[Fanzine Focus XL] Pamphlet of Pantheons

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 how 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.

Pamphlet of Pantheons: Guide to Creating Fantasy Myths and Religions is a systemless sourcebook designed for fantasy games in general, rather than a specific roleplaying game. Which means that it will work with many Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games. It would also work with Science Fiction settings too if there are cultures with polytheistic faiths. Released following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is designed and published by Gonzo History Project, better known as James Holloway, the host of the Monster Man podcast, who also published The Magonium Mine Murders.

The aim of the Pamphlet of Pantheons is to make the creation of a fantasy pantheon relatively simple and easy, whilst avoiding two pitfalls. One is avoid making them boring or irrelevant to either the setting or the Player Characters. In other words, they should not be boring and they should matter to the players and their characters. The other is to avoid unnecessary complexity. A richness of detail can be off-putting, Greg Stafford’s Glorantha of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and M.A.R. Barker’s Tékumel of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne being quoted as examples. Both are rich and complex, but requirement commitment to get the most out of them. What the fanzine offers to avoid both is a set of twenty-five tables which a Game Master can roll on and using the prompts provided build a relatively complete pantheon.

The first sixteen tables provide the divine archetypes that are the core of the pantheon. These include ‘Bestower of Plenty’, ‘Celestial Sovereign’, ‘Fruitful Earth’, ‘Hierarch of Hell’, ‘Laughing Rogue’, and more. As archetypes, it is easy to recognise gods from various real world (and even fantasy) pantheons, but the aim is for the Game Master to create her own rather than simulate another. The author admits that the archetypes do have a European (though he does reference middle eastern gods too) feel because that is where his influences come from, but that should not limit the imagination of the Game Master. Further tables define the look and feel of the gods, whether they look human or have fantastic features or are disembodied cosmic forces, what their signs of divinity are, which one is the head of the pantheon, what titles they bear, and what do the religions devoted to them look like? Every table has six entries and most also have little asides and thoughts that serve as further prompts for the Game Master to ponder.

The process of pantheon building involves rolling some dice and making a few choices. First is to decide on what archetypes will be in the pantheon, not all sixteen are needed, with eight being suggested as a good number. Having selected the gods for the pantheon, the Game Master rolls a complication for each, the pantheon’s aesthetic, adds a duplicate god or two (or combines them), adds secondary attributes and complications to the gods in the pantheon, and then rolls for minor gods, if needed, to cover very specific aspects of the setting. The pantheon is ready at this point, but to it, further rolls for temples, rituals, servitors, and treasures will define how the pantheon is perceived by its worshipers and how the religion is practised. All the results are noted down on the Pantheon Sheet included in the fanzine. With this done, what the Game Master does next is flesh out the details of her pantheon, making connections between its deities and so creating elements of its mythology. The prompts beneath many of the tables will help with this.

The process is simple and quick. Perhaps the most difficult part of the process is actually thinking up names for the goods themselves (though that can be eased with an online name generator). It helps that the author includes a fully worked out example, based on a livestream he hosted as part of the Kickstarter, with a filled in Pantheon Sheet. The simplicity of tables means that Pamphlet of Pantheons could be created as an online pantheon generator, but arguably that would be too easy and it would not avoid the first pitfall that the fanzine warns against, that is, making the religion and its gods boring, since what it avoids is the process itself which gives time for the Game Master to think about the pantheon and the relationships of the gods within it, building connections, areas of conflict (such as when there two or more gods with the purview for the same thing), and so on.

Physically, Pamphlet of Pantheons is clean and tidy, and lightly illustrated with public domain artwork, most of it small and all appropriately placed.

Pamphlet of Pantheons is an engaging little supplement, a simple set of prompts that direct a Game Master, with a few rolls, to not only create a complete pantheon, but to think how the pantheon works and is worshipped by a particular culture. In the process, she will create background to part of her campaign world and a religion that she understands and can impart to her players, and so bring her campaign world to life.

[Fanzine Focus XL] The Beholder Issue 5

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 how 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. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.

The Beholder was a British fanzine first published in April, 1979. Dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it ran to twenty-seven issues, the last being published in July, 1981. It was popular and would be awarded ‘Best Games Fanzine’ at the Games Day convention in 1980. After the final issue of The Beholder, the editors would go on to release a number of anthologies which collected content from the complete run of the fanzine such as Beholder Supplement Glossary of Magic, which collected many of the magical items which appeared in the fanzine and collated them into a series of tables for easy use by the Dungeon Master, and Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2, the first of several scenario anthologies.

The Beholder Issue No. 5 was probably published in August 1979, given that the fanzine was published monthly and on a regular basis throughout its run. The issue’s concerns are typical of the period for a fanzine devoted to Dungeons & Dragons—problems with different aspects of the roleplaying game and possible solutions, new monsters, new spells, an adventure, and so on. The editors—Michael Stoner and Guy Duke—implore readers to submit ides for the forthcoming monster issue, likely to be Issue 8 to coincide with Games Day V and note that, “In a few weeks the long-awaited DM’s Handbook will be on sale. Watch out for a review of it in issue 7. There is no doubt that it will have a large impact on the way many people play D&D , and will most probably alter several basic parts of the game. We hope to be able to “move with the times” and cater for the many new players who will be coming into D&D because of this (just as many started when the “Basic Rulebook” first appeared). However, if you still play “old style” D&D, don’t panic! We will try to ensure that articles are of use to everyone, from rank amateur to top-class pro.” Thus, the issue comes at a point when there is a definite shift in the hobby from Dungeons & Dragons and Basic Dungeons & Dragons to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a split that would mark the first of the edition wars that followed over the years. This split then will not be as sharp since mechanically the similarities between the two really are very strong.

The issue’s content opens with ‘View Point: Specialised Clerics Are More Interesting’ [sic] by John Norris. His viewpoint is that the Cleric Class as presented is unsatisfying and vague, calling Gygax’s design simplistic and the only thing that distinguishes one Cleric from another is the plain and boring Alignment system. He suggests that real clerics have “…[A]ll sorts of interesting foibles, some of which stem from the particular tenets of their various faiths and others which seem to be a kind of professional “occupational hazard” of clergy in the society to which they belong.” The article highlights one of the longstanding and oft-addressed complaints about the roleplaying game, in that Clerics are depicted as a holy warrior a la the Crusades, when in the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons, Christianity was not the faith of choice and there were plenty of other options. The solution is typically to design pantheons with gods that grant different spells and demand different tenets and the article more or less suggests that with a detailed example of a ‘Subclass’. This is ‘The Way of Anubis’, which believes that it is the proper doom of all living things to die and that it is wrong to interfere with the dead, especially via resurrection. There is some divide in the faith too, between those that believe that the process should not be interfered with and those that believe its process should be hurried. In game terms, Clerics of the Way of Anubis better turn and dispel the undead and they cast Lay Undead better and more effectively than the standard Animate Dead spell. Counter to this, Clerics of the Way of Anubis do not use healing magic and are opposed to its use, even seeking to reverse the effects of such magic if used! Clerics of the Way of Anubis also seek to kill anyone who has been resurrected.

‘The Way of Anubis’ is a fascinating creation. One that follows through on the author’s initial complaint about the Cleric Class, but to an extreme. ‘The Way of Anubis’ is a Cleric Subclass is unplayable as a Player Character type since it is antithetical to what a standard Cleric is supposed to do in play and that is heal. One way which the author suggests getting around this is to keep the ‘The Way of Anubis’ Cleric’s faith hidden until the full meaning of his tenets are realised in play. This is odd in itself since a reason would have to be given why this was kept hidden and keeping it hidden feels like a dirty trick to play upon the players by the Dungeon Master. In a way, the article shows the reader how not to do it when it could have been exploring more options.

‘Monster Summoning’ gives eight new monsters. They include the Wood Golem for the Druid to create; the Thin Giant, essentially a giant with invisibility due to permanent Duo-dimension spell having been cast on them; the Bactos, a living cactus that uses its offshoots to pin victims against it and drain all moisture from their bodies, making resurrection impossible; and the Death Grub, an flying insect related to the Rot Grub, which does not attack, but instead infests dead bodies and again, resurrection impossible. The daftest monster is the Time Rat, a rat from the future with time travel powers that likes to come to the past and explore dungeons and is curious about adventuring parties. If attacked, it can cast Time Stop, after which it will steal any item its can, especially magical items, and then phase out back to the future. It is essentially a means to deprive Player Characters of their hard won magical items and it could have been a whole lot more interesting. Lastly, the Thin Giant is simply boring.

‘Monster Reaction Roll Tables’ provides a more detailed means of handing interactions between the adventurers and the dungeon denizens if the former are looking to do more than fight, whilst Andreas J. Sarker’s ‘More Gem Tables’ provides a means for the Dungeon Master to detail the gems that might be found as treasure. The included ‘Computer Program’ is a simple BASIC computer program, running to just fifteen lines of code and designed to generate attribute values for Dungeons & Dragons characters. This dates to a time when home computers could easily be programmed at home to run programs typed in.

‘The Dragon Race’ presents the Dragon as a playable Race. As a playable Race, the Dragon has high minimum attributes, can only be a Magic-User or a Fighter—and cannot cast magic if the latter, and has a breath weapon that inflicts damage equal to its Hit Points and can be used a limited number of times a day. They have a natural claw and bite attack, but the bite attack gets better for the Fighter Dragon. All Dragons can attack creatures and enemies that require magical weapons or attacks to hit, but need to be higher Level to attack creatures and enemies with higher magical protection. However, there are two downsides to the Dragon as a playable Race. One is that all Dragons are suspicious of everyone and everything and they are only accepted in society because they are feared, and mechanically, they suffer a high penalty to Experience Point gain. This is -20% for the Fighter Dragon and a massive -40% for the Magic-User Dragon! Honestly, this is not a bad version of the Dragon as a playable Race as the penalties do offset any advantages that the Dragon has and a player of a Dragon will see the characters of his fellow players racing ahead in terms of power and ability.

‘New Spells’ are taken from the ‘Barad-Dur Spellbook’. The eight spells include Mirage for the Illusionist, which makes something appear very attractive, like a fine meal or a pile of gold, and can be used as a distraction for all but the most intelligent and similarly, for the Illusionist, Premonition, with which the caster runs his finger across his neck as if to cut and then points at the victim of the spell, who gets a bad feeling that his about to die, and if he fails a Saving Throw, runs away! Effectively, a Fear spell then. The Clerical spell Cure Paralysis is good for after encounters with Ghouls and Ghasts and the like; Death Bomb turns a Magic-User into a living bomb if he is killed, potentially destroying every item on his body, if not his actual body, so good for the Dungeon Master to use on a villainous wizard; and Probability Travel gives the spell’s recipient the ability to see a few seconds into the future, see what he is going to do, and give him the opportunity to improve on it. In game terms, Probability Travel lets a player roll twice for his character’s next action and take the best result. So, Advantage in 1979, then?

Lastly, ‘Thoughts on NPC’s’ (sic), suggests ways of getting away from anonymous NPCs who are just there to provide services such as Cure Disease and Resurrection. Ultimately, the point of half the article is not about NPCs as such, as more finding ways of making the Player Characters work to access spells such as Cure Disease and Resurrection, whether that is through simple, but big payments or more interestingly, require a quest to get the right ingredients or components, or fulfil a task required by the caster. The other half is a call to make normal NPCs more interesting, especially those that adventure with the Player Characters, such as having an Assassin pose as a Paladin in a party of Good-aligned Player Characters. Arguably, this is a call to make NPCs more of a threat—in this case, an internal threat—than necessarily interesting.

The highlight of any issue of The Beholder is its scenario. ‘Legend of Leshy’ is what it calls a ‘stage-by-stage’ mini-scenario. What this means is that its plot and story will be revealed in discrete sections or scenes. Roughly designed for a group of five Player Characters of First and Second Level, one of whom should be a Druid, the scenario is based on Slavonic mythology and calls upon them to capture the ‘Leshachikha Bond’. The Leshachikha is the mortal wife of Leshy and bearer of the Leshonki, the children of Leshy. By capturing the ‘Leshachikha Bond’, it will free her from her subservience to Leshy. He is the spirit of the forest and tends to be good natured, though he does lead travellers astray. The scenario begins at the Ivanovich family farm where the Player Characters are staying, put up in a barn overnight. This barn is locked and the Player Characters are warned about the Keeper of the Barn and told not to enter the yard after 11 pm as there will be strange spirits about.

The farm and its inhabitants are nicely detailed and will be a challenge to get past as the Player Characters will need to break out of the barn and into the house in order to really get the scenario going. This is to begin the quest that spirit of the barn sets, which includes actually setting fire to the barn(!), and puts them on the path to capturing the ‘Leshachikha Bond’. Much of the scenario is an exploration of the surrounding wilderness, almost jump-cutting from one scene to the next, one encounter with a mystical inhabitant of the forest to the next, as the Player Characters go in search of the ‘Leshachikha Bond’. In places, the scenario can be quite tough physically, such as attempting to get across a battered rope bridge, but bar the occasional random encounter, is low in terms of combat. Most of the encounters will give clues as to where to search next and ultimately, if the Player Characters complete the quest, they will be well rewarded.

In 1979, ‘Legend of Leshy’ would have been a fine scenario. It is rough around the edges and the background to the scenario, based on Slavonic folklore, would not have been familiar to many players or Dungeon Masters, so adding it to a campaign would have been a challenge. (Today, there is at least a Wikipedia page.) More background would have helped and it would have been good if the possibility of the Player Characters returning to the Ivanovich family farm after the quest ends had been addressed. The main problem is the lack of detail on the otherwise large, two-page spread map of the region. The Dungeon Master really needs to work through the scenario hard in order to extract clues as to where various locations are on the map. That aside, ‘Legend of Leshy’ is a fine fantasy folkloric adventure, possessing an at time eerie and unsettling atmosphere that would have been enhanced by the lack of familiarity with the folklore.

Rounding out The Beholder Issue No. 5 is the ‘Contacts & Info’ section. Not only does this gives details of the then forthcoming Games Day which would take place on October 20th later that year, but lists a couple of players looking for players. This was how it was done back in the dawn of the hobby and people were then quite happy to hand out their address as contact details! One of the two is Simon Washbourne, later designer of roleplaying games such as Lashings of Ginger Beer.

Physically, The Beholder Issue No. 5 is slightly untidy in places, but readable. The layout is tight and that does make it difficult to read in places. The illustrations are reasonable, but the cartography simply lacks the detail its scenario requires. Of course, every issue of the fanzine was published when personal publishing was still analogue and the possibilities of the personal computer and personal desktop publishing were yet to come. In the case of The Beholder that would never be taken advantage of.

The Beholder has a high reputation for content that is of good quality and playable. The Beholder Issue No. 5 does not yet match that reputation, but as with previous issues, the signs are there and there is content aplenty that the Dungeon Master could have used in her game at the time and in some cases, still use to today. The standout piece is the scenario, ‘Legend of Leshy’, which is a rough, but interesting attempt to write a folklore-based scenario that just about works. It is certainly the best scenario in the fanzine to date. Elsewhere, the other articles are not quite as interesting or as thoughtful as in previous issues, though still very much concerned with what would have been traditional topics for Dungeons & Dragons at the time. The Beholder Issue No. 5 would have been a solid issue of the fanzine in 1979 and even today in 2025 is an enjoyable read.

[Fanzine Focus XXXIX] The Beholder Issue 4

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 how 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. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.

The Beholder was a British fanzine first published in April, 1979. Dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it ran to twenty-seven issues, the last being published in July, 1981. It was popular and would be awarded ‘Best Games Fanzine’ at the Games Day convention in 1980. After the final issue of The Beholder, the editors would go on to release a number of anthologies which collected content from the complete run of the fanzine such as Beholder Supplement Glossary of Magic, which collected many of the magical items which appeared in the fanzine and collated them into a series of tables for easy use by the Dungeon Master, and Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2, the first of several scenario anthologies.

The Beholder Issue 4 was probably published in July 1979, given that the fanzine was published monthly and on a regular basis throughout its run. The issue’s concerns are typical of the period for a fanzine devoted to Dungeons & Dragons—problems with different aspects of the roleplaying game and possible solutions, new monsters, new traps, new magical items, a dungeon, and so on, though no new spells. The editors—Michael Stoner and Guy Duke—state in their editorial that, “We feel that this issue is the best one so far.” whilst also noting that, “Contributions are now coming in in fair numbers and quite a lot of this issue is made up from them.” The latter is certainly true, whilst the quality of the fanzine, something that it was renowned for, shows slight improvement. The Beholder is yet to hit the highlights of its great adventures, but the promise is there in this issue. Similarly, even if the subject matters of the issue look familiarly parochial some thirty years on, the fanzine addresses them in a thoughtful manner.

The Beholder Issue 4 opens with ‘Wishes’, a short look at one of the perennial bugbears of high-level play in Dungeons & Dragons—the power of the wish. Whether from the Magic-User spell or the Ring of Three Wishes, the wish is open to abuse, both by players and the Dungeon Master. The players by demanding too much of it and the Dungeon Master by simply negating its effects and thus impeding the players’ enjoyment of the game. The solution is that powerful sources of wishes be guarded by, or in the possession of, suitably powerful monsters and that the Dungeon Master play the roll of the gods who do not want the heroes to overstep their bounds, such as using a wish to render themselves immortal, for example. There is discussion too, of the application and limitations of the Limited Wish and Altered Reality spells and overall, the advice is solid and useful.

‘Magical Weapons’ provides a new set of tables for rolling random magical weapons to account for the number of new weapon types presented in The Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the lack of magical weapons available for certain Character Classes, such as the Druid, the Monk, and the Magic-user. Thus, there is a sub-table for the weird weapons at the end, such as the bo stick and the pick, plus of course, all of the polearms, like the bec de corbin and the guisarme-voulge. The tables are followed by a handful of new magical weapons, such as Flaming Arrows; the Chaotic Evil Pirate’s Cutlass, which is +1, +2 versus Good, +3 versus sea monsters, and detects hidden treasure within 25”; and the Illusion Quarterstaff, +1, which can appear as any weapon and inflict its damage as long as the defendant believes it to be a weapon of that type. These are nicely inventive and could easily find their place in a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game today.

The first of several contributions to the fanzine by Martin Stollery is ‘Competition Chronicles: An account of an adventure in the Pyrus Complex (TB 1)’. This is a recounting of his play through or running of ‘Pyrus Complex’, the competition dungeon in The Beholder Issue One. The Player Characters are fractious and selfish, and barely co-operate throughout. The ‘every man for himself’ style of play—though exacerbated by the competition nature of the dungeon—looks dated and immature now, but it was common enough at the time and beyond.

The issue’s monsters are presented in a new style for the regular ‘Monster Summoning’ department—a style that is reminiscent of the Fiend Factory department of White Dwarf magazine at the time, even down to the inventive founts used for the monster names. There are eight monsters in total, three of which, the Leech Plant, the Vart, and the Bonwack, are the contribution of Andrew Whitcombe, editor of another fanzine of the time, Droll Drivel. There is some inventiveness here, but several also serve little function other than to confuse the players and their characters because they are new and will not have been encountered before. The Quazzle is inventive because it is harmless, but it looks too much like a Roper, so that adventurers keep attacking it, but it protects itself by teleporting away weapons used to attack it! The Dralt is a puffball-like and non-psionic variant of the Intellect Devourer which uses darkness magic to hide and charms its victims to attack each other. The Leech Plant is a bloodsucking plant which attaches itself to the calves of unwitting walkers and sucks their blood, increasing its Hit Points in doing so. The silliest creature is the Bonwack, blind balls of fur with large pincers on stalks and single legs on which they hop about the dungeon hunting for food. It should be noted that all of the creatures have a Monstermark System as devised by Don Turnbull and presented in the first three issues of White Dwarf and also The Best of White Dwarf Articles Vol. I.

The scenario in The Beholder Issue 4 is ‘The Mines of Mentorr’. Written by Martin Stollery, it is another competition dungeon and thus comes complete with pre-generated Player Characters—including a Trickster, as detailed in The Beholder Issue 1, and a scoring system. Designed for Player Characters of Fourth Level, it details a small Dwarven tin mine which was chosen by the great dwarven king Mentorr to house the tombs for himself and his descendants. Centuries later, the mad alchemist, Farjet, led a band of Gnolls, Bugbears, and evil mercenaries into the mines, slaughtered the Dwarves, and unaware of the tombs, expanded the mine into a laboratory where he could conduct his experiments far from the eyes of the lawful authorities. More recently, word has reached the outside world that he has perfected the Elixir of Life, giving him immortality. This is an affront to the gods, and whether in service of the gods of Law or Chaos, the Player Characters are sent into the complex to put an end to this blasphemy!

The adventure really has three strands to it. One is the old mine, the other is the secret tombs, and the another is the laboratory facilities, whilst the scoring system allows for various different objectives rather than just killing everything. Although the map is plain, the dungeon is decently thought out and so does not suffer from the randomness of the competition dungeons that appeared in the previous three issues. With a little updating, ‘The Mines of Mentorr’ could be run today without any difficulties and the players would be none the wiser. The adventure’s combination of decent design, theme, and background mean that it could also be added to a Dungeon Master’s campaign and again, the players would be none the wiser.

‘Tricks & Traps’ discusses the editors’ philosophy of trap design—challenge the players and their characters, rather than simply killing the latter and the use of monsters and their abilities in an intelligent manner. The article is supported by ‘Dangerous Digressions’ which presents a number of traps, all of them old of course, but some of them familiar today. ‘The Magic Mouth “Party Killer” Trap’ is a temple dedicated to demon worship. Apart from some statues, the only features of note are a candle and a statue of dragon’s head. If the candle is lit, the Magic Mouth on the dragon statue activates and says, “Demogorgon, Orcus, Juiblex” again and again until the spell expires. Even with a small chance to summon any one of these demon lords, this is simply evil… Others, like ‘The Round and Round Teleport Pit’, an infinite teleporting pit, is a very slightly less dangerous version of the classic, whilst ‘The Balanced Boulders Pit’ has a plank poking out of the wall of the pit, which when grabbed by a falling character, pivots and tips four boulders on top of him as he falls onto the single spike at the bottom of the pit, is equally familiar.

Lastly, ‘Thoughts On Ideas’ continues the discussion of Dungeon Master fiat begun in ‘Wishes’ at the beginning of the issue. It looks at the sort of ideas that players come up with in play and then repeat over and over. In addition to suggesting ways round simply banning player ideas that make game play stale or unbalanced, such as offering Experience Points to their characters or ruling it as being against the wishes of the gods, the article also gives its own good ideas. For example, having the Magic-User or Illusionist cast Invisibility several times over the course of several days so that the entire party is invisible before beginning an adventure or buying ‘padded’ belt pouches and backpacks to prevent bottles and phials of potions or holy water from breaking when a Player Character falls into a pit. These are all quite inventive and showcase the then style of play in which the players sort to gain an advantage for their characters against the Dungeon Master.

Physically, The Beholder, Issue 4 is slightly untidy in places, but readable. The layout is tight and that does make it difficult to read in places. The illustrations and the cartography are not actually that bad. Of course, every issue of the fanzine was published when personal publishing was still analogue and the possibilities of the personal computer and personal desktop publishing were yet to come. In the case of The Beholder that would never be taken advantage of.

The Beholder has a high reputation for content that is of good quality and playable. The Beholder, Issue 4 does not yet match that reputation, but the signs seen here and in The Beholder, Issue 3 are not only present, but getting stronger. Not everything is good in the issue, but that is offset by the fact that it does contain a number of thoughtful articles on what would have been traditional topics for Dungeons & Dragons and the adventure is the best to date. The Beholder, Issue 4 feels almost on the cusp of achieving the high quality it was renowned for.

[Fanzine Focus XXXVIII] Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3

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.

The Beyond the Borderlands trilogy of fanzines is different. Beginning with Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1, this is a systems neutral regional hexcrawl inspired by B2 Keep on the Borderlands, most recently implemented by Goodman Games’ Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands. The setting for the Beyond the Borderlands, like B2 Keep on the Borderlands before it, is the edge—or just beyond it—of the civilised lands, the frontier outside of which lies untrammeled wilderness, barbaric tribes, and Chaos run rampant. Here a solid fortress has been established as the last outpost of civilisation, to provide a degree of protection to travellers making the journey beyond and against the possibility of an incursion from the ghastly Goblins, horrible Hobgoblins, obnoxious Orcs, grim Gnolls, and more, which lurk just out of sight, ready to strike…

Published by Swordfish Islands LLC (but also available in PDF from the author), best known for publishing Swordfish Islands: Hexcrawl Adventures on Hot Springs Island, the first part of a trilogy detailed the last bastion of a civilisation on the frontier, Stronglaw Keep, and the surrounding Wicked Palovalley. What was particularly noticeable about Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 was that all of its maps were presented in isometric format, which when combined with their bright, vibrant colours, make them leap off the page. This feature is continued in Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2, which when combined with spare nature of the text makes the descriptions and details given nicely accessible and easy to run from the page. However, Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 differs from this bar the vibrancy and colour.

In contrast to B2 Keep on the Borderlands, what Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 did not do was take the Dungeon Master and her players into that den of evil which so threatens the Keep, the Caves of Chaos! Instead, it detailed a similar, but much smaller area, The Bloody Ravine, a sharp valley whose walls are pockmarked by cave entrances, beyond which many different tribes of Humanoids find their home. Notably, it detailed only six caves rather than the ten of the original short. What then of the remaining four? They are not detailed in either Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 or Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3—and nor do they need to be, since The Bloody Ravine is complete as written. Which begs the question, does the Beyond the Borderlands trilogy really need a third issue and if it does, what does it add to the reinterpretation of the classic setting Basic Dungeons & Dragons?

Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 brings the trilogy to a close with not another set of mini-dungeons as per the series’ inspiration, but what is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon for the trilogy. This is the Shifting Maze, a six-level dungeon that is a small part of the Chaosphere, a dimension of unreality that strikes fear into most who hear about it. It is presented in cross-section rather than the isometric style seen in previous issues. Each level has four entrances and eighteen rooms which are not only generated randomly at the start, but since this is the Shifting Maze, is generated randomly again whenever the Player Characters leave the dungeon and come back in again. The method of creating this by drawing cards from an ordinary deck of playing cards, turning the play of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 from a dungeon crawl into a ‘cardcrawl’. The suits of the card determine the room type—Spades for monster rooms, Clubs for trap rooms, Diamonds for empty rooms, and Hearts for safe rooms. The two cards from each of the four suits are used to mark the entrances, whilst eighteen cards are drawn for each level and arranged on the table however the Game Master wants. A token is used to mark where the Player Characters are in the level and as they proceed through the level, cards are turned over and resolved. If there is an encounter, it has to be resolved before the Player Characters can move onto the next one. When the Player Characters leave the dungeon or proceed down to a lower level, the cards on the table are collected, the deck is shuffled again, and new cards drawn.

The six levels consist of the Fetid Tunnels, home to giant rats, jackalopes, and Kobolds, as well as a young Wyrm hiding from poachers; the Crumbling Mines where the Firebug Queen holds court; Mushroom Lake where hostile frogmen make sacrifice to an ancient Kraken; an Elven Mausoleum still protected by undead vassals; the Sibilant City, an ancient Elven city overgrown by plants and taken over by snakes; and the Duke’s Domain, ruled by the Lords of Chaos. Each level has a two-page spread of its own. This includes three tables. One for the passages, one for random encounters, and one for specific locations. Plus, there are game stats as necessary.

The nearest there is to a fully detailed NPC in Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 is Mr. Beatley Coins. He wanders the dungeon with things to sell and coins with which to buy. This includes rumours as well as standard goods. His inventory includes all manner of creature body parts that when consumed, provide a particular bonus. For example, the Spider Gland can be consumed to gain the ability to climb smooth walls and shoot webs for several hours, whilst a Frogman Intestine improves the consumer’s Wisdom and makes them immune to poison, but break wind loudly every hour! This is all part of a pleasing and very decently illustrated section of magical items. In some ways, this is the best part of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3.

Physically, Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 is well presented. it needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is excellent. There are no maps, so the isometric cartography of the first two issues is not repeated here. Which is a shame.

The Beyond the Borderlands series is intended to be a trilogy, inspired by B2 Keep on the Borderlands and presenting a simple, stripped back means of revisiting the classic scenario for Basic Dungeons & Dragons. In exploring the frontier fortress of Stronglaw Keep and the surrounding Wicked Palovalley, this is exactly what Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 do. Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 takes the trilogy beyond the Wicked Palovalley and away from Stronglaw Keep and in the process away from B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Effectively, the inspiration for the trilogy ended with Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 has nothing to do with B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Although it is not a bad dungeon, Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 is a part of the Beyond the Borderlands trilogy in name only.

[Free RPG Day 2024] The Shining Shrine

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—

The Shining Shrine is a preview of Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting, a supplement for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition published by Loot Tavern. The supplement contains adventures as well as rules for tracking, crafting, and harvesting, and also new monsters, spells, and Player Character options. The Shining Shrine includes just a little of that, making it essentially, a mini-version of the full book. Thus, it contains a full adventure and not one, not two, but seven appendices. These in turn provide new magical items, spells, creatures, familiars, a wizard, and more—including a QR code for a soundtrack! All of which is illustrated with some lovely artwork. The Shining Shrine opens with the eponymously named scenario. This is a short affair designed to be played in roughly one or two sessions, and contains the stats and details necessary to run it for between three and seven Player Characters of Second, Seventh, or Twelfth Level. Ideally though, there should be an average of four Player Characters. The scenario takes place in the Springarden, a bounteous and blossom-filled estate at the heart of the Springwood. Here the barrier between the Plane of Fey and the Material Plane is at its thinnest, enabling the fey to slip into our world. The barrier is at its weakest during a confluence of stars and this when Feyfest is held. Unfortunately, during the most recent confluence a creature called the Suneater Owlbear slipped in the Springarden and has subsequently made its home in a shrine holy to the Blossom Union, a sect of druid-monks that cares for the surrounding Springwood.

The scenario set-up is nicely detailed and gives a clear explanation of what is going on as well as some adventure hooks. The scenario itself is quite structured. Designed as a hunt, it is split into two parts. In the first, much shorter part, the Player Characters have the opportunity to gather three clues pertinent to the hunt itself. These are primarily delivered by Threeflowers, a timid Gnome Druid who would rather be in some quiet corner smoking a pipe, but there are other means of gathering clues too. The authors both make it clear what the clues and their significance are and that the players and their characters need to know all three. It is not subtle about this. Once the Player Characters have their clues, they are ready to face the creature, a Sun-powered version of the Owlbear. The battle is fought in three stages, or waves, and each is described in detail including the tactics that the Suneater Owlbear and its minions will use each time. Making use of the given clues will at least ameliorate some of the deadlier attacks that the creature can deploy. Ultimately, the scenario is a one-session affair (though it may take longer to play), primarily combat-based, but with a little bit of roleplaying and puzzle solving thrown.

There is treasure to be found at the end of the scenario. Some of these are magical items held in the Blossom Union, whilst others can be crafted from the unique components that can be harvested from the Suneater Owlbear. These and others are detailed in the first appendix in The Shining Shrine. They include the Bonze’s Bokken, Wind Ripper, a wooden sword which can create increasingly strong gusts of wind; the Suncatcher, a staff which can catch and absorb radiant energy, and even imbue spell attacks with radiant agency; and the Sunwing Bow, which requires no ammunition in sunlight and marks targets with radiant energy. There are magical meals such as Suneater Steak and Eggs, that grant healing every hour spent in sunlight, and so on.

The other appendices contain spells like The Bends, which creates bubbles of nitrogen in a target’s blood, effectively poisoning him and Endoleech, which with a touch allows the caster to absorb the energy from the target and slow its metabolism. It also inflicts cold damage. These two spells come from the new school of magic given in The Shining Shrine and thus in Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting. The school specialises in the manipulation of the biology of both the caster and others. This includes ‘Self Improvement’, by which the caster can give himself an extra appendage like a prehensile tail or an arm, make a hand detachable, owl eyes to see in the dark, and spidersense to gain a bonus to his initiative. The main feature of the new creatures is the Suneater Owlbear, a fey rather than beast-aligned creature with radiant energy abilities. Three versions are given—young, adult, and ancient—complete with stats so that the Dungeon Master has the right version to match the Level of the Player Characters for adventure in The Shining Shrine.

The Tamer Class is new to Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting, but The Shining Shrine only goes so far as to give tantalising glimpses of what it can do. This includes the ability to harvest and craft familiars from remains of powerful creatures. The accompanying example is of a Sunsnacker, a tiny Fey creature that can grow with the Tamer as the Player Character gains Levels. In doing so, it gets bigger and it gains abilities like a Solar Beam and eventually, the power to appear to be an Eye Tyrant in low light or darkness. More obviously playable is the ‘Rakin’, a playable raccoon-like race known for their practical jokes. It has three subraces consisting of the Urkin, the Posskin, and the Tanukin. Of these, only the streetwise Urkin with a penchant for theft and the nomadic and tough Posskin who will play dead when in a dire situation are actually given playable details.

Physically, The Shining Shrine is very well done. It is decently written and the artwork is excellent throughout.

The Shining Shrine is a mixture of playable content and hints at what is to be found in the pages of Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting. The latter is intriguing, whereas the playable content is decent, the adventure in particular, presenting a tough challenge for the Player Characters whatever their Level. Overall, The Shining Shrine is an engaging preview that nicely showcases a little of what is to be found in Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting.

The Other OSR—Forgotten Duty

The Book of the Key is an elaborate monastic chronicle written in the sixteenth century in an obscure Italian dialect that describes events and happenings so fantastical that they are at odds with the known history of the period, yet the work is anything other than a satire. The marginalia is even strange, annotations consisting of esoteric formulae and prayers dedicated to an unknown and unnamed god. The god is described as having the power to permit movement from this world to another, from this reality to another… It is currently held in the library of the University of Navarra, in the city of Pamplona, in north-east Spain. It is also rumoured to have been stolen from its previous owners, and that they, the Knights Hospitaller, seek to return to their possession. There are many reasons why someone might want to examine The Book of the Key. Perhaps to right a wrong by engaging in the many-worlds theory of quantum physics to shift to another reality where the right rather than the wrong took place. Perhaps to open, or even close, the way, perhaps to prevent access to our world by otherworldly entities such as Dimensional Shamblers or Hounds Out of Time. Perhaps the book points to the means to locate an artefact that will be inimical to a true enemy. Perhaps the connections to the Mythos of the book are already known and it has fallen into the wrong hands, and whoever that is, they need to be stopped from using it.

This is the set-up—or rather the set-ups—to Forgotten Duty, a modern day scenario for Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition, the Old School Renaissance-adjacent roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Just Crunch Games. Whatever the reason for the Investigators to want to look at the book, the curator at the museum, Gustavo Ibáñez, will sadly explain that the book is currently not held by the university, but has been loaned to a benefactor to the university, Count Cielo Al-Hamrā. Fortunately, he can arrange an interview with the count and when this happens, the count will be very gracious and tell the Investigators that he has returned the book. The book though, has already been shipped off elsewhere, or has it?

There is a strangeness that runs deep not only into the question of the missing book, but also in the city of Pamplona itself. The inhabitants seem to be suffering from collective trauma, there are reports of missing persons and missing persons posters across the city, and the Investigators begin to suffer strange dreams, nightmares that point to the city’s dark history and the invasion of the Romans centuries before. Random strangers approach the Investigators, some to question their interest and reason for being in the city, others steal from them, or worse, assault them as an act of revenge, but for what? Then there is Count Cielo Al-Hamrā, a man that the Investigators have met, but whom nobody can quite recall too much about beyond his being a great benefactor to the city.

Ultimately, the investigation will point to Count Cielo Al-Hamrā as being key to getting to the heart of the mystery in Pamplona, let alone being key to locating the book. In fact, by this time, the location of the book almost becomes secondary to the need to find just what is really going on in Pamplona. Doing so will take the Investigators to the count’s home, a villa with an oddly unlived in feel and signs of strange activity, whilst the staff genially about their odd duties. This is to the extent that the Investigators may be able to explore the villa almost unimpeded, though something is surely waiting for the truly curious. Which should of course, include the Investigators.

Forgotten Duty supports the Game Master with details about Pamplona and the University of Navarra, descriptions and details of the odd encounters that the Investigators might have around the city, and the means to create the dreams that they begin to have. There are missing persons posters too, as handouts. Throughout, there are footnotes as well, and these will help the Game Master add flavour and detail to the scenario.

Physically, Forgotten Duty is decently done, but a little rough around the edges. It does need another edit as there is missing text, but the maps are good, as are the few handouts.

Forgotten Duty is a solidly weird and creepy scenario. It can easily be played in a single session and so be run as a convention scenario, in fact more easily than it can be worked into a campaign. It is also just as easy to adapt it to the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror of your choice.

—oOo—

Just Crunch Games and All Rolled Up will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] The Beholder Issue 3

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. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.

The Beholder was a British fanzine first published in April, 1979. Dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it ran to twenty-seven issues, the last being published in July, 1981. It was popular and would be awarded ‘Best Games Fanzine’ at the Games Day convention in 1980. After the final issue of The Beholder, the editors would go on to release a number of anthologies which collected content from the complete run of the fanzine such as Beholder Supplement Glossary of Magic, which collected many of the magical items which appeared in the fanzine and collated them into a series of tables for easy use by the Dungeon Master, and Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2, the first of several scenario anthologies.

The Beholder Issue 3 was probably published in June 1979, given that the fanzine was published monthly and on a regular basis throughout its run. Its contents do not follow the pattern as set by The Beholder Issue 1 and followed by The Beholder Issue 2. So although the issue does include new monsters and a scenario, but no new monsters, spells, or magical items, and even then, the scenario is different. Rather than the competition scenario of the first two issues, it consists of the fantasy equivalent of the ‘country house’ mystery, and this makes it much, much more easier for the Dungeon Master to add or adapt to her own campaign. Further, unlike The Beholder Issue 2, the issue solely focuses on Dungeons & Dragons and so there is no content for use the then leading Science Fiction roleplaying game, Traveller.

The issue opens with ‘Magic System’, which offers up an alternative to one of the ‘bugbears’ of Dungeons & Dragons—its magic system. Infamously Vancian, spells are learned, memorised, cast, and in the process, forgotten, or in the case of a Cleric or Druid, prayed for, memorised, cast, and in the process, forgotten. What ‘Magic System’ suggests as an alternative is a point buy/memorisation system. No matter whether the Player Character is a Cleric, Druid, Magic-User, or Illusionist, or even a Paladin or Ranger, there is a limit to how many spells he can hold in his head. This is Spell Capacity, determined by the point value of spell and the total spell capacity of the Player Character, which will vary according to each Class based on the primary attribute of the Class and the Player Character’s Level. Then each spell is given a point value. When a spell is cast, it reduces the Player Character’s Spell Capacity. For example, a Magic-User’s Spell capacity is half his Intelligence multiplied by his Level, a third Level Magic-user with an Intelligence of sixteen, will have a spell capacity of twenty-four. Magic Missile has a Spell value of three, which reduces the Magic-User’s Spell Capacity to twenty-one when he casts it. Spell Values are given for all of the spells accessible to each spell-casting Class.

So far, so good, but there are a couple of interesting wrinkles. When a Druid or Cleric prays for his spells, there is a very small chance of them not being granted, but this chance drops by extra time spent praying, and they can even pray to receive spells that would exceed his spell capacity. However, there is a chance that this will annoy the gods and they will excommunicate the Druid or Cleric! If this happens too many times, the Druid or Cleric has his soul destroyed and he is dead! For the Magic-user and the Illusionist, there is the chance that any spell cast will fail and a smaller chance of any spell that is failed to be cast will backfire! The likelihood of a spell casting failure and spell backfire increases if the Magic-user or the Illusionist casts spells that would reduce his Spell capacity below zero.

Overall, the ‘Magic System’ appears to be a serviceable alternative, likely as good as or better than any that would have been offered in the fanzines of the period, given that such publications served as platforms for alternatives to published rules for a roleplaying game such as Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, they are more complex though than the Vancian magic system in standard Dungeons & Dragons.

‘Monster summoning’ details some seven new monsters. From Huw Williams, there is the Kelpie, a small, extremely evil water spirit that looks like a nixie, but can transform into a horse, and from John Stoner—brother of co-editor, Michael G. Stoner—the Helfic, a giant spider-like creature with ten legs instead of eight and large, crushing mandibles. These inflict an increasing amount of damage, the longer a victim is held in them, and they infect the victim with haemophilia, which means that suffering damage can be fatal due to bleeding—internally or externally! Michael G. Stoner gives write-ups of five new monsters. They include Helz, disembodied skeletal hands that snatch equipment and run (float?) away; the Yeti Naga, a variant of the Naga which lives in cold, snowy climates and can cast the Ice Storm daily, plus other spells that are not fire related; and the Swordfish, an aerial version of the fish, which likes to skewer its victims with its sword. The other two monsters are Chess-related and both are created by high-Level Magic-Users and both are either ‘black’ or Lawful Evil’, or ‘white’ or ‘Lawful Good’. The Rook is a miniature castle tower which charges its opponents to knock them down. This means it ignores the Armour Cass bonus of any armour worn. The Knight can attack with his sword, whilst his horse can bite. It is also very fast and can leap into combat and strike first or it can leap out of combat first and gallop away!

The monsters themselves are okay. Nothing spectacular. What is interesting is that the article gives the values for ‘The Monstermark System’ by Don Turnbull which appeared in the pages of the first three issues of White Dwarf and was subsequently reprinted in The Best of White Dwarf Articles in 1980. It amends the article with the following comment: “Incidentally, talking of MonsterMark, do you realise the trouble that AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) is going to cause? Not only are there now many new _monsters that need “marking” but many of the old ones have been changed, making their monstermarks wrong! Also the Ref’s guide uses a new set of attacking tables and, if you use them, monstermark will be even more Inaccurate! If Ian Livingstone and the lads at GW are listening: Why not give Don Turnbull a few pages of a White Dwarf to fill with AD&D monstermarks?”

‘The Villa of Menopolis’ is the scenario in The Beholder Issue 3. Unlike in the first two issue, due to popular demand, it is not competition dungeon. Instead, it is a mini-scenario for low Level characters, but one that needs an experienced Game Master. Oddly, it suggests that it be played with two First Level, two Second Level, and two Third Level Player Characters rather than they all be of the same Level. The villa is associated with a legend that says that its keepers live alongside a mythical race known as the Gremlodwarves, short creatures with long green hair and beards and said to be seen abroad on moonlit nights. This does not stop the villa and its keepers from accepting paying guests, it might even encourage them due to the notoriety, but the Player Characters are hired to stay at the villa and “…[D]estroy the heirarchy [sic] of the Villa of Menopolis from serf to lord.” This is actually at odd with the point of the scenario. What it suggests is that the Player Characters are to go the Villa of Menopolis and put everyone to the sword. This is not the case.

The Player Characters are hired by a man named ‘Socrates’ who stayed at the villa a few years earlier with his brother and saw his brother being dragged away the Gremlodwarves. He wants his brother found and the Gremlodwarves put the sword rather than everyone from serf to lord. So instead of a ‘country house dungeon’, the scenario is more akin to a ‘country house murder mystery’ and there being a trail of clues which the Player Characters can follow to have it lead them to the dungeons of the Gremlodwarves below the villa. Some of the villa staff are aware of the creatures’ activities, whilst others have their own agendas, so there is a little more to investigate at the villa than the Gremlodwarves, though not much. Further, the clue path to follow is linear, but ideally the Dungeon Master should be able to adjust as necessary to keep the players and their characters interested and involved.

The Gremlodwarves are a cross between Gremlins and dwarves, so they are silly. Otherwise, the scenario provides lots of decent NPCs for the Dungeon Master to roleplay, a good map of the villa, and serviceable descriptions of its various locations. Names and so on are kept purposefully odd to encourage the Dungeon Master to replace them with her own. ‘The Villa of Menopolis’ is far from being a bad scenario, but it is a huge improvement over the competition dungeons of the first two issues, encouraging roleplaying and investigation before the exploration and the butchery! The truth is, The Beholder would go on to publish many well received scenarios—as evidenced by Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2—but ‘The Villa of Menopolis’ is a reasonable sign of things to come.

‘Viewpoint: D&D Languages and the Trickster’ by John Norris is a response to both the Trickster Character Class and its ability to have a command of languages and the way languages are handled in Dungeons & Dragons in general. With its one Common tongue spoken by all and all the same, its alignment languages that never vary, and everyone and anyone having their own language, Norris simply does not find the treatment of languages to be credible in Dungeons & Dragons or the Class. His solution is to create a family of languages and have dialects play a role too, so that, for example, an archaic version of language might serve as a language for diplomacy and the educated, whilst others might be used as secret guild or temple languages. He suggests restricting the number of languages known by most NPCs and Player Characters, primarily due to geography, age, and intelligence. As to the Trickster Class, he turns them into a combination of Thief, translator, and animal trainer. The treatment of the Trickster is rather brief in comparison to the general treatment of languages, which will have a limiting effect on communication and travel if implemented, but it could be used to enhance world-building.

Lastly, ‘Definitions Of Non-Magical Treasure: Gems’ builds on the inclusion of material components for various spells in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, to provide a means of creating the type and value of first gems, and then jewellery. This is before the release of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, so it would have been quickly superseded, but until then it would have been useful enough.

Physically, The Beholder, Issue 3 is slightly untidy in places, but readable. The layout is tight and that does make it difficult to read in places. The illustrations and the cartography is not actually that bad. Of course, every issue of the fanzine was published when personal publishing was still analogue and the possibilities of the personal computer and personal desktop publishing were yet to come. In the case of The Beholder that would never be taken advantage of.

The Beholder has a high reputation for content that is of good quality and playable. The Beholder, Issue 3 does not yet match that reputation, but there are signs there of what is to come. The inclusion of a non-competition dungeon with a scenario that places an emphasis on interaction and investigation, points the direction in which future issues will go, and whilst its alternative spell casting rules are typical of the time when the issue was published, they could be used today. With The Beholder, Issue 3, the fanzine begins to show promise.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Strange Visitors to the City

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. A more recent retroclone of choice to support has been Mörk Borg.

Published in November, 2020, Strange Visitors to the City is one of three similar fanzines released by Philip Reed Games as a result of the Strange Citizens of the City Kickstarter campaign, the others being Strange Inhabitants of the Forest and Strange Citizens of the City It follows on from the publisher’s Delayed Blast Gamemaster fanzine, by presenting a set of tables upon which the Game Master can roll and bring in elements to her game. Whilst Delayed Blast Gamemaster detailed monsters, environments, and more, with a cover which reads, “Roll 2d6 and say hello to Evil”, Strange Visitors to the City is all about the encounter and all about encounters with evil coming to the city, the cover reading, “Roll 2d6 and Greet a Visitor”. For Mörk Borg, the city can most obviously be that of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland, but it need not be, instead any city with a dark seamy underbelly where the strange is accepted and allowed to fester.

Strange Visitors to the City follows the format of Strange Inhabitants of the Forest and Strange Citizens of the City, consisting of four tables—or rather sets of entries—which populate and add detail to a large location, in this case, as with Strange Citizens of the City, a nameless city. In fact, Strange Visitors to the City is really a companion to Strange Citizens of the City, complementing it with another array of ghouls and grotesques, this time visitants and vermin passing in and out of the city gates. The issue opens with the eponymous ‘Strange Visitors to the City’ which presents a table of mostly villains or villain-like NPCs to be encountered in and about the city. Each is given their own two-page spread, with a large illustration, a full page of text providing background, and of course, notes and stats. The notes typically suggest how much money the Player Characters might make from their loot or handing in proof of their deaths, though not always—as the number of ‘No Reward’ entries suggest.

The entries include Sava Yegorovich, Collector of Soiled Souls, a legless traveller wreathed in toxic smoke, who visits the city on an arcanomechanical contraption to purchase vials containing soiled souls for his dreadful experiments that carries out in his laboratory deep in the forest. Babatyev Ilyich, Escaped Killer from Elsewhen, an extraplanar murderer who travels from world to world, killing, and then escaping to the next, though this time he is trapped, his route elsewhere having been destroyed. Now he is wanted by the authorities and there is a bounty on his head which grows as the number of bodies pile up, so there is a rush to find him. He usually attacks with his talons, but he can unleash a nightmarish fiend from the portal in his stomach! Nicolas Mocanu, Wizard of the Woods, rarely visits the city, but only does so when he needs spell and alchemical ingredients and components, and since he is short of time, he will hire likely adventurers to find them for him—and will pay handsomely if they do. The entry includes a list of some twenty items, like a Troll’s eye or the mummified remains of a beloved pet, each one a spur to entice the Player Characters to action.

Not all of the entries describe the vile and the villainous, though there are a number of visitors of extraplanar origins, murderers or not—and plenty of those. Otherwise, the less threatening includes Svetlana Botnari, Unliving Seamstress, travels to the city every full moon, and earns money with needle and thread, but is undead and the needles are her fingers, but despite this, her skills and speed are highly valued. Further, she is friendly, and is willing to hire adventurers prepared to protect her undead kin from raiders on the value where they live. Which means that the Player Characters might be protecting the undead from the living! Richards and Roger, a Ruffian and a Gentleman, are a pair of ordinary fish, magically transformed, enlarged, and enhanced, though without legs—instead they each wear a suit of armour with the necessary legs—and with their master and creator dead, they have taken up residence in the city. One works as a hired thug and goon, the other a gentleman trader, but are otherwise inseparable. They are easily found in the city, meeting up in a tavern to catch on their activities of the day.

‘Strange Visitors to the City’ takes up over half of Strange Visitors to the City. It presents a collection of monsters and the monstrous, many of them evil in nature, and if not that, evil looking. They are invariably challenging opponents should the Player Characters go after then for their bounty, if there is one, that is. As with Strange Citizens of the City before it, the entries described in the ‘Strange Visitors to the City’ table—and elsewhere in the fanzine—do all feel as if they would fit in the one city. A dark twisted city with a Slavic feel where arcanotech, a mixture of magic and technology is available.

‘Strange Visitors to the City’ is followed by a shorter table. This is ‘1d6 Unusual Places’, a companion piece to the ‘1d8 Places in the City’ in Strange Citizens of the City. They include Jelena Romanovna’s Home for Orphans, a three-storey tower where wayward children are taken in and unfortunately beaten until they accept training as pickpockets and thieves. The Broken Clock Tower, a spire located deep in the city centre, long abandoned and in a state of disrepair, such that some have called for it to be pulled down and replaced, but moans and the rattling of chains from within indicate that someone or something is using it still, but who? Adventurer and raconteur, Godzimir Mazur, has won a former gambling hall and turned it into coffee shop, but he has no head for business and it is failing. Can he be helped or would he be happier just to sell up?

‘4d6 Rumours’ suggests things that the Player Characters might hear in taverns or down alleys, such as the ‘fact’ that Jelena Romanovna’s Home for Orphans is also the location of a black market every week or two; the burning of a red candle attracts the evil spirits of the dead, so anyone doing so is clearly an agent of death and destruction; or that if anyone who easts a sacred scroll is forever transformed into a being of unimageable power capable of surviving any encounter with evil. Plus, the scrolls taste great when smeared with honey! Some of the rumours connect to other entries in Strange Visitors to the City, but most do not. All will require some development by the Game Master.

Lastly, ‘2d4 Hired Goons’ presents another collection of hirelings, simply detailed and each with a special trait, such as ‘Conniving’ or ‘Experienced’. Few are obviously beneficial, such as the ‘Underworld Knowledge’ of Lukas Hofstetter, who can help the Player Characters find information about crime and criminals for a price, but most are not. Darin Masur is ‘Bloodthirsty’ and has trouble ending a fight or a battle if any opponents are still alive, and might even turn on his allies! He has a hatred of the city guard too and that is likely to get him into trouble as well as those who hired him. All seven NPCs are ready to drop into the city.

Physically, Strange Visitors to the City is very nicely presented. Although it makes strong use of colour, it uses a softer palette than Mörk Borg, but scratchier and stranger, though still easier on the eye. The artwork throughout is excellent.

Strange Visitors to the City is a set in some strange city where twisted men and women and other things lurk in the side streets, where great evil hides behind populism, and arcanotech is put to dark uses. It is the same city as populated in Strange Citizens of the City, and whilst it is a standalone title, Strange Visitors to the City strongly complements it. Although intended for use with Mörk Borg—and it shares the same doom-laden sensibility—the contents of Strange Visitors to the City would work with any retroclone or be easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. However, they do all feel as if they live in the same city, a city waiting to be detailed. Perhaps a city that Philip Reed Games could detail in a future fanzine? In the meantime, Strange Visitors to the City is an entertaining and useful collection of NPCs and encounters for the Grimdark roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice.