On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Then there is also Old School Essentials.
Carcass Crawler Issue #1 is ‘The Official Fanzine Old-School Essentials zine’. Published by Necrotic Gnome, Old School Essentials is the retroclone based upon the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay and published in 1981, and Carcass Crawler provides content and options for it. It is pleasingly ‘old school’ in its sensibilities, being a medley of things in its content rather than just the one thing or the one roleplaying game as has been the trend in gaming fanzines. Carcass Crawler Issue #1 is primarily about character Classes and new options in terms of the Player Character. So it includes six new Classes and three new Races, and rules for black powder weapons, Fighter combat talents, d6 thief skills, and Adjudicating thief skills.
The six new Classes follow standard Old School Essentials rules in that it allows for ‘Race as Class’, whilst the three new Races support the separation of Race and Class as per Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy. The six entries of ‘Character Classes’ begin with the Acolyte, a priestly or religious Class which switches out the spell memorisation of the Cleric with percentile skills as per the Thief Class. Although the Acolyte can cast Cleric scrolls from scrolls, it cannot cast spells otherwise. Instead, the Class has Bless, Detect Magic, Know Alignment, Purify, Rally, and Turn Undead as percentile skills. In addition, the Acolyte can Lay on Hands to heal. Designed as a thought experiment, Class is surprisingly untraditional, less divine even, and moves towards a modern presentation of the Cleric. The Gargantua is the opposite of the traditional demi-humans in Dungeons & Dragons—big humanoids rather than small. The Class is a Fighter type, capable of wielding two-handed weapons in one hand, opening doors with ease, and throwing rocks. The opposite of the Gargantua is the Goblin, which with its Defensive Bonus, Infravision, Stealth, and Wolf Affinity is very traditional adaptation of the demi-human race.
The Hephaestan are another Race of demi-humans, tall, thin with angular features and pointed ears. They are not another version of Elves. Instead, they have mental powers including ESP, Gestalt, Healing Trance, Mind Control, Mind Shield, and Telepathy, which can be used twice per day per Level and require activation. However, they also have the Neuropressure ability, a non-lethal combat technique involving the gripping of the back of the neck, which indicates the inspiration for the Class—the Vulcans of Star Trek. The Kineticist are monk-like, but employ mind over matter to manipulate and control kinetic force. The given mental powers include Control density, Crush Life, Kinetic Fist, Kinetic Shield, Throw Weapon, and more, and the Kineticist is obviously inspired by the Jedi of Star Wars. The Mage is the arcane equivalent of the Acolyte. The Class can only cast spells from scrolls, and again, Detect Magic, Open/Close, Rally/Fear, Read Magic, and Suggestion are skills rather abilities. The Mage’s staff can radiate light once per day and can be used to harm monsters that are otherwise invulnerable to mundane attacks. In comparison to the Magic-User, the Mage is more of a physical interpretation of the arcane Class and inspired by Gandalf of The Lord of the Rings, is suitable to low magic settings.
The Acolyte, Kineticist, and Mage are designed by Gavin Norman, the designer and publisher of Old School Essentials, whilst the Gargantua, Goblin, and Hephaestan are designed by James Maliszewski of the Grognardia blog. Of the six Classes, the Gargantua and Goblin will fit easily into a standard fantasy campaign, whereas the others will change the feel of a campaign. The Acolyte and Mage feel suited to a low-powered campaign, notably because they do introduce the possibility of failure in their abilities, rather than the automatic success of casting a spell like the Cleric and the Magic-User. Whereas the Hephaestan and the Kineticist would push the campaign in a Science Fiction direction. Gavin Norman and James Maliszewski collaborate in ‘Character Races’ which present the Gargantua, Goblin, and Hephaestan as standard Races and give the available Classes and maximum Levels for each for use with Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy.
‘Black Powder Weapons’ by Gavin Norman and Donn Stroud provides rules for early firearms such as matchlocks, wheellocks, and flintlocks in Old School Essentials. Provides the stats for these weapons, suggests which Classes can use them—non-martial Classes can only use pistols, semi-martial Classes all firearms bar the heavy musket, and martial Class can use all firearms—and describes the specialists, the Gunsmith and the Assistant Gunsmith, who can make and maintain. It also includes the rules for their use with optional rule of their being able to penetrate armour.
Lastly, Gavin Norman’s ‘Optional Rules’ adds three new ways of handling aspects of the Fighter and Thief Classes. For the Fighter Class there is a ‘Combat Talents’ such as Cleave, Defender, and Slayer, which allow the Class to specialise a little further, whilst d6 Thief Skills which scale the Class’ skill down from a percentile range to that of a six-sided die. The Thief gains Expertise Points which the player can assign to the skills, raising each skill from a one-in-six chance on a point-for-point basis. This version offers flexibility and simplicity, as well as a degree of specialisation in how the player assigns the points. If there is an issue here, it is the missed opportunity for to take this means of handling Thief skills and applying it to the earlier Acolyte and Mage Classes to give them the same flexibility. Lastly, Adjudicating Thief Skills is for the Referee, offering suggestions how they can be handled and ruled in play. So for the Climb Sheer Surfaces skill, it suggests that non-sheer surfaces do not require a skill roll, whilst non-Thief Classes will require specialist equipment for sheer surfaces and a Dexterity check under difficult situations. It does this for each of the Thief Skills and expands and explains their use in game to make the Referee’s job easier.
Physically, Carcass Crawler Issue #1 is well written and well presented. The artwork is excellent. 
Carcass Crawler Issue #1 is a pleasing collection of options and ideas, some new, some old, but here presented for Old School Essentials. They present means for the Referee to adjust her campaign and to make it what she wants—at least mechanically in terms of the Player Characters. Some of the content is too different for a standard fantasy campaign and would warrant more of a Science Fantasy setting than is traditional. Carcass Crawler Issue #1 is an enjoyably old school-style fanzine for Old School Essentials.

I am starting off my 2023 Year of the Monster this week with something I have been planning for a while. 

So please allow me to announce the publication of Monstrous Maleficarum, Issue #0 Christmas Special.

From Issue #0:

My goal is to publish a regular series of monsters for the 5th Edition of the World’s First Fantasy Role Playing Game via the Open Gaming License. 

These will be monsters from my regular series “Monstrous Mondays” from my blog The Other Side.  I will be taking what I have learned from my own monster creation over the years and from my reviews on what works well.

This Issue #0 will feature some Christmas-themed monsters and replaces the fifth edition version of Krampus I published years ago. 

Each issue will cover a theme. Sometimes a closely linked set of monsters, or other times other similarities.  The themes will largely be around the myths and legends of our world and other creatures I have found or made in my readings. In particular, the readings around the myths and legends of witchcraft. Thus the “Maleficarum” part of the title.

I will also endeavor to keep each monster to one or two pages so they can easily be printed out for use in your games. Also, my personal goal is to lay out these pages so you could, in theory, print them out and use a 3-hole punch to add them to a three-ring binder like editions of old.  Collect what you want, and ignore the others.

Presently I have nearly 500 monsters ready to go. How many of them will see publication and get into your hands is unknown, but it will be an adventure for us all. 

There will be framing text for each issue brought to you via various NPCs I have used over my 40+ years of gaming experience. Some, like my witch Larina and my undead-hunting cleric Johan will be familiar to readers of my blog. Others, like Jassic here, are maybe only known by name. 

I hope you enjoy this adventure with me. 

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Not every fanzine is dedicated to particular roleplaying games.
The What on the Border Where? is quite possibly the oddest fanzine possible and either the weirdest or most basic treatment of B2, Keep on the Borderlands possible—if not both. What it is not, as written, is a gameable product. None of the constituent parts of the module appear in the fanzine. Not the Keep on the Borderlands itself, not the Caves of Chaos, not the river or the wilderness. None of it. So if it is not a new treatment of the classic Basic Dungeons & Dragons module that so many of entered into the hobby by playing, then what exactly is The What on the Border Where?
The What on the Border Where? is really two things. First, it is an exercise in memory, and second, via that exercise in memory, it is a way of revisiting old modules and making them playable again. The result is a tool for the Dungeon Master that she can use to create new adventures out of old ones, a way of combining the solo play of journaling with the preparation the Dungeon Master has to do in order to ready a scenario. The example used throughout The What on the Borde Where? is based on B2, Keep on the Borderlands, since it is already familiar to so may Dungeon Masters. Hence the name. However, the process can be applied to other adventures too.
So what does The What on the Border Where? involve? It starts by suggesting two exercises. First, going to the kitchen, opening the cutlery draw and memorising what is in there. Then closing the draw and listing everything in the draw. The second is get both the prospective Dungeon Master of The What on the Border Where? and a friend to think about a film, quickly write its plot on a sheet of paper, and then compare notes. When both done, compare the list with the cutlery draw in the first case and the friend’s description of the plot and yours with each other’s, and also with the actual plot. There will be differences, and the comparison is not correct them, but to highlight them, to see what that is new and how that is interesting. Once those exercises are complete, The What on the Border Where? asks the Dungeon Master to do exactly the same with B2, Keep on the Borderlands. Look at the map of the wilderness in the module which surrounds the Keep and the Caves of Chaos. Do that for two minutes. Then put B2, Keep on the Borderlands aside and draw the map from memory. Then do it again for the Keep. And again, for the Caves of Chaos.
Once done compare the maps and begin to populate them. If the same, use the original entries for the locations. If different, then create something new, whether using wandering monster tables and taking something from other sources. However, The What on the Border Where? does have monster tables of its own, this its only actual gaming content. Then play. Options included in The What on the Border Where? suggest ways in which the Dungeon Master can turn the process from a solo process into a collaborative one with tasks being swapped round from the Wilderness to the Keep to the Caves of Chaos, and so on, so that none of the players are fully aware of what the created adventure contains.
Physically, The What on the Border Where? is cleanly and tidily presented. Much of it consists of plain map pages with notes on how to draw the maps from memory and the appropriate map symbols as you would expect for a Basic Dungeons & Dragons module from TSR, Inc.
The The What on the Border Where? never explores the obvious issue between the playthrough of the original module and the playthrough of what is a simulacrum of the original module. Just how far does the new memory-based simulacrum of the module have to deviate from the original before it is no longer what was played? How many exercises does the Dungeon Master have to conduct on new simulacra after the first, before what she is left with is not really based on her memories at all and almost exactly unlike B2, Keep on the Borderlands?
The What on the Border Where? is about nostalgia, a big feature of the Old School Renaissance. Essentially, it is not replaying the adventure that you first played forty years ago, but about recreating your memories of it and what you think you played, and playing that. It is also playing with and upon our memories of doing so, but in a way that leads to the creation of something potentially different, whether because our memories are wrong or we have forgotten things about the module. Ultimately, it is telling the Dungeon Master that the details of what was played do not matter, but the memories of what was played do. Yet, is that achieving anything, except delving into memories of what was and reliving them once created? Is that a viable alternative to reobtaining the module, in this case, B2, Keep on the Borderlands, and simply replaying again? Will that not trigger those same memories with a playthrough decades since the last or first, along with new ones based upon the playthrough again of what was originally played, rather than what might just be an idea of it?
The What on the Border Where? is at best an interesting idea in memory recreation that is never really explored and is reductive is what it creates. At worst, it is a complete waste of time, one that adds nothing to B2, Keep on the Borderlands as a module and does not guarantee that Dungeon Master will have anything worth running at the end of it. Ultimately, it might just be simpler to order a copy of B2, Keep on the Borderlands and play that and so create new memories.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Not every fanzine is dedicated to particular roleplaying games.
The Electrum Archive Issue #01 begins a Science Fantasy roleplaying game delivered in the  fanzine format, inspired by films such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, books like Dune and The Book of the New Sun, computer games such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, settings like Dark Sun, Wormskin, and Through Ultan’s Door, and roleplaying games such as Cairn and Maze Rats. Written and published by Emiel Boven and the Cult of the Lizard King, it  explores the world of Orn and its people, descended from those who were transplanted to the planet by an ancient starfaring civilisation known as the Elders. Knowledge of them was lost when their ships fell from the heavens and buried themselves in the surface of the planet long ago. Gold and silver are so abundant on Orn that they are worthless, instead the main currency is drops of Elder Ink, a magical substance that was left behind by the Elders. Further, when vaporised and inhaled, Elder Ink expands the mind and allows the user to enter the Realm Beyond, a parallel dimension inhabited by spirits, and tap into its magical energy, thus enabling Warlocks to cast their spells. Ink can also be used to power a variety of ancient constructs like golems and airships. Trade across Orn is handled by ancient Merchant Houses feuding with others in a desperate search for former glory and power, whilst their trade networks are barely recovering from the fungal parasite known as Bone Spores. Fortunately, the Order of Ilsaar works to keep the networks free of infection. Meanwhile, hidden below Orn is the Sunless Princedoms, a network of an expansive network of tunnels and caves where the insect-like Irr are locked in a cold war over control of their ancestral city and the Twin-Souled Emperor, ruler of the ancient City of Nol, claims they are a spirit from the Realm Beyond born into human flesh. Adventurers known as ‘inkseekers’ venture out into the decaying world beyond the cities ruled over by scheming Merchant Houses to look for Elder artefacts and ink.
A Player Character has five attributes—Agility, Archive, Body, Mask, and Spirit. Archive represents information, literacy, and insight, whilst Mask is both charisma and stealth. These range between one and eight, but typically start between one and six. He also has a Background and an Archetype. Backgrounds provide Talents, Attribute bonuses, and languages, whilst Archetypes grants specific features. Backgrounds include Archivist, Houseborn (member of a minor Merchant House), Muscle, Nomad, Cultist, Performer, Scavenger, and Worker. The three Archetypes are Fixer, Vagabond, and Warlock, and each has different features. The Fixer has Skills such as Swift or Network, gaining one of these at each Level or mastery in one of the previously selected Skills. The Vagabond has Manoeuvres, such as ‘Focus’, which enables a vagabond to attack and ignore an opponent’s armour, or ‘Shake It off’ which enables him to shake damage off. The Vagabond can choose more Manoeuvres at later levels, but all Manoeuvres require the expenditure of Grit, of which the Vagabond has only a few points. The Warlock can learn spell names from the spell spirits of the Realm Beyond, initially randomly, but then by crafting them. Once known, spellcasting costs Drops of ink and how any one spell works is very much open to interpretation. Creating a character is a matter of rolling for attributes and then selecting Background, Archetype, and equipment.
InaxxBackground: WarlockArchetype: CultistAttributesAgility 2 Archive 4 Body 3 Mask 2 Spirit 6Hit Points: 3Talents: Religion, Spirits, RumoursFeature: Spell NamesSpell Names Known: Blade of Diminishing Cosmos
One possible issue with The Electrum Archive Issue #01 is that it offers limited options in terms of character types. The Fixer has plenty to choose from in terms of Skills and ways to improve them, but it is difficult to make one Vagabond different from another. So perhaps the Vagabond could have the option to take a Talent in a particular weapon and then Mastery? Whilst the Warlock has plenty of flexibility in terms of his spells and no two Warlocks are likely to possess the same spells because they are all random, could the Warlock learn more Talents? Ultimately, the issue is that as with fighters and warriors in many other retroclones, the Vagabond does feel underpowered in comparison to the other Archetypes. 
Mechanically, The Electrum Archive Issue #01 is simple. For a character to undertake an action, his player rolls a ten-sided die and succeeds if he rolls equal to or under the appropriate attribute. Advantage and Disadvantage works as standard, which can be gained from the situation or equipment, or in the case of Advantage, from a Talent. Combat is simple and deadly, a roll against a weapon’s Speed value to attack before an opponent and an attack always striking an opponent. Instead of rolling to hit, a player instead rolls damage, which is reduced by the Armour Value of any armour worn. The rules allow for critical hits, dual-wielding, aiming, and stunts. If a character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is at Death’s Door, there is a fifty percent chance that he will die immediately and a fifty percent chance of falling unconscious and dying later unless healed. If that happens, the character will awake with a Scar, which can be physical or spiritual.
Experience Points are awarded for finding treasure—ink drops, completing goals, learning about the world, establishing relationships, and surviving being at Death’s Door, but the number awarded is rolled randomly. Equipment is carried across the body in slots, including backpack slots, and weapons, armour, and ammunition have a usage die rolled after each combat, whilst Torches and Lumen Pods are used up on certain Exploration Events, rations on Travel Events, and tools and gear when they are used. The currency is Drops of Ink, a worker earning one Drop per day, whilst ‘inkseekers’ can search for more. The equipment list includes membrane masks, Inkdrinker Blades (a dagger which expands to three times the size and damage when fed Drops of ink), and Moonlight Rifles (recharges faster at night). Lastly there are rules for travel and exploration.
More than half of The Electrum Archive Issue #01 is dedicated to detailing the world of Orn and the first issue of the fanzine includes a separate map of the known parts of the planet, done as a point crawl rather than a sandbox. It begins with a short history and an overview of the regions, people, languages, and religions before explaining the nature of Elder Ink and the Realm Beyond. In terms of factions, it covers ‘The Blind Bank’ which stockpiles Elder Ink and influence, guarded by the eerie Stillsingers, and sponsors expeditions to both recover more and investigate the nature of Elder Ink; the merchant House Uvri, militarising because its cynical head wants to regain control of Ilsaar, the city it built up, but lost to the Order of Ilsaar, the monks who work prevent further infections of Bone Spores; and the Children of the Moon, a cult which believes that the Elders are watching them from Orn’s moon, waiting to return and judge everyone. The cult believes that inhaling ink and interaction with the Realm Beyond are both a sin.
A good third of the fanzine—and most of the background—is devoted to detailing six of the regions given on the map. These are ‘The Electrum Sea’, ‘The Mirall Delta’, ‘The Rift’, ‘The Ruinlands’, ‘The Spirit Roads’, and ‘The Spore Wilds’. Each includes a box of travel options, descriptions of its major locations, and then tables of plot hooks and encounters, for a total of four pages each. For example, ‘The Spirit Roads’ is where the Veil between Orn and the Realm Beyond is at its weakest, spirits bend and warp the laws of physics, rocks float in formation, and the great city of Nol stands at nexus of pilgrim routes, but the entire region is walled off and can only be entered by the Soulgate in its southern wall. Nol, the City of Sorcerery, is the largest in the world, once ruled by the Consortium of Nol, consisting of representatives of the city’s various spirit cults, now ruled by the Twin-Souled Emperor, whose Sorceror-Knights have been cracking down on anyone who challenges the Emperor’s claim. The Masked Apostates, consisting of disaffected members of the spirit cults, is in open rebellion.
Elsewhere, a monastery to St. Shebol sits atop Lifthold, a large floating rock formation, and houses the largest library in the world, and the Plain of Jars is a vast field scattered with thousands of burial jars, attracting unsavoury spirits and warlocks scavenging for secrets and treasures. Each of the locations is described in sufficient detail to pique the interest of the Seer—as the Game Master is known in The Electrum Archive Issue #01—and the plot hooks and encounters more than make up for the lack of a starting scenario. Rounding out the fanzine is a decent bestiary, an NPC generator, a ‘I Loot the Body’ table, and information about the dread Bone Spores. Lastly, there is a bibliography, which is surprisingly comprehensive.
Physically, The Electrum Archive Issue #01 is a lovely looking book. The artwork is excellent throughout, the writing engaging, and the cartography decent. One excellent inclusion is a full example of play, two pages long and far more than roleplaying games from actual publishers usually include. For a small roleplaying game/fanzine, The Electrum Archive Issue #01, its inclusion is a marvel.
The only thing real wrong with The Electrum Archive Issue #01 is that you wish there was more of it. This first issue of the fanzine is a roleplaying game in its own right and it has everything that the Seer and her players need to get playing, barring the lack of a scenario (but then the author is upfront about this), and yet this world is so intriguing that you want to learn more and explore more. From the moment the cover to The Electrum Archive Issue #01 and the basic background were available, it sounded fascinating and rife with possibilities, and there can be no doubt that this inaugural issue delivers on both the fascination and the possibilities. The Electrum Archive Issue #01 is a stunning first issue, opening up a weirdly inky, baroque, and alien planetary romance to our exploration. Electrum Archive Issue #02 is coming in 2023 and Reviews from R’lyeh is disappointed that it has to wait.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Not every fanzine though, is dedicated to particular roleplaying games.
Lichcraft: An RPG About Trans Necromancers is an overtly political fanzine about a controversial or difficult or political subject (or all three)—depending upon your point of view. Published by Laurie O’Connel Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest #3, it is a dystopian satire upon (fifty) years of Conservative Party rule and access to life changing healthcare in the United Kingdom. It is a commentary upon the Conservative Party and its attitude to both the National Health Service and anyone who does not fit its white middle class ideals. It is also a game for two players which can be run as a multiplayer game and is intended to be quite light-hearted despite the seriousness of its underlying theme. The year is 2069 and the Conservatives have been in power for fifty years, and partially realised its dream of dismantling the NHS with huge cuts and sell-offs to its wealthy backers and as a result, the waiting list to access healthcare for the transgendered community is currently three centuries. So what is a trans person supposed to do? Scream and protest knowing they will be dead be receiving the healthcare they actually need or…? In the case of Lichcraft, it is taking up the study of necromancy in order to become a lich, achieve immortality, and so outlive—or rather, undead the waiting list.
Character creation in Lichcraft is simple. All it requires is that the character is transgendered and on the waiting list. After that, the player is free to decide, or they can roll on the small set of tables to determine their gender, politics, day job, and source of magic. They also assign the numbers one, two, or three to three stats—Strength, Sense, and Spells. Lastly, the character has a Health of five, although this can be lower if there are more players.
My name is BellaI am 29 years oldI have known that I was trans since I was sixI am Non-BinaryI am a CommunistMy hobby is ReadingMy day job is AccountantThe source of my magic is Force of Will
Strength 1 Sense 2 Spells 3
Lichcraft is designed to be flexible in that it can be played with one player and one Game Master, one Game Master and several players, or two players without a Game Master. In fact, Lichcraft could just as easily be played by one person and written up as a journaling game. Either way, the aim is for the player to assemble the elements that they need for the ritual. These include a magic spell, some rare and valuable components, and a magically powerful place. These are determined randomly by the Game Master. For example, “The spell is scrawled on the back of envelope, hidden in a cluttered cafe, and guarded by vampires”,  “The components are in moss gathered from standing stones, hidden in the Houses of Parliament, and guarded by zombie Liz Truss”, and “The location for the ritual is the top of a corporate skyscraper, the catch is the strange weather phenomenon, and the locals are dangerous because they are giants”. Each of these three represents a challenge that the would be lich has to overcome to succeed and is done in a single scene each, so that a play through of Lichcraft should be three scenes only.
Within each scene it is the Game Master’s tasks to present obstacles derived from the prompts and objectives already created. If the Player Character needs to overcome an obstacle, then their player rolls a number of dice equal to the appropriate stat. More can be added if the Player Character’s hobby, politics, or other background elements are relevant. If the highest result on any die is a six, the Player Character succeeds and their player narrates the outcome. If three, four, or five, the Player Character succeeds, but may lose a point of Health or the stat being rolled. Lastly, one a one or two, the Player Character fails and something goes wrong. They will also learn a harsh lesson which they can learn from and bring into play later on to gain another die.
There is combat system as such, but the Player Character can lose points of both stats and Health. When all Health is lost, the Player Character is dead. Losing points in a stat represents loss of confidence and a wearing down of the will to succeed, making the challenge of the game  more difficult to overcome. Alternatively, a player can decide that their character will make a sacrifice to continue on, whether that is a relationship, career, as sense of independence, and so on, in order to restore two points of Health or a stat. Once the Player Character has gathered everything necessary to perform the ritual, the player has a choice of a final encounter as one last challenge or skipping straight to the ritual. In order to complete the ritual, the rules pose some questions for the player and their character which push them to reflect upon what they have done in order to complete the ritual and how they feel now. Most are chosen by the player, but the Game Master also selects one too.
Lichcraft expands upon the core of the game—which is supported with a nicely done example of play—with multiplayer rules, with alternative settings for the Victorian era, the far future, and Ancient Rome, as well as one parodying a very far future British Science Fiction roleplaying and wargaming setting.
Physically, Lichcraft is a nicely presented. The best artwork is actually inside the front and back covers, and the writing is engaging.
Lichcraft is not about the processes and steps needed to gain gender recognition and the healthcare necessary to support that or the trans experience as it is lived of dealing with the NHS as such, whether that is in the early twenty-first century of today, or the future of the fanzine. Rather it is about overcoming those hurdles and the wait involved—especially the wait involved—in what is as ridiculous a method possible. In doing so, it is making its point in as equally a ridiculous manner possible, but letting the player—who need not be transgendered, because after all, this is a roleplaying game—roleplay that experience out and what it costs in a way that they can understand and appreciate. Ultimately, Lichcraft: An RPG About Trans Necromancers gets its message of frustration and the enormous obstacles which have to be overcome across in one single, entertaining session.

Grok?! is an adventure role-playing game set on the planet of the same name, a gonzo world which was once a haven for trans-dimensional migrants and a bastion of advanced technomancy, until a cataclysm rendered it a desolate hollow planet. Now Planet Grok is rent with chasms haunted by feral monstrosities as cities float across its skies and a derelict space station contains the whole the planet, constantly bathing it in phosphorescent radiation. Yet the survivors of the cataclysm have begun to rebuild and explore, cities have been founded and lost relics discovered and begun to be understand, and war looms as the cities and their cultures clash, all whilst something black and unfathomable peers out from the hollow left by the cataclysm.

Grok?! is not a retroclone like Old School Essentials or Labyrinth Lord, nor is it a microclone like Knave or Into the Odd, although it is heavily inspired by both as well as Numenera, Savage Worlds, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Technoir, and Troika!, amongst others. The simplicity of the mechanics suggest that Grok?! is a microclone, but the player-facing mechanics, use of advantage and disadvantage (at a cost), capacity to being elements of the setting into play with description-based modifiers, and narration of Player Character actions push it away towards more storytelling style of play.

A Player Character in Grok?! is simply defined. He has three Attribute dice, one each for Physical, Mental, and Social, ranging between a four-sided and a twelve-sided die. He has a word or phrase each for his Personality, Motivation, Background, Trouble, and Appearance Traits, plus an outfit and four Assets. Bar the outfit, which the player—or Actor as Grok?! terms them—is free to decide on his own, everything is determined with a roll of a few dice. The creation process takes a few minutes at most.

Nero Stout
Physical d6 Mental d6 Social d10
Personality: Pessimistic
Motivation: Create strife
Background: Paranormal Inquisitor
Trouble: Impoverished
Appearance: Hulking
Outfit: Inquisitor’s Ruby Lame Trouser Suit
Assets: X-Ray Monocle, Telekinetic Glove, Auto-Inflatable Airship, Spell of Mind Melding

Mechanically in Grok?!, to have his character undertake an action, his Actor declares his Intention, narrates the Action, and determines the Outcome with the roll of an appropriate Attribute die. If the result is between one and four, the Outcome is ‘No, and…’ something bad happens; between five and nine, then ‘Yes’ as intended; and ten or more, then ‘Yes, and…’ and good happens. Grok?! employs the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic as standard, each one which comes into play—up to five Advantages and five Disadvantages, with the two types cancelling each other out—must be based on an Aspect. Aspects can be the character’s Traits, Assets, or from the environment or situation the character is in. Advantages and Disadvantages are also acquired through Effort. However, applying Effort comes at a cost. This is a Condition appropriate to the action, and when acquired, it fills one of the character’s Resource Slots, of which he has seven. Conditions can also be acquired by failing actions.

Normally, Resource Slots are filled with the character’s Assets, but as they are filled Conditions, the character can carry fewer and fewer Assets, to the point where he acquires the Incapacitation Condition and is unable to act. Beyond that, if the character gains further Conditions, they reduce the appropriate Attribute die step by step, until if educed to below a four-sided die, the character is dead. The die-rolling is, of course, all Actor-facing, so the Director never rolls a die.

Grok?! uses the same mechanics for combat, the aim being to apply a Condition to an opponent if attacking and avoiding if being attacked. The rules for combat are underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games, the roleplaying game talking about dealing with threats rather than adversaries. For some players some adjustment may be required to switch to narratively driven combat.

However, Grok?! does acknowledge this possible difficulty by including optional rules for Health Points and weapon effectiveness, as well as rules for handling wealth in a less abstract fashion and the use of the exploding die for characters with low Attributes. The Director, as the Game Master is known in Grok?!, is also given tables for creating Director Characters and one line scenario prompts, such as “An Angry Tree is Teaching Musical Masterpiece in a Derelict Spaceship”.

Planet Grok is described as world in part rent and in part shattered by a cataclysm caused by the failure of hyper advanced technology. Most of its inhabitants are divided between four castes—Celestials who reside in the giant Simulacrum which surrounds the planet, Islanders who live on the microcosms that float above the planet’s surface, Vagabonds who travel its surface exploring and trading, and Underlings who survived in the underground shelters despite many of their number being warped into monstrosities. The realms for each of the castes—the A.I. controlled Simulacrum of the Celestials, the haphazard wanderings of the Islanders’ floating Isles, the Wastelands travelled across by the Vagabonds, and the tunnels, caves, bunkers, research facilities, and chasms of the Underworld are all given a page each, which includes two tables for creating encounters.

Physically, Grok?! is stunning. The layout is bright and breezy, but the artwork is amazingly good, capturing the weirdness of the broken world, whether is the three-eyed, beaked and spike-tailed camel-like camel on the front cover, the fecund fungi, the broken canal city menaced by a tentacled monster who eyes cry black ichor, the shattered land amidst which a warrior swathed in a cloak surveys the chaos and a floating island, or a scythe-wielding Plague Doctor-like figure rides a be winged jet bike down a street. The artwork is truly excellent and hopefully future releases will feature more of it.

However, as good as the artwork is—and it is very, very good—it is also Grok?!’s curse. It is not difficult to imagine so many of the Kickstarter backers being enticed by the artwork with the promise of the roleplaying game’s weird post-gonzo apocalyptic setting and being disappointed at the lack of background or a scenario or a starting point for play or anything beyond an overview. There are a lot of prompts in terms of the tables for creating Director Characters and encounters, but that leaves a lot of work for the Director to undertake to bring world of Planet Grok to life. For some Game Masters that may not be an issue, but for others…? Ultimately, Grok?! is more mechanics than Planet Grok and the prospective Director and her players will have to wait to get more of the latter than the former.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.
Ghostlike Crime #01: A Roleplaying Game Zine of Modern Weirdness is a fanzine for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game published by Abiology Games as part of ZineQuest #2 in February, 2019 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It presents a modern day setting for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game which combines magical realism, the paranormal, and cryptid terrors that get reported on the six o’clock news. The streets are crowded and patrolled by emotionless cyborg beat cops, the bureaucrats answer to secret cabals, the world is scuzzy, drab, and decaying, and it is probably raining. This is a world of monster hunting in a dark dystopian twist upon today, but which could also be tomorrow, next week, or New York in the fifties. In classic Dungeon Crawl Classics style, the Player Characters begin life as office drones, shelf stackers, fast food servers, and the like, but after surviving an encounter (or two) with a terrible monster (or more), they realise that life is not for them and someone has to stop the monsters. They become monster hunters and defenders of humanity from paranormal threats because no-one else will—and particularly not the government. Ghostlike Crime #01: A Roleplaying Game Zine of Modern Weirdness includes new and adjusted Classes, equipment, suggested party set-ups, monsters, and more including three adventures!
The setting for Ghostlike Crime #01: A Roleplaying Game Zine of Modern Weirdness is lightly sketched over before the fanzine explains its Classes. The Warrior and the Thief remain largely unchanged, but the Halfling becomes the Half-Pint, the scrappy kid adventurer with very little changes. No other Classes are carried over into Ghostlike Crime #01, but two new Classes are introduced. The first of these is The Scrapper, whose second sight enables them to find ordinary objects and rubbish and both see and harness the magic imbued with them. Essentially, these scrap artefacts become the means to cast the spells of the Wizard Class of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Thus the ‘Mini Disco Ball’ is used to cast Colour Spray, a ‘Landline Phone’ to cast Ventriloquism, and so on. Many of these artefacts have personalities which the Scrapper will need to engage with to actually cast. Inside of finding artifacts, the Paratechnologist jury-rigs weird science devices, but can only use a limited number at a time. A list of devices, such as the ‘Ecto-Flare’ which reveals ghosts and invisible creatures or the ‘Electro-Tether’ which enables the Paratechnologist to force targets to obey single-word commands for several rounds. The devices require an Action Die roll as per casting a spell to use, and the devices can break, which means that the Paratechnologist will have to repair them which can take hours or days to repair. There are elements of Ghostbusters to both Classes, but definitely Ghostbusters on a budget.
Harvey HopkinsOccupation: TruckerZero Level STR 13 (+1) AGL 13 (+1) STM 18 (+3)PER 04 (-2) INT 11 (-0) LCK 07 (11)Hit Points: 7Saving ThrowsFortitude +3 Reflex +1 Willpower -2Alignment: LawfulEquipment: CB Radio, Tire Iron, Leased TruckStarting Weapon: Hockey Stick (1d6)Trinket: Fingerless Gloves (Melee Attack Rolls)
Several options are provided for the Player Characters to be together, including Monster Hunters and Freaks, essentially suggesting the sort of campaigns that the Judge might run. The remainder of Ghostlike Crime #01 is the Judge’s eyes only. It starts with ‘A Hellish Commute’. This is a ‘Character Funnel’, a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. The scenario throws the Player Characters into the last carriage of an underground carriage, who have an encounter with a cryptid which wrecks the train and leaves them stranded and desperate to find a way out. It includes encounters with C.H.U.M.s—or Cannibalistic Homicidal Underground Molepeople—before finding a way out realising that they can go back to their old jobs. The scenario has  very New York feel to it. 
The ‘Character Funnel’ is followed by ‘Cathode Casualty’, a First Level scenario which throws the Player Characters into the middle of a dispute between two scrappers guilds. The Pigeonrot Scrappers Guild want a device retrieved which was stolen by the Opensores Scrappers Guild. The device is somewhere in a storage locker and so the Player Characters need to break in and find it. Of course, the Opensores Scrappers Guild is going to do its very best to stop the Player Characters and then there is the matter of the device and what it does… The third adventure, ‘The Unstoppable Killing Machine’ is a more open investigation into a series of strange deaths, whilst ‘Monsters, Anomalies, & Ill-advised Creations’ gives details and stats for creatures like the ‘Atmospheric Jellyfish’ and the ‘Jersey Devil’, whilst ‘Watch Out For The… Bean-Nighe’ details a modern version of the creature of Celtic folklore, seen in laundromats.
Physically, Ghostlike Crime #01 is a sturdy affair. The artwork varies in quality, but the writing is decent  and the fanzine is enjoyable to read. Above all, the setting in Ghostlike Crime #01: A Roleplaying Game Zine of Modern Weirdness is engaging and fun, and will be fun to play in a grimly gonzo style. Plus, of course, Ghostlike Crime #01: A Roleplaying Game Zine of Modern Weirdness packs a lot of immediately playable content that the Judge can bring to table and get her players roleplaying to explore this weirdly off kilter today, tomorrow, or yesterday.

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

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

Swordpoint: A Swashbuckling Roleplaying Zine is not really a fanzine, at least in the traditional sense. This is despite having the word ‘zine’ in the title. Published by Gallant Knight Games, this is a roleplaying game of swashbuckling action inspired by The Three Musketeers and Captain Alatriste as well as roleplaying games such as En Garde and Flashing Blades, all set in the Paris of the seventeenth century. Published as part of ZineQuest #3 it highlights how the fanzine and ZineQuest itself is moving from showcasing a particular game or author’s campaign—typically from the Old School Renaissance—to becoming a format for standalone mini-roleplaying games. Also, its odd format—five-by-eight inches, flipbook sized, and in landscape format, also marks it out as not being a fanzine in the very traditional sense.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Swordpoint uses a percentile system, being based on Mongoose Publishing’s Legend OGL. Players take the roles of Heroes who swashbuckle, race across rooftops, duel for honour, save the day, protect the innocent, defeat villains, and defeat villains again because they can never truly die. Games can involve military engagements, espionage, diplomacy, courtly intrigue, and both love and passion. There are rules for creating characters, action resolution, Style Points, combat, duels, grudges and revenge, spells and spellcasting, and of course, passion. These are all explained in a fairly succinct fashion, and whilst Swordpoint is not quite the bare bones of a roleplaying game, it is not far off from being so.

A Player Character has seven characteristics rated between three and eighteen—Strength, Constitution, Courage, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, and Appeal. He has several Style Points, an Education rating for his general knowledge, and Rank. The latter represents his Social Status, derived from his social standing, position within an organisation, nobility, and wealth. Both Education and Social Status are percentile values. Rank can be increased for notable deeds, publicising those deeds, earning wealth, and so on. Rank can also be lost through misdeeds, and so on. A Player Character or NPC with a higher Rank will gain a bonus to social skills and situations. In addition, Player Character will have various skills—quite broad, and some possessions.
To create a character, a player rolls dice—typically three six-sided dice for most, but two six-sided dice to which six is added for Intelligence and Courage—to create the characteristics, or he can assign values from an array. Starting Rank is based on Power, but can be more if the character is of noble birth, determined by rolling on the appropriate table. Skill base values are derived from the characteristics and the player then assigns some bonuses, the largest being assigned to the character’s professional skill. He also has five items of equipment, which cannot include medium or large shields or armour, or shotguns, as they not suited to the genre. That said, stats for them are included should the Game Master want them in her game.
NAME: Campion Babin
CHARACTERISTICS
Strength 06 Constitution 06 Courage 17 Intelligence 15 Power 09 Dexterity 10 Appeal 12

ATTRIBUTES
Damage Modifier: -1d4
Hit Points: 23
Style Points: 5
Education: 75%
Rank: Gentlefolk

SKILLS
Athletics 26%, Craft (Specialty) 21%, Dodge 29%, Endure 33%, First Aid 35%, Lore (Religion) 70%, Melee 31%, Perception 44%, Persuasion 51%, Ride 39%, Shooting 25%, Stealth 25%, Thievery 19%

EQUIPMENT
Bible, sword, rosary beads, quill & ink
Mechanically, Swordpoint uses the percentile system of Mongoose Publishing’s Legend OGL. When a player wants his character to undertake an action, his player rolls the percentile dice and if the result is less or equal to the skill, then the character succeeds. Modifiers range between ten and forty, whether penalty or bonus, and in opposed rolls, it is the roll that succeeds and rolls highest which wins in that situation. Characteristic tests are rolled on a twenty-sided die.
Combat is not that much more complex than this. The rules cover initiative (players roll only, and go first if successful), attacking, dodging, insulting or taunting an opponent, two-weapon fighting, and so on. Successfully insulting or taunting an opponent will lose them a Style Point or Villain Point and is a nice genre touch. A character is only wounded when his Hit Points are reduced to zero, but further damage renders him first Helpless and then dead. Swordpoint being a swashbuckling game includes rules for duels, used by Heroes to settle matters of honour and resolve perceived slights and insults, whilst Villains use them as a means isolate and remove Heroes as threats to their Villainous plans. Heroes tend to duel to first blood, whilst Villains to the death. A successful Perception test allows the duellists to assess each other, learning things such as skill ratings, preferred weapons, Hit Points, Style or Villain Points, and so on.
In addition to loss of Hit Points, a Player Character can suffer a Condition. Being Wounded is a Condition, but a Player Character can also be Afraid, Confused, Exhausted, Heart-Broken, and so on. They have mechanical effect, but are primarily earned through the narrative of game play. In addition, Player Characters have Style Points, whilst the Game Master has Villain Points. Style Points can be spent to gain several benefits. These include ‘Catch Your Breath’ to regain some Hit Points, ‘Grit Your Teeth’ to reduce incoming damage, ‘Make Them Bleed’ to double the damage of an attack, ‘Redouble Your Efforts’ to reroll a test, and ‘Press Your Advantage’ to gain an extra action at the end of a round. Style Points are recovered at a rate of one per day, but a player can have his character fail a test in dramatic fashion, insult a foe in combat, accept a duel, and decide to accept a condition all to recover Style Points immediately.
Setting rules cover clubs and organisations, gambling, grudges and revenge. Having a Grudge against someone grants a slight bonus when acting against the target of the Grudge and can be settled quickly, whilst Revenge is a more determined, long-term attempt to do damage to a person and their situation. It requires Game Master approval, and enables the potential recovery of Style points when enacting said revenge. For the Game Master there are stats for various NPCs, from guards to Dangerous Villains, but oddly no feme fatale type character such as Milady de Winter. Swordpoint also includes rules for spellcasting and sorcery, plus a handful of skills, which would work in a more fantastical version of the genre. Rounding out Swordpoint are rules for Passion (and romance), which can be initiated between Player Character and Player Character or Player Character and NPC by the player or Game Master saying, “Passion, if you please.” The recipient does not have to consent, but a couple of tables follow which are rolled on to shape the romance itself. This covers the spark between them, the obstacle, and the possible fate of the relationship. When roleplayed, this all adds to the feel and genre of the game.

Swordpoint does not come with any setting. To be fair, it does not need to. This a swashbuckling film style of a roleplaying game and there are plenty of those for the Game Master to draw upon for inspiration, let alone the various works of fiction that she draw from.
Physically, Swordpoint is clearly and tidily laid out. It is well written and easy to grasp. It is very lightly illustrated. Given its length and format, Swordpoint is unsurprisingly sparse in feel and nature, and there are a lot of elements that the Game Master will need to develop, especially in terms of setting. Swordpoint: A Swashbuckling Roleplaying Zine is bare bones, but those bones are sturdy enough to provide everything, at least mechanically, that a gaming group will need to run a mini-campaign of swashbuckling action and romance.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.
Published in the Spring of 2018, Meanderings Issue #3 is a fanzine for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Where previous issues both had themes, this one comes without any theme. The issue opens with the introduction and acknowledgement—of Goodman Games as well as a host of other fanzines—but gets underway with a full review of Hubris – A World of Visceral Adventure in ‘Review Corner’. This is decent enough, but not as full a treatment given in Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic in Meanderings Issue #2. The actual gaming content begins with ‘Tools of the Trade: What are Thieves’ Tools?’, which lists all of the tools to be found in a set of thieves’ tools, from basic sets to expanded and master’s tools. This is a quick and easy breakdown and useful for the Thief, whatever retroclone is being played. Disappointingly, a few magical items are suggested rather than given. Hopefully that will be addressed in future issues.
Also included in Meanderings Issue #2, ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Weapon Styles – Weapons Tables for Two-Weapon Styles’ which inspired by Steel and Fury, this added weapon styles for sword and shield, Florentine, Twin Handaxe, and Twin Dagger, plus Deed fumbles and criticals too. Meanderings Issue #3 continues this with ‘Bladed Weapon Styles’ which covers ‘Clock & Blade plus Sword & Scabbard’. Again, this is part of the ‘The Dungeon Crawl Classics Weapons Project’ and adds options with much in the way of complexity and given the various weapon styles, some flavour too, as well as making both Player Characters and NPCs stand out a bit more in their use of these styles. The two options have a much more cinematic feel than the standard rules, but will add complexity in play as well as flavour.
‘Reeling in Clerics: By the Gods! House Rules for Clerics’ suggests ways in which the Cleric Class can avoid being abused—or rather a particular aspect—and that is the ‘Lay on Hands’ ability as well as other rules. The issue is that ‘Lay on Hands’ can be used over and over, so when this occurs with these rules, it earns levels of Disapproval, which penalises the Cleric on spell checks. Options are included for empowering spells, including sacrifices—with blood sacrifices mostly for evil or Chaotic Clerics—and converting others to the Cleric’s faith. Also included are guidelines for handling sins and even non-believers gaining Disapproval too. Again, more options for another Class, opening them up and adding depth.
‘In Defence of Luck: Using Luck Defensively’ is a more general article, which suggest alternate ways of using Luck in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The options suggest using its modifier to adjust Armour Class, burning Luck to temporarily boost Armour Class, to modify a Critical Hit, to burn for Damage Reduction, and to burn to gain a Lucky Escape. These offer lots of flexibility and the Judge is free to pick and choose from them. The suggestion is that whichever ones the Judge does include, the players are encouraged to narrate their use in a cinematic style, much like the other options in the issue. 
The weapons theme continues with ‘Magical Weapons: Unique Magical Weapons tables with Millstones’ which makes magical weapons interesting. Not mere +1 longswords or the like, but weapons with flavour and detail that grow and get better the more successful a wielder is with them. For example, ‘Flamebrand’ starts with a three-sided die as its effect die and an eight-sided die for its damage. When the wielder rolls the maximum on the effect die and kills an opponent, he achieves his first milestone with ‘Flamebrand’. This grants the weapon a +1 bonus to hit, increases the effect die to a four-sided die, and illuminates an area ten feet in radius. The weapon—and all three weapons in the article—has three milestones which the wielder can achieve and improve its abilities. Consequently, these weapons have lives of their own and they grow and change as they are wielded in anger. Of course, the three sample weapons are easy to add to a campaign, but the other use is as templates that the Judge can base designs of her own upon.
‘Breathing Life into Your Game: Crowd Surfing – Judge Tips for Bringing a Crowd to Life’ does exactly what it says. It suggests ways in which the senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste—can all be used to help bring a location and its massed occupants to life. It is a short article for the Judge, but to the point and worth reading.
Although Meanderings Issue #3 is a general issue, it returns to the publisher’s campaign setting of Bastion, introduced and explored in the first two issues of the fanzine. ‘Occupations of Bastion – Zero Level occupations for the City of Bastion’ in Meanderings #2 enabled the creation of Zero Level Player Characters for Character Funnels or low Level, ordinary NPCs in the Bastion setting for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but it left the question what Classes there were for the Bastion setting. Meanderings Issue #3 provides the first answer with ‘Classes of Bastion – The Graft’. This is a cyber-samurai Class, primarily a mercenary, able to make use of the biological grafts mentioned, but not detailed in the previous issue. Instead, they are given in the following article, ‘Umbral Market – Bioarcana Grafts: Grafting Bio-organic parts’. Grafts can be bioarcana or technoarcana, the former alcemically treated body parts of other races, whilst the latter are enhanced mechanical devices. The options include weapon grafts, enhancement grafts, and utility grafts. However, bioarcana has a Warp score, which adds up as the Graft adds further modifications. If the Warp score exceeds the Graft’s Personality score, then he can suffer from Warp Shock and lose his humanity. However, the Graft can also temporarily push his grafts to their limits granting better bonuses. The effect of the Warp Surge is to increase, at least temporarily, the Graft’s Warp Score and so pushing him towards a loss of humanity. The Graft as a Class is a sub-par Warrior, so really needs to install the various bioarcana or technoarcana to improve his capability. However, this gives a degree of modularity and options in terms of what to select and so design a member of this Class. 
Physically, Meanderings Issue #3 is decently done. It is clean and tidy and the artwork good. It does need a light edit in places. The issue has a pleasing sturdiness due to the ‘Zeroes to Heroes – Paper minis for Zero Levels’ which presents seventeen or so paper minis on light card. Designed for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, these are rather fun.
Meanderings Issue #3 is for the most part, a selection of options for the Judge to add to her campaign. This is in the main an issue for the Thief and Warrior Classes. The limiting of Bastion-related content from the publisher’s to just two articles means that there is more general content to attract the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Judge, although the issue still feels as if it could done with more Bastion content rather than leave the reader wanting. Overall, Meanderings Issue #3 is decent issue with lots of things for the Judge to think about adding to her campaign.

Well, it’s about done for the season: the last Nightmare Weekend Before Christmas open house of 2022 starts on Saturday at noon and runs until 5:00, but that may stretch based on the number of last-minute visitors. After that, one … Continue reading →

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. And then there is All That Glitters Is Palladium.
All That Glitters Is Palladium: A Short History of Palladium is different. Published by Yaruki Zero Games, All That Glitters Is Palladium is a short history of the publisher best known for the roleplaying game, Rifts, or rather, “[A] short, tongue-in-cheek overview of one of the weirdest tabletop RPG publishers.” Within a handful of pages, it looks at the fifteen or so roleplaying games published by Palladium Books since its founding in 1981, as well as the entire Palladium Books Megaverse, explains the Megaversal RPG system which underpins the majority of the publisher’s titles and its general strangeness, discusses the publisher’s presentation style and values, and provides a detailed examination of Rifts, before coming up to date—at least in 2019—with the Robotech RPG Tactics Debacle. All with a dash of humour and a very knowing tone from someone who has played a lot of Rifts.
All That Glitters Is Palladium opens with an introduction that makes clear that the company is very much Kevin Siembieda’s and that he brings a “[G]onzo kitchen sink sensibility and boundless enthusiasm” to his books and also himself, often rewriting books when authors have already followed their brief. This is followed by detailed examination of the Megaversal RPG system, highlighting how the stats only really matter if they are very high, the inclusion of skills—often with surprisingly low chances, how the differences between Mega Damage Capacity and Structural Capacity, how even in the twenty-first century, a Science fiction/Science Fantasy roleplaying game like Rifts is using an Alignment system. In terms of production values it points to the publisher’s unwillingness to adapt to prevailing technology—the use of desktop publishing and the publication of PDFs in particular; the peculiar writing style with its use of underling, exclamation points, and ALL CAPS.
Although is best known for Rifts, Palladium found its fortune with two licences—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and Robotech. Consequently, All That Glitters Is Palladium begins its overview of the publisher’s major roleplaying releases with those titles and they receive more coverage than other modern titles like Ninjas & Superspies or Beyond the Supernatural. Then they receive move coverage of Palladium’s other games—The Mechanoid Invasion, Recon, Palladium Fantasy, Systems Failure, and others. These latter titles barely receive a paragraph each, which is something of shame because some of these are still interesting, if only from a historical point of view. It is Rifts though, which receives the most coverage, four pages in all. The author describes it as an “[O]verwhelming stew of kitchen sink post-apocalyptic science-fantasy horror” and charts its development from the core through some thirty-six World Books, eighteen sourcebooks, fifteen Dimension Books, three Conversion books, and more. It is noted here that a lot of the written content is artwork driven, that is, written to provide stats and background based on a piece of artwork rather than the other way around as is usual in the industry. That said, the overview concentrates on the first two or three books beyond the core rules, and consequently, the overview is fairly broad at this point. The section on Rifts closes with a section on Savage Rifts, of which the author is particularly positive in terms of the writing and the layout, labelling them both as competent.
All That Glitters Is Palladium comes to close with the author delving into the ‘Robotech RPG Tactics Debacle’ and despite raising over a million dollars failing to deliver quite what was promised. The piece is again brief and provides the lightest of overviews. The author speculates that the licence will not get renewed when it runs out, and leaves Palladium awaiting lawsuits, its future uncertain… In between all of this, All That Glitters Is Palladium pokes the humorous list or five. For example, ‘Odd Palladium Skills’ like ‘Lore: Cattle & Animals’ and ‘Microfilm/Microfiche/Microdot Technology’;  ‘Questionable Magic Spells’ such as ‘Magic Pigeon’ and ‘Curdle Milk’; and ‘Dumb Superpowers’ from Heroes Unlimited, including ‘Alter Physical Structure: Rag Doll’ and ‘Clock Manipulation’.
Physically, All That Glitters Is Palladium is simply laid out and lightly illustrated. It is written in a very light and personal style. And that really sums All That Glitters Is Palladium up. This is all one person’s opinion upon Palladium Books, its history, its failings, and its idiosyncrasies. Consequently, it is not really a good history of the company and its books. Much of what it covers is already known and the author does not add that much more. It is clear that he knows the Megaversal RPG system and Rifts, but the joy he got from playing them in his games never really comes through. Nor it is a real history. Despite the author giving it both criticism and praise, there is no balance here because there is no voice from Palladium Books. So ultimately, whilst All That Glitters Is Palladium: A Short History of Palladium is far from uninteresting, the definitive history and assessment of Palladium Books is yet to be written.

As of this writing, Dallas winter arrived a little early. The current cold front is being compared to the big freezes of December 1983 and 1989, but thankfully we’ve neither seen the snow and ice of both of those nor … Continue reading →

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, not every fanzine has to be for the Old School Renaissance.
Loviatar No. 1 was published in August, 2011. Written and published by Christian Walker, it was not written as a response to the Old School Renaissance, but rather as a means to focus the author’s mind when it comes to running fantasy games. Thus it is not written for any of the then available retroclones, such as Labyrinth Lord or Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. Instead it is hybrid between Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, First Edition. Not mechanically, but rather between rules and setting, the author’s campaign being set in the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Forgotten Realms using Pathfinder, First Edition. If that sounds like Loviatar No. 1 is a mongrel of a fanzine, there might be some truth in that, but that is the author’s choice, and anyway, the point of the early gaming fanzines of the nineteen eighties which the modern fanzine revival so heavily draws from, was to present content from the editor’s own campaign world. Which is what the author is doing in the pages of Loviatar No. 1. 
If that sounds like the content of Loviatar No. 1 is not of use, that is not the case. Shorn of the Pathfinder, First Edition stats—which like nearly all Dungeons & Dragons derived content are easily adapted to the retroclone of your choice—the content in Loviatar No. 1 enjoyably playable and easily changed to fit any Game Master’s campaign, whether that is again, mechanically, or dramatically. Future issues of the fanzine would shift to being specifically aimed at the Old school Renaissance, although it could be argued that Loviatar No. 1 had a sensibility that leaned in that direction anyway.
Loviatar No. 1 carries the tag, “a zine about tabletop role-playing games”. This is not the case, although oddly the fanzine does carry a number of adverts for roleplaying games, many of them long out of print, even in 2011. They include adverts for The Traveller Adventure from Game Designer’s Workshop, Fantasy Games Unlimited’s Bushido and Aftermath, and Star Frontiers from TSR, Inc. Apart from these oddities, the fanzine focuses entirely on the publisher’s campaign setting and on providing a base of operations for the Player Characters in that campaign. To that end, there is only the one article in the fanzine. ‘At the Corner of River Street and Craft Way’. This details four possible dwellings for his Player Characters in the city of Baldur’s Gate. They include a ‘Small Home with Loft’, ‘Warehouse’, ‘Ground Level Flat’, and ‘Former Tavern with Apartment’. Each is mapped out, fully detailed, including rent, and more. They feel reminiscent of the homes that a player might buy in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released the same year as Loviatar No. 1 as well as possessing the sort of sales pitch that an estate agent or landlord might give the prospective purchaser or tenant. However, it is the ‘more’ of the dwelling descriptions where the fanzine comes into its own.
Each of the potential dwellings comes with both history and plot, both of which a Player Character can become involved when not adventuring. Not only that, they pull the Player Character into the community around and they encourage the player to roleplay and they get the Player Character involved in story. For example, the ‘Small Home with Loft’ was previously home to a drug dealer named Shamus. No-one knows where he is now, but that does not stop the local gang from harassing the new tenant, the Player Character, to find out where he is, even Shamus himself, from turning up on the doorstep. The question is, what does he want, let alone where has he been and why did he leave? Some of the four possible dwellings get more plot than the others. For example, ‘Ground Level Flat’ was previously home to a cleric of Lathander, who used to provide healing to the injured and the sick. Not everyone is aware of this yet, so the local inhabitants will come knocking on the Player Character’s door at all hours with all sorts of illnesses and injuries. This in addition to the neighbours upstairs who are constantly arguing and always settle their biggest disagreements with bouts of lovemaking. How is the Player Character going to deal with his noisy neighbours, let alone the medical cases which come to his door?
In addition, stats are provided for each of the major NPCs associated with each of the four dwellings. These are clearly separate from the fanzine’s descriptive content and whilst written for use for with Pathfinder, First Edition, they are easily adapted or rewritten using the rules system of the Game Master’s choice. It does not even have to be retroclone. The contents of Loviatar No. 1 would work with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as much they would RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha or Symbaroum. It should be noted that the neighbourhood focus of ‘At the Corner of River Street and Craft Way’ feels similar to that of the ‘City League’ setting and series of articles for ‘Pelinore’, the fantasy setting developed by TSR UK in the pages of Imagine magazine.
Physically, Loviatar No. 1 is neat and tidy, and in general, well presented. Artwork is very light, but is fairly heavy in its style, as is the cartography, which reprints a map of Baldur’s Gate and shows the floor plans and neighbourhood of River Street and Craft Way. This does make the floor plans slightly difficult to read with any ease.
Despite containing just the one article, Loviatar No. 1 comes with plenty of plot and roleplaying opportunities, and despite it containing no new monsters, magical items, or spells, it is easy to add to the Game Master’s campaign. Refreshingly different, but still fantasy, suitable for one-on-one sessions with a player and downtime between adventures or urban focused campaigns, Loviatar No. 1 is simple, straightforward, and delightfully serviceable.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.
Night Soil is a fanzine which takes the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game as its direct inspiration. Specifically, it draws from the artwork of the fourth printing of the core rules to provide images that have in turn inspired the creation of monsters, magical items, spells, tables, and more that the Judge can bring to her game or campaign. It is a lovely idea, but the result—at least seen in Night Soil #Zero—was a bit of a mess, a hodgepodge of miscellaneous things and entries that unless you somehow know the artwork and its order in the fourth printing of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, may have you leafing through the pages of the admittedly short Night Soil #Zero in order to find something.
Night Soil #1 picks up where Night Soil #Zero left off. Literally in the case of the page numbers! Published by Inner Ham—previously known for Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine—Night Soil #1 includes a similar mix of monsters, magic items, spells, and whatnot as the inaugural issue, but notably benefits from fewer entries. It is still a mishmash, but the ideas are developed and given time to breathe, and so consequently making them not only more interesting, but also easier for the Judge to add them to her game.
Night Soil #1 opens with the first of several monsters. This is the ‘Scare-pion’, an unpleasantly large scorpion-like creature which can bifurcate its body and then snap it shut much like a bear trap! This impedes a Player Character’s ability to fight back and the player either has the give up his character’s Action Die to retain full Armour Class or lose up to six points of Armour Class! In addition, the pinned Player Character is subject to all of the Scare-pion’s attacks, but at a bonus. This is a nasty creature and the choice between Armour Class and Action Die is delightfully cruel. In comparison, the ‘Haas Rat’ is a rat with brains equal to the Player Characters and a penchant for subterfuge and becoming the boss of gangs of normal rats, whilst the ‘Dwarves of the Brazen Shield’ is a small band available for hire and willing to take on all sorts of work—except for working against other Dwarves. They are protective of each other right up to working together defensively in combat. The ‘Bugorilla’ mixes insect and primate for a hulking beast, but one with claws and mandibles almost everywhere. Its claws can tear through the rock and its gaze is so disarming that the creature gains an extra Action Die to its attack.
The magical items begin with the ‘Polearm of Surprise’, which can suddenly extend to gain the wielder and extra attack at the beginning of a round and a bonus to attacks, whilst the ‘The Twin Daggers of Chyenar’ which deal double damage to undead and beings of umbral and shadow. They can be given as gifts by angels, but demons always pursue the wielder. The ‘Crystal of Far Magic’ is much prized by spellcasters as they can use it to both spy on others at a distance and cast magic on them. Primarily this is by Magic-Users, but Clerics can use it too. There are plenty of smaller devices too, like the ‘Dizzying Ward’, which Magic-User can cast on a scroll or book to place a disturbing effect upon anyone who attempts to read it without permission, whilst Rogues can infuse their maps with toxins to create ‘Poisoned Maps’. The inclusion of ‘Neutralising Shell’ is an oyster shell used as a scoop or spoon, but it has been enchanted to counter poisons.
Entries in Night Soil #1 get inventive and more detailed with the inclusion of ‘More uses of a Dead Giant’, which does exactly that. For example, eating the liver of a giant means that the consumer does not to have to eat or drink for two whole days and the underarm hair of a giant will keep a campsite safe from natural predators. Then the ‘Spectacles of Reading Magic’ grant the wearer the ability to read magic without actually casting it. This requires a Luck roll, so it can go disastrously wrong, cause the wearer to hallucinate, understand just one word, and so on. Whilst this provides a useful benefit, the chance of it going wrong is of course, entertaining.
The detail continues with ‘Five Ready-Made Demons’, which range from Type I to Type V demons. Rattling Men are Type I demons that grab their opponents and imprison them in their otherwise empty rib cages, and anyone imprisoned literally has to fight their skeletally demonic gaoler to escape. The Bugdog King is a Type III demon, short, always fashionably dressed cross between a praying mantis and a crossbreed dog, but with the magnificent mane of a lion, which likes to wander from realm to realm, establishing kingdoms and then destroying them. More demons are always welcome, and the chaotic nature of the demonic planes means that there is huge variety, so the Judge can always throw something different at her Player Characters. Which these options allow.
Spells in Night Soil #1 start with Energy Shaping, which enables the caster to shape and redirect any energy around him, whether it is directly affecting him or simply part of the environment around him. Ghostflames sets the undead alight, with the mindless undead having a saving throw at a penalty, whilst the intelligent undead having one with a bonus. Sound Bending enables the caster to manipulate and sculpt sound, whether that is to dampen to silence, distort it, or even sharpen it into physical shards that can be cast at targets.
Physically, Night Soil #1 is scrappy—intentionally scrappy. The artwork is likewise intentionally rough. Together with the use of the typewriter style font, the look of the fanzine is designed to match that of the fanzines and books of the seventies and even then their lack of professionalism. However, as there are fewer entries in the Night Soil #1, the issue feels far less bitty and far less scrappy.

Night Soil #1 continues from Night Soil #Zero in being a mostly entertaining medley of the miscellaneous and the muddled, organised only by reference to another book. (Which is its major problem.) The inspired sits alongside the indifferent and reading the slim volume is very much a matter of whether you are going to get the former or latter, from one page to the next—or even on the same page! Night Soil #1 is the equivalent of another blind box purchase for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game—there are definitely things in here that will inspire the Judge and there are definitely things which will leave her uninspired, but it is definitely a case of there being more of the former than the latter.

Going back to my box of Dragons this week to pull out a nice one from January 1988.  I say "nice" but the issue is in fairly bad shape with no cover and pages falling out.  The winter of 1988 was an odd one for me. I had a girlfriend leave me (quite literally, she never came back to school), and I was entering my second semester of college.  Though I did start hanging out with the girl I would eventually begin dating and then marry, but that was still years off.  INXS was the biggest music group on the radio. Robin Williams and "Good Morning Vietnam" was the king at the box office (whatever happened to "Good Morning, Chicago!"?) and on the shelves was #129 of This Old Dragon. 

We are solidly into the "theme" issues of Dragon now. The cover, a Dwarven cleric of Thor, reflects this.  There are a few articles coming up that I think helped set the stage for how demi-humans would later be dealt with AD&D 2nd ed. Certainly, it was beyond what you would have seen in the Golden Age of AD&D 1st Ed. These are the end of the Silver Age of AD&D 1. 

Letters has some Top Secret S.I. questions and some questions about cover art.

Forum has the (then) latest debates on whether or not Magic-Users can use weapons and/or armor.  Some good cases are made here to be honest. All largely moot these days. 

We get to the Featured Section, Demi-humans.

Len Carpenter is up first with Arcane Lore, Magic of the Dwarven Priests. It is a rather good one to be honest that gives tips and ideas on how to play the "newly permitted" Dwarven cleric PC.  I am not sure if this article had anything to do with it, but the Dwarven Cleric became something of an iconic figure in the 3.x days.  To that end this article still has some sound advice on not just what a Dwarven Cleric can and could do, but also what spells they are likely to have access too and which ones they would not.  There are also plenty of new spells just for dwarven clerics. If you play a dwarven cleric today then this is a good article to dig up regardless of the system you are using. 

Children of the Spider Goddess from Eric Oppen is next and gives us some insight on the Dark Elves. I went back to this article way back when I was running the D series for my family. I was running it all under 5e and there have been millions of words written about the Drow and Dark Elven between this publication and when I used it, but I still found it quite helpful for working out how the drow act and do what they do.  While I have always felt that Drow should be Lawful Evil this article made a good point about how Chaotic Evil would work better. 

John R. Prager hits us with a short article about altering the dice rolls for abilities in Give Demi-humans an Even Break! Essentially demi-humans get extra dice they can roll for determining their abilities.  For example, if you are going to play a Hill Dwarf you roll 7d6 for Strength and just take the highest three. This might run counter old school dice rollers where you roll first and then determine the race/class or new schoolers where getting a low score in something typically associated with a particular race is really no big deal.  Yes, there is even a column for Comeliness. 

Halfling get a new class of their own in Don't Sell Them Short by Peter Dosik. The Halfling Guardians are bit like Halfling Paladins. Perfectly playable archetype/class.  

C.E. Misso finishes us up with a bit on driders in Entering the Drider's Web.  Driders' status have changed over the years with them being either cursed (this article) or the chosen of Lolth.  I also took this and put it in my Drow (D1-2,3) folder. While maybe not the exact heralds of the age, they were certainly forerunners of the days when everyone wanted to play an edgy drow. 

The Role of Computers by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser (and copyrighted 1988) covers the then state of the art in computer games.  Their featured game is Tower of Myraglen for the Apple IIgs. Make sure your Apple has been upgraded for stereo sound for this game! It is not the best game they have played, but it does take advantage of Apple's 640×200 resolution and sound capabilities.  They also have a bunch of smaller reviews for Acolade's Pinball Wizard, Beyond Zork, GBA Championship Basketball, California Games, and more. 

Nice full-page ad for Traveller 2300. 

Runequest fans get a treat in A Sorcerer's Supplement: New Sorcery Spells for RUNEQUEST by Michael DeWolfe.  I have the classic Runequest rules, so I should hold on to this.  I have still never played. 

Sage Advice covers all those new questions that come with new rule books.  This time for the D&D BECM (no I just yet) rules. 

Big four-page ad for Warhammer. The worlds of D&D and Warhammer have been drifting further and further part by this time. Might be one of the last ads I'll see for it.

Dean Shomshak gives us a nice treat. The Dragon's Bestiary this month covers monsters from the Para-Elemental planes of Ice. 

The Game Wizards from Jim Ward this month is A Volume of Oerthly Delights. He lets us know what could be part of the new Greyhawk Adventures hardcover (the last AD&D 1st edition hardcover). He gives us some ideas he is considering for the new book. They include: Greyhawk's Hall of Heroes, Greyhawk's Book of Creatures, Greyhawk's Book of Magic, Greyhawk's Book of Magical Devices, The Free City of Greyhawk, and Greyhawk's Clerics and Temples.  I can't recall how many of these made it to the hardcover, but I do recall their being some monsters.

Our fiction section is The Old Ways are Best by Larry Walker.   

"Who's in Charge Here?" by Bryan Caplan gives us guidelines on how many leaders in the form of higher-level fighters and/or cavaliers one should expect from a group of soldiers. 

Powered armor gets more details for Star Frontiers from David Dennis in Armored and Dangerous. I really should get a Star Frontiers game going again. It was a lot of fun. 

John C. Bunnell is back again with more book reviews in The Role of Books. He covers the likes of Sword and Sorceress IV, Tales of the Witch World, Agnes Day, and Murder at War. 

Role-playing Review by Ken Rolston gives us two soon-to-be classics; one for AD&D and one for D&D.  Up first we have GAZ 3 The Principalities of Glantri.  Long-time readers here know how much of a fan I am of Glantri, and Rolston concurs, saying it is the best city presentation for a TSR game world. He also says that the book is nicely presented and well-written.  His other is a little boxed set known as The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set. I don't suppose I need to go into detail on how this one was received here. 

Up next are small ads.  Lou Zocchi has some Deities & Demigods with Elric and Cthulhu in them. Send him 40 bucks.  Oh, and I never did get my characters drawn from Anvil Enterprises.

The Convention Calendar has the best cons for the Winter of 1988, including one I actually went to!

Lots of conventions listed here. Far more than we have now.

Dragonmirth has comics.

We end with some ads and just Snarf Quest. No Wormy, though. The last strip would show up in a couple more issues. Little did I know I was at the time living just a couple miles away from where Tramp was living. 

 So a fun issue. Great if you are into demi-humans. 

Mine has seen much better days, and I am unsure if it will survive the trip back to my box.

It's Tuesday, and that means a look at my latest mail call items.  This week has some pretty good stuff. 

Up first, a special Vampire Queen adventure from Bill Barsh and Pacesetter Games.

It is a Tournament style adventure for Pacesetter's BX RPG but it would work with OSE, B/X, or AD&D or any sort of clone.  Note: If you have not checked out the BX RPG lately the new revision fixes a lot of issues to first print had.

The package I got also came with 15 pre-gen characters to use. 

Long-time readers will know I am a big "Vampire Queen" fan, buying a lot of books on this theme.  This new purchase rounds out my "Pacesetter" collection.

And part of my larger Vampire Queen collection.

Pacesetter Games

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• DriveThruRPG

I also got two RPG-adjacent Calendars for 2023.

First is the 2023 A Year with Djinn Calendar from my good friend Djinn in the Shade. 

And that is about the only month I can actually show.  Djinn is great, and I love the exploits of her sorceress Solaine. 

You can find Djinn (and Solaine) here:

• Linktree
• Pateron
• DeviantArt
• Twitter (sometimes NSFW)
• Instagram (Main)
• Instagram (sorta NSWF)
• Ko-fi
• Facebook

Secondly, I also got the GinnyDi 2023 Calendar.

I have spoken about Ginny Di before and I think she is great. Her calendar features many of her original characters including Morelia the Wood Witch.  I grabbed the now sold-out Deluxe Ginny Di 2023 Calendar so I got the character card and the Ginny Di Dice.

Ginny is a lot of fun and this will work great in my game room.

Ginny Di online

• YouTube (her main home)
• Website
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Patreon
• Her WorldAnvil site with some characters

We are almost at the Winter Solstice, and Christmas is less than a week away.  

My thoughts this month have been coming back to D&D 5e and what the future for that might be.  At least for the next year or so, 5e will be largely the same, so I will be getting some 5e content out here to enjoy it.  I also just finished reading the Finnish epic poem, the Kalevala. Really one of the foundational stories of D&D to be honest. You can see where so much of D&D came from; Gygax's interpretation of this tale, and Tolkien's use of it in the formation of Middle Earth and his Legendarium. 

So my thoughts on all of these are rummaging around and I was thinking I need more types of cold creatures, bards, and more magic.  Some of that I showed off last week with my Jötunn Troll. 

So here is some 5e content from the frozen lands of the far North.

Elf, Álfar Skald
Medium humanoid (elf), Chaotic Neutral

Armor Class 13 (Hide armor)

Hit Points 17 (3d8 +3)

Speed 30 ft

STR 12 (+1)
DEX 13 (+1)
CON 13 (+1)
INT 14 (+2)
WIS 11 (+0)
CHA 12 (+1)

Saving Throws Con +3, Cha +5

Skills Performance +5, Persuasion +5, Perception +3, Survival +3

Damage Resistances Cold

Condition Immunities Blinded

Senses darkvision 120 ft., passive perception 13

Languages Common, Elvish, Giant

Fey Ancestry. The Álfar has advantage on saving throws against being charmed and can't be put to sleep.

Innate Spellcasting. The Álfar’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 13). The Álfar can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

At will: minor illusion
1/day each: animal friendship, healing word

Fleet of foot. Like all elves, the Álfar are fleet of foot and can travel over snow and ice with no restrictions.They are immune to difficult terrain caused by ice and snow.

Protected eyes. Álfar have a protective membrane over their eyes. They do not suffer disadvantage from blizzards or poor weather.

Actions

Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5ft. one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 +3) piercing damage.

Sling. Ranged Weapon Attack. +3 to hit, range 30/120 ft., one target, Hit: 5 (1d4 +3) bludgeoning damage.

Description

Álfar are the elves of the coldest reaches. Also known as “snow elves” they are tall (6’ to 6½’), with long straight white or light blond hair. Some, though, have long black hair. Their skin is pale and their eyes are so pale that they appear nearly white or light bluish-white. This is due to a protective membrane over the eye that allows them to see even in the coldest of temperatures or the blowing of snow.

Álfar are typically encountered in roaming bands of hunters or in warmer climes, herders of goats and sheep. They will typically be armed with a shortsword and sling with up to 20 sling stones handy.

Like all elves, they produce beautiful works of art, though they lack the raw materials of their forest-born brothers and sisters. They are a nomadic species, often following large game in their frozen territories. For this reason, their chief artistic expressions are saga songs.  These tales of ancient times, gods, and heroes can last from a few minutes to several days to perform, often with other singers (Skalds) joining in and taking over for others. Álfar skalds are revered by their communities.

Álfar bards are known as skalds. Their role in the Álfar community is to memorize the saga songs of these nomadic elves, some which take days to completely sing. Skalds advance as bards.

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Quick one today. Well, quick for me, but a bit of work for the original content creator.

I have not talked about my BlackStar game in a long time. I have not played any of it for a long time, to be honest. But I do have some new plans coming up, and my oldest has some ideas he wants to try out too.

Before I get back to all of that I found this great modeler on YouTube, Epyc Models. He builds an Ambassador Class Enterprise-C, which puts my meager attempts to utter shame. 

Have a watch.

Seriously cool, right? I need to check out his other videos after this for more ideas.