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 Dungeon Master and her 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. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, such as Crawl! and Crawling Under a Broken Moon. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is the aforementioned Crawling Under A Broken Moon.
The setting has, of course, gone on to be presented in more detail in The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, now distributed by Goodman Games. The setting itself is a world brought about after a rogue object from deep space passed between the Earth and the Moon and ripped apart time and space, leaving behind a planet which would recover, but leave its inhabitants ruled by savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science.
The entries begin with two sets of tables really designed to provide scenario hooks as much as flavour. Thus an entry for ‘N is for New Vistas’ reads “You come across a truly enormous tree that has various bits of different large buildings jutting out of it. Many of them seem to still have electricity as the tree glitters with lights. A community of some sort has built catwalks between the buildings and calls this place home.”, whilst ‘O is for Old Ruins’, an entry reads “The broken remains of four skyscrapers melted together by heat and atomic power. Monsters and giant spiders haunt the place and tons of ancient equipment still in operate inside.” The same goes for ‘Q is for Quantum portals’, only weird, like “...a blue-black sun hangs in the sky and weird plant mutants herd 1d24 near-humans into huge copper colored cages. A large meat grinder-like processing plant is nearby and the sound of suffering echoes across the landscape. A strange temple structure holds 1d8 levels of bizarre dungeon structures filled with weird monsters. It might be a zoo or something far stranger.”
As well as places to go, there are people to met. The Player Characters can find something to buy from ‘P is for Peddlers’, who might have “Two dozen cans of food, all in pristine condition but the labels are quite faded. Could be pork and beans, could be fruit cocktail, who knows? Vendor is looking to move them in a hurry.” or be “A shady looking robot with a push cart selling various pharmaceuticals at cheap prices. It seems too good to be true but 1d5 former customers will swear the medicines are good if any inquiries are made.” A slightly more complex table, requiring multiple rolls of a thirty-sided die enables the Judge to generate places to stop and stay in ‘N is for New Vistas’ . This is not the most complex table in the issue. The most complex table in the issue is ‘W is for Weather of the Wastes’ which provides a complete means of creating weather in Umerica and Urth, all the way up to Freak Storms, which have their own table, whose entries include “Bloated gelatinous clouds discharge a downpour of living slime fragments. Every hour that the storm rages, 1d5-1 Primeval Slimes, each of 1d3 HD in size, (DCC RPG, pg 423) will reform from the fragments in each acre the storm covers.” and “Swirling Purple clouds unleash a downpour of fish, crustaceans, and amphibians upon the area covered by the storm. Unprotected people, beasts, and structures will suffer damage from the fleshy torrent. The bounty that falls is fully edible and untainted but will quickly begin to rot (goes bad in 5d30 minutes) unless properly stored. Areas not cleared of the rotten mess will have a 20% per day to attract large scavenger type beasts for the next week.”
Since the setting of Umerica and Urth is a post-apocalyptic one, the ‘S is for Scavenging’ table with entries that include “Whether it turns out to be just a useless pastime or opens a door to another realm, this six-colored glowing puzzle cube beckons to be solved.”, “2d3 plastic eggs containing sheer pantyhose. If nothing else you’ll look great at the tavern this weekend. And your next hold-up will be memorially fashionable.”, and “A complete magician’s kit with top hat, cape and wand. Mystify your friends with over 250 tricks, from guessing your card, shoving a nail through a piece of glass, spot the ball under the cup and the ever famous, “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.””. These are all very entertaining, and perhaps of any of the tables in this issue or the previous one, this is all but mandatory since a major aspect of play is scavenging for things from the past. That said, a whole issue of Crawling Under A Broken Moon could have been devoted to items to be scavenged and everybody would have been happy with it.
Towards the end of the issue, the tables get a little weirder and out of this world. ‘U is for UFOs’ and ‘X is for Xenotech’ cover potential extraterrestrial encounters and the devices that might get left behind following such encounters. However, the most interesting table is ‘Y is for Yestermen (or “Who is in that Cryochamber?”)’, which details the origins of ‘Yestermen’. Each one is grown in a Seeder, a genetic depository which when supplied with raw materials creates robot servitors, then life, and lastly the means to support the wholly new ‘humans’ known as ‘Yestermen’. Originally Seeders were a scientific experiment, then a national and military necessity if a nature is to survive, and then a commercial venture. After that? Who knows? So Yestermen of any Seeder can be of any culture from before the apocalypse and of any persuasion, making any encounter with them more random than normal! They could also be used as the background certain Player Character types, as yet not exposed to the wider damaged world of Urth. Lastly, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 9 includes the ‘B is also for Bonus Table! Post-Apocalyptic Lucky Roll Table’, which replaces the ‘Table 1-2: Luck Score’ in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game core rulebook, specifically for the Umerica setting.
Physically, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 9 is as serviceably presented and as a little rough around the edges as the other fanzines in the line. Of course, the problem with Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 9 is that much of its contents have been represented to a more professional standard in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, so it has been superseded and superseded by a cleaner, slicker presentation of the material.
Like the previous issue, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 9 is by nature bitty and disparate with its numerous different entries and writeups. It is not an issue to read through from end to end, but to consult from time to time in search of something that will make a Judge’s game just that little bit more interesting and more exciting, which all of its entries have the ability to do. Further, because there really is no specific setting detail given in its various tables, the contents of Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 9 will work with a lot of other post apocalyptic roleplaying games and not just the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic.
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