[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine

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

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

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine does something different and interesting. Published in 2019 by Technical Grimoire Games, best known for Bones Deep, it takes a campaign to the Southeast coast of the United States, specifically during the early half of the nineteenth century. This is a land of shifting, disappearing and reappearing Barrier Islands running along the coast, of marshes low and high, of sandbars, and the thick Pluff Mud which often rings them, hindering progress between them. Or at least the idea and the romance of them, rather than being specific. It incudes tables to create them and populate them with interesting features, a complete mini-point-crawl, and details of often eerie creatures to be encountered along the Barrier Islands and magical gewgaws and knickknacks to found and even bought. It is inspired by the region and its mythology, but it is ahistorical rather than specific. What this means is that the fanzine avoids the complexities and sensitivities of the history, whilst still acknowledging that they exist, and has rightly employed a sensitivity reader in order to do so. What remains is a moody, sense of isolation and strangeness lost in mist-soaked islands.

The fanzine begins with an ‘Island Generator’ that with a roll of twenty-sided die four times lets the Game Master create islands of her own, including their size, environment, and name. It is quick and easy, so that together with an explanation of the possible environments—sandbar, marshland, rocky, forested, structures, and other—the Game Master can have her string of islands with a handful of rolls. The ‘other’ option includes anything odd or weird that the Game Master deems, but an accompanying table suggests haunted islands, prison islands, cannibal islands, and more.

The centrepiece of Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is ‘Island Crawl: An Adventure For LVLs 1-2’. This details four Barrier Islands, running from north to south, from the last major settlement on St. Erasmus down to Wildys, once a hunting reserve belonging to a foreign sorcerer, but now gone to seed and populated by exotic and magically augmented creatures. In between, Backwater Bay on Aloyin is rife with pirates, including Captain Seymour Foy, whose ship is pulled by a chained kraken, upsetting the other pirates, and Fort Assumption, a former military installation, then former plague hospital, still said to be manned by the spirits of those who died there. There are only a handful of locations per island, but they are nicely detailed, just enough to intrigue the Game Master, but with room aplenty for the Game Master to add her own content.

Travel and time across the islands is nicely handled. Each day is divided into six four-hour increments called watches. The trail between one location and another can be traversed in a single watch, but getting across country takes longer. Accompanying detailed locations are a pair of splendid encounter tables, one for ‘Coastal Encounters’, one for ‘Inland Encounters’. Every entry consists of two elements, the encounter itself, and an ‘Omen’, a harbinger of what the Player Characters are about to encounter. For example, whether the chest they discover is an actual buried chest or a mimic, the indication of metal and wood above the mud, and the smell of salt, timber, and rust presages its discovery. These signs add to the atmosphere and mood of the Barrier Islands, enforcing their sense of difference and separation, and perhaps worrying the Player Characters as they begin to recognise the Omens and what they mean.

The ’Creatures’ article has just the six entries. They include the Boohag, a scrawny, mean-tempered old by day, bloody red skinless spirit by night, that like La Llorona, rides sleepers at night to steal their breath; the Plat-Eye, a shifting shadow with one large eye that sometimes takes the form of a dog and attempts to lead you astray and away from any treasure it guards; and Tommy Rawbones, a maniacal skeleton with tattered skin and too many teeth which particularly lies the taste of liars and children. Another mysterious denizen of the region is the ‘Low Tide Merchant’, which wanders the Barrier Islands at low tide, carrying an assortment of strange and useful items, that if he likes you, will let you purchase, such as an island map or ghost flintlock (one shot, kills anyone, but they return to haunt their killer!). Not all of the goods will truly benefit the purchaser, or in the case of spells, work quite as accurately as they are supposed to, so buyer beware when it comes to perusing the wares that he carries in his burlap sack.

Lastly, ‘Magic Items’ describes some six magical items particular to the Barrier Islands. These include ‘Sticking Chaw’, a chewing tobacco as black as tar with the stench of sulphur that when chewed makes the teeth black and creates a wad that can be spat at a distant target to encase and bind a target like a Web spell or a Raccoon Baculum, a very reliable love charm that enhances Charm effects which is made out of the phallic bone of a raccoon!

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is a thoroughly engaging fanzine, but it is not complete. There are a couple of issues that it does not address. For example, it uses the terms ‘Haint’ and ‘Root Doctor’, but it never explains what these are. In this way, it feels underwritten and waiting for more detail. It also feels underwritten in that the Game Master will need to develop the included ‘Island Crawl: An Adventure For LVLs 1-2’, especially given that it lacks hooks or objectives.

Physically, Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is very nicely done. It is fantastically illustrated and the cartography is very good.

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine was published the same year as Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying and it would actually make a fantastic setting for that roleplaying given that both have the Player Characters engage with the local folklore. In addition, two other roleplaying supplements have been published since that explore the folklore of the United States of America—Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game and Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse. Could either of them be extended out of the mountains and forests as far as the coast? Then again, Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine need not work with a fantasy Old School Renaissance retroclone. For example, Into the Odd would work very well with it, as would any Pirate-themed roleplaying game.

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is sadly the first and only issue. It is a pity, because it promises and hints at so much with an eerie mystery and salt-soaked mud flats just waiting for the tide to rush in. With no more issues to come, it is perhaps the Game Master’s task to do more for it with her own content than the publisher will.