Magazine Madness #45: Knock! #4

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Published in January, 2024 by The Merry Mushmen, the fourth issue of Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac comes as jam-packed as the previous issues. There is content drawn from blogs and content that is wholly new, there are new rules and new ways of doing old things, there are monsters and NPCs, there are spells and spellcasting, there are swords and scenarios, and there are thought pieces and threads that run through the issue. There is just about anything and everything in the issue that a reader with any interest in the Old School Renaissance might want to read about. There is even a ten-page section at the end of the issue called ‘Welcome to the OSR’ that explores how various authors encouraged Old School Renaissance style play at their table. (Despite the title, the section is not intended as an introduction to the Old School Renaissance, but the issue’s editorial does give pointers to that.) Along the way to that last section, there is plenty of art, some of it new, some of it in the public domain, some drawn from unexpected sources (Vincent Price makes a surprising appearance), and honestly, just almost too much stuff, too much to read, too much to use, too much to think about. Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4 really does pack a lot into its two-hundred-and-ten-pages.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the content in Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4 begins with the dust jacket which contains with ‘The Lost City Sandbox’, Eric Nieudan’s homage to Tom Moldvey’s B4 The Lost City, the classic scenario for Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Along with the cover, this is a great start to the issue which does explore several themes. The first of these draws upon the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien upon the hobby. Josh McCrowell develops its ideas into two articles. The first is ‘The Hobbit as a Setting’ which asks, “What if The Hobbit was the only inspiration for roleplaying?”, whilst the second, ‘In search of better travel rules’ looks at where travel rules go wrong and how they might be improved for the Old School Renaissance. The first examines some of the elements of The Hobbit not normally seen in roleplaying, such as song do a lot of work—means to remember, appeals to authority, taunts, and more—and the importance of journeys means that Experience Points should be earned from them. There are new rule suggestions for each aspect like spending Experience Points to name yourself or an item following a critical success, to add both a story and a bonus to play, and that animals can speak their own language. There is even the observation that The Hobbit alludes to the existence of guns in Middle-earth! The second article expands upon the point about travel in the first, pointing out its potential mishaps if handled poorly and offering solutions to those problems. The second article can be seen as adjunct of the first, but can be used also be used in general Old School Renaissance too, not just one directly drawn from The Hobbit. Nevertheless, the first article could be the basis for a mini-roleplaying game and campaign all of its own.

A second theme will be more familiar; the design of adventures (and dungeons). They lead off with Idiomdrottning presenting her ‘BLORB Principles’, a preparation-focused, no-plot preparation, playstyle. The aim is to have the elements to place and engage the players and their characters with, but not plots, and then advice on how to develop and add to those elements in play. Then designer Chris McDowall takes a look at them in ‘Patching’ and develops them further to look at the more immediate effects of encountering something in play that the Game Master did not prepare for as part of her preparation. McDowall suggests ways of improvising a fix in play rather than leaving it for subsequent preparation. In some ways, the advice is obvious, but the second article complements the first and together they make a thought-provoking pair.

The theme is further explored by a trio of articles by Joseph Manola. ‘Elements of Incongruity’ suggests adding unexpected elements alongside elements, including traits, individuals, and nature, and ‘Localism – The Adventure as Microclimate’ decries the genericism in modern Dungeons & Dragons and suggests that the Game Master focus on small regions and populate with unique, even singular monsters and perhaps with races that are not found elsewhere, the aim being to make them memorable. Good solid advice and both backed up by examples, but Manola’s ‘Romantic Fantasy and OSR D&D’ takes Dungeons & Dragons in another direction. At the heart of the article, is the simple idea that not every solution has to be resolved with violence and its shows a number of ways in which the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons—the reaction system, the morale system, the combat system, and the retainers system—can be all used to support that. The result is a game that focuses on relationship-building and non-violent forms of resolving conflict and getting rewarded for it.

Since Knock! #4 is for the Old School Renaissance, there are articles aplenty on magic, monsters, and treasure. Some of these are specific, some are not. The specific includes a complete magic system in ‘d200 Power Words of Sorcery!’, inspired by a gamebook from the eighties, but feeling very much like the television series Knightmare; the ‘Menagerie’ gives full stats and details for creatures such as Zedeck Siew’s Mob Demon, Danilo Moretti’s Mirror Mare, and James V. West’s Raptor Knight as well as Islayre d’Argohl gives four fully detailed villains; and a selection of swords awaiting stats in Letty Wilson’s ‘The Sword Librarian’. The less specific includes Jens Turesson’s weird ‘Telephone Pictionary Game as Spell Research’, which fortunately is completely untested; a ‘4d8 Golem Generator’ by Chance Dudhack; and Glynn Seal’s complete to what happens following the ‘Desecration’ of a grave for its goods and treasure. There is even a little crossover by Eric Nieudan. So, his ‘Dragons Should Be Unique!’ gives the means to create dragons from alignment, age, and element to personality, hoard, and quirk, whilst the accompanying ‘The never-ending saga of the Wyrm’ shows how it works with a complete example.

Each issue of Knock! always includes some new Classes with ‘Retinue of Rogues’ and this issue is no exception. Joseph Manola’s ‘The Ghoul Blooded’ lets a player create a character who gets more Ghoulish as he goes up in Levels, from having an acute sense of smell and very tough fingernails to learning all the benefits of cannibal cookery and tunnelling through the ground, and even though he will become an unliving monster, he is not undead! Manola follows this with ‘The Inquisitor’, who can pass judgements on others for various effects, and is an interesting variant upon the Cleric Class. Pierre Vagneur-Jones also details two new Classes. ‘The Cynocephasus’ is a dog-headed human who may be born that way or cursed and may, through good fortune, transform into a full human and take Levels in another Class. It is inspired the medieval legend of St. Christopher. ‘The Skiapod’ draws from the writings of Pliny the Elder to present a very agile one-legged human. They prefer to kick with their feet rather than use weapons, but there are no details to reflect this. These second two Classes are less useful than the first two and ‘The Skiapod’ is underwritten in comparison to ‘The Cynocephasus’.

Penultimately, Knock! #4 gives four short adventures in ‘Extraordinary Excursions’. Numbered Work’s ‘Swamp Renewal’ involves the Player Characters in an ecological battle between a wizard who is using golems to dig out peat in a swamp and a Lizardfolk Druid who wants him stopped. The scenario does not give a set ending, so it will be entirely down to the players, but there are consequences to whatever side the Player Characters choose. ‘Grandma’s Cottage, Inc. and Gift Shoppe’ by Glenn Robinson has a cosy feel until it does not as the Player Characters go in search of a lot of missing orphans. When the king puts out the call for the softest of feathers for his bed, the Player Characters are off in search of the softest feathers in the land only to be found on the Giant Arboreal Goose in Martin Orchard’s ‘A Fistful of Feathers’. A cross between a race—there are rival groups—and a pointcrawl, this is an entertaining scenario. Lastly, ‘The Mountain Hall of the Iron Witch’ by Rosie Grey is written for The Merry Mushmen’s CRACK!, but is easily adapted to the rules of the Game Master’s choice. The Player Characters find themselves shackled and forced to work in the Iron Witch’s mines and have to escape. This is a fun campaign starter. In fact, all four scenarios are easily adapted and would work with a number of different roleplaying games.

Lastly, Knock! #4 rounds out the issue with ‘Welcome to the OSR’. Here the issue explores some of the responses to the attempt by Wizards of the Coast to rewrite the terms of the Open Game Licence. The aim here is for the members of Old School Renaissance hobby to show this section to players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and point them in the direction of the possibilities in the different play style. There is discussion too of several Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition-retroclone hybrids. For the most part, this preaching to the choir, but the first article, ‘Back to the Future (of D&Deering)’ by Daniel Norton gives a good comparison between the play styles and why a player might want to switch.

Physically Knock! #4 is impressively bright and breezy, just as with the previous three issues. The layout is cluttered in places and the text a little too busy, but on the whole, it is clear that a lot of attention has been paid to the layout. It needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is good and the cartography excellent.

The honest truth is that the Game Master is never going to use everything in the pages of Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4. There is just too much. It is an embarrassment of riches. However, it gives the reader a lot of things to choose from and lots of ideas to think about. It is an absolute treasure trove of content for the Old School Renaissance and with so many contributors from the hobby, Knock! may well serve as a candidate for a focal point for the Old School Renaissance hobby. The reader could spend hours surfing the Internet for similar ideas and other content in Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4, or he could just get the issue and have it all at his fingertips in another literally solid issue of the magazine.

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An unboxing of Knock! #4 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac can be viewed here.