Goodman Games Gen Con Annual IX

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, community content, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo in 2019, the first to be reviewed was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, a little patience and a copy of the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book was located and reviewed, so since 2021, normal order has been resumed with the Goodman Games Gen Con 2016 Program Book, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2017 Program Book, and Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston.

With both Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, the series had begun to chart a new direction. Each volume would contain a mix of support for the various RPGs published by Goodman Games and the content recognising the Goodman Games community, but the major feature of each volume would be a tournament scenario, staged the previous year at Gen Con. Unfortunately, events caught up with the eighth entry in the series, intending to highlight the presence of Goodman Games at Gen Gen in 2020, which would cancel Gen Con and every other event as well as face-to-face gaming. It meant that Goodman games had to adapt and adapts its by now traditional Gen Con Program Guide. The result was Goodman Games Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not be Named, a slimmer affair that would alter the direction of the series as whole and also see the traditional Gen Con Program Guide becoming a ‘Yearbook’ instead.

The Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook also marked the twentieth anniversary of Goodman Games, celebrating it with a cover that referenced numerous releases and events from the publisher’s history. The issue proper opens with a moment or two for reflection upon the part of Michael Curtis and Harley Stroh, looking back at how Goodman Games was forced to change as a result of the pandemic and how through online contact and play, the community came together like never before and kept gaming, all before diving into the gaming content of the yearbook. This is a pattern repeated later in the book by Brendan LaSalle and Chris Doyle. Where the previous three talk about Dungeon Crawl Classics, the latter focuses on the development of Dungeon Denizens, Goodman Games’ bestiary for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, as well titles in the ‘Original Adventures Reincarnated’ series, such as The Temple of Elemental Evil and Dark Tower.

As with the previous Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, what the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook also offers is a tournament scenario, though to be fair, it is more tournament than scenario. ‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ by Harley Stroh is a winner takes all series of arena ‘battle royale’-style battles that take place on a ziggurat deep underground to the amusement of foul Aghartan slave lords. Everyone roleplays a Warrior, First Level at the beginning, but who will acquire more Levels as he survives more rounds, but always begins a round armed only with a club. His aim is to survive. To do this, he can search corpse mounds for better equipment, gain strange boons from touching the Malachite Crystals which contain an aged and withered sage or wizard, take control of the ballistae mounted on the ziggurat, and so on. Once their characters have all acted in a round, the players get to decide what action the Slave Lords take, which might be to “Release the man-bats!” or command “Forward, feasters of flesh!”. The latter is important because the Player Characters have been held captive for quite some time and been fed on a diet of vile gruel, which consists of either mushrooms or mushrooms and the flesh of their dead comrades. Those Player Characters who turned cannibal get more Hit Points, but are in danger of falling under the influence of the slave lords during the battle.

‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ details and illustrates in full colour the various parts of the tournament and suggests how it might be used in campaign play. One way would be to tie it into the setting of Lost Agharta, as detailed in Dungeon Crawl Classics #91: Journey to the Centre of Áereth and then Dungeon Crawl Classics #91.1: The Lost City of Barako and Dungeon Crawl Classics #91.2: Lairs of Lost Agharta. There are also notes on how the tournament was run and who the winners were. There is a certain tongue in cheek battling charm to this, a way to run a tournament online which can then can also be run face-to-face.

Mike Bolam adds to the tournament with ‘Pits of Lost Agharta Variant Rules’ which suggests a way in which it could run as a board game and without a Judge, as well as setting it in an arena as in Dungeon Crawl Classics #84C: Escape from the Purple Planet from Dungeon Crawl Classics #84: Peril on the Purple Planet. It is an intriguing idea, though it would probably take almost as much time to set up as would running the proper tournament version.

There is a delightful sense of fun in the ever so bonkers ‘The ’Stashe Stash II: ’Stashe of the Titans!’ by Brendan LaSalle. This is a sequel to ‘The ‘Stache Stash: Magic Moustaches for DCC RPG’ from the DCC Annual Vol. 1 and presents yet more magical facial hair. These include ‘The Walrus or ‘The Ubermensch’, ‘The Handlebar’ or ‘The Rollie Fingers’, and even more hilariously, ‘The Hairy Mole’. They have odd magical powers like that of ‘The Antenna’ or ‘The Dali’ to cause any non-magical object to melt without any heat, to stop time whilst the bearer floats away, or catch an opponent in a time loop and so force him to repeat the action from the previous round. Amusingly, the modifier to the Saving Throw to shrug off this effect involves at least one cat. It is clear that both the author and the illustrator, Brad McDevitt, have had a lot of fun with this article.

‘Black Mountain Lights’ is a scenario for Second Level Player Characters for Dungeon Crawl Classics by Michael Curtis. It takes place in the Shudder Mountains, an Appalachian-style fantasy setting with elements of horror originally published as Dungeon Crawl Classics #83: The Chained Coffin. The Player Characters are staying as guests overnight at a remote farm during their travels when strange luminous figures creep out of the night, snatch up the farmer’s infant son, and carry him up the mountain. The Player Characters are implored to rescue the kidnapped boy, an attempt which takes them up the mountain where a witch is said to lurk. There is a dark threat to found up and, in the mountain, but it is not what the Player Characters may think. The scenario is a Shudder Mountains twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons-style set-up of goblins threatening the locals and can be played in a single session, so will work as a convention scenario. It is also easy to add to a Shudder Mountains-set campaign.

Although Goodman Games is best known for its content for its Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, but it publishes content for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as well. The support for it in the pages of The Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook includes entries from Dungeon Denizens, the bestiary that the publisher is just now funding on Kickstarter, a scenario, and a look at a Twitch channel, all by Chris Doyle. The scenario is ‘The Monastery of the Dawning Sun’, written for Fifteenth Level Player Characters for use with the version of Crypt of the Devil Lich for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition (there is also a version for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics). The scenario is designed to be played as a tournament and as a campaign play scenario, but the introduction to the scenario favours the former rather than the latter. ‘The Monastery of the Dawning Sun’ is designed to offer an alternative opening suited to campaign play. It provides a creepy location, containing ancient defences and signs of bloody violence and destruction, despoiled by evil and marked by hints as what lurks beyond in the ‘Crypt of the Devil Lich’, all ready for the Player Characters to discover its horrors.

‘What is Talking TSR?’ is show livestreamed on the Goodman Games Official Twitch channel. It introduces the backgrounds of the presenters Chris Doyle and Rick Maffei, who together get to highlight their favourite episodes and also provide an episode guide. The article highlights the move that Goodman Games has made into supporting its releases online as does the addition to the usual series of photographs taken at various conventions. Not just Gen Con 2021, the Goodman Games Road Crew, and other in-person events, but also on-line events such as Spawn of Cyclops Con and Empire of the Cyclops Con for lots of screenshots of Judges with their players. Further support for the Goodman Games community takes the form of ‘The Goodies’, the awards given for supporting and contributing to the community, plus there is a list of the winners of the ‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ tournament. Lastly, there is a gallery of the ‘Road Crew Stickers’ from the previous year.

Physically, the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook is well presented and easy to read. It does need an edit in places, but the artwork and the cartography are as good as you would expect for a Goodman Games release.

There is a certain sense of adjustment having been made with Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook after the Pandemic and its effect on the Goodman Games Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not be Named. The inclusion of online content alongside in-person content is more assured, even if that content is restrained and not as ambitious as that of Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, what the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook. The result is that the content is both easier to use as well as enjoyable as it tracks the move to a more normal existence than the year before.