[Fanzine Focus XXVII] RQ Adventures Fanzine Issue 1

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 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 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. As popular in the Old School Renaissance as the format is, not all fanzines are devoted to Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games—and in the nineties, many fanzines appeared dedicated to roleplaying games other than Dungeons & Dragons.

The world of Glorantha has had any number of fanzines dedicated to it over its forty year or so history, most notably, Wyrm’s Footnotes and Tales of the Reaching Moon. Published by John Castellucci, RQ Adventures Fanzine ran for six issues between 1993 and 1998, each issue containing scenarios written around a particular theme or location. Published in 1993, the inaugural issue of RQ Adventures Fanzine contains just the one scenario, ‘Escape from Duckland’, which the author and publisher had previously released as a standalone title. The scenario is set in 1621 ST in the kingdom of Sartar and sees a band of adventurers tasked with locating a small band of outlaw Ducks which has been struck down with the Red-Feather plague, a disease which fortunately only seems to affect Ducks and seems to be directly related to the intensity of the Red Moon in the sky. The only healer known to be capable of curing this disease resides by the mouth of the Marzeel River where it flows into the Mirrorsea Bay, many days travel away in the Holy Country. The adventurers must make their way to Apple Lane where they can find a guide, the famed Quackjohn, and then travel south and west into the Delecti Marsh to locate the stricken ducks, and from there escort them south to the border between Sartar and Esrolia. They will need to take some care, as not only are the Ducks outlaws and have a price on their heads (or beaks), but the infamous proclamation issued by General Fazzur Wideread, blaming the Ducks for the 1613 ST rebellion led by Kallyr Starbrow and placing a bounty of one year’s Imperial taxes for every Duck head/bill turned over to the provincial Lunar government is still in effect.

The scenario proper begins in Apple Lane. After they have dealt with a would-be Lunar tax collector and his bully boys on the make, the adventurers can sneak their guide out of the village and west to Runegate, but to avoid Dragonewt entanglements they are diverted south along Starfire Ridge and then over into Greydog territory. There are a couple of nasty encounters along the way—a band of Broo and horde of the undead which comes swarming up out of Upland Marsh. After both locating and placating the refugee ducks, the adventurers can begin their long journey south. There are some more nasty encounters along the way, a band of mercenary Tusk Riders which has decided to go Duck hunting—and have some horrid plans for any they catch, and there is one last attack by a threat encountered earlier. Not all of the encounters are quite so confrontational, an old man on Starfire Ridge proves to be good company and potentially helpful in speeding their journey, and there are dinosaurs to be found along the way, who might prove to be nuisances, or they might actually be helpful.

Consisting of ten encounters, ‘Escape from Duckland’ is a linear scenario, but then it is designed to be a journey. In terms of framing, being set in 1621 ST and thus written around elements of the Lunar occupation, it would be challenging for the Game Master to set the scenario elsewhere—or else when. That said, it could be adjusted to a few years earlier, but only few as they have to be after the Lunar proclamation on Ducks. This does not mean that the scenario could not be run today despite its strict time period. Since it takes place following the destruction of Gringle’s Pawn Shop in Apple Lane, it could be run as a flashback for Player Characters being run in the current timeline of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, especially if they have played through the events of Apple Lane at the very start of their careers. If so, then the old man they encounter on the Starfire Ridge early in the scenario could easily be the shaman they would have run into at the beginning of ‘The Broken Tower’ from the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure. Alternatively, it could be run as part of The Company of the Dragon campaign which takes place during this period.

Mechanically, ‘Escape from Duckland’ is written for use with Avalon Hill’s RuneQuest III—as would all six issues of RQ Adventures Fanzine would be. The differences between those rules and the previous and subsequent rules for RuneQuest are relatively minor, such that ‘Escape from Duckland’ can be run with relatively few changes. In terms of support it is suggested that the Game Master be familiar with Apple Lane, Snakepipe Hollow, King of Sartar, and Gods of Glorantha. Were ‘Escape from Duckland’ be run today, The RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack would be useful for information about Apple Lane, and the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary and The Red Book of Magic will be useful for details on the various creatures and magics encountered as part of the scenario, but otherwise it is easy to set up and run. An experienced Game Master would have no problem running the scenario.

‘Escape from Duckland’ is supported with a total of eight pre-generated adventurers. Ranging from a young and headstrong Orlanthi and a cold, hard Tarsh Exile to a peaceful centaur from Beast Valley to a bachelor of the Newtling race, they run the gamut of the standard Gloranthan types to the slightly odd, even weird. The scenario suggests the type of player each is suitable for and each is given a full page, including stats and nicely done background briefing. It also includes a copy of the Lunar proclamation on Ducks, some reasonable maps, and an enjoyable write-up of both Hueymakt Deathdrake, Druulz God of Death & War and the Indroduck Greydog subcult. Plus there are full stats for all of the creatures and monsters encountered in the scenario.

Physically, RQ Adventures Fanzine Issue 1 is scrappily presented. It is very far from unreadable, but it does need another edit and the art is rough. The maps are decent though. Another issue is the tone, that taken with the Ducks, which involves more than a few puns. Of course, ‘Escape from Duckland’ is very much a case of ‘Your Glorantha May Vary’ and another Game Master will have a different approach. The scenario includes a lot of flavour and detail about the various locations it visits over the course of its journey and each of the NPCs is decently done as well.

RQ Adventures Fanzine Issue 1 is rough around the edges, but ‘Escape from Duckland’ is decently serviceable and playable, taking the Player Characters on a challenging and nicely described tour of southern Sartar. For a modern campaign and a scenario of its vintage, ‘Escape from Duckland’ is a far more flexible scenario than at first seems.

[Nice Dice?] Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set

When we sit down to roleplay, the one thing we invariably have in front of us is a set of dice. We have been using dice in roleplaying for as long as we have been roleplaying and just about everyone who games has their own set. They are of course tools, tools that we use to determine the outcomes of our character’s actions. Yet we come to invest our hopes and fears in our dice as we play and we place our characters in increasingly perilous situations, but this degree of investment and how it manifests varies from player to player. One player might hold on to one set of dice which he uses for every game he plays, another might build a set of dice he only uses for one character, one player might dump one set of dice and replace it with another due to poor results or character death, and another may simply collect dice. There is an amazing array of dice available in a variety of styles and materials—metals, gemstones, wood, and even moose poop. Then there are dice sets for different games. In some cases, particular dice are required to play particular games. For example, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire from Fantasy Flight Games requires its own set of dice, as does Fvlminata: Armed with Lightning with its ‘Talia’ or knucklebone dice and Free League Publishing’s ‘Year Zero Engine’ family of games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days or the more recent Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

In most other cases, publishers manufacture dice for their roleplaying games which are absolutely not required to play their games. If such dice are not required, then what do they add? They certainly do not add to the game itself in terms of play, any more than any other set of dice a player might have in his collection. What they enforce is brand identity, so that if a player has a set of Call of Cthulhu dice when playing Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or a set of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha dice for playing RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, they add to the idea that the players are playing those games, encouraging a degree of immersion, but without adding anything directly to that play.

Released by The Evergreen Burrow following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is a complete set of polyhedral dice. The standard set that we have been gaming with for over forty years. So a four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, twelve-sided, and twenty-sided die, plus two ten-sided dice for percentile rolls, thus everything that a roleplayer will need to play a wide variety of roleplaying games, from Dungeons & Dragons to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. What sets these dice apart from any set of dice is the fact that each die is of clear resin and each one contains a single, yellow, rubber duck. In order to accommodate these ducks, the dice in the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is larger than the ordinary set of dice. Each one is 26 mm across, which means that they feel bigger in the hand and they are easier to read with consequently larger numbers. Only the four-sided die is different. It is not big enough to be home to a rubber duck, so instead its numbers are replaced with symbols. The one with a duck and the other numbers with the webbed feet that your friendly, cute rubber duck does not actually have.

So why ‘duck dice’? There is no roleplaying game which focuses entirely on ducks, and of course, the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set can be used with innumerable roleplaying games, so there is no obvious brand identity that these dice could be enforcing. Except… there is always Glorantha, and famously (infamously?) Glorantha has Ducks. Anthropomorphic Ducks. Complete with their own culture and beliefs which you can play and encounter as NPCs. So if you are playing a Duck in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha or 13th Age Glorantha and you bring these dice to the table, you are not only enforcing the fact that these dice are yours, you are enforcing the fact that you are playing a Duck. Duck Dice for your Duck character.

Then there is the fact that ducks are cute. Especially rubber ducks. They are yellow, bright, and cheery. Therefore, a rubber duck dice set is, by extension, also cute. Plus, you get to roll them. How often do you get to see tumbling rubber ducks? At your table? Then, they come with a bathtub display. A clear, plastic freestanding bathtub in classic Victorian style. Which means you have somewhere to store them—on the table during the game and on the shelf after the game.

Ultimately though, like so many sets of dice, the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is completely and utterly unnecessary. If a roleplayer already has a set of polyhedral dice, arguably, she does not need another. Roleplayers are roleplayers though, and a great many of them like having more dice, different dice, and themed dice, like the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set. And yet, these dice are fun, they are silly, and they are cute, and if you have a set, there can be no doubt that the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is your set, that they are your dice.

Jonstown Jottings #4: Yossarian’s Duck Bandits!

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the  Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford's mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?

Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players is a short one-shot with pre-generated players character Ducks.

It is a thirty-six page, full colour, 7.76 MB PDF.

Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! is well presented, nicely illustrated in a cartoonish style, and the maps are good.

Where is it set?

Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is set in Sartar in Dragon Pass. The default location is 32 km north of Apple Lane in the lands of the Dinacoli, but it can be shifted to any location on the fringes between civilised lands and the wilderness.

Who do you play?

Duck bandits. Or rather, Ducks who through misfortune and circumstance have turned to a life of banditry. Five pre-generated Ducks are included ready to play. They consist of two Odayla-worshipping Hunter brothers, an Uleria-worshipping ex-courtesan, a Humakt initiate, and an Orlanth initiate.

What do you need?

Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! can be run just using RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. The Glorantha Bestiary may be useful for information on Ducks and veteran Gloranthophiles may want to refer to the scenario ‘The Money Tree’ from RuneQuest, Third Edition for more information about the primary NPC in Yossarian’s Duck Bandits!

What do you get?

Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is a tragi-comic affair about five Ducks who have been forced to turn to a life of crime and are about to commit their first act of banditry. This does not go quite as well as planned—for mostly tragic, comic reasons—but the Ducks do learn the whereabouts of even greater treasure. Unfortunately that involves a trek up a mountain and down again, a tight squeeze, some hungry, hungry trolls, and a ‘river rapids ride’ with Ducks!

Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is in part intended to be played for comedy, played out against a very big threat, but there is a lot of flavour and nuance to the scenario which stems in part from the interplay of the pre-generated Ducks and their relationships. This should drive the events of the scenario as much as its fairly simple plot, and should also provide plenty of opportunity for some good roleplaying too. Although the outcome of the scenario is not set in stone, there is a good chance that the player characters will come out of it heroes—after all, they are bandits more by circumstance rather than choice—and the authors do provide several adventure seeds should the Game Master want to continue with the further adventures of Yossarian’s Duck Bandits.

Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is about the right length to be run as a convention scenario and so could be run in a four-hour session. No advice is given to that end, but an experienced convention Game Master should have no issues with running the scenario.

Is it worth your time?

Yes. Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players is a fun, exciting affair, easy to run as a one shot (or convention) scenario which demonstrates one of the odder aspects of Glorantha. Duck fans will love this, as will fans of the original ‘The Money Tree’ scenario, and they will also want a sequel,which the scenario deserves.

No. Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players involves Ducks and some people find Ducks silly.

Maybe. Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players involves Ducks and some people find Ducks silly, but there is plenty of tragedy in the scenario to counterpoint the silliness—and at the very least, it is just a one-shot. 

Symbaroum's Challenge

After a supplement, four scenario anthologies, and three parts of a campaign, let alone a core rulebook, it is surprising that the one thing that Symbaroum does not have and that is a monster book or bestiary. That changes with the publication of the Monster Codex. Published by Swedish publisher, Free League following a successful Kickstarter campaign—and distributed in English by Modiphius Entertainment—it presents thirty new threats, numerous old threats in an easy to reference section, new categories of flora and fauna, guidelines for creating new creatures and balanced combat challenges, and more for the near-Dark Ages fantasy roleplaying game. The Monster Codex is not just a monster book, but a book about making monsters, hunting monsters, and more.

To use the Monster Codex, the Game Master will need access to the Symbaroum core rulebook and the Advanced Player Guide. The book itself is divided into three sections. More than half of the bestiary is taken up by the first section, ‘Hordes of Eternal Night’. Named for work of the same title by the famous monster scholar and black cloak, Father Almagast, it describes just twenty-seven of the creatures described in that tome, but all with certain degree of verisimilitude. To that end, each entry draws from a letter, note, report, transcript of an interrogation, and the like to provide an in-world description, followed by information about the creature’s place in Symbaroum, and an adventure set-up, essentially a plot hook. The monster’s stats are almost an afterthought. For example, the Death Prince are undead warriors and would-be sovereigns who jealously crave power and possession of what was theirs when they were alive. Each was once a Death Lord, a dead body raised to life once again in a ritual which blackens and burns its flesh and bones into a suit of armour and binds them to a sorcerer. Once a Death Lord’s master dies, the now Death Prince is free to pursue his own ambitions. The entry’s story describes how a notary to Queen Korinthia encountered a loquacious bard and his mistress, a noble knight who remained silent and in her rune-engraved armour despite the heat and later fearsome blows in combat with bandits. The notary goes on to describe realising that this was slightly odd, only have it confirmed that the bard was discovered to be a sorcerer and that the knight was known to have died years before, and that since, the knight was acting on her after the death of her master, who had been posing as the bard. The entry lists known Death Princes and includes False Life, a ritual which makes the undead appear as they did in life the following day, whilst the adventure set-up sees the player characters come to a castle or estate as a Death Prince attempts to take it from within from the current owners who betrayed her family. 

Each of the entries is typically four pages in length and as well as the in-game piece of background or ephemera, comes with an excellent illustration—but then you would expect nothing less from a supplement for Symbaroum. They include the small, like the Ettermites, which swarm and bite, but which reside in pillars of a precious gemstone-like building material known as Ettercopal, which attracts treasure hunters. Ettermites can be temporarily put to sleep with a rare elixir known as Etter Sleep, giving treasure hunters just enough to harvest the Ettercopal before the creatures awaken and form a deadly, clattering swarm. They include the huge, like the Colossi, the legendary mounts of the Witches that are massive carnivores that appear to be wood as much as flesh. Many come with elements beyond their just being a threat. So the shapeshifting Bestiaals can actually be taken as a challenging player character Race, as can the Illgoblins, former Goblins who have entered pacts in order to live beyond their short lives; King Toads are amphibians which grow large enough to swallow small boats, but whose legs are a delicacy amongst the Ambrian elite; and Glimmers are undead spirits which appear from the gleam of light on metal, but when killed their souls can trapped in blood red amulet whose glimmering rays of light can distract opponents in combat when worn. There is a good range of threats here for the Game Master to use against her players’ characters, many of them quite nasty and sure to provide memorable encounters. The adventure set-ups do feel a little similar in places, but there are some interesting ideas amongst the mix.

The second section, ‘Monsters & Adversaries’ is much more straightforward and has a more immediately obvious use. It consists of some eighty or so entries, each a standard NPC, monster, or creature, either belonging to a particular organisation or found in a terrain or location type. These range from Champions of Prios, like Experienced Templars and Liturgs, and Artifact Crafters and Panzer Alchemists of the Ordo Magica to mountain’s Snow Wraith and Stone boar and the Pale Crawlers and Rakals of the Underworld. Each consists of a set of stats and a thumbnail description, all quick and easy to use, ready for the Game Master to add character wherever the player characters happen to be.

The last and smallest section of the Monster Codex is ‘Rules & Guidelines’. This covers a variety of different aspects of the rules as they relate to monsters and creatures. To Abominations, Beast, Cultural Beings, and Undead it adds Flora and Phenomena to increase the number of monster categories from one to six, whilst adding thirty-seven new Monstrous traits such as Bloodlust and Wrecker, listing them alongside those given in the Symbaroum core rulebook. Alongside the Infectious and Infestation Traits, it also adds rules for handling diseases in Symbaroum. These are workable enough, but although a few diseases are named, their individual symptoms are not, so the Game Master will have to be creative here. As well as guidelines for creating monsters, the section also expands upon the core rules by providing a more detailed guide to creating balanced combat encounters by scaling both their competence and their scope to the player characters. So limited adventures for beginning player characters, local adventures for experienced characters, regional adventures for veterans, and so on. This is a really useful section for the Game Master, and comes with a list of quick-pick preset of encounters built from the Symbaroum core rulebook and the Monster Codex. 

The penultimate article in the Monster Codex is a discussion of the campaign possibilities that it suggests—the Monster Chronicle, that is, monster hunting. What lies underneath the canopy of the Davokar forest, and of course underneath that, has long been a source of fascination for the monster and treasure hunters and scholars of the kingdom of Ambria, as well as the things that come out of them. This fascination means that there is money to be made from monster hunting, whether that is as trophy hunters, monster explorers—for the advancement of knowledge and science, or simply as pest control, dealing with monstrous threats to towns and outposts. Monsters are also wanted for the arena in Thistlehold, nobles want certain delicacies from the particular creatures, and parts are also in demand by alchemists, physicians, artificiers, and so on. Taking the Game Master through the four phases of monster hunting—preparations, tracking, the confrontation, and the journey back—this is an excellent companion to the monster entries earlier in the book, in some cases working with some of the adventure set-ups also.

Rounding out the Monster Codex is a semi-serious new player character race, the Andrik. These are the descendants of ducks deformed by dark powers into caricatures of cultural beings and consequently, there is a stigma attached to the Andrik. Thus they have the Pariah trait! They also have Paws and poor dexterity, but they have a knack for provoking others. The Andrik are playable, but they are slightly silly and yes, of course, they are an April Fools joke, but a knowing one to the appearance of Ducks in the late Greg Stafford’s Glorantha. They are optional though.

Physically, this being a book from Free League and for Symbaroum, there can be no doubt that the Monster Codex is going to be a fine-looking book—and it is. The layout for the most part clean and tidy, but the first section with the new monsters is perhaps a little cluttered with the letters and notes and so on, which does make its content not quite as easy to read or reference. Nevertheless,  the artwork is fantastic. 

The Monster Codex could have just been two hundred pages of monsters and that would have given the Game Master some fifty or so new creatures to bring to her campaign. Which would have been fine, but perhaps not as interesting, for the Monster Codex does more than just provide a list of monsters and creatures. Instead, by focusing on fewer monsters, it gives room for the authors to tell the Game Master more about them and to place them in setting of Symbaroum. It also does not overwhelm the Game Master with having too many monsters to choose from. Then it provides a ready selection of NPCs and other threats, useful rather than interesting. Lastly, with the advice and new rules, it brings everything else in the book together, helping the Game Master use the rest of the content—and use it in a particular way. That is to create and build challenges for her players and their characters, whether that is on the new monster hunting campaign set-up. As much a challenge reference book as a monster sourcebook, the Monster Codex adds more to a Symbaroum campaign than a simple bestiary would.