of Glaslyn has the potential for multiple sessions of play as the Player Characters explore the island. Ultimately, the secret to the island echoes that of scenarios like ‘The Lichway’ from White Dwarf #9 or Death, Frost, Doom for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay.

Physically, The Isle of Glaslyn is neatly, if perhaps a little too tightly in places, presented—but then that is down to the format. It needs an edit in places too, but the artwork is really rather charming. Physically too—and despite the cleverness of its design—it is not always easy to use because sometimes it is not merely a matter of content being on the other side of the page, but a matter of being on the other side, and flipping back and forth can be cumbersome. It is printed on fairly stiff paper, so it will withstand some handling though.

Inspired by Welsh folklore and Arthurian myth about the lake below Snowdon, The Isle of Glaslyn, is published by Leyline Press and designed for a party of low-Level adventurers using Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy. Which means it is very easy to adapt to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice. The limited amount of space means that the designers have to pack a lot of information into its pages and folds, but much of that is concisely presented, leaving room for the Game Master to add or develop detail and flavour as is her wont, although there is plenty of flavour implied. Literally as presented, the adventure is not a large one, but roughly a hex or two should be explored per session, and that with a fairly minimal degree of preparation upon the part of the Game Master. Plus, the size and self-contained nature of the island means that The Isle of Glaslyn is easy to drop off the coast of almost any fantasy roleplaying campaign. That self-same scope and size means that The Isle of Glaslyn could work as a low-Level party’s first wilderness adventure or hex crawl.

Overall, The Isle of Glaslyn is not necessarily a great scenario, but its small size contains plenty of adventure and its concision and format afford it a charm not always found in other scenarios.

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—
Published in January 2021—following a successful Kickstarter campaign by The Merry Mushmen—Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac promised and delivered some eighty-two entries contributed by some of the most influential writers, publishers, and commentators from the Old School Renaissance, including Paolo Greco, Arnold K, Gabor Lux, Bryce Lynch, Fiona Maeve Geist, Chris McDowall, Ben Milton, Gavin Norman, and Daniel Sell, along with artists such as Dyson Logos and Luka Rejec. From the off, it grabbed the reader’s attention and began giving him stuff, including a dungeon adventure on the inside of the dust jacket! Inside its pages contained a  panoply of articles and entries—polemics and treatises, ideas and suggestions, rules and rules, treasures, maps and monsters, adventures and Classes, and random tables and tables, followed by random tables in random tables! All of which is jam-packed into a vibrant-looking book. All primarily written for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, but readily and easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, and laid out out with a graphic style which was heavily influenced by the look (though not the tone) of Mörk Borg to eye-catching and distinctive effect.
Knock! #2 An Old School Gaming Bric-à-Brac is no different. Published following a second successful Kickstarter campaign, it contains some sixty-six entries, covering Game Master advice, things to be found, Goblins, dungeons, wilderness, maps, design, and more—and all that in the first one hundred pages! Its contributors include Emmy Allen, Andrea ‘Vyrelion’ Back, E. A. ‘taichara’ Bisson, Adam Bloomfield, Emiel Boven, Caleb Burks, Cacklecharm, Islayre d’Argolh, Warren Denning, Nicolas Dessaux, Andrew Duvall, Brent Edwards, Leander Elwischger, Simon Feser, Sándor Gebei, Kezie Gracie, Paolo Greco, Sarah Grove, Adrian Hammer,  James Holloway, Anne Hunter, Arnold K, Kobayashi, Gus L, Phill Loe, Dyson Logos, Gabor Lux, Iko, James Maliszewski, Josh McCrowell, Chris McDowall, David McGrogan, Stefan Mijucic, Danilo Moretti, Eric Nieudan, Nobboc, Diogo Nogueira, Gavin Norman, ktrey parker, Graphite Prime, Stuart Robertson, Perplexing Ruins, Jack Shear, Zedeck Siew, Skullfungus, W.F. Smith, Gustav Sokol, Sean Stone, Matt Strom, Chris Tamm, Trollsmyth, Vagabundork, Charles Wells., and more. It represents a diverse range of voices from the Old School Renaissance on the various preoccupations of the movement, and presents a huge amount of content that the Game Master can bring to her campaign and gaming table.
As with the first issue, the contents of Knock! #2 An Old School Gaming Bric-à-Brac begin inside the dust jacket. Here it is ‘Gloomywood’, a campy and sinister micro setting by Gabor Lux. In classic Hammer Horror style it details thirty-six locations across the mountain valley that is the family seat of the Counts von Marstein. Of late, the current incumbent has been ill, leaving his seneschal to rule in his stead, and now the inhabitants fear him and his cruel control as much as the wild beasts which roam the region. No space is wasted—even the inside of the spine has a weather table, but the format means that it is cramped and not necessarily as easy to use at the table. As a hex crawl, its size and self-contained nature makes it easy to drop into a campaign, but the Game Master will need to develop a few hooks and story elements to draw her players and their characters in.
Then on the front page, there is the first of the many tables of things to be found in the issue. This is ‘d6 Magical Tomes’, and it is followed by Cacklecharm’s ‘Sorcerer-Corpse Hazards’, lovingly detailed options for what might be found on the dead body of a wizard, including traps and treasures. Then by ‘I Search the Bookshelf!’ by Vagabundork, lists twenty books to be found on the shelves of a personal library. This counters the issue of finding books in a mansion or dungeon that are worth money, but not detailed. The later ‘30 Tomes of Magic’ by Nicholas Dessau is marginally less useful, only listing spells according to book themes, such as Tome of the Spider or Tome of Force, but without the flavour text. Sarah Grove offers more colour in a giant table of ‘D60 Pointless Items’, all designed to be both amusing and disappointing, but which perhaps would be easier to use had it been designed as a d66 table.
Other tables enable the Game Master to generate game element after game element. Matthew Strom’s ‘Knight Errant Generator’ enables her to create a knight’s heraldry, fighting style, name, quirk, and quest. Together it could be used to create the background for a Player Character or an NPC. Gavin Norm uses ‘Party like it’s 999’ by Jeff Rients to present ‘Carousing for Spellbook Nerds’, rules for sorcerers and wizards burning the midnight oil to learn new spell or other magical effects, not always to the benefit of the caster, such as being able to see the patterns in other magic-users’ minds and thus know the spells they have memorised or there being a temporary chance of a spell backfiring! In general, a fun way to add a little temporary flavour to the arcane spellcaster. Eric Nieudan’s ‘Érynie’s Mirror’ presents ways to encounter one of the famed Furies over and over, each time a little different in terms of place, what she wants, and what she demands. This is a little different, dark and dangerous.
The advice begins with Arnold K’s ‘The Master’s Words of Wisdom’, which includes advice for the Dungeon Master, covering the use of meaningful choices, information, impact, lethality, fair deaths, and more. It does not ignore the player either, giving advice about thinking in terms of the dungeon levels, being clever, and learning everything that he can, and so on. It is good advice, kept simple by being almost bullet point-like. Then Chris McDowall counters it with ‘Cheap Tricks’—quick and easy rather than unfair things, that the Game Master can do to keep her players interested and her game running, like amplifying their characters’ competence or having the NPCs remember them (for good or ill). It covers cheap humour and horror tricks too, so there is a fair amount here for the Game Master to consider when running a game.
In ‘Landmark, Hidden, Secret’, Anne Hunter presents ways in which she presents information in her game. The first type is easily found and easily repeated; the second can be asked for, but can have a cost in terms of time and risk; and the third, is not just difficult to find, but the characters are not guaranteed to find it. This is an interesting read, challenging us how we handle information in our games by looking at a potential in-game problem in another way. Anne Hunter also provides twelve ‘Random Rival Adventuring Parties’ to be encountered in a dungeon. ‘Mansions of the Dead: Historical inspiration for fantasy… Tombs’ by James Holloway gives some suitable thoughts and ideas about alternatives to dungeons, though it feels reminiscent of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne.
The subject of new Player Characters after the death of the previous one is addressed not once, but twice. First, Philip Lee offers a means to create new a Player Character after a player has lost his during play. Dice are rolled to generate starting Experience Points until the player has rolled enough or the same number is rolled again. If the latter happens, the new character starts at First Level, but with a boon like a bonus to Strength and Constitution or third eye which can be opened daily to see in the dark or through an illusion. The boons are organised by Class, but if the player instead rolls enough dice, his character can start as high as Fourth Level or so. Overall, this is a nice idea, which compensates the new character with an often-intriguing ability and a bit of flavour too. Second, Vagabundork gives a list of thirty ready-to-play ‘fools’—after all, who would be foolish to enter a dungeon?—in ‘Another Fool For Your Adventures!’. All are Zero Level, Classless Fighters with full stats, names, backgrounds, and means of introduction. If the new Player Character survives, his player gets to roll a new Hit Dice, choose a Class, and so on. All much like the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, but supported instead with thirty oddball, often weird would be Player Characters. 
Graphite Prime discusses something often ignored during dungeon explanation. Typically at the end of a hard day’s exploration, the party will either retreat if they can or hole up somewhere and post guards. What happens when the members of the party are asleep? There are twenty options here—and thus another table—such as a character getting up in his sleep and opening a locked door or waking up to find rodents nibbling on his extremities (save versus poison…). This adds further flavour to play, particularly at a moment when the characters’ guards are down. Similarly, ‘You are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue_’ by Joh McCrowell inflicts terrible options upon the party should its torches go out whilst deep in the bowels of a dungeon… Lesser, but still terrible options are listed by Dyson Logos in ‘Unquietly Undead’ for alternative effects of the Level-draining touch of certain members of the undead, such as the thing having the ability to unerringly track a victim it has touched or transmits the much feared mummy rot… Cacklecharm provides a list of options to change a monster in ‘Monster Modifiers’, like infesting it with flesh-eating maggots or spider eggs about to burst, or giving it reasons to be cornered and that much more dangerous.
For Goblins, Cacklecharm also gives ‘8 Goblin Warlock Spells’, such as Repulse, the reverse version of Charm Person and Count, which actually enables the cast to do what it says! This is a lovely little collection, which would work with Goblins as traditional enemies or Goblins as Player Characters (perhaps in a campaign like In The Shadow of Mount Rotten), and deserves more entries. Hopefully in a future issue of Knock!. Whereas, Paolo Greco shows us what does to his Goblins in ‘My Goblins Are…’, which is to make them dirty, nasty, unruly, daft, and more with tables for inexplicable goblin situations, insane secret goblin warfare techniques, unexpected goblin locations, mutations and other goblin weirdness… Combine the two, and what you have is the means to lift the warty little creatures up out of the ordinary.
Simon Black addresses one of the constant bugbears in Dungeons & Dragons and that is Alignment. In ‘The Grey Shaded Hex’, he suggests an alternative to the traditional three-by-three square. It is built around six traits—empathetic or callous, protective or manipulative, and selfless or self-entitled, to help create better characters, whether Player Character or NPC. It means a radical shift in handling personality in the game, and so may not necessarily be for all.  
Gabor Lux gets to grumble about the poor nature of dungeon map design in ‘The Anatomy of a Dungeon Map’ and make some suggestions as to how to improve it. He takes one of Dyson Logos’ designs, The Winter Tombs and analyses it in detail as an example. It covers choke points, bridging points, dungeon highways, and more, and as much as it focuses on the one dungeon, there are still points to be thinking about when the Game Master comes to designing her own dungeon.
Jack Shear writes ‘In Praise of Vanilla Fantasy’, defending it as a base for the hobby and an easier starting point in terms of both play and design. He points out that it is a common language for the hobby, easily translatable, when everything is weird, nothing is, and not only do companies like Paizo, Inc. and Wizards of the Coast have it covered, it might be something that people want to play. It is a solid defence, and indeed, there should be room for it in the hobby. Another reason is that just like vanilla, it can serve as a palate cleanser. After all, vanilla can make for a refreshing change.
Javier Prado and Nobboc delve into Basque folklore for inspiration with ‘Bad Paxti’, the tale of a blacksmith so talented, but so full of sin and vice that numerous demons vied for his soul. Unfortunately for them, he outwitted every one, and Hell no longer wants his soul! It comes with full stats and some hooks too, and is easily added to a campaign. This is a really pleasing little addition and there should be more entries like this in future entries. Inspiration for Charles Wells’ ‘The Charnel Saturnalia’ must surely be the dancing mania of the late medieval period, here expanded into a strange event in which good men and women are driven to dance with skeletons to the local graveyard until they drop exhausted, and then do it the next night, often until their deaths. In effect, this is very enjoyably detailed, if grim little encounter in which the Player Characters have as much chance as being forced to join in as do the local peasants. This would work in any number of fantasy roleplaying games and settings, but especially ones with grim and perilous worlds. Almost being contemporary, Jack Shear looks to a Science Fiction novel (and forthcoming film) for inspiration with ‘Making a Powder Keg The Dune Way’, which suggests how its set-up could be adapted to a fantasy setting once the names have been filed off. It is a bit quick and dirty, but hopefully the players will be too busy to notice the inspiration.
The last quarter of Knock! #2 is devoted to a quintet of regular departments—‘Portfolio of Cartographic Curiousities’, ‘Menagerie of Monstrosities’, ‘D is for Demons’, ‘Retinue of Rogues’, and ‘Extraordinary Excursions’. The ‘Portfolio of Cartographic Curiousities’ provides some wonderful maps, such as Andrew Bloomfield’s fun pixelated version of the Tomb of Horrors, or the Desiccated Temple of Locha from Andrew Duvall. There are six maps here and they show off an intricacy and love of maps for map’s sake, as well in some cases being suitable for the Game Master to develop and adapt and add detail. Many of the entries in the ‘Menagerie of Monstrosities’ are simply odd, like Adrian Hammer’s Pywawa, a cross between a pineapple and a skull with bat’s ears, the bite of which causes the victim to not only cry out, “WAWA WAWA WAWA” and so be unable to say anything else, but also want to bite the nearest creature! Then there is the Cafetière Assassin from Eric Nieudan, created by Dwarf Golemancers, coffee-fuelled, and often given as a diplomatic gift. James Maliszewski contributes the half dozen entries to ‘D is for Demons’, very much born of his experience creating demons for his own fanzine, The Excellent Travelling Volume for Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne.
The octet of new Classes in ‘Retinue of Rogues’ ranges from the serious to the silly. The series starts with Nobboc’s ‘The Errant Friar’, a learned ascetic monk or nun, capable with the staff and a little healing, and gifted with daily miracles like Holy Beacon which turns the undead like a Cleric. This is a decently serviceable and workable Class for a low magic campaign. James Maliszewski’s ‘The Beggar’ is a Thief variant, but only capable of Disguise, Hide in Shadows, Pick Pockets, and Scrounge, all backed up by a reaction bonus against Lawful and Neutral NPCs, which makes it an interesting choice to roleplay. The silly, or the daft starts with Leander Elwischger’s ‘The Grey’, the classic space alien with an understanding of future science and a phaser weapon with variable effects, which has been stranded on this fantastically primitive world. It continues with ‘The Platyperson’ by Nicholas Dessaux, which is an aquatic warrior with excellent swimming, electrolocation, and in times of need, poisonous talons under its feet. This would work in a game which has anthropomorphic animals. The other Classes include Eric Nieudan’s take on the Giantkin, ‘The Autnagrag’, Emiel Boven’s ‘The Prophet of Ruin’, and Ethan Lefevre’s ‘Plague Doctor’, which studies and develops contagions to both find a cure—useful for his allies, and to apply them to his blade and then inflict them on his enemies. Imagine being able to infect a dragon with the Black Death…? Both the ‘The Prophet of Ruin’ and the ‘Plague Doctor’ have a certain ‘end of the world’ quality to them which might make them worth adapting to Mörk Borg.
‘Extraordinary Excursions’ contains four short scenarios or locations. Vagabundork’s ‘Obselete Sewer Radiopasteurization’ is a short point crawl dungeon with a strong technological theme. Grungy, dirty, and mostly out of genre, it seems more fitting for a post-apocalyptic than a fantasy setting, but it would work as something weird and perhaps out of phase with the campaign. Islayre’s ‘Fort Levent’ is the issue’s second hexcrawl, this time one large hex consisting of nineteen different hexes, that the Player Characters explore as they attempt to discover the source of a Gnoll invasion the drove out the Goblin Barbarian Clans which the settlers were warring against. It packs a decent amount of adventure and a nasty secret or two into its four pages, and much like the earlier ‘Gloomywood’, is designed for low-Level Player Characters and easy to drop into a Game Master’s campaign.
‘The Dark Island’ is one-great capital to a subterranean kingdom deep underground, located in a large, flooded cavern and still home to the Dragon Queen, Dragon Cultists, Albino Gnomes, and perhaps the occasional visiting dragon. Although given decent descriptions and random encounter tables, this will require the Game Master to develop some stats for all of the NPCs and monsters. Of course, that means it is easily scalable, so it could simply be used as a location in a vast underground network or an end of campaign boss location. Lastly, Emiel Boven’s ‘The Rot King’s Sanctum’ is a dungeon for Levels One to Five, nicely detailed, rot-infested nest of cultists, rats, and wererats. This is a fuller scenario, complete with stats and is easily added to the sewer system of any major city in the Game Master’s campaign.
Physically, Knock! #2 is as impressively bright and breezy as Knock! #1. However, the layout feels less cluttered, the text a little less busy, so is easier on the eye and everything seems to breathe a little more openly. It needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is good and the cartography excellent, but then with Knock! coming out of the Old School Renaissance, it would be remiss if the cartography was anything else.
However, there is an issue with Knock! #2. There is just too much of it, too much of it to review, too much of it to read, too much of it to use. It is like getting the whole of ZineQuest in one indigestible lump for dinner on Christmas Day, and then having read it, having to spend the rest of the day on the sofa cogitating on the richness of ideas and content you have just swallowed. It is like being given a whole gooducken with all the trimmings and stuffed with a platypus for good measure. Yet like any good Christmas dinner, the leftovers—turkey and cranberry sandwiches, bubble and squeak, turkey broth, will last days at the very least, which means that you will be coming back to consult the pages of Knock! #2 again and again.
One noticeable aspect of the issue is that there is less of an obvious reliance upon blog posts than in the first issue. So there is less of a feeling of it capturing the state of the Old School Renaissance than in Knock! #1, and thus it is more of a magazine than necessarily a collation of past thoughts. 
There is such a wealth of detail and flavour and ideas and opinions and suggestions in the pages of Knock! #2. One of the best and weirdest is Kezie Gracie’s ‘Whale Heart: An Ailment of Heart, Mind, and Sea’, which could be a curse, a blessing, or the path to godhood in the inky depths of the ocean, all perfect for a nautical, piratical, or coastal campaign, whilst Zedeck Siew offers some entertaining ways to make magic spells more interesting in ‘Fixing Spells’. And even pointing these out in the final summation demonstrates just how difficult it is to cover everything in the issue, there is so much of it. And that really gets to the point of Knock! #2 An Old School Gaming Bric-à-Brac. There is so much of it, it is very hard to be disappointed with any of it, because there is always something else just over the page.

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—

Published in June, 2020, Tabletops and Tentacles #1 – The Kickstarter Edition proved to be both a disappointment and enjoyable. It promised to be, “The monthly magazine of RPGs, Tabletop Games, Comic Conventions, Art Reviews, Adventures & More! In this prodigious premiere issue, you will find adventure hooks for roleplaying games, RPG dice tables, reviews, artist and game designer interviews, original art, tips, tricks, NPCs, treasure and maps.” It was an ambitious claim, and it very much made it sound like a gaming magazine. It was not, and that was the disappointing bit. The problem is was that its focus initially and in the main was on the ‘More’ of that subtitle—books, films, computer games, and so on rather than games. This is not to say that there was no roleplaying content to be found in its pages. There was, and it was decent too. Kristopher McClanahan’s systemless, Lovecraftian ode to Pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying games, ‘Realm of the Moon Ghouls Part 1: The Starship Poe’ was fun, and ‘H’AKKENSLASH! An original RPG system’ by Benjamin C. Bailey showed promised. Thus once you accepted that Tabletops and Tentacles #1 was not a gaming magazine, but a general fandom magazine with the gaming content saved for the issue’s back half, it proved to be an enjoyable read.

Tabletops and Tentacles #2 – The Quarantine Issue follows the same format, but it is a much queerer beast, for this is the issue written during and in response to the year in lockdown that was 2020. Published in January, 2021 by Deeply Dapper Games, the issue offers up the usual mix of columns, features, and interviews, covering films—lots of films, reviews, and more, all coloured by the fact that its contributors had to stay at home and not go anywhere. That starts with Kris McClanahan’s editorial ‘Notes from the Depths’, in which he laments the change in circumstances forced upon him and his partner by the pandemic. That is no criticism, for we have all had to do it and adapt as best we can, but he is more used to travelling and presenting at one convention after another. There can be no doubt that Covid-19 has changed many lives and the way we live, and its spread is the closest that we have come to an apocalypse—yet. How we survived and what we did is reflected in the issue, which focuses on plagues, apocalypses, pandemics, and the like across our media. This is very much reflected in the issue’s first half, which does feel as if can be summed up as ‘What I watched in quarantine’. The issue’s reviews—the previews having been dropped due to the difficulty of their being relevant—cover a mix of the old and the new, including a lot of crime such as S.A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland and Michael Connelly’s Fair Warning. The fantastic includes Peace Talks, the latest Harry Dresden from Jim Butcher, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, and the graphic novel, The Adventure Zone Vol. 1: Here There Be Gerblins by The McElroys & Carey Pietsch. The ‘Spotlight’ on The Andromeda Strain is sadly all too short in comparison to the reviews of Netflix series like Warrior Nun and Amazon Prime films such as Blow the Man Down. Video game reviews include the excellent The Outer Worlds, Griftlands and Earth Defense Force 5, plus tabletop reviews which cover Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos and the first part of the adventure quartet, Yig Snake Granddaddy: Act 1: A Land Out Of Time. In general, it is a good mix of reviews, the familiar with the unfamiliar.

In ‘Thoom! Theater’ Thom Chiaramonte presents his fantasy cast for The Fantastic Four. This is an interesting take upon the classic Marvel superhero group, more interesting than the previous filmic takes, including detailed casting suggestions and a complete story outline. With an origin shifted forward to the nineteen seventies rather than the nineteen sixties, this is all very speculative, but given the recent release of the series, What If! for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it does not read as being, well, too fantastic.

Less useful and less interesting—at least for a non-American readership—is Kris McClanahan’s ‘Islands in the Stream:  The Tabletops & Tentacles Guide To Streaming Channels’, which does what it says on the tin. An eleven-page guide and opinion to every television and film streaming service imaginable. Many of these are available outside of the USA, but then just how many such services do you need, or indeed, have time to watch? The counterpoint to this guide is his ‘In Praise of Physical Media’, which highlights the advantages of checking your library of DVDs you have been avoiding with all of that ready access to instant video on demand. Better quality, limited choice (really!), and of course, the extras. It would have been interesting to find out a little bit as to what he pulled off the shelf, but otherwise definitely a better read than the streaming guide.

Also a better read is the editor’s second entry in the regular column, ‘50 Films You DON’T Need To See’. In Tabletops and Tentacles #1, it was Toy Story. In Tabletops and Tentacles #2, it is Night of the Living Dead, and as before, this is an examination of the film, warts and all. It is better for it, because despite it being a cliché in places (but then it was the original and set those clichés!), some odd shots, limited budget, and the then inexperience of George A. Romero, it is still very much a classic zombie and classic horror film. This is an enjoyable re-examination of the film, and it is very much s pity that The Andromeda Strain did not receive a similar—though not exact—treatment earlier, as given its age and subject matter, it would have been very appropriate for the issue.

Both the ‘What I watched in quarantine’ and the plague themes continue with ‘The Binge’ in which the editor takes advantage of one streaming service after another to dive down a rabbit hole of one bad apocalyptic film followed by probably worse bad apocalyptic film… If the article is not worth reading for the films—and the likelihood is that the reader really has to like bad films for it to be seen as a guide to bad film—then there is recompense in the author’s self-flagellation in making himself endure the four films he watches here. The theme is carried on in ‘The Top ten Pop Culture Pandemics!’ which draws roleplaying games, television, film, comic books, novels, and video games, and as lists go, the plenty to agree and disagree with. That said, Wild Card virus from the series of the same name edited by George R.R. Martin should definitely have been on the list.

Devon Marcel offers his own suggestions within the issue’s themes with ‘That’s Quarantainment! – Quarantine themed media for life during lockdown’, and what he viewed and read and played. Just three titles are examined, but space enough is given to each to make them sound interesting and worth tracking down. The three are the Val Lewton directed, Boris Karloff starring Isle of the Dead, of which Marcel is highly positive; Frozen Hell, an earlier iteration of 1938 short story ‘Who Goes There?’ by John W. Campbell, Jr., which would form the basis for both versions The Thing From Another World, of which the author find interesting as a curiosity, but little more; and The Bunker, a Full Motion Video adventure game from Splendy Games, a horror game set entirely in an underground bunker which he thoroughly enjoyed. Again, the article is the all the better for the space it is given, and each of the three items covered is more interesting for it also.

‘Quest Accepted: My Epic Adventure Into VR’ by Shawn Lance takes us on the author’s introduction to playing on the Occulus Quest. It is a serviceable read, but could have been improved with illustrations of the games he played, otherwise, it feels divorced from his experience.

The issue makes a very noticeable switch to fiction to ‘The Book Club’. In a similar fashion to the earlier ‘50 Films You DON’T Need To See’, this examines H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Festival’, one of his minor short stories and breaks down its plot, history, what he liked and disliked, along with his final thoughts, trivia, and more, and again is an enjoyable appreciation. Two actual pieces of fiction follow. The first is the second part of ‘Sowing Dragon Teeth’, a fantasy story with pulpy tones by James Alderdice, which continues to be as enjoyable as the first part in Tabletops and Tentacles #1, whilst the second is Neal Kristopher’s ‘No More Masks’, a post-apocalyptic tale that is very much a commentary on the decision whether or not to wear a mask in the least or so, and going forward.

The actual gaming content in Tabletops and Tentacles #2—some eighty pages in—begins with a pair of interviews. The first is with Cullen Bunn, author of the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Deepest Catacombs. Based on the old-school adverts from TSR, Inc. for the game from the seventies and eighties, this does a nice job selling the concept, especially with the samples from Bunn’s current project and the inspiration for it. The other interview is ‘Gaming from the Hearth’ which is with the husband-and-wife team behind Fireside Games, the publisher of Castle Panic. Conducted just prior to the beginning the lockdown, the couple talk about how they work and the challenges of bringing any game, let alone a deluxe version of Castle Panic to the market, and it is concluded with postscript four months on, looking at the state of the company and the industry deep into the effects of the pandemic. In a way, it bookends Kris McClanahan’s editorial ‘Notes from the Depths’, in which he laments the change in circumstances forced upon him, his partner, and their business by the pandemic. It is a change which many businesses have suffered sadly, and the difficulties of operating under the pandemic cannot be underestimated.

Alan Bahr’s regular column, ‘Tiny Thoughts’ showcases just a handful of the post-apocalyptic roleplaying games available. It mentions—and they are tiny mentions—Punkapocalyptic, Apocalypse World, Pugmire, and more, but does suggest ways of roleplaying under the pandemic as so many have, using Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and so on. This is the only mention of such methods in the issue and the truth of the matter is that Tabletops and Tentacles #2 – The Quarantine Issue misses this trick—and when it comes to lockdown and gaming, it is a very important trick. So many have adapted to roleplaying online rather than face-to-face, including at virtual versions of major conventions, and it is shame that barring this mention, the issue ignores it.

The first of the actual gaming content in Tabletops and Tentacles #2 comes some hundred or so pages into the issue. Kristopher McClanahan and Lindsay McClanahan continue the gaming dice tables for ‘In the Inn’ with twenty things to be found on a shelf in a cellar in the inn, whilst ‘Symptoms of the Sickness’ by Lindsay McClanahan provides random symptoms exactly as its title promises. The longer gaming content starts with ‘The Green Infection’, a systemless fantasy scenario in which the village of Ainsmoor has been beset by a deadly pandemic of its own. It is fairly straightforward, but nicely detailed, and easily adapted to the system—and even setting—of the Game Master’s choice. it is followed by ‘Realm of the Moon Ghouls File 02: Location Shuttle Station Sixteen’ which further details the Lovecraftian setting for Pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying games. This details a space station suitable for the crew of the Poe to refuel with Strontium. It is a fun little setting complete with half-alien, half-robot cook, space pirates, and a handful of story hooks. Unfortunately, it is let down by the news that future installments of ‘Realm of the Moon Ghouls’ is moving to Patreon. It is disappointing that the most enjoyable content in the issue will not be is easily available.

The expansion for ‘H’AKKENSLASH! An original RPG system’ by Benjamin C. Bailey presents ‘Monsters and Mayhem’, a set of ten new monster abilities for the Game Master, such as Vampirism, Quick, and Combustible. These are decent additions.  Rounding out the issue is a further entry in  ‘Merchants of the Realm’. ‘Merchants of the Realm: Millhaven Curiosities’ by Kris McClanahan. This describes a mysterious alleyway shop, small and full of strange shadows, its proprietor simply watching... unless engaged in which case he will be a font of knowledge, rumour, and even adventure hooks! Here the adventurers might be able to buy a Webbing Scroll, a surly vampire bat in a cage, Mr. Pointy, a slightly off-kilter stake stained in ash and blood—and those are only some of the interesting items crammed into the premises. ‘Merchants of the Realm: Millhaven Curiosities’ is likeable and servicable, easy to add to any fantasy campaign, whether medieval or modern.

Physically, Tabletops and Tentacles #2 is generally well-presented, being bright and cheerful. It seems an improvement over the previous issue, there being less of an effort to pack quite so much in. Again, the editing could have been stronger, but hopefully that will get better with future issues.

After having read Tabletops and Tentacles #1, coming to Tabletops and Tentacles #2 – The Quarantine Issue is very much less of a disappointment because the reader knows what to expect, that it is not a gaming magazine so much as general fandom magazine. It suffers from that lack of gaming specificity in terms of actual gaming found in other magazines, and gaming wise, it could have leaned harder into the apocalyptic theme. There still is not enough gaming content to wholly recommend Tabletops and Tentacles #2 – The Quarantine Issue as a gaming magazine, but as a general fandom magazine with some gaming content, it is an enjoyable read.

 The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Parallel Worlds feels a little old-fashioned. By which Reviews from R’lyeh means that it supports the gaming hobby with content for a variety of games. So an issue might include new monsters, spells, treasures, reviews of newly released titles, scenarios, discussions of how to play, painting guides, and the like… That is how it has been all the way back to the earliest days of The Dragon and White Dwarf magazines. By which Reviews from R’lyeh means that it can be purchased, if not from your local newsagent, then from your local games store. Just like The Dragon and White Dwarf magazines could be back in the day. However, Parallel Worlds, published by Parallel Publishing can also be purchased in digital format, because it is very much not back in the day. 
Parallel Worlds #22 promises, as with previous issues, ‘The Best in Escapism’. It offers a mix of scenarios and support for various roleplaying games as well as interviews with creators and reviews of a number of books and games. Once past the editorial from Chris Cunliffe—less interesting than that in the previous issue—Parallel Worlds #22 opens with an interview with Science Fiction author, Peter Hamilton. Short but informative, this only focuses on his new book. A longer piece might have explored more of his previous works, which would have been interesting. Other media is thrown under the spotlight in Sam Long’s Thinkpiece, ‘The Pay-off’. Subtitled, ‘When character arcs… aren’t’, this both celebrates the adroit handling of pay-offs in the stories of films, in particular, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and laments their poor handling in a number of films and television series. This also includes the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the author includes the work of Zack Snyder and the DC Extended Universe too. The series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, is placed under a similar spotlight in ‘Let’s talk about…’ by Ben Potts, Chris Cunliffe, and Sam Long. Both it and ‘The Pay-off’—which covers Wandavision—are good pieces, but do rely very much upon the reader having watched either and thus have access to Disney+. Not everyone will have and so spoilers abound.
Ben Potts engineers a crossover between gaming and other media with ‘The New D&D Movie – What We Want To see’. This looks at the forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons film and speculates what traps it needs to avoid and suggests what it needs to include to really shine as a film adaptation of the world’s greatest roleplaying game. So of course, no chainmail bikinis, racial stereotypes, love story, or planar travel, but definitely split the party, include iconic monsters, keep it medieval, and more. It is of course, tongue in cheek, but there is no doubt that we want to see a Dungeons & Dragons film which puts the previous ones behind us and very much to shame.
In terms of gaming, Parallel Worlds #22 continues its support for the roleplaying games Black Void and Chivalry & Sorcery. For the former, there is a preview for the forthcoming supplement, Under Nebulous Skies, which showcases a new character background, the Djinn-Kin. This is all decently detailed, with some variation built in, and presented in a way that it could be added to the game straight off, and comes with an excellent illustration. For the latter, the designer of Chivalry & Sorcery, Stephen Turner, presents ‘Leganti, the Capital of Solda’. This details the ‘City of the Silver’ and its long history, its layout and districts. It is a serviceable description in just a few pages and a reasonable addition to a Chivalry & Sorcery campaign.
In terms of gaming, the most interesting article in the issue is ‘We Played… Cyberpunk RED’, R. Talsorian Games, Inc.’s 2045-set iteration of 1990’s Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. (developed from the earlier Cyberpunk 2013). It provides an overview of the setting and the campaign run by Angus McNicholl, one built around the Night City Police Department, for his three players. All four participants are given space to give their opinion on both the campaign and Cyberpunk RED as a game system, their opinions on the former wholly positive, whilst on the latter, their opinions are less effusive and more nuanced. In general, they agreed that the rules and combat system of Cyberpunk RED’s Interlock System were playable, they also said that the game had too many attributes and too many skills, and that perhaps the system was not as gritty as they were expecting. Overall though, the combination of the game set-up and feedback is engaging and informative.
The world of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls receives not one, but two articles in Parallel Worlds #22. The first, by Thomas Turnball-Ross, ‘The Worlds of the Elder Scrolls’ examines the setting as a whole through the many computer games which have been set there over the years, whilst the second, ‘Skyrim in 2021’ by Ant Jones examines the ground-breaking computer roleplaying game and asks if ten years on, it is still worth playing despite its flaws. The issue with the first article is that it lacks a degree of context and whilst it is liberally illustrated, it is just with images from the various computer games. It would have been better if covers from the various computer games had been used as illustrations and a timeline included. The second article benefits from a better focus and actually makes this player want to go back and play again.
Reviews in the issue cover the Swords & Sorcery roleplaying game, Beyond the Black Sea, the Civilisation-style time travel Science Fiction board game, Anachrony, the novel Rachel’s Story (author Leigh Russell was interviewed in Parallel Worlds #21), and Byrony Pearce’s novel, Raising Hell. These are decent, though as with the earlier article on computer games, the covers of the items being reviewed could have been shown. Lastly, the issue is rounded out with ‘No Kisses Goodnight’, an enjoyable piece of fiction by Toshiya Kamei.
Physically, Parallel Worlds #22 is professionally presented and written. The layout is clean, strong, and easy to look at, and in general is easy to read. The previous issue, Parallel Worlds #21, did feel as if it needed more gaming content that would appeal to a wider audience, the focus on Black Void and Chivalry & Sorcery, perhaps a bit too narrow. Especially given that the magazine is sold in gaming stores. ‘We Played… Cyberpunk RED’ does expand it a little, just not enough. Similarly, the handful of reviews does not feel enough either, whether of roleplaying games or novels. Again, more of those might increase the appeal to a wider audience.
Parallel Worlds #22 is an enjoyable read, but two articles involving the Marvel Cinematic Universe and two articles involving The Elder Scrolls is two too much in either case. Certainly the second article in either case could have been bumped to Parallel Worlds #23. The best gaming article in the issue is ‘We Played… Cyberpunk RED’ and surely that could have been paired with something else, a review, a scenario… It seems as if the magazine missed an opportunity there to bring the reader further into that roleplaying game and perhaps set up a regular format, that of, ‘We Played…’ with content the reader can use. What this means is that as before, there are a few good articles within the issue and it needs to build on those to bring readers back to it on a regular basis rather than their simply checking out an issue to see if there might be something good in its pages, because ultimately, Parallel Worlds #22 just has its fingers in too many worlds to really get a handle on them and its gaming content is neither mainstream nor interesting enough for the reader to be either useful or adaptable.
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An Unboxing in the Nook video of Parallel Worlds #22 is available here.

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. It is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 1 was published in the Spring of 2020 and carries the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”. It opens with ‘Behold’, a preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles, such as Oathsworn: Into the Deep Woods, Oceans, and Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. Given as much prominence as a full review, what is interesting about these is previews is that each give ‘What they might be’, so Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile might be the new Civilization, Sub Terra II: Inferno’s Edge the new Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and so on. Many, if not all, of these titles have since been released and been subject to their own reviews and analysis, so these previews can be read with the benefit of hindsight to see whether their predictions were right.

‘Points’ provides a selection of readers’ letters, whilst in ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall begins his designer’s journey towards Gloom of Kilforth. Here he talks about the genesis of the idea behind the board game and its inspirations, laying the groundwork for the process to come. This should be a fascinating path to follow in future columns.

Thematically, Senet Issue 1 pursues a pair of the board gaming industry’s most recent trends—Mars and Vikings. In ‘Out of the World’, board game visualist Ian O’Toole shows how he developed the look and visual style of On Mars. It mentions other titles he has worked on, but in the main, the article takes the visual and graphical development of On Mars from start to finish, showing  the various stages through which O’Toole takes his design. It is a genuinely fascinating journey which throws the spotlight on someone involved other than a designer. The other theme is Vikings and board games journalist, Owen Duffy, looks at several of the high-profile Viking-themed board games which have been released over the last few years in ‘Vahalla Rising’. It notes our fascination with the Vikings, but makes the point that there is more to them than raiding and pillaging, which as much as raiding and pillaging is often part of Viking-themed board games, there are an increasing number of designs where that is not the case. For example, Shipwrights of the North Sea is about shipbuilding. The article points out that this may be just another thematic cycle, but perhaps not given our long association with Viking history and the fact that they too, played board games.

Similarly, two common mechanics are examined in the issue. With ‘Work Hard Place Hard’, Matt Thrower investigates the worker placement mechanic, which proved very popular in the late noughties and early tweenies, fostering competition without confrontation. It traces its origins back to a game called Keydom from 1998. Notable examples—Agricola, Caylus, and Le Havre, amongst others—are used as examples, and the examination looks at variations which use dice, involve time, and provide a sense of progress. Lastly, it looks forward to the future of the mechanic and then-forthcoming titles using it. There are numerous examples it misses of course, likely one of the reader’s favourites, but it is a case of hitting the notable examples. The other mechanic—or is that style of play—is the co-operative game. Alexandra Sonechkina writes the first ‘How to Play’ column which is entitled ‘Cooperative games can make us better people’, which provides a short history of the genre, emphasising that the removal of competition between players  not only removes conflict, but leads to stronger shared experience.

The longest piece in Senet Issue 1 is ‘High Flyer’, an in-depth interview with Elizabeth Hargrave, the designer of the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres winning Wingspan. This an interesting and informative piece, designer answering honestly about the challenges of being a female designer in the industry as much as her design process and the themes which attract her, which as Wingspan and her then-latest design, Tussie Mussie, are far from the traditional castles and similar elements. Hopefully, future issues will have interviews as nicely done and enjoyable as this one is.

No good gaming magazine would be without games reviews, and Senet Issue 1 is no exception. Just the ten, but all regarded as the magazine’s ten favourites from the year before, that is, 2019. Rounding out Senet Issue 1 is ‘Shelf of Shame’ in which a prominent gamer is asked to play a game that he has on his shelf, but never played. In this first column, the gamer is Paul Grogan of Gaming Rules! and the game is 1999’s Torres, also the 2000 Spiel des Jahres Winner. One obvious reason why he has not played this despite having a copy is the ‘cult of the new’, but he is not necessarily correct about a reviewer always getting more views for something that is ‘hot and new’. Retrospectives can generate plenty of views. The column feels less about the game and more about the fact that he has not played it, but is interesting enough. His very first play through of the game can be seen here.

Physically, Senet Issue 1 is very nicely presented, all pristine and beautifully laid out. Whether drawing on board game graphics and images, or the magazine’s own illustrations, the issue’s graphics are very sharply handled, living up to the issue’s motto of  “Board games are beautiful” as much as its subject matter does. 

Senet Issue 1 is a very impressive first issue and can be enjoyed whether you are relatively new to the hobby or a long-time participant. It sets out to inform and illustrate, and in doing so—sets a high standard for the issues to come.

For devotees of TSR Inc.’s Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel, the various issues of The Excellent Travelling Volume, James Maliszewski’s fanzine dedicated to Professor M.A.R. Barker’s baroque creation continue to provide dedicated support and further exploration. Published in June, 2021, The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 13—available in print via lulu.com—is the most recent issue. As with previous issues, his exploration of one of oldest of roleplaying settings is heavily influenced by the campaigns he has been running, the primary being his House of Worms campaign, originally based in, around, and under Sokátis, the City of Roofs before travelling across the southern ocean to ‘Linyaró, Outpost of the Petal Throne’, a small city located on the Achgé Peninsula, as detailed in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 8. However, although he continues to be the primary contributor to the fanzine, this latest issue contains multiple submissions from other authors, which is not only encouraging, but hopefully, a sign of things to come.

As per usual, The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 13 opens an editorial from James Maliszewski. As you would expect, this does highlight the challenging nature of the last year, but its main focus is the difficulty of its production and in particular, the postal and printing troubles. Fortunately, these have been solved with the move to lulu.com. The editorial also welcomes the multiple submissions from other authors that feature in the issue. The first of the additions in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 13 is drawn from the author’s House of Worms campaign, specifically from its current exploration of ‘Linyaró, Outpost of the Petal Throne’, a small city located on the Achgé Peninsula. ‘Naqsái Sorcery’ presents a new form of sorcery which differs from that known amongst the temples of the Five Empires. Naqsái sorcery involves the study of one hundred and eight ideograms. These appear to be two-dimensional, but closer and continued study reveals that they actually have three or more dimensions and can be used to access the same energies of the Planes Beyond as sorcerers of the Five Empires do. The article suggests a way in which a Player Character sorcerer might come to learn such ideograms—at a new Level switching to the new ideograms and their associated spells rather than the traditional spells he might learn from a temple. At subsequently newly acquired Levels, he might switch back. Several sample ideograms are listed, organised into Groups as per Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel. These include Chúr, which completely copies (but does not translate) the contents of a non-magical scroll, book, or codex for the caster, and Ósuni, which fills the lungs of a designated target with saltwater, which can cause drowning if not immediately treated. The ten sample ideograms each come with their own actual ideograms and represent a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar in terms of spell design. For ease of use, it would have been better perhaps if the spells had been listed by Group rather than alphabetically, and potentially, the ideogram Hrún, which transmutes non-living objects into steel may have a game changing effect given how rare that metal is on Tékumel. Otherwise an interesting and different approach to magic that has room expansion and further mysteries.
The subject of magic continues with ‘The Magic-User’. This proposal suggests changes to the Magic-User Class from Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel. This is to make the Class more flexible and less Change-oriented, offering a more balanced take so that a player could roleplay a Stability-worshipping sorcerer. It follows on from a similar treatment of the Warrior Class in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 12 and gives a new list of initial professional skills, as well as an explanation of skills such as Aspects and Mythology and Inner Doctrines. Unfortunately, this is untested and it would need some playtesting, although the possibility of this seems unlikely in the short term.
‘Shiringgáyi: Queen of the Heavens and of Tékumel’ explores the religious history of  Tsolyánu’s eastern neighbour, Salarvyá, and its differences with the other faiths of the Five Empires derived from the priest Pavár’s theological revolution. Whilst scholars of the other Five Empires take an interest in that history, the Salarvyáni simply give Shiringgáyi pride of place among all the gods. Her influence and those of her priestesses is such that they sit on the country’s Council of Nobles which decides its next king, who is then ‘reborn’ as the ‘son of Shiringgáyi’ and rules until such times as he is deemed physically and mentally unfit to rule and as the goddess ‘withdraws her blessings’ from him, only accepting back into her bosom following his ritual impalement. This adds both background and detail to the world of Tékumel, and would not only be useful should the Player Characters visit Salarvyá, but also should a player want to roleplay a priestess of Shiringgáyi.
One of the best ongoing features in The Excellent Travelling Volume is the Patrons section. Each entry includes six ready-to-play NPCs, including stats, skills, and spells, as well as a thumbnail portrait, some background and a reason for their wanting to employ the Player Characters. Not only a reason, but also several different explanations as to what is actually going on. Thus, Di’iqén hiTurshína, a priest of Grugánu who believes that someone is trying to kill him. The explanations include the fact that he is mistaken, a rival attempting to discredit him by making him paranoid, his temple testing his suitability for advancement, and another rival competing for the affection of a pretty ritual priestess of Ksárul. Modelled after the entries in the supplement, 76 Patrons for the Science Fiction roleplaying game, Traveller—of which the author is an avowed fan—these patrons are excellent, each providing an individual NPC and an adventure that the Game Master can develop.
The second addition in the issue is ‘Poisons, Antidotes & Narcotics’, useful for campaigns which involve murder or assassination, or social situations, the latter given the fact that the societies of the Five Empires hold no stigma when it comes to the social use of ‘The Powders’ as they are known.
The first of the submissions to The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 13 is ‘Puppetmaster Clans’ by Rob Smith. There are two of these in the Five Empires, the Society of the Hands Which Are Not Seen and the Clan of the Striding Incantation, and both are highly secretive about the arts they practice, the performance of sagas, plays, poems, and even gladiatorial duels using puppets of wood, metal, bone, and other materials, which then animated using spells. It adds the new skill, ‘Performer: Puppeteer’ and covers roles such as Puppet Artist, Set Designer/Craftsman, Musician, and more, as well as Puppetmaster Magic. This adds new spells such as Animate Puppets I, Animate Peerless Puppet, and even  Transfiguration, which turn the victim of the spell into a living puppet! The Puppetmaster clans perform regularly at the homes of the nobility and the roleplaying possibilities that they suggest are numerous, including single clan campaigns travelling the Five Empires getting involved in intrigues and seeing the world, murder mysteries, and more. Perhaps only lacking the lineage names for the respective clans, this is a fine addition to Tékumel campaign.
David A. Lemire provides more fiction in the form of ‘The Epic of Hrúgga. This brings to life one of the heroic figures from the past of the Five Empires, and in addition to being an enjoyable read, might serve as inspiration for a performance by the previously explored  ‘Puppetmaster Clans’.
Lastly, ‘Hanging on the Ropes’ by Mikael Tuominen is a lengthy encounter in the wilderness at  long, rope bridge crossing a ravine, river, or swamp. On its other side waits a lavishly but tastelessly dressed warrior with a gem-encrusted sword ready to strike at the ropes of the bridge. This is Kúrkuru hiSáchi, a soldier of fortune with a grudge to settle against the Temple of Hrü’ü for the death of his sister. The question is, does his vendetta have any basis in fact, is he acting nobly or ignobly? This is a really nicely developed encounter, relatively easy to drop into a campaign, which also forces the Player Characters to question their preconceptions. It also pleasingly addresses the issue for the point of view of both Stability and Change worshippers, and so feels nicely rounded. There should be more like this in the pages of the fanzine.
Physically, The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 13 is nicely produced, a sturdy little booklet in a thick card cover, pleasingly illustrated and tidily presented throughout. 

The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 13 continues the author’s excellent support for Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel. It is a solid issue, packed with content and background, made all the better for the submissions,  that the Referee can readily bring to her campaign.

On the tail of 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 showcased how 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.

Black Pudding is a fanzine that is nominally written for use with Labyrinth Lord and so is compatible with other Retroclones, but it is not a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style  fanzine. For starters, it is all but drawn rather than written, with artwork that reflects a look that is cartoonish, a tone that is slightly tongue in cheek, and a gonzo feel. Its genre is avowedly Swords & Sorcery, as much Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as Conan the Barbarian. Drawn from the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules and published by Random Order via Square Hex, Black Pudding’s fantasy roleplaying content that is anything other than the straight-laced fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons, but something a bit lighter, but still full of adventure and heroism. Issues one, two, and three have showcased the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules with a mix of new character Classes, spells, magic items, monsters, NPCs, and adventures. Black Pudding #4 included a similar mix of new Classes, NPCs, and an adventure, but also included the author’s ‘OSR Play book’, his reference for running an Old School Renaissance game, essentially showing how he runs his own campaign. Black Pudding #5 was more of a return to form, a mix of new character Classes, spells, magic items, monsters, NPCs, and adventures. It did, however, begin to suggest a campaign setting.

Black Pudding No. 6 continues where Black Pudding No. 5 left off. Previous issues of the fanzine have always been entertaining, but primarily felt like collections of new Classes, character sheets, monsters, and NPCs from the author’s ‘Doomslayers’ campaign, but without really presenting what that ‘Doomslayers’ campaign actually is. Now Black Pudding No. 5 did contain its own collection of new Classes, character sheets, monsters, and NPCs from the author’s ‘Doomslayers’ campaign, but it also included something more. This included the mini-sandbox, ‘Standing Stones of Marigold Hills’, but was really seen in ‘Adventures in the North’. This was a small region taken from Yria, part of the ‘Doomslakers’ campaign, beset by arctic temperatures, Ice Witch matriarchs, Ice Wights, and more! Parts of Black Pudding No. 6 carry on directly from ‘Adventures in the North’, but there is new setting material too. Further, Black Pudding No. 6 marks another shift, this time in terms of rules, so that it covers Old School Essentials as well as Labyrinth Lord.

Black Pudding No. 6 is not without its new character Classes. These begin with ‘The Fat Lady’, as in, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.” This Charisma-based Class should ideally be clad in armour with literal breast plates and winged helmets, and is all about singing, first to increase her Strength, to heal, to inflict damage, and influence people. Combine this with the Barbaribunny Class from Black Pudding #1 and the Referee will quickly find herself running What’s Opera, Doc?! ‘The Demodyn’ is a wee demon person who constantly radiates heat, can cast Burning Hands daily and any fire spell from a scroll, and ultimately, open a portal to the Infernal Plane daily. The third Class is the Beastfriend, who possesses a supernatural affinity with wild creatures and can calm, befriend, and ultimately call them to come to the aid of the Beastfriend. 

One of the best on-going features in Black Pudding is ‘Meatshields of the Bleeding Ox’, a collection of NPCs ready for hire by the Player Characters (or in a pinch, replacement Player Characters). As before, there is a decent range of NPCs given here, such as Malloid the Mage, a Fifth Level Magic-User who knows many things, but if not, can ask the Kosmik Halo that constantly whirls about his head; Totterdun of Udderpeak, a Second Level Dwarf from a poorly regarded family of Dwarves, who likes to work, to get the job done as agreed—and no more, and then getting paid; and the Weird Boatmen, several Zero Level creatures who have access to the Boat of Safe Passage, who speak little, but for a price will safely take you across any body of water in complete safety. Where in previous issues there have just too many entries in this ongoing series, here they are kept to just eight and that feels just the right number.

The monsters in the issue a Monstrous Toad with a mucoid skin—the mucus can be collected and boiled to make a frog and toad repellent, and an unpleasant personality who enjoys giving out insults; Iggy the Husker, a pig-man-thing which can be summoned to hunt and dine on man; and the Nightstalker, a dog-like creature which nightly waits in the shadows to hunt those that be Powers That Be committed a bad act and should be punished. Only the victim can see it and he or she cannot ignore it lest their rolls be made at a disadvantage, the Nightstalker making a single claw and gaze attack nightly, the former inflicting deep scratches, the latter the random loss of Attribute points! The monsters here are more singular than is usual and perhaps all the more memorable for it.

‘Adventures in the North’ is continued from the previous issue and as well as adding soft, lumpy, and magical Snowmen who might come to the aid of of unwary travellers in the region, perhaps with healing magic, perhaps with messages written in the snow, it provides a table of things to be found upon the Frozen Victims of the Ice Witches. Found along the road to the north is Trence the Troll’s Roadhouse, owned by a hard man said to have troll’s blood in his veins and be capable of walking naked in the snow for miles, and claim that the weather was no more than, “a bit chilly”. For a good enough tip, he might impart some important piece of information that will help the Player Characters whilst they are in the north, but otherwise he will remain as cold and as tightlipped as his welcome—and he certainly will not explain why he has his mother in the cellar! Beyond lies the Domain of the Snow Witches, which Dembellina Rue, the Matron Prime rules with a cruelly icy grip and breeds goblins from filth and refuse. The two parts—in this issue and the previous one, provide a nicely done and particularly wintery north (barring the Ice Camels which feel silly), that can easily be dropped into a Referee’s campaign.

The feature article in Black Pudding No. 6 is ‘Underground Down Below: An Old School mapcrawl adventure for PC levels 3-6 or so’. This is a wilderness style adventure, but located underground, an underground into which the Player Characters have been cast, perhaps randomly, perhaps not. Down below, the Player Characters will find animated cave mouths capable of chomping them to bits, a shrine to the war goddess Hilda built from dung; mounds—some home to grumpy ants, some ambulatory and home to Granny Naga, other of soft stone upon which to fall asleep and fall prey to their hungry denizens; the remains of a once great, but long dead empire; a mighty palace crumbling under the care of decrepit, aging staff who await the return of their long lost leader; and walking villages home to tiny people who will also try to eat the Player Characters, though their attacks are like insect bites. If attacked the villages flip over and hide under thick shells.

There are almost forty locations in the ‘Underground Down Below’, all of them odd, even creepy. This feel is aided by the map and the intentionally scrappy presentation which pulls apart the map and provides a closer view of each location to accompany the description. This is necessary in part because the main map is cramped on the page, but this is not the real issue with the locale. Although there is plenty of ideas and imagination here, unless the Player Characters are cast down into it at random and thus need to find a way out, it does lack a hook or two for them to want to visit. This may necessitate the Referee combing through the various locations to derive such a motivation from them, which given the format is not as immediately easy as it should be. Overall, there is a lot of imagination to work with here, excepting motivations, and so ‘Underground Down Below’ is not as good as it could be.

‘A Trolling We Will Go’ provides a ready-to-play location, a play upon the idea of rolls being found under bridges. The Troll itself, an Urnt Troll, is a combination of the classic goat-hating Troll and the Dungeons & Dragons Troll, complete with powers of regeneration. The location is built and illustrated around a set of random tables which provide random finds, the Urnt Troll’s treasure, Trollish reactions, and more. Again, this is nicely detailed and easy to drop into a campaign.

Elsewhere in the issue, ‘A Curious NPC Approaches the Party’ provides a ready source of NPCs and their goals, whilst ‘Unfinished Puddin’’ adds numerous untested and undeveloped rules, such as Saving Throws being based directly on a character’s Attributes, better Armour Class for a barbarians if they actually wear less armour, and a more narrative-based Initiative order. All of these are workable to some degree, but adding these will change the retroclone of the Referee’s choice. Lastly, ‘Armour Class Hack: AC is Negative Only When Protection is Magical’ provides another alternative to Armour Class, this one limiting non-magical Armour Class to zero (or twenty, if ascending). Beyond magical armour is required and magical armour should be special, much like weapons can be special. This is a nice touch and has the potential to make armour much more interesting than it typically is in a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game.

Physically, Black Pudding No. 6 adheres to the same standards set by the previous issues. So plenty of good, if cartoonish artwork to give it a singular, consistent look, accompanied by similar cartography. As with previous issues of the fanzine, the potential and obvious problem with Black Pudding No. 6 is that its tone may not be compatible with the style of Dungeons & Dragons that a Labyrinth Lord or Game Master is running. The tone of Black Pudding is lighter, weirder, and in places just sillier than the baseline Dungeons & Dragons game, so the Referee should take this into account when using the content of the fanzine.
The highlight of Black Pudding No. 5 was that it contained content from the author’s ‘Doomslakers’ campaign and the hope of Black Pudding No. 5 was that this would continue in future issues. It has, but only to the extent that the ‘Adventures in the North’ article started in Black Pudding No. 5 is completed in this issue. It would have been great to see yet more, but this is not to say that the content in Black Pudding No. 6 is poor. The issue benefits from having fewer Classes and NPCs, in their stead there being a good encounter at a bridge, some interesting rules ideas to test out, and a potentially fun underground wilderness. It is this underground wilderness, ‘Underground Down Below’, which ultimately disappoints, only needing a little extra development and support to be more immediately useful. Black Pudding No. 6 is not quite as entertaining as previous issues, but its content is not without promise.

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 Dungeon Master 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.
Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is a little different. Penned by Zedeck Siew—author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor—and drawn by Munkao, it is the fifth title published by the A Thousand Thousand Islands imprint, a Southeast Asian-themed fantasy visual world-building project, one which aims to draw from regional folklore and history to create a fantasy world truly rooted in the region’s myths, rather than a set of rules simply reskinned with a fantasy culture. The result of the project to date is eight fanzines, plus appendices, each slightly different, and each focusing on discrete settings which might be in the same world, but are just easily be separate places in separate worlds. What sets the series apart is the aesthetic sparseness of its combination of art and text. The latter describes the place, its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness with a very simple economy of words. Which is paired with the utterly delightful artwork which captures the strangeness and exoticism of the particular setting and brings it alive. Barring a table of three (or more) for determining random aspects that the Player Characters might encounter each entry in the series is systemless, meaning that each can be using any manner of roleplaying games and systems, whether that is fantasy or Science Fiction, the Old School Renaissance or not.
The first, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, described the Death-Rolled Kingdom, built on the remains of great drowned city, now ruled by crocodiles in lazy, benign fashion, they police the river, and their decrees outlaw the exploration of the ruins of MR-KR-GR, and they sometimes hire adventurers. The second, Kraching, explored the life of a quiet, sleepy village alongside a great forest, dominated by cats of all sizes and known for its beautiful carvings of the wood taken from the forest. The third, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, takes the reader into a forest where its husband Time moves differently and the gods dictate the seasons, Leeches stalk you and steal from you that which you hold dear, and squirrels appear to chatter and gossip—if you listen. Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain, the fourth, explores a vampire kingdom desperate for trade.
Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is another island, lost at the tail of an archipelago. Ironically it is known as Lodestone, for it cannot be found or reached by conventional means of navigation—a ship has to set sail in a random direction and get lost. Which does not always work… Yet many have reasons to go there, primarily to gain access to the skills and abilities of the magicians of the isle, which is said to be very great indeed. Such petitioners typically have a great need, for the price charged by the magicians is also great. The strangeness of Stray Virassa is primary presented through NPCs, first those who are travelling to the island, second through the magicians themselves, and lastly, through the citizens of the island’s port city, Ka-Lak-Kak—and this is done in two ways. First in random tables to generate NPCs and second sample ready to portray NPCs.
So a traveller to Stray Virassa could be going there because they have been cursed by a business rival that whenever they speak, they cough up maggots. They do not seek a cure, but a reciprocal curse. Besides their strangely fouled mouth, they are known for the crooked wig which constantly slips from their sweat-slicked head, and whilst travelling light, their neck is heavy with brass amulets to ward off bad spirits. The magicians include Diffa Fu, an overly worldly twelve-year-old and fertility specialist who can put a baby in any women—or man, who also collects skulls and whose word is final for any descendant of such skulls she owns!
Ka-Lak-Kak itself is a ghost city and city of ghosts, solid during rainstorms, transparent under direct sunlight, which might lead to the disappearance of a floor several storeys high! It is the Fourteenth Hell, the Hell reserved for those lost at sea. None of these have feet, but simply fade away below the knee, so in life, one might have been a soldier who died fighting pirates and is armed with a crossbow with a string made of ectoplasm which fires bolts of flame, and as a ghost, has a hand whose fingers end in crab claws that they constantly click. Now, they herd the floating lanterns that replace ghosts too lazy to manifest and are philosophical about their new existence, except for a hatred of their husband, who constantly cheats on them. The irony of the soldier’s situation is that Ka-Lak-Kak and Stray Virassa is a pirate port. Not to traditional pirates, but ghost pirates whose raids are never planned and always unguided. When ghost pirates weigh anchor, their boat capsizes. Only to right itself somewhere on the water, be it a river canal or a mountain lake, to raid and reave before capsizing their vessel again and return home! If the wreck of a lost ship can be found—pirate or not, the nails which hold its thick planks together can be harvested and if used to construct another ship, will ensure that the new vessel never sinks—for no ship ever sinks twice. 
Ka-Lak-Kak and thus Stray Virassa is also home to the largest settlement of Mu-folk, outside of ancient, lost Mu, including its last potentate, the indolent Xeng Xin, whose days are spent running spirit dens and taking his share of the island’s pirate raids when not in a haze of opium. He also occasionally still claims that Mu is rightfully his, though he has no word from the old country in some time. Perhaps a loyal lieutenant might employ someone to bring news and even an individual from the former kingdom? As with previous issues, accompanying Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is an insert, a foldout poster of extra tables. These include tables for determining the details of ghosts who have wandered the sea-floor for decades, and a drop table of ‘Memories of Mu’ to flesh out questions that the Player Characters might ask whilst on Stray Virassa.
Physically, Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is a slim booklet which possesses the lovely simplicity of the Thousand Thousand Isles, both in terms of the words and the art. The illustrations are exquisite and the writing delightfully succinct and easy to grasp.
As with entries in the Thousand Thousand Isles series, Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is easy to use once the Player Characters get there. There are hooks and plots which the Game Master could develop and engage the players and their characters with, and the setting is easy to adapt to the world of the Game Master’s choice, whether that is a domain on the Demiplane of Dread that is Ravenloft for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or a remote kingdom in nautical setting such as Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport: The City of Adventure or even a lost isle in H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, whether for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or another roleplaying game. However it is used, if the Game Master can get her Player Characters to its borders—and its randomly accessed nature makes that relatively easy—Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is creepy and magical and weird, simply, but evocatively and beautifully presented and written pirate and ghost haven intentionally lost.
—oOo—
The great news is that is Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Kraching, Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain, Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell, and the others in the Thousand Thousand Isles setting are now available outside of Malaysia. Details can be found here.

On the tail of 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 Dungeon Master 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.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content. Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and in reducing the number of articles it gave the fanzine more of a focus and allowed more of the feel of the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign to shine through, whilst Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs drew from multiple to somewhat lesser effect. Lastly, Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara focused primarily on smuggling town of Tirwas and the caves underneath it through which the contraband is taken.
Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs continues the stronger focus of the previous issue. The issue opens with ‘The Wandering Glade’, a wilderness module for Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Levels. It details a nomadic labyrinth of an ancient forest; its ancient trees moss laden and its caves and clearings home to long forgotten secrets known to the high druids of the past. There are few ways in—the route walked by the Pilgrims of the Lunar Oath is one, others are known to certain groups, and then the glade itself may wander into the path of travellers and swallow them up. It has an almost spiral layout, one that will pull the Player Characters further in, and perhaps under, as they seek a way out, encountering creatures and beings out of myth and folklore—the old ways, as some might call it—as well as the fae and other creatures of the forest, not to forget the bandits who reave its paths (and between them) in search of victims for their sacrificial ceremonies to the thorns and the oak to ensure harmony between man and nature. This is a bucolic and baroque forest dungeon, full of detail and flavour, and perhaps mysteries, which will appeal to any Druid or Ranger in the party—the former in particular.
The main article in the issue presents at the oft mentioned campaign location, ‘The City of Vultures’. Much in the mode of Imrryr of Moorcock’s Melniboné or Professor M.A.R. Barker’s Jakálla: The City Half As Old As Time—especially the latter as the author acknowledges, the City of Vultures is an ancient crumbling metropolis, rot bound and hidebound, its high-born and low-born ill-cast and ill-disposed, yet given to the worship of evil demigods and given to cruel and unyielding customs, once a great power, now friendless and warred upon from all sides. Although various locations are described, in the main, this is a city described faction by faction. These include its cruel leader, Mirvander Khan and  the many gods and demi-gods, like The Worshippers of the Columns, ascetics who whirl about the colossal columns seen about the city, often battering themselves senseless when not screaming out prophecies that drive mobs to do terrible things and Kwárü Khan, a former ruler who degenerated into a black, worm-like horror who stalks the streets at night in search of victims which it whispers horrid secrets, often incomprehensible or allegorical, into their ears. The city’s societies include Deston, a secret society dedicated to weird harmonies using oddly shaped tuning forks that are harmful and organised into cells which each only know limited number of harmonies; The Followers of Dókh, a parish caste whose duty it is to collect the dead—and the legally dead—and chain them atop the city’s roofless towers to be picked clean by the many vultures which circle the city; and the Warriors of the Tiger, a military brotherhood loyal to Mirvander Khan whose members paint their scars or wear iron masks which scare the peoples of the city and regularly walk the city with their trained tigers, free to kill whomever they want. In turn, customs and places are given similar treatment and level of detail, adding flavour and feel to the setting of the City of Vultures. The article details some of the dungeons and levels below the city, but in the main, they are left for future expansion and presentation in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06. It also goes beyond the walls of the City of Vultures to provide an overview of the northern coast of Thasan and the Sea of Kroitos upon which the city stands.
Included with Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is a quite lovely, double-sided mini-poster map, on which side is a players’ map of the City of Vultures whilst on the other is a hex-map of Thasan. However, as rich in detail and flavour as ‘The City of Vultures’ is, it is missing two things. The author describes it as being built on three pillars—a system of city encounters for street-level adventures, descriptions of the conspiracies rampant within the city, and write-ups of the city’s Underworlds and adventure locations. The third and last of these pillars is begun to be addressed in the very issue itself and will continue to be addressed in further issues, as will the second pillar. However, the first pillar requires another supplement, The Nocturnal Table. Of course, this is annoying, but there is nothing to stop the Dungeon Master using table she already has or indeed, creating her. However, they might not have the flavour of The Nocturnal Table.
The second adventure in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is the eponymous ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’. Again designed Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Levels, this is part of the Underworld below the City of Vultures, said to be the resting place of five nobles from when the city was founded who are said to be held aloft twist heaven and earth, so of great interest to historians. However, ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ is only partly about those tombs, but getting to them. They are concealed beneath the Temple of Sürü Miklári, the god of rats whose priests know and will sometimes sell some of the city’s lesser and greater secrets that its packs have overheard. However, there is only one known entrance to the Temple of Sürü Miklári, and that is quite literally barred. Fortunately, it is rumoured that there are side entrances which bypass the barred entrance and provide access to the temple, both of which, are of course, detailed. One is in the home of a seedy caravanserai, the other in a filthy underground theatre, either of which the Player Characters will have to either fight, bribe, or sneak their way through in order to find the entrance. There are another five levels below the entrances, consisting of temple and tomb complexes, plus the court belonging to a god.
‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ is rich in detail and flavour, presenting level after level of baroque, sweaty and forgotten complexes of rooms and warrens. If it is missing anything, it is perhaps a hook or two to pull the Player Characters into wanting to delve deep into the Underworld under the City of Vultures, and whilst the Dungeon Master is free to develop these herself, the process is not eased by the lack of NPCs in the earlier ‘The City of Vultures’ who might be interested and also, whilst the tombs of the nobles and their inhabitants are detailed, what is not, is the sort of information which would motivate a scholar to want to delve that deep into the Underworld. As written, ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ just is, leaving the Dungeon Master to do all of the set-up.
Rounding out the issue is ‘The Armoury’. This is quite possibly the richest two pages of magical items committed to paper, presenting almost thirty items, one paragraph after another. Again, there is a lot of flavour, mostly mechanical to these entries, but it gives them a pleasing individuality. For example, The Sword of the Basilisks is a longsword +1 which petrifies victims on a natural roll of nineteen or twenty, but where a victim gets a save, the wielder never does against petrification of any kind. Or The Sword of Vilet Kanebe, which is a damned blade, a longsword -2, which actually transfers the curse to the victim of a first successful hit in combat and thereafter becomes a longsword +1, only to revert at the end of the battle. In both cases, as well as many others in the article, a little mechanical complexity adds some flavour.
Physically, Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is decently presented. It is perhaps a bit cramped in places, whilst the maps are often rough, they work and they are not without their charm. The artwork selected is also good.
It is great to finally see an introduction to the City of Vultures in the pages of Echoes From Fomalhaut, and ‘The City of Vultures’ in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs certainly serves as an excellent primer to the mouldering city. Hopefully future issues will explore the city further and perhaps also provide the Dungeon Master with some hooks and some NPCs which can help her run the type of city adventures that the publisher professes to be fond of. The two scenarios in the issue are also good, the forest adventure actually easier to use than the dungeon adventure, which for all of its detail is disappointing. Nevertheless, the continued focus on fewer, longer articles in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs continue provide interesting gaming content.
—oOo—

An unboxing of Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs can be found here. 

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 Dungeon Master 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.
Once per year, The Grognard Files, a North of England podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest, hosts Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. As The Armchair Adventurers, the podcast also publishes its fanzine, just once a year, and typically timed for release at Grogmeet. The first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine will donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. More recent issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 and The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 have sadly not followed suit, but for members of the ‘Grog Squad’ and attendees of Grogmeet, both issues continue to serve up thick, syrupy wodges of nostalgia and gaming inspired by their youths in the nineteen eighties. Of course, worldwide circumstances means that there has been no Grogmeet since 2019 and thus no issue of The Grognard Files, but The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 was not the only fanzine to be released at Grogmeet in 2019. Further, that fanzine has gone on to be expanded following a Kickstarter campaign and unlike The Grognard Files – Annual 2019, is still available.

Grogzilla #1 is published by D101 Games, best known for the OpenQuest roleplaying game and the Glorantha fanzine, Hearts in Glorantha. It is undeniably a showcase for what the publisher does and is full of ideas and bits and pieces, some of which are silly, some useful, and some interesting. The issue starts with the silly—‘A Question of Ducks’, which is a poll of Twitter and the Grog Squad—as fans of The Grognard Files podcast are known—and their feelings about Ducks in gaming. The questions are mostly related to Glorantha, the answers varying from series to silly, depending upon how the respondent feels about Ducks. ‘Four Faces of Grogzilla’ is almost as silly, presenting four versions of the not-kaiju for D101 Games’ different roleplaying games—OpenQuest, Crypts and Things, Monkey the RPG, and River of Heaven: Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century. Thus, Grogzilla for OpenQuest is a half-dragon, half demonic reptile thing which slumbers deep under the earth, but which cult priests can summon him to rampage across the land once again, whilst hysterical mobs sacrifice to him in order to avoid such a fate! Then for River of Heaven, Robozilla is a giant robot originally intended to be used to help terraform the world of Terrosa, but since stolen by terrorists! More fun perhaps is Monkeyzilla, for Monkey the RPG, the ten-storey high, fire breathing lizard which the Monkey King transformed into to fight the Pagoda Throwing General, which nobody talks about because of all the destruction wrought in the ensuing battle!

The scenario in Grogzilla #1 is ‘Wigan Pigs’. Written for use with Swords & Wizardry, but therefore adaptable to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, the scenario is a sequel to The Road to Hell, which is also set during Elizabethan times. It is a mixture of Tudor fantasy and horror, the Player Characters sent by Doctor John Dee to England’s northwest to locate a consignment of missing pigs which should have been delivered to the Irish butcher and purveyor of fine sausages, Mrs Figgins. Such a mundane task hides a nasty secret and a moral quandary for the Player Characters and for Game Master a moment to reflect wonder if the scenario should not have been called ‘The Road to Wigan Pig’ instead. The scenario is also easy to adapt to other systems, but perhaps the most obvious in the two years since the fanzine’s publication is The Dee Sanction.

There are multiple Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games, but Grogzilla #1 offers one more with ‘Outsiders’. This is a game design document, suggesting how the author might design his own Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game were he to do so. First to avoid what Call of Cthulhu does and use those elements of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction which are in the public domain and then… The result is a scaled down concept, using a simple mechanic with just two six-sided dice, skills which can damage and are therefore harder to use. The Player Characters are actual outsiders, punks and rockers, radical scientists, drifters, hackers, and more, with talents such as Athletics, Science, Gobsite(!), and the like. The opposition consists of Horrors, similarly scaled down, Deep Ones, cultists, and the like, whilst deities—or alien intelligences—are ineffable, unknowable, working their way through their proxies. It would be fascinating to see this developed further by the author, but with access to the fanzine, there is nothing to stop the reader from developing it further.

‘The Six Traveller’s Culture – Magical Questing Gypsies for Mythras’ presents a Culture and its faith for use with The Design Mechanism’s Mythras. A preview of a forthcoming supplement from D101 Games, there is a danger here in presenting gaming content based on other cultures, but this very much appears to have been sensitively done. It provides for their skills—standard, combat styles, and professional, cultural passions, and more. The Six Travellers constantly journey in wagons following routes long established by their heroes and gods, many in the footsteps of the Six, searching for the magical Way Stones, long lost, but capable of fostering trade and safe passage. In their way are the agents of a malevolence known as the Ignorance. Accompanied by notes on the social castes amongst the Six Travellers this culture would make an interesting addition to a fantasy campaign.

Further previews follow. ‘Lost Fools of Atlantis’ is a preview of a roleplaying game about conspiracies and the ridiculousness of conspiracy theories, more a black comedy than a serious game. Again, the game is yet to appear, but the fiction is sufficiently intriguing to wonder what it might be like and actually be about. Lastly ‘The Barbarian at the Gate’ is a preview of Swords Against the Shroud, a rewrite of the Barbarian Class from Crypts and Things for use with The Black Hack, Second Edition. With a high Constitution, a certain fearlessness, initial ferocity in a fight, outdoor survival skills, it is exactly what you would expect in a classic fantasy treatment of the Barbarian. It is well done, with plenty of mechanical flavour and would certainly be fun to play. Between the two, is ‘Pitbull’, a sample NPC, a street ronin, for the Cyberpunk roleplaying game, Reboot. It seems decent enough, but not having seen the roleplaying game, it is difficult to comment further.

Physically, Grogzilla #1 is a ‘rough cut’ affair (note, the version available on Drivethrurpg.com will be different), not quite the ‘deckle edge’ feel, but definitely something with a ‘put together by hand’ feel. Black and white throughout, the cover has pleasing linen finish and the roughness continues throughout the fanzine. Not necessarily to its detriment, but it gives it the amateurish feel of fanzines of old.

Grogzilla #1 is a medley of ideas and previews, not necessarily useful, but nevertheless interesting. The scenario though, ‘Wigan Pigs’, is the exception and easily adaptable.

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. However, not every fanzine—for the Old School Renaissance or otherwise—needs to be for a specific set of rules.
Lands of Legends – Mundane is part of series of fanzines released as part of ZineQuest3 on Kickstarter. Published by Axian Spice, there are five entries in the series—Lands of Legends – Grim, Lands of Legends – Fairy, Lands of Legends – Holy, Lands of Legends – Primeval, and of course, Lands of Legends – Mundane—each of which provides two hundred different entries spread across twenty tables, all sorted by terrain type, including city, desert, forest, island, mountain, swamp, and more. The aim of the series is to provide a toolkit for the Game Master wanting inspiration in terms of worldbuilding and encounters for her setting and campaign.
The entries in the Lands of Legends series are colour-coded and Lands of Legends – Mundane is white and provides thumbnail descriptions of places and situations intended for low fantasy and low magic settings and campaigns, focusing on the natural environment and ordinary events, rather than high fantasy, dark secrets and grim magic, the realms of the fae, the divine and the holy, and so on. It adheres to the format for the series in two ways. First, provides a table of ten Area entries in turn for Civilisations, Deserts, Forests, Jungles, Mountains & Hills, Plains & Valleys, Rivers & Lakes, Seas & Islands, Swamps & Marshes, and Wastelands, and then it does exactly the same for Encounters. Second, it splits the Area entries and the Encounter entries and places them back-to-back so that to use either, the Game Master has to flip the book over and turn it upside down.
So, open up the ‘Mundane Areas’ half of the fanzine and a roll on the ‘Mundane Civilisations’ table would generate the result of ‘The City of Towers’, which details how the merchants of a city that once stood on the banks of a river grew rich enough to construct tall towers as their homes, but refused to move when the valley and thus the ground floor and cellar of every building was permanently flooded, including their towers. In the years since, the entrances to the flooded lower levels have been barricaded off and terraces and arched bridges built between the towers, but what secrets, treasures, and dangers lurk in the waters below? Flip over the book to the Encounters half and a roll on the ‘Mundane Deserts’ table provides an encounter with natives engaging in the practice of ‘sand diving’. Much like pearl divers, these natives dive for natural treasures, but not pearls and not in the sea, but into pools of quicksand to be pulled back up by rope, hopefully with a beautiful desert rose crystal in their grasp!
With a hundred entries for both the Areas and the Encounters, some no longer than two or three sentences, some a little more detailed, there is no doubting the wealth of inspiration to be found in the pages of Lands of Legends – Mundane. For the most part, the entries are systems neutral, so the Game Master can use them for the roleplaying game of her choice, whether generic, like Savage Worlds or something more specific, like Dungeons & Dragons. The latter—and thus almost any retroclone of the Game Master’s choice—is slightly better supported because Lands of Legends – Mundane does use some Dungeons & Dragons terminology, such as ‘Save versus Poison’ or ‘Hit Dice’. This of course eases the adaptation of the content for the Game Master.
Lands of Legends – Mundane is cleanly and neatly laid out. The difference between the two sections—the Areas and the Encounters halves—of the book are nicely delineated, with one being in traditional black on white, the other white on black. Simple line art or silhouettes further highlight the difference.   
Lands of Legends – Mundane is plain and simple in appearance, but its content is anything but. For the Game Master wanting ideas or inspiration, there can be no denying that Lands of Legends – Mundane is rich in both. Plus the fact that it can do both inspire world building and encounters gives Lands of Legends – Mundane a pleasing versatility to both the inspiration and the ideas..

On the tail of 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 Dungeon Master 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.
The Grognard Files is a fanzine born of The Grognard Files, a North of England podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest. It is available only to patrons of the podcast—or alternatively to attendees of Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. It is also put out just once a year. Published by The Armchair Adventurers, the The first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine will donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. More recent issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 and The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 have sadly not followed suit, but for members of the ‘Grog Squad’ and attendees of Grogmeet, both issues continue to serve up thick, syrupy wodges of nostalgia and gaming inspired by their youths in the nineteen eighties.
It would seem remiss to be reviewing The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 in the summer of 2021 rather than more recent issue, but in truth, circumstances mean that there was no Grog Meet in 2020 and no The Grognard Files – Annual 2020 either. So The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 it is then. Previous issues have taken their design cue from gaming magazines of the nineteen eighties, White Dwarf being the most obvious. With The Grognard Files – Annual 2019, the design cue is taken from DragonLords, the British role-playing game fanzine published between 1980 and 1983. It thus moves The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 to a digest format rather than the magazine size of White Dwarf or Imagine and it comes crammed full of the type of content that middle-aged men that will shut themselves away with a cup of tea and wallow in the gaming years of their yesteryear before being asked to put the bins out/do the washing up/take one of their offspring to football, music lessons, and the like.
Opening with an editorial which highlights the role of fanzines in providing a community for gamers—they were the Internet before the Internet—The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 gets down to gaming goodness. It opens Neil Benson’s ‘OSR this, OSR that, but what is it?’, which provides an explanation of what the Old School Renaissance is and what it sets out to do. It points to the source for the Old School Renaissance, that is, early Dungeons & Dragons, and explains the key points of creating and playing in the movement. So simple, quick Player Character generation; freedom of play in terms of hexcrawls and sandcrawls, and the like; emphasises player agency in solving problems rather than relying on skill rolls, and so on. There are eight of these points, but Benson does not simply list them, but sets them out as a quest undertaken by an adventuring party to learn what the OSR. This makes the piece much more entertaining than a simple explanation of what the Old School Renaissance would otherwise have been. It includes a short list of sample retroclones and is accompanied by a thumbnail review of Chris Gonnerman’s Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, written by Shannon Ferguson.
A similar convention is used to explain what one of the oldest roleplaying games is. ‘A Bluffer’s Guide to Tékumel’ is actually written by me (and in truth, I had forgotten I had written the piece) and is presented as an in-game monologue delivered by a minor bureaucrat to a barbarian who knows nothing of the setting for Professor M.A.R. Barker’s Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. It is all a bit knowing and po-faced, but provides a simple enough introduction.
The nostalgia in The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 begins in earnest with Cris Watkins’ ‘Games Master Immortality’. It is about bad, but funny memories of Player Character deaths brought about by the Game Master simply getting it wrong. Part-Game Master advice, part-hoary old war stories, such as over the course of a campaign driving the Player Characters so paranoid that when a new player turns up with a new character, their first reaction is to not trust the character and then turn on him when his player seems to confirm their suspicions. Yes, it is cruel, but at the same time funny, though ultimately best not necessarily implemented in a Game Master’s campaign as not every player may see the funny side.
The nostalgia continues with both Nick Edwards and Alan Gairey taking a look back at Judges Guild. First with Nick Edwards’ ‘The Guilded Age – Thoughts on Judges Guild’ which examines the delights of City State of the Invincible Overlord which forced him to create his own content, in the main a thief and crime-based campaign much like the Lankhmar setting of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser novels. Although the author would make further purchases of Judges Guild titles, and praises those that he likes, he has since returned to the City State of the Invincible Overlord for other campaigns and City State of the Invincible Overlord would also influence his preference in gaming for cities rather than dungeons! Alan Gairey also focuses on the one title from Judges Guild with ‘An Ode to Inferno: Abandon hope all ye that enter…’, which is the 1980 module, Inferno. This presented the first four circles of Hell as a challenging dungeon and the author ran it several times, each time nearly ending in the death of the whole party. The article comes to rather droll end, but is accompanied by a list of some of the other better titles published by the prolific Judges Guild, all of which in their way, would be worthy of articles such as these two. 
The feature piece in The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 is ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’. Written by Roger Coe, this is a scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but not the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay of the nineteen eighties. Rather it is for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment. Almost thirty pages in length and thus almost half of the fanzine, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’ is a convoluted murder mystery and conspiracy thriller, involving guild rivalries, hair stylists, cultists, and ecumenical matters, all specifically designed to be set in the city or large town of the Game Master’s choice. It opens with a dangerous encounter chanced upon by the Player Characters between a blue glowing demon-man-thing and a poorly victim. The scene ends with both demon and victim dead, which leaves the Player Characters with a problem or two. The demon was once a man, so who was he? Who was the victim and what was the meaning of his dying words? Investigation will reveal more and more, perhaps initially with the Player Characters attempting to avoid the City Watch—especially if they happen to be carrying either of the corpses with them, then finding employment from a surprising quarter, and more. There is a fair bit going on in this scenario and the Player Characters will really need to dig deep to discover some the city’s secrets, but in true Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, their investigation will take them from lows of society to the heights and back again, revealing perfidious goings on. Although it does feel a bit crammed in, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’ is a gem of a scenario, offering lots of opportunity for combat, investigation, and roleplaying, adeptly hitting all of the signature notes you would want in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay scenario, but without being location specific.
Sean Hillman gets systems specific with ‘A Short History of the Long Dice – The story of percentage based games’. It is more of an overview than anything else, too brief to provide any real insight. A better article might have explored more of the nuances between the various roleplaying games to have used percentile dice. Newt Newport details the history of his own company with ’10 Years of D101 Games’, the article sadly missing some text in true fanzine fashion, but nevertheless an enjoyable and informative piece. Perhaps it could have done with a bibliography, though that would have made it less personal.
The nostalgia continues with the memories of Niall Hunt and others of their gaming youth with ‘Gaming in the Shire’ and the founding and running of Evesham Roleplaying Association. There is a certain pleasure to be had here in reading reminiscences similar to your own—and of course those of The Grognard Files podcast files hosts—and of course, having them in print. Back in The Grognard Files – Annual 2018, ‘Keharr’ presented ‘Pendragon: City of Legions’, a fascinating exploration of his Pendragon PBEM set in the northwest of England. For this issue he provides not so much an update, but a sort of guide to running such a thing with ‘How to Fry your Fish-Fingers – Lessons learnt from running a Cheshire Pendragon Play By Email’. The advice is both applicable to Pendragon PBEM games and non- Pendragon PBEM games, such as taking disagreements offline, be clear about the rules, listen to your players, and much more. There are still some personal touches and it is clear from the article that the author and his players continue to enjoy running and playing the PBEM.
Lastly, ‘All That Glitters…’ by Jerry Nuckolls, compares and contrasts the two versions of the classic superhero roleplaying game, Golden Heroes, by Simon Burley and Peter Haines. One is their self-published version from 1982, the other the Games Workshop version from 1984. The review as such, does lack illustrations, barring a suitably fanzine-ish cartoon that has a sly dig at Games Workshop, but is a fascinating read because it is often forgotten that there even was a self-published version. What the article highlights is that the differences between the two are relatively minor. Which only goes to show how good the self-published version was that the authors and Games Workshop did not have to do a great deal to bring the version we know to print.
Physically, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 has a rough quality to it, by design as much as by accident. It needs an edit here and there and feels alternatively cramped and overly spacious in places. It is lightly illustrated, but they are generally well handled, and the cartography for the scenario, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’, is excellent. Similarly, the wraparound cover from Russ Nicholson is superb.
As with previous issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 delivers a good mix of nostalgia, opinion, and a little bit of gaming content. Indeed, pride of place goes to that gaming content, the scenario, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’, which is worth the price of the fanzine alone. It is a formula which The Armchair Adventurers have followed before—and it works. It would be fantastic to see this issue made available to the wider gaming hobby, perhaps for a decent cause much like The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, but in the meantime, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 and further issues are bonus for supporting The Grognard Files podcast.

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 choice is the 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. Similarly, Crawl! #3 was just as focused, but the subject of its focus was magic rather than treasure. Unfortunately, the fact that a later printing of Crawl! No. 1 reprinted content from Crawl! #3 somewhat undermined the content and usefulness of Crawl! #3. Fortunately, Crawl! Issue Number Four was devoted to Yves Larochelle’s ‘The Tainted Forest Thorum’, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game for characters of Fifth Level. Crawl! Issue V continued the run of themed issues, focusing on monsters, but ultimately to not always impressive effect, whilst Crawl! No. 6: Classic Class Collection presented some interesting versions of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style Classes for Dungeon Crawl Classics, though not enough of them. Crawl! Issue No. 7: Tips! Tricks! Traps! was a bit of bit of a medley issue, addressing a number of different aspects of dungeoneering and fantasy roleplaying, whilst Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! did a fine job of giving rules for guns and exploring how to use in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Crawl! No. 9: The Arwich Grinder provided a complete classic Character Funnel in Lovecraftian mode.
Published in August, 2014, Crawl! Number 10: New Class Options returns to the theme of the earlier Crawl! No. 6: Classic Class Collection, that of Class in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. One of the design cues for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game is Basic Dungeons & Dragons in that it employs the ‘Race as Class’ option for its choice of character Classes, that the Dwarf, the Elf, and the Halfling are all Classes in their own right. This as opposed to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and later iterations of the world’s most popular roleplaying game which separated the two and allowed a player to combine the Race and Class of his choice. Such options are not present in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game though, and further, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game is not a game which has presented such options. So there is no equivalent of the Player’s Handbook 2 or the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. The space left by such an omission—if omission it is—is exactly that into which fanzines and similar publications like Crawl! and in this case, Crawl! Number 10: New Class Options, can step.
In particular, Crawl! Number 10: New Class Options focuses on the Demi-Human Classes—the Dwarf, the Elf, and the Halfling. It provides new options to play each of these Races, but through a new Class. For the Dwarf, this is the Dwarven Priest by Jeffrey Tadlock. Primarily Lawful—though Chaotic and Neutral ones exist—this Class combines the abilities of the Dwarf, the Cleric, and the Warrior. The Class gains a deed die from Third Level and can perform a Mighty Deed of Arms, but also gains several spells known per Level. The other three new Classes are by Rev. Dak J. Ultimak. These start with the Elven Rogue which combines the magic of the Elf Class with the thiefing skills of the Thief, which are necessarily beholden to a Patron as the Elf normally is. Just like the Thief, the skill bonuses the Elven Rogue is determined by his Alignment—Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral. The Halfling Burglar is given a similar set of tables as it moves the traditional Halfling of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game away from his martial bent and towards what is seen as the traditional role for the Halfling—or at least its traditional role for its inspiration. So the Halfling Burglar is thus more like the supposed role of Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. Guidance is included in the descriptions of the Elven Rogue and the Halfling Burglar with the ‘My Thief, My Way’ from Crawl! No. 6: Classic Class Collection should a player want to modify which skills he wants his Rogue—Elf or Halfling—to have. The last Class in the fanzine is another Halfling Class which where the Halfling Burglar makes the Halfling be a Thief, makes the Halfling a Warrior! The Halfling Champion combines the Mighty Deed of Arms of the Warrior with Luck of the Halfling and adds to it the ability to wield the longsword, the Warhammer, and the heavy axe not in the one hand as per other Races because Halflings are tiny, but two-handed! This comes at a penalty to the Halfling Champion’s Initiative die, but nevertheless, the Halfling Champion is a doughty, fearless warrior ready to step forward* and protect his village.
* I would have written ‘ready to step up’, but that is Halflingist.
These four Classes are engaging and fun, offering new roleplaying opportunities. For example, playing a Halfling Champion would be wholly different to playing a Halfling. However, it would have been nice to have been given some information on who or what the Dwarven Priest typically worships, so the inclusion of a Patron or two would have been a nice inclusion. As well as offering new choices, the inclusion of the four Classes do something else, and that is push Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game further away from the baseline of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and more towards Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—though still a long way from getting there. Just as with any content in a fanzine, these four Classes are all optional, but their inclusion would be worth considering.
Just as there is no combining Race and Class in Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, there is no Multi-Classing either. ‘Half-Levels’ is Daniel J. Bishop’s solution to this, enabling a player to select a half-Level up to three times, each time choosing the equivalent of Zero Level in another Class. Then at subsequent Levels switch to the new Class. The mechanics feel just a little too complex to easily provide what the author is trying to do, but they include notes for all of the core Classes in the roleplaying game as well as those which appeared in the earlier Crawl! No. 6: Classic Class Collection, so ultimately the article covers a lot of choices whilst providing the player with even more options.
Colin Chapman’s ‘Not Just a Pretty Face’ provides a means for a player to create the random physical appearance for his character. It starts with a baseline for each Race and adds a Baseline followed by hair and eye colour, and so on. Lastly, the player can roll for a physical feature, whether negative, neutral, or positive. All very neat and simple, enabling the player to add colour and detail to his character’s appearance, and the Judge to do the same for her NPCs. Lastly, Noah Stevens casts a spotlight on three different third-party Races in ‘Three Weird Races’. Each is accompanied by a link, whether a blog or DrivethruRPG.com. Potentially useful at the time of the issue’s publication, but ultimately more filler than useful.
Physically, Crawl! Number 10: New Class Options is decently done, a clean and tidy affair. The artwork—done by Mario T—is a lot of fun and really captures the feel of the four new Classes in particular. 
Crawl! Number 10: New Class Options is very serviceable issue. The high points of the issue are the four new Classes, which expand the play of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game with new options and new roleplaying potential. Whether or not the Judge or her players want to expand their game and thus move away from the core of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game is their choice, but the options are there.

 Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: The Secret of SilcestrePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andy Miller

Setting: Dark Ages WessexProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-two page, 38.35 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: There be dwarves in them thar hills—and they be evil. Evil, I tell ye!Plot Hook: What secrets and treasures lie in Silchestre’s Roman past?Plot Support: Detailed plot, three good handouts, eight maps, seven NPCs, three Mythos entities, one Mythos tome, and four pre-generated Investigators. Production Values: Decent.
Pros
# Multiple set-ups for the scenario# Solid support for Dark Ages: Cthulhu# Decent quartet of pre-generated Investigators# Multi-factional treasure hunt# Roleplaying opportunities for negotiating with the factions# Could be adapted to other periods and settings, but not easily# Potential campaign set-up
Cons
# Requires a fair degree of set-up and exposition# All male pre-generated Investigators
Conclusion
# A treasure hunt in Merry Olde Englande# Take the treasure themselves, give it to a nickname and have juicy thoughts about making it yours, promise it to another faction. Ultimately, the outcome is down to the players.# Good support for Dark Ages: Cthulhu

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—


Name: Broken Arrow: ChernobylPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Chad Briggs

Setting: 1990s Ukraine
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Seventeen page, 5.93 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: In the new wild west of post-Soviet era someone has mosied out of town with a nuclear warhead!Plot Hook: One of their bombs is missing!Plot Support: Detailed plot, six handouts, one NPC, one Mythos monster, and six pre-generated Investigators (separate).Production Values: Plain.
Pros
# Interesting use of the historical background# A chase into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone# Suitable as a one-shot or convention scenario# Decent background information# Easy to adapt to Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game
Cons
# Requires a good edit# Linear plot
# Mythos threat underdeveloped
Conclusion
# Best suited as a Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game scenario# Interesting background and setting# Linear and underdeveloped

 Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: The Mad PriestPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marco Carrer

Setting: Dark Ages Iceland using Cthulhu Through The Ages and Mythic Iceland
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Ten page, 792.80 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A plague upon their crops, a plague upon their animals, what madness has come upon the village?Plot Hook: The price of hospitality can lead to horror.Plot Support: Plot outline, one handout, two NPCs, two Mythos monsters, and five pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Plain.
Pros
# Short, one-session one-shot or convention scenario# Support for Cthulhu Through The Ages, Mythic Iceland, and Cthulhu Dark Ages# Best to fit the scenario to Investigators’ village
Cons
# No Sanity losses for failure# Underdeveloped plot 
# Needs an edit# Needs development
Conclusion
# Compact scenario waiting for a Keeper’s input# Support for Cthulhu Through The Ages, Mythic Iceland, and Cthulhu Dark Ages