Fromage Affray

Although there is no scenario in the rulebook for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the first RPG released by Schwalb Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the excellent decisions upon the part of the designer has been to release support—and release it early—in the form of scenarios for the game. This way a gaming group can get playing quickly, even if they are just using the core rules presented in Victims of the Demon Lord: Starter Guide plus the adventure. In addition, the publisher has also released Tales of the Demon Lord, a complete mini-campaign that takes a party of characters from Zero Level up to Eleventh Level. In the meantime, the nineteenth adventure is The Demon’s Wet Nurse.

The Demon’s Wet Nurse is written by Stan!, best known as a co-author of titles such as Urban Arcana for d20 Modern and author of Call of Cthulhu scenarios like Midnight Harvest and Murder of Crows. It is the fourth adventure written for characters who have entered the Novice Path, of First and Second Level and then selected their first or Novice Path—Magician, Priest, Rogue, or Warrior. It comes as a nine page, 14.50 MB PDF and is designed as a standalone adventure that slots easily into a campaign as an encounter when the player characters are travelling between more important destinations. 

The setting for The Demon’s Wet Nurse is Ephraim’s Fork, a small trading town that stands at the intersection of three well travelled roads. Initially, the player characters find it to be healthy and thriving, but after interacting with both the townsfolk and fellow travellers it becomes apparent that the town is beset by a flux that causes sufferers to evacuate themselves, sometimes bloodily, at both ends. Is Ephraim’s Fork subject to an outbreak of dysentery, the bloody flux, or something worse? Well… Of course, it is something worse—this is a scenario for Shadow of the Demon Lord after all.

Essentially, The Demon’s Wet Nurse is divided into two parts. The first involves the player characters traipsing back and forth across Ephraim’s Fork, interviewing locals and visitors alike in search of clues. Once the adventurers have found enough information, then they have reason to track the origins of the disease to its source and there have a vilely lactosed encounter with the real villain of the piece. This is a horrid, fecund encounter and might just put the player characters off child care, let alone the players…

The Demon’s Wet Nurse is a longer, more detailed adventure than the others released for Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is because it more details the town of Ephraim’s Fork for future use than it does provide a convoluted plot, which is really quite straightforward. The details though should help the GM given description to some messy encounters and nicely serve to dish up another slice of body horror, all blood and bodily fluids.

Suitably Unqualified

In the wake of Cards Against Humanity, there has come a slew of party games designed primarily to be played by adults, such as Bucket of Doom, or at least by an older audience, such as Love 2 Hate. What these games have in common is that they have one player asking a question to which the other players supply the answers from which the asking player makes a selection, typically for comedic effect. In this they follow a design first seen in the highly popular Apples to Apples party game, but other designs have since taken the design and begun to do more with what amounts to a big, fat box of question and answer cards. For example, The Metagame from Local No. 12 uses the format to build not just one game, but several, all within the one box; Gorilla Games’ Who Would Win? has the players not only select an answer card, but also justify said card; and Funemployed has the players not only select an answer card, but use four answer cards and then justify them.

Recently republished by Urban Island Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Funemployed: The party game of real jobs and unreal qualifications. is a game in which the players are the Applicants for a job for which they are highly unqualified for, but are forced to apply using the Qualifications they have on the cards they hold. For example, the players have to apply for the role of a Gangster, for which one player has the Qualifications ‘Ambidextrous’, ‘Drive’, ‘Handlebars’, and ‘Loose’, another has ‘Crack’, ‘False Teeth’, ‘Gluttony’, and ‘Scalpel’, and ‘Excuses’, ‘Online Degree’, ‘Poker Face’ and ‘Red Sea’.

Designed to be played by between three and twenty potential Applicants, Funemployed comes as a box containing seventy-two Black Job Cards, three-hundred-and-twenty Green Qualification Cards, and a rules sheet. Each Black Job Card is headed with the term ‘Help Wanted’, below which is a job title, such as ‘Used Car Salesman’ or ‘Dominatrix’. One is marked with the phrase, ‘My Job’. This Black Job card is always included in a game and when drawn indicates the last round of interviews. Each Green Qualification Card is marked with a tick or check-mark and a Qualification, like ‘Day Job’, ‘Italian Accent’, ‘Lisp’, ‘Night Terrors’, ‘Scented Candle’, ‘Time Machine’, and ‘Trench Coat’.

At the start of the game, a deck of sixteen Black Job Cards is drawn, shuffled, and the ‘My Job’ Job Card is inserted into the lower half of the Black Job Card deck. Each player or Applicant receives four Green Job Cards as his Resume, whilst another ten are placed out, face up, where everyone can see them.

One player is chosen to be the Employer. He turns the first Black Job Card over and reads it out. Each Applicant has a minute to work out how to use his Resume to apply for the Job, but he can also rebuild his Resume by swapping Qualification Cards from his hand with those on the table.

For example, Ruth is the Employer and turns over the Job Card, ‘Competitive Eater’. Louise has the Qualification Cards, ‘Dirty’, ‘Hook’, ‘Red Panda’, and ‘Room to Grow’ as her Resume, whilst Theresa has the Qualification Cards, ‘Beefcake’, ‘Pathological Liar’, ‘Recess’, and ‘Utterly Adorable’ as her Resume. First Ruth turns to Louise and asks her to explain why she is qualified to be employed as a ‘Competitive Eater’. Louise answers, “As a Competitive Eater, I am quite prepared to get my face down onto the plate and thus ‘Dirty’, where I can use my ‘Hook’ for a hand to scoop food into my mouth. Further, my time spent training with a ‘Red Panda’ family means that I can digest almost anything, including bamboo leafs and because a lot of leafs are needed to in order to get a square meal, I have ‘Room to Grow’ and eat prodigious amounts. Ruth mulls this over before proceeding to Theresa and asking the same question. Theresa responds with “My Beefcake’ figure hides a ‘Recess’ for putting away the food from the competition, but if you do not believe me because I am a ‘Pathological Liar’, then I am sure that neither you nor the judges will find this to be a problem because I am of course, ‘Utterly Adorable’.” Ruth decides that while Louise’s ‘Hook’ will be useful, it might be too sinister and decides that although Theresa might not have the right Qualifications to be a ‘Competitive Eater’, being ‘Utterly Adorable’ more than makes up for it and awards Theresa the ‘Competitive Eater’ Black Job Card as the ‘Most Qualified’.

At the end of the round, all of the used Qualification Cards are discarded and new ones drawn. The next player to the left becomes the Employer, a new Black Job Card is drawn, and play proceeds as normal. The game continues until the ‘My Job’ Black Job Card is drawn. It is up to the Employer who drew this to decide if the Applicants are applying for his real life, actual job, or a job of his choosing. At the end of the round, the Applicant with the most Black Job Cards in front of him is the winner.

Physically, Funemployed is a plain and simple looking game. The cards are all of a good quality and having the names on each Qualification Card printed twice, once upside down, is a nice touch as it makes them easy to read from either side of the table. The rules are also simple and once the box is open, a game can be started in a few minutes. The game though, does have three problems. The first is its audience, as not everyone likes this kind of party game and the creativity and humour that it engenders. So sometimes a game can be dull because of this. The second is that it is an American game, so some of the Jobs and the Qualifications may not be familiar to everyone despite the ubiquity of American culture. Third and lastly, the game states that it is for players aged thirteen and up, but a minority of both card types are of a sexual or adult nature, and that in addition to the cards that can be interpreted as such, which means that out of the box, Funemployed is not suitable as a family game or a game suitable for players that young.

Nevertheless, Funemployed is a fun game, one that requires the players to be inventive and clever in how they explain the usefulness and applicability of their Qualification Cards. In fact, having to use all four cards forces each Applicant to be inventive and to think about their explanation to the Interviewer. Now having to use the four cards in his hand might mean that a player could be stuck with something unsuitable for the current Job or something that he just cannot quite explain how it applies, but having the ten Qualification Cards out on the table and being able to swap them to build a Resume means that a player can alleviate this problem by replacing one bad Qualification with one better. 

Despite the problems with this game and with this type of game, Funemployed: The party game of real jobs and unreal qualifications. is nice addition to the Apples to Apples style of party game. It requires the players to think about how they use their cards and gives everyone the opportunity to be creative rather than just give an answer card.

A Treasure's Treasury Trove

The first point to be made about the Book of Loot is that it is a dull read. The second point to be made is that it is not a dull book. The distinction needs to be made because it is not written to be read from end to end, which is the dull way to read it, but rather referred to and dipped into for ideas and inspiration—and those ideas and inspiration are anything other than dull! In fact, the ideas and inspiration to be found in the Book of Loot are not only great, but they have the potential to be great fun.

The Book of Loot is a supplement for 13th Age, the dramatic Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG published by Pelgrane Press. It presents a hoard or thirteen’s worth of treasures, each individual item linked to one of the thirteen Icons, the archetypal gods and major NPCs, in the game’s default setting of the Dragon Empire. The items are further categorised into further fourteen types with one, two, or more entries for each type. The types are in turn Armour, Robe, Shirt, and Tunic; Arrow, Crossbow Bolt, and Sling; Belt, Swordbelt, Kilt, and Girdle; Book, Scroll, Tome, and Grimoire; Boots, Shoes, and Slippers; Cloak, Mantle, and Cape; Glove, Gauntlet, and Mitt; Helmet, Circlet, Crown, and Cap; Necklace and Pendant; Ring; Staff; Wand; Weapon; and Wondrous Item. What this means, with thirteen Icons and fourteen types, is that the Book of Loot describes at least one-hundred-and-eighty-two items of treasure—and the true figure is closer to two hundred!

The Book of Loot is neatly organised with chapters devoted to each of the thirteen Icons and then each detailing the various items under each of the fourteen types. Each chapter opens with a description of where items related to the Icon might come from and what they form they might take. So for example, those items related to the Elf Queen tend to be either well made, if ordinary looking, or simply beautiful works of art, whilst those of the Archmage can be showy, whimsical, devastating, or all three, since they serve to showcase his power to both his allies and his enemies. Then it proceeds through the types, one by one, giving in many items that can in varying forms. For example, under the ‘Armour, Robe, Shirt, and Tunic’ type for the Dwarf King two items are described, ‘Solidity’ and ‘Thrice-Forged’. So these might be ‘Armour of Solidity’, ‘Robe of Solidity’, ‘Thrice-Forged Shirt’, and ‘Thrice-Forged Tunic’. What this means that in a very many great instances, the actual form that a magical item comes in is not important and that a wider array of Character Classes will be able to make use of them. Rounding out each of the chapters is a trio of adventure hooks, each involving a magic item, for a total of thirty-nine, plus another six involving magical items in a more generic sense, for a total of forty-five in the supplement.

Each magic item is accorded a paragraph or two, each comes with a quirk, and many are written with a sense of humour. For example, “Swift Shot: Once per battle, if you’ve got elven grace, and you get an extra action, and you use that standard action to make a ranged attack with this ammo, then the size of the die rolled to determine whether or not your elven grace triggers doesn’t increase. If you’re not playing a wood archer, your eyes probably glazed over two clauses back.” Of the quirks, the ‘Armour of Darkness’, tied to the Prince of Darkness and which grants an Armour Class bonus in darkness (at night, underground, or indoors), but a penalty in sunlight or bright light, also leaves the wearer finding bright light painful, increasingly pale skin, and sadly, allergic to garlic; the Emperor’s Spellbreaking Ring, a chunky affair that enables a user to use an opportunity attack triggered by a spell to counter the actual spell, but the wearer no longer respects personal space; and The Three’s Weapon of Feinting gives the wielder an Armour Class bonus if he misses an attack, but makes him blurt out lies when put under pressure. In this way not only does each magical item give a player one or more powerful abilities, they also alter his character’s behaviour and so give the player role-playing challenges.

Topping and tailing these thirteen chapters is the book’s introduction and a chapter on Treasure Troves. The former sets out what the Book of Loot is for and how it works, but notably it panders to the 13th Age’s love with a set of lists. So you have lists of ‘Items that Demand a Story’, ‘Relentlessly Practical Items’, ‘Unforgivable Puns’, and more. The latter explores what else might be found in a treasure trove beyond magical items—coins, gems, jewels, and actual treasures. This nicely ables the GM to design interesting hoards for his players to loot. Rounding out the supplement is set of tables that addresses a problem in the Book of Loot—finding anything. As everything in the supplement is organised by Icon rather than type, finding anything by type is a bit more awkward than normal. So a set of tables for each type of magical item lists everything in the previous pages, as well as summarising each item’s power, tier in the game—Adventurer, Champion, or Epic, Icon, and of course, page number. So the tables work as a set of indices too.

Physically, the Book of Loot is far from perfect. It needs another edit in places and the layout is scruffy in others. Over all, in places it does feel a bit rushed. The book is lightly illustrated, but all of the illustrations nicely capture the feel of one magical item or another. Nevertheless, the book is well written and it is clear that the author had fun writing it.

As much as the Book of Loot is a chore to read from start to finish, each individual entry is actually a pleasure to read because it is invariably clever and interesting and does so much more than your run of the mill +2 Sword of Giant Slaying or Ring of Invisibility. Arguably this is one of the most inventive and interesting hoard of magical items ever to grace a d20 System supplement and it almost deserves to be on the shelf of any GM or Dungeon Master who creates his own adventures and dungeons. The only reason why it should not be is that a great many of the items in the Book of Loot are more complex than those typically found in Dungeons & Dragons because they have to take account of the greater complexity, often dramatic complexity, such as the relationships between each player character and the Icons, to be found in the 13th Age. That said, there is nothing to stop the DM from adjusting any of the items in the Book of Loot to suit the mechanics of his choice.

The Book of Loot is quite possibly one of the best treasure books ever written for Dungeons & Dragons—it is unsurprisingly, the best ever treasure book written for use the 13th Age RPG. Inventive, fun, and full of clever creations, the Book of Loot is an excellent addition to the 13th Age line and a hoard of treasures worth looting for just about fantasy RPG.

Fanzine Focus III: The Blasphemous Tome #1

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 how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

In the years since, fanzines have appeared to support various RPGs, such as tHE bIG pICTURE for S.L.A. Industries, Warpstone for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Sholari for SkyRealms of Jorune. In many cases, such fanzines became a vehicle for the RPG itself when there was no official support or even an actual RPG in print. Yet barring Carl T. Ford’s Dagon, which ran from 1983 to 1990 and Mike Mason’s The Whisperer from the turn of the millennium, fanzines devoted to Call of Cthulhu have been few and far between. The publication of The Blasphemous Tome does not change that, for although it is about horror and horror roleplaying, Lovecraft and Lovecraftiana, it is about the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but not for Call of Cthulhu RPG. In other words, it is not an official licensed Call of Cthulhu publication, although fans of the RPG will find much to interest them within its pages.

The Blasphemous Tome is published by The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, an English podcast dedicated to horror and horror roleplaying, Lovecraft and Lovecraftiana, and the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Indeed, of the three hosts of the podcast and thus the three authors of the fanzine, one co-designed Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, another edited it, and all three write Call of Cthulhu scenarios. Available only to Patreons of the podcast, the inaugural issue of The Blasphemous Tome is a humorous affair, much of it drawing upon the authors’ experiences co-hosting the podcast.

So in ‘A Memoir of the Shed’ looks back to original recording location for the podcast—a potter’s shed, ‘Cocktail Corner’ explores the hosts’ love of cocktails and includes recipes, one author reviews a Mythos-themed plush despite his dislike of such things in ‘Plush of the Month’ whilst having fun poked at him in ‘A Guide to Beard Care’. Perhaps more interesting in terms of the podcast, its history and its links to Call of Cthulhu is ‘The Secret History of Attract Fish’. One host’s rabid dislike of what is perhaps the least liked, if not the most useless, spell in Call of Cthulhu, is examined to explain how it went from a simple dislike to a tee shirt and an internet meme.

Neither games nor horror are ignored in this mix. There are reviews of RPGs that they have played in ‘The Ludomancer’—a rare occurrence since the trio prefers to referee than play, notably that of A Red and Pleasant Land, as the trio are fans of Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying and have interviewed the RPG’s designer; the hosts’ favourite Lovecraftian films in ‘The Popcorn Resonator: Our Top Three Lovecraftian Films’; a retrospective of 2015 horror films in ‘2015: A Year of Horrors’; and more. Perhaps though, the highlight of this first issue is ‘The Horror from the Shed’, a system-less scenario with an easy to adapt setting. Inspired by the history of the original recording location of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast, the scenario combines grief, gossip, and something nasty in the woodshed for a tale of small village horror and misguided hope. It Lovecraftian in tone and although system-less, it is easy to see where the numbers and the stats have been filed off, such that a Keeper could easily run it without the need to add them back in. Although set in Buckingham, England, ostensibly in the here and now, it would be easy to relocate the scenario both in terms of time and place. So it would work in the 1890s of Cthulhu by Gaslight, the 1920s of classic Call of Cthulhu, and the 1930s of Trail of Cthulhu, just as it would in USA or Sweden. It would work easily as well under other rules. The authors suggest using it with a weird fantasy RPG and give a note or two to that end. So it would easily work with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, though perhaps what the authors really mean is Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying… However the Keeper—or GM—uses ‘The Horror from the Shed’, it serves up a rich breakfast of spores and fungal horror.

At forty-two pages, The Blasphemous Tome #1 is longer than most fanzines. On the whole, it is a clean, unfussy affair. It is though a little scrappy and rough around the edges, but this is intentional, the design being meant to invoke nostalgia for the fanzines of before the advent of desktop publishing.

Definitely a horror and a Lovecraft fanzine, The Blasphemous Tome #1 is not really a gaming fanzine despite its gaming content. It is though much more of chat fanzine, a collection of thoughts and reminiscences of the hosts of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias that is in parts informative and in parts silly, but mostly fun (especially if you like the podcast).

Fanzine Focus III: The Undercroft #3

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 DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

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

Published by the Melsonian Arts Council—also the publisher of he recently released Something Stinks in Stilton—in July, 2014, issue #1 of The Undercroft was an engaging initial issue, full of intriguing and useful material. It was followed in September, 2014 with issue #2  and as with many second efforts, especially after successful first efforts, it proved a less than satisfying mix of content. Issue #3 does not have either that problem or indeed as much content as issue #2. In fact it only has three articles in comparison to the multiple published in issue #2.

It opens with Barry Blatt’s ‘van Steen’s Company’, which describes a well drilled and highly disciplined, if odd company of Dutch mercenaries fighting for the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War. On the surface they would appear to be an efficient military unit, but of course there is more to them than that. They turn out to be automata created from soldiers whose creator wants to plunder England’s secret magics that might have survived Henry VIII’s separation of the Church of England from Rome and the subsequent Dissolution of the Monasteries. There is a bit more going on this this, involving both Jewish legends of Mitteleuropa and the Crusades, but for a campaign set during the English Civil War, it would make for an interesting addition. It could even be slotted in England Upturned, the recently released scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. There is even reference of sorts to said scenario in the contents listing on the back cover of the fanzine.

Although the various members of the company are described in detail as is how the company works, what the piece lacks is a scenario seed or two. Now there are hooks that a Referee can extract from the text, but the inclusion of a scenario seed or two would have topped the piece off nicely.

The second article is ‘The Cunning Men of the Fern Court’. It is written by Daniel Sell, the editor of The Undercroft. This presents an alternative take upon the Magic User, one closer to the Druid, but much earthier, loamier, and bloodier. More an NPC Class than a Player Character Class, the Cunning Men of the Fern Court move through the deep forests from settlement to settlement, blessing children and crops, bringing and collecting news, and being seen as a beneficial presence. The near naked Cunning Men record their knowledge and their spells not in great books that could easily molder away in the damp of the forest, but directly on their skins via scarification. These skins are collected and stored by the Fern Court upon a Canning Man’s death lest his knowledge is lost, though knowledge of a spell can be lost if a Cunning Man is also severely wounded.

The bulk of ‘The Cunning Men of the Fern Court’ is devoted to the spells known by the Cunning Men. There are over twenty of these, highly detailed and clearly laid out, ranging from First Level to Seventh Level. They range from the relatively simple, like Babble, which makes a victim unable to speak clearly, and The Spleenful Led, which causes the victim to lose his way in the woods, to the complex, like The Subtle Heart, which sear curses and sickness from everyone around the caster, though may also die, and A Black Sun Climbs the Ladder to the Heavens, in which the Cunning Man makes the victim believe that the Sun has been replaced by a pus-dripping black and shaken to the core, possibly kill him and those around him. All of these spells are described in some detail and many have a dark and gruesome tone.

There is a certain vagueness to ‘The Cunning Men of the Fern Court’, so that it is never wholly clear what and who they are. Part of this is due to their not being presented as an actual Class in game terms, but more NPCs of near myth and superstition that might be encountered in the woods. The vagueness is nicely counterpointed by the detail, feel, and effect of their spells, so that whilst they have an often horrible, but still concrete effect, the Cunning Men themselves still remain a sense of mystery and legend.

Rounding The Undercroft #3 is ‘The Bridge’ by Alex Clements. It is a short effective piece of fiction that plays upon the encounter with the Black knight in Monty Python & The Holy Grail. Fortunately it is not as silly as that, being more Pratchett-like in tone.

Physically, The Undercroft #3 is neat and tidy with some decent illustrations. Overall, despite there being just three articles in the issue, they are different enough and detailed enough to be as the editorial puts it, “...[A]ll elbows and knees.” with each other. This works very well and gives The Undercroft #3 a pleasing and distinctive mix.

Fanzine Focus III: Mystic Pangolin #2

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 DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

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

Published by Blackie Carbon/Cloudstepping Media, Mystic Pangolin #1 was released  in the Autumn of 2014, but beyond its vibrant cover, the contents never quite succeeded in being all that interesting. The second issue, published in February, 2016, promises “...a terror bird’s ton of treats”. The question is, does it deliver on that promise? Further, does it improve on the underwhelming first issue?

Well, behind what is a fantastically good cover, Mystic Pangolin #1 is initially unpromising. The first article is part of the Down ‘n’ Dirty Dungeon Dozens series, which presents short, sharp lists of useful information for world-builders and GMs. Now the inaugural entry in the series, ‘Casks & Barrels – terminology and definitions’, from Mystic Pangolin #1, suffered from a surfeit of facts and a lack of application, or at least suggested application. Not so, ‘Textile Treasures’, which at cloth in all forms and fashions, from simple bolts of cloth and tapestries, carpets, and rugs, to mummy wraps and human skin suits. There is not only description here, there is history and there is usage. In other words, there is application. So we learn what tabards are and why they were worn, what not to do with an altar cloth, and so on. This absolutely the right amount of detail and depth for an article like this, with the author’s going beyond mere description to explain each item’s use being both helpful and suggestive to the GM. It is a solid, thoughtful article and shows off the potential of the article series that ‘Casks & Barrels – terminology and definitions’ did not.

‘All the Fun of the Fair’ details a small troupe of travelling entertainers comprised of two Thieves, a Cleric, and a Fighter, all of Third Level. Although nicely nicely detailed with a background fully worked out, what sets these NPCs apart from the similar offerings is that none of them are interested in theft, that is they prefer to use their thievery skills for the purposes of entertaining the crowd rather than robbing them. So no pickpockets working the crowd then… Although there is nothing wrong with this, it begs the question, how do you use these NPCs? It is not a question that the article sets out to, or indeed, actually answers. It is a solid piece of writing, but a scenario hook or two would not have gone amiss here.

Big, mostly flightless, but definitely predatory birds are the subject of ‘Terror Birds’. It describes and gives stats for a selection of real world, prehistoric birds such as the Phorusrhacos, the Kelenken, the Anthropornis Penguin, Haast’s Eagle, and more. These are great for ‘Lost World’ and primordial settings and really should inspire terror. After all, the Phorusrhacos is ten feet high, and can claw and kick its prey before delivering a downward death strike with its beak.

Designed for characters of between Fourth and Seventh Level, ‘The Haunting of Kilderkin Fell’ is cliché, but a well done cliché. Lord Doric of Kilderkin Fell has fallen ill, bedridden with some kind of living death, further threatening the decline of the family estate. Can the player characters determine the cause and restore Lord Doric to the land of the living? There is a lot that will be familiar to the plot of this scenario—a worried family, an isolated and moldering castle, and dark secrets. This is less fantastical than a typical Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure, owing much more to the gothic stories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and perhaps even just a little to Shakespeare. Despite the familiarity of its plot, ‘The Haunting of Kilderkin Fell’ is well written, solid scenario.

Rounding out Mystic Pangolin #2 is another entry in the fanzine’s ‘Ports of Call’ series. This describes ‘Walrus Bay’, a way station and refuge in the far north that can provide warmth and safety should a passing ship and her crew be forced to winter there. It is customary for passing ships to carry enough wood and provender to restock any of way stations should they be forced to winter at one of them. Walrus Bay is a rough hewn place, home to territorial walruses, predatory white bears, and perhaps a man eating wendigo… Stats are provided for the various creatures and a new magic item, but no NPCs are given, but really none are needed. Where the description of the port of Haeford in Mystic Pangolin #1 was overlong, this is about the right length and feels complete without meandering…

Physically, Mystic Pangolin #2 is cleanly, tidily presented. There are nice pieces of artwork and each of the articles is pleasing to read. It does need a tighter edit in places though.

If Mystic Pangolin #1 proved disappointing, promising ill for the next issue, Mystic Pangolin #2 is a revelation. A small revelation to be clear, but all the more welcome for it, for Mystic Pangolin #2 is a huge improvement over Mystic Pangolin #1. The content is a good mix, each of the articles is interesting and readable, and above all, good enough that you would want to use it in a campaign. Behind its great cover, Mystic Pangolin #2 hides some solidly useful and gameable material.

Fanzine Focus III: Winged Snail Plays RPG’s

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 how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Now Winged Snail Plays RPG’s is not about any of those RPGs or indeed any RPG. Rather it is an introduction to RPGs and the hobby published by Sarah E. Hoffman via her Winged Snail Mail, a fanzine dedicated to the sending and receiving of snail mail and the creativity that it engenders. Winged Snail Plays RPG’s was born of the author’s twenty year or so interest in RPGs and then her delving into the hobby, playing, running, and creating games and settings. It is a guide to getting involved and how to be a good player.

The advice starts with finding—or creating, a game and what you will need to play. Then it delves deeply into good player etiquette. This includes having a basic understanding of the rules, showing up on time, bringing snacks, reading and re-reading your character, and making sure that you separate yourself from your character. All of which is good advice, but not all of it may be seen as such. In particular, the advice to ‘Avoid the Negative Player’ and ‘Don’t BE the Negative Player’ is perhaps contentious because the one piece of advice countermands the other. In particular, it advises avoiding the negative player because engaging with said player is likely to reduce your enjoyment of the game, for example, not going with character to explore some caverns. Conversely, the advice of ‘Don’t BE the Negative Player’ suggests that the player should engage with the other player characters no matter what they want to do, for example, burning down a tavern, lest he becomes that negative player by giving negative feedback. Yet what if both players and their characters are undertaking negative actions—going into the caverns or burning down the tavern—surely the other player and his character can engage with the other to dissuade them as to their course of action? Especially if that is what a player character wants to do? Ultimately, ‘Avoid the Negative Player’ and ‘Don’t BE the Negative Player’ are extreme pieces of advice rather than ones to adhere to always.

Physically Winged Snail Plays RPG’s is roughly an A6-sized booklet. It is light on illustration and it feels rough and handmade for the most part. It is well written and clear in its purpose, although the poorly done title—or incomplete title—does let it down a bit.

Winged Snail Plays RPG’s is not really a booklet for the experienced player or GM. Most of the advice will familiar to them, but this does not mean that it is bad advice. In fact, the advice is sound, is clearly born of personal experience, and packaged in a charmingly small fashion.