[Fanzine Focus XXXII] Thoughts & Prayers 2023

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. One of the more recent retroclones to inspire fanzines is Mörk Borg, but there are fewer fanzines dedicated to its sister roleplaying games, Death in Space and CY_BORG. Thoughts & Prayers 2023 addresses this by providing support for all three.

Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is a fanzine published by the Stockholm Kartell, the design group for notable Old School Renaissance such as Mörk Borg, Death in Space, and CY_BORG. It provides support for all three of those roleplaying games—and more. That more consists of content found in the more personal style of fanzines, often consisting of filler material, but despite the professionalism of the fanzine, it does not feel out of place. The most notable aspect of Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is that it is only available direct from Stockholm Kartell and then only at conventions on the Thoughts & Prayers Tour 2023, which took in Gothcon, the Blackwork Tattoo Convention, Lincon, UK Games Expo, and Gen Con. In addition, all proceeds from the sale of the fanzine go to charity. Most of the content is written is by Johan Nohr, the co-creator of Mörk Borg, except where noted.

Thoughts & Prayers 2023 opens with ‘Hog God’, a short scenario for Mörk Borg. It begins with a fight and every drop of blood from the wounds inflicted floating into the air and shooting towards Goresnout Crag. This leads the Player Characters to a series of caves where a new god is about to be spawned attended by his Hog Men acolytes. There is a porcine fleshiness throughout this mini-dungeon, pleasingly mapped by Skullfungus. The second scenario in Thoughts & Prayers 2023 for Mörk Borg is by Pelle Nilsson. In ‘Skewed Angel’, the Player Characters find themselves the honourable winners of a lottery to remove a ‘Fallen’—either an angel or a daemon—which are despoiling the crops in the fields. This has the feel of a more traditional Mörk Borg scenario, more detailed in its location descriptions, and offering two sessions’ worth of play.

Also for Mörk Borg, ‘Who goes there, at the end of all things?’ is a table of strangers, quest givers, companions, and victims for the Game Master to roll on and develop. The longest entry in Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is Christian Sahlén’s ‘d66 ways to slay your enemies’. Beginning with ‘A (Sometimes) Spiked Flail To The Face’, this describes six interesting weapons under the categories of flails, polearms, blunt trauma weapons, blades, heavy weapons, and missile weapons. For example, the Crow’s Caw is a Bec de Corbin, which has a +2 bonus to attack, inflicts damage equal to that of a dagger, but against heavy armour, it ignores the armour modifier, and with the sound of a caw, a crow begins to claw itself out of the opponent’s armour, impeding his actions and inflicting damage. All thirty-six of the weapons in the article share the same level of inventiveness, and whilst designed to be used with Mörk Borg and SKR, they can easily adapted to work with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

Christian Sahlén’s ‘Sprawling Car Park’ describes a location for CY_BORG in the manner of the CY_BORG Asset Pack. This gives a map of a typical car park and then options for what it actually is and what such locations might actually be hiding in the city of CY. The location works as well as other similar locations for the roleplaying setting. He follows this with ‘In Case of Emergency’, which presents a trio of NPCs belonging to an ‘ERT’ or ‘Emergency Response Team’. This can be used in various ways. Perhaps as a team that has to rescue the Player Characters, perhaps a rival ERT team, or a team the Player Characters are hired to act against. Christian Sahlén is also the author of ‘A Day in the Life of a Cy Corp Drone’, a short story detailing the unsurprisingly nasty last day as a regimented, monitored wage slave. It makes clear exactly why the Player Characters do not want that life… ‘Fraudulent Freemium Game Generator’ and ‘Why is the product cheap or free?’ and more by Christian Sahlén and Johan Nohr add tables for inspiration for CY_BORG and Death in Space.

The first actual content for Death in Space is the scenario ‘Cesium 66’. Written by Carl Niblaeus, this details a complete sector ready for the presence of the Player Characters. It gives people, locations, factions, and imminent trouble, including an authoritative leader, a murderous resistance/terrorist group, and science artists who only leave cryrosleep to perform Zero-G dance rituals and speed the end of the universe, and a hive decayer in an adjacent sector. Throw in some contracts and the sector is ready to boil over, seething with tension waiting to be exacerbated by the Player Characters. The other scenario for Death in Space, ‘Transit Precinct 45’, is by Carl Niblaeus and Christian Plogfors. This is set aboard an old marshal satellite station which was staging outpost for the enforcing company law and regulations during the Gem War, but is now operated by rogue corrupt marshals. They capture new prisoners and imprisoning them under false accusations. The Player Characters are hired to extract a wrongly accused prisoner whose family cannot afford the bail to free him. The station is nicely detailed and there are random events tables for the approaches the Player Characters can take to solve the situation—talking and scheming or sneaking around—as well as possible environmental events. It is a more direct affair than ‘Cesium 66’, which has a sandbox feel, but both are easy to add to a Death in Space campaign.

Extra content in Thoughts & Prayers 2023 consists of ‘Public Domain goodness’, which is a selection of black and white publicly available artwork, which can work as inspiration or illustration. ‘Regarding the misses’ discusses ways in which failed attack rolls can be made interesting, a not uncommon point of discussion in Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games, whilst Pelle Nilsson’s ‘Broken Body Bits’ gives twelve unpleasant maladies that are annoying to the affected character as well as those around him. Jonas Stattin explores the afterlife in ‘The Hell Realms’, drawing from Buddhist traditions to describe several different hells. Unfortunately, it is not anything more than this and there is no application or development. That is left up to the Game Master and reader to do. Fortunately, ‘A Love Letter to the Reaction Roll’ is more interesting because it tells a story. Christian Sahlén begins by telling us how Dungeons & Dragons was looked down upon in the nineties in Sweden, but explains that for him, its saving grace was the reaction roll whenever the Player Characters encountered some monsters or an NPC. It is rather an endearing piece dedicated to the author’s favourite roleplaying game mechanic. Skullfungus adds ‘That weird egg you picked up last session? Yeah it just hatched, and this space-god-spawn crawled out…’, a pair of tables that do exactly what their title suggests.

Rounding out Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is the more personal, non-gaming content. In ‘Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’, Jonas Stattin provides a quick examination, but informative of the Japanese short story writer. This is more interesting and possibly useful than the earlier ‘The Hell Realms’ as it is more likely to spur the reader to investigate further. Lastly, ‘Dronedevil and Massgrav’, described as anonymous Stockholm Kartellites, pen ‘2022 in records’, reviews of the best music in the noise, drone, doom, and black genres. These are either space fillers or interesting depending upon the reader’s interest in these genres.

Physically, Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is well presented. Its artwork is more ‘Doom Punk’ than ‘Art Punk’ and works well in black and white.

Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is a good fanzine. It provides support for all three roleplaying games from the Stockholm Kartell—Mörk Borg, Death in Space, and CY_BORG—and more. That the proceeds go to a good cause is a bonus on top of the solid support, the most fun of which are the delightfully vile weapons.