[Fanzine Focus XXVI] Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed 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 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.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content. Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and in reducing the number of articles it gave the fanzine more of a focus and allowed more of the feel of the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign to shine through, whilst Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs drew from multiple to somewhat lesser effect. Lastly, Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara focused primarily on smuggling town of Tirwas and the caves underneath it through which the contraband is taken.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs continues the stronger focus of the previous issue. The issue opens with ‘The Wandering Glade’, a wilderness module for Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Levels. It details a nomadic labyrinth of an ancient forest; its ancient trees moss laden and its caves and clearings home to long forgotten secrets known to the high druids of the past. There are few ways in—the route walked by the Pilgrims of the Lunar Oath is one, others are known to certain groups, and then the glade itself may wander into the path of travellers and swallow them up. It has an almost spiral layout, one that will pull the Player Characters further in, and perhaps under, as they seek a way out, encountering creatures and beings out of myth and folklore—the old ways, as some might call it—as well as the fae and other creatures of the forest, not to forget the bandits who reave its paths (and between them) in search of victims for their sacrificial ceremonies to the thorns and the oak to ensure harmony between man and nature. This is a bucolic and baroque forest dungeon, full of detail and flavour, and perhaps mysteries, which will appeal to any Druid or Ranger in the party—the former in particular.

The main article in the issue presents at the oft mentioned campaign location, ‘The City of Vultures’. Much in the mode of Imrryr of Moorcock’s Melniboné or Professor M.A.R. Barker’s Jakálla: The City Half As Old As Time—especially the latter as the author acknowledges, the City of Vultures is an ancient crumbling metropolis, rot bound and hidebound, its high-born and low-born ill-cast and ill-disposed, yet given to the worship of evil demigods and given to cruel and unyielding customs, once a great power, now friendless and warred upon from all sides. Although various locations are described, in the main, this is a city described faction by faction. These include its cruel leader, Mirvander Khan and  the many gods and demi-gods, like The Worshippers of the Columns, ascetics who whirl about the colossal columns seen about the city, often battering themselves senseless when not screaming out prophecies that drive mobs to do terrible things and Kwárü Khan, a former ruler who degenerated into a black, worm-like horror who stalks the streets at night in search of victims which it whispers horrid secrets, often incomprehensible or allegorical, into their ears. The city’s societies include Deston, a secret society dedicated to weird harmonies using oddly shaped tuning forks that are harmful and organised into cells which each only know limited number of harmonies; The Followers of Dókh, a parish caste whose duty it is to collect the dead—and the legally dead—and chain them atop the city’s roofless towers to be picked clean by the many vultures which circle the city; and the Warriors of the Tiger, a military brotherhood loyal to Mirvander Khan whose members paint their scars or wear iron masks which scare the peoples of the city and regularly walk the city with their trained tigers, free to kill whomever they want. In turn, customs and places are given similar treatment and level of detail, adding flavour and feel to the setting of the City of Vultures. The article details some of the dungeons and levels below the city, but in the main, they are left for future expansion and presentation in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06. It also goes beyond the walls of the City of Vultures to provide an overview of the northern coast of Thasan and the Sea of Kroitos upon which the city stands.

Included with Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is a quite lovely, double-sided mini-poster map, on which side is a players’ map of the City of Vultures whilst on the other is a hex-map of Thasan. However, as rich in detail and flavour as ‘The City of Vultures’ is, it is missing two things. The author describes it as being built on three pillars—a system of city encounters for street-level adventures, descriptions of the conspiracies rampant within the city, and write-ups of the city’s Underworlds and adventure locations. The third and last of these pillars is begun to be addressed in the very issue itself and will continue to be addressed in further issues, as will the second pillar. However, the first pillar requires another supplement, The Nocturnal Table. Of course, this is annoying, but there is nothing to stop the Dungeon Master using table she already has or indeed, creating her. However, they might not have the flavour of The Nocturnal Table.

The second adventure in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is the eponymous ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’. Again designed Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Levels, this is part of the Underworld below the City of Vultures, said to be the resting place of five nobles from when the city was founded who are said to be held aloft twist heaven and earth, so of great interest to historians. However, ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ is only partly about those tombs, but getting to them. They are concealed beneath the Temple of Sürü Miklári, the god of rats whose priests know and will sometimes sell some of the city’s lesser and greater secrets that its packs have overheard. However, there is only one known entrance to the Temple of Sürü Miklári, and that is quite literally barred. Fortunately, it is rumoured that there are side entrances which bypass the barred entrance and provide access to the temple, both of which, are of course, detailed. One is in the home of a seedy caravanserai, the other in a filthy underground theatre, either of which the Player Characters will have to either fight, bribe, or sneak their way through in order to find the entrance. There are another five levels below the entrances, consisting of temple and tomb complexes, plus the court belonging to a god.

‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ is rich in detail and flavour, presenting level after level of baroque, sweaty and forgotten complexes of rooms and warrens. If it is missing anything, it is perhaps a hook or two to pull the Player Characters into wanting to delve deep into the Underworld under the City of Vultures, and whilst the Dungeon Master is free to develop these herself, the process is not eased by the lack of NPCs in the earlier ‘The City of Vultures’ who might be interested and also, whilst the tombs of the nobles and their inhabitants are detailed, what is not, is the sort of information which would motivate a scholar to want to delve that deep into the Underworld. As written, ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ just is, leaving the Dungeon Master to do all of the set-up.

Rounding out the issue is ‘The Armoury’. This is quite possibly the richest two pages of magical items committed to paper, presenting almost thirty items, one paragraph after another. Again, there is a lot of flavour, mostly mechanical to these entries, but it gives them a pleasing individuality. For example, The Sword of the Basilisks is a longsword +1 which petrifies victims on a natural roll of nineteen or twenty, but where a victim gets a save, the wielder never does against petrification of any kind. Or The Sword of Vilet Kanebe, which is a damned blade, a longsword -2, which actually transfers the curse to the victim of a first successful hit in combat and thereafter becomes a longsword +1, only to revert at the end of the battle. In both cases, as well as many others in the article, a little mechanical complexity adds some flavour.

Physically, Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is decently presented. It is perhaps a bit cramped in places, whilst the maps are often rough, they work and they are not without their charm. The artwork selected is also good.

It is great to finally see an introduction to the City of Vultures in the pages of Echoes From Fomalhaut, and ‘The City of Vultures’ in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs certainly serves as an excellent primer to the mouldering city. Hopefully future issues will explore the city further and perhaps also provide the Dungeon Master with some hooks and some NPCs which can help her run the type of city adventures that the publisher professes to be fond of. The two scenarios in the issue are also good, the forest adventure actually easier to use than the dungeon adventure, which for all of its detail is disappointing. Nevertheless, the continued focus on fewer, longer articles in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs continue provide interesting gaming content.

—oOo—

An unboxing of Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs can be found here. 

[Fanzine Focus XXIV] Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed 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 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.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content. Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and in reducing the number of articles it gave the fanzine more of a focus and allowed more of the feel of the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign to shine through, whilst Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs drew from multiple to somewhat lesser effect.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara contains just four entries, and is all the better for it. Published in April, 2019, the issue opens with the titular, ‘The Enchantment of Vashundara’, by Zsolt Varga. This is an otherworldly scenario designed for Player Characters of Third and Fourth Levels. It begins with a giant peacock landing in front of the Player Characters and lowering her wings as if to suggest that they might climb onto her back. If they do, they are flown up into the clouds and over an ocean to a land far, far away where the bird alights at the entrance to a villa. It is an interesting start because the peacock never speaks, although the Player Characters may find animals in the villa who will, many of them quite eccentric. They will also discover that the villa is clearly built for a giant, and that giant—complete with six arms and six heads—is chained up and deeply asleep in the stables. What exactly is going on in this villa? The scenario is a mix of investigation and combat and plays upon the idea of the adventurers as midgets in a land of giants, much like Castle Gargantua, making what would be small things for a giant of a size that the adventurers can use. They are free to poke about as is their wont in the gardens—hanging or otherwise, fabulously clean bathing facilities, and lake (which is actually upstairs) of the villa. There is no one way to approach this scenario or investigating its situation, so the suggested set-up is exactly that, and whilst there is an ideal outcome given, the scenario is open enough that events could play in plenty of other directions… The second-place winner in a scenario writing competition the editor was judging, it is easy to see why ‘The Enchantment of Vashundara’ came second (and to wonder what happened to the first), because it is simple and flexible, but with plenty of scope for the players and their characters to interpret the how they will. Its set-up also makes it easy to drop into a campaign with relatively little preparation.

The bulk of Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara is dedicated to the town of Tirwas, but in two parts. The first part is ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ which describes the harbour town with its unfinished walls, its inhabitants, various locations, and the various tensions which make it fraught place to visit, let alone live. Located towards the eastern end of the Isle of Erillion—detailed in previous issues—this was once a sleepy village at best, known for its communal customs and penchant for smuggling, but little else. Now it has grown into a town in which smuggling is a way of life; strangers have a habit of going missing or become the victims of attacks or other crimes unless they have paid (or been extorted) for membership into one of the town’s many factions; and factions headed by the town’s Landlords. As with the town writeups in previous issues of Echoes From Fomalhaut, ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ goes into some detail about the town and its inhabitants. This includes all eight Landlors and their aims and rivalries, customs such as what might happen to the Player Characters if they are not willing to wear one of the Landlords’ emblems, and numerous NPCs and locations accompanied by rumours and potential hooks. 

The second part is ‘Plunder of the Stone Sacks’, a scenario for Player Characters of Third to Fifth Level. This details a series of caves which in the past were worked and expanded into a series of communal shelters below Tirwas, each family in the town having and furnishing their own cave, but which have since been partially abandoned with some areas closed off, some used as storerooms, others as a means to smuggle goods into the town, and lastly, one area as a gaol and holding area for a certain nasty trade… The Stone Sacks is a cross between a classic dungeon and a working area, the Player Characters needing to use stealth to get around sections of it to avoid being noticed in the areas under guard. Beyond mere curiosity, several hooks are suggested to push the Player Characters to investigative activities in the town and in the Stone Stacks, including disappearances in the town, stopping the smuggling activities, or even looking for an ancient, long-forgotten shrine. Together, ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ and ‘Plunder of the Stone Sacks’ form a solid pairing, which could easily be added to a Game Master’s campaign, but really it provides her and her players and their characters with motivations not just with reasons to visit and investigate the town of Tirwas, but also the Isle of Erillion. This is excellent support for the setting and hopefully future issues will see support in a similar fashion.

Rounding out Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara is ‘All is Well in Sleepy Haven’ This describes another coastal settlement on the Isle of Erillion. Where ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ and ‘Plunder of the Stone Sacks’ take up half of the fanzine, ‘All is Well in Sleepy Haven’ is a mere tenth of the issue’s length. It is described as unexciting, even dull, and the problem is that it is. There are some missing persons and suggestions that treasure hunters are operating in the area, but it is debatable as whether this would be enough for the Player Characters to be motivated enough to visit the village. To be fair, the descriptions are well done, just as they are elsewhere in the issue, but the write-up of Sleepy Haven is exactly that.

Previous issues of the fanzine came with a map which depicts the outline of a city or town, intended as a handouts for the players. Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara goes one step further with two maps on a double-sided sheet, one of Tirwas and one of Sleepy Hollow. These are done on sturdy paper and as before, nicely done. Physically, the issue is decently presented, the choice of public artwork and new illustrations, all feel fitting. It needs an edit in places, but is otherwise, well written.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs had four articles and felt the better for it, and Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara has four articles and feels all the better for it. In fact, it is better for having the two articles describing a town and the dungeon below it together with reasons to explore both, as well as an intriguing and likeable scenario in the form of the titular ‘The Enchantment of Vashundara’. Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara is a solidly entertaining issue.

—oOo—

An unboxing of Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara can be found here.

[Fanzine Focus XXIII] Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed 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 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.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content. Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and in reducing the number of articles it gave the fanzine more of a focus and allowed more of the feel of the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign to shine through.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs continues this focus and again keeps the article count down to just four. Published in January, 2019, the issue opens with ‘The Technological Table’, a list of futuristic weapons and gadgets, ranging from laser pistol and laser spear to the God-box and The Dark Eye. Many of these items will be familiar from Science Fiction and other gaming articles, so it is refreshing to see some interesting entries alongside the usual electro-whip and laser sword. For example, Aquastel is a liquid so weighty, that when mixed with other liquids, it separates their constituent parts into layers according to their density, so could be used to neutralise poisons or extract valuable metals. The God-box is a communications link to an information bank located deep underground which can be consulted for information, though it is likely to be out of date or phrased on language that the Player Characters do not understand. This sort of article supports a setting where the campaign planet has links to a star faring civilisation or the various weapons and gadgets are remnants of a prior civilisation, fallen long ago. There are echoes of the lost civilisation set-up in the scenario, ‘Terror on Tridentfish Island’, published in Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism.

The scenario in Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs is the eponymous ‘Revenge of the Frogs’. The has always been an element of batrachian horror in Dungeons & Dragons, going back to Dave Arneson’s scenario, ‘Temple of the Frog’ and creatures such as the Bullywug, as well as drawing on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’. Frogs can be alien and emotionless creatures, so make a weird, but worthy enemy in any Dungeons & Dragons scenario. Designed for Player Characters of Third to Fifth Levels, ‘Revenge of the Frogs’ maroons them in the mouldering port of Silvash. The winds have ceased and the local high-priest of Murtar, God of Murky Waters hires the Player Characters to locate the means to restore them in the nearby marshland and prevent the rising of a frog-cult and its dread god that in ages past was destroyed by the priesthood of Murtar. The scenario is designed as a sandbox which will see the Player Characters delving deeper and deeper into the marshland, encountering various dank dangers and independently-minded inhabitants, all of whom are nicely fleshed out and bring colour to the region. Originally written as a companion piece to ‘Cloister of the Frog God’, part of Frog God Games’ Rappan Athuk megadungeon, Revenge of the Frogs’ is a bit rough around the edges and underwritten in terms of set-up and its explanation, especially in the placement of one of its magical items needed to complete the scenario. Otherwise, the scenario has a Lovecraftian tinge combined with a pleasing sense of mouldering decay.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs comes with a map which depicts the outline of a city. This of ‘Arfel – City State of the Charnel God’, which is fully detailed in the issue of the fanzine. This is a city dominated by Ozolba the Zombie God from his labyrinth temple-complex and necropolis which overlooks the city. He and his priesthood—both undead and living—can claim what they want and who they want, and to object is a sin. The nobility of Arfel abide by the stifling Necrotic Traditions, rarely if ever leaving their mansions which are perpetually shrouded in mourning, giving parts of Arfel a sepulchral feel. In the absence of civil government, crime syndicates and gangs have stepped in to run the city, though only unofficially. Only the Outer City beyond its walls is free from Ozolba the Zombie God’s reach, though it a lawless, rough place, where protection much be bought. Meanwhile, throughout the city can be found cat after cat after cat, which hunt in packs against the cat-catchers of the Outer City and know its secret ways from one end to the other. Again, there is the sense of the Lovecraftian to Arfel, it having a Dreamlands-like feel, though heavily influenced by Clark Ashton Smith’s Mordiggian, the Charnel God.

As with Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism, the remaining half of Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs is dedicated to one article. In the previous issue, this was ‘Erillion, East’, in this issue it is ‘Erillion, West’. This is the second half of a gazetteer detailing the island of Erillion, previously described in Echoes From Fomalhaut #02 and for the most part completed here—there are still plenty of locations mentioned here to be fully detailed in future issues. It continues to detail numerous locations and aspects of this end of the island, some forty or more of them. There is a strand of religiosity which runs through the location descriptions, notably the ‘Lunar Path’, a pilgrimage which leads from black lunar stones to black lunar stones and which will grant those successful with access to the world of dreams, but test them mightily in the process, and the ‘Isle of Trials’, an island west of Erillion, but connected by a pirate infested bridge, which is home to numerous persecuted cults and religious movements. Here the thumbnail descriptions never get as far as living up to their promise, since the reader is left wondering more about the cult or the religious movement and what their religious beliefs are. Hopefully, these might be detailed in a future issue. Otherwise, the thumbnail descriptions are decently done, such as the band of Ogre bandits which capture children and fatten them up for the pot, the court of Lord Virguard the Besieger who keeps five chairs empty in memory of his lost adventuring companions and who will reward tales of brave adventuring, and a marble chess high in the mountains, where two legendary wizards, one transformed into a mountain, the other a cloud, play out an endless game with living figures for the Staff of Power. There are also lots of bandits and thieves and berserkers to encounter too. This western half of Erillion is even more lawless than the Eastern half, and like the earlier ‘Erillion, East’, this half consists of many locations that might be passed through or discovered rather than necessarily visited with any purpose and the Dungeon Master will want to create that purpose or use the scenarios published in the earlier issues which are set on the island.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs definitely feels all the better for having just four articles, their content being allowed to breath and not feel crammed in. It is lightly illustrated, but much of the artwork is really quite good, whether it is public domain or commissioned for the issue, it all fits the oppressive ‘Mitteleuropa’ feel of the author’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign and is well chosen. It needs an edit here and there, but is generally well written. Of the content, ‘The Technological Table’ is the outlier. It is a good article, but it feels out of place with the rest of the content, whilst the enjoyable ‘Revenge of the Frogs’, creepy ‘Arfel – City State of the Charnel God’, and completing overview that is ‘Erillion, West’, all feel as if they are in the same world. And that perhaps is a problem too, because so far Echoes From Fomalhaut is only giving us snapshots of the ‘City of Vultures’ campaign, not quite a partwork, but getting there. Overall, Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs is sol'd issue of the fanzine, but it is beginning to feel as if something is wanted to begin pulling the ‘City of Vultures’ campaign together.

[Fanzine Focus XV] Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed 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 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.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and consists of just four articles. The first of these is ‘People of the Great Wheel’, which presents an unstoppable much in the manner of Broodmother Skyfortress. The great wheel, fifty feet high and fifteen feet wide, impervious to damage and allegedly all influence, rolls on and on, unimpeded by geography—manmade or natural, crushing all that fall in its path. As the legends of the Great Wheel have grown, so has the retinue around it, from the Outriders of the Great Wheel who ride ahead and forage and pillage and the Penitents of the Great Wheel who run before it shouting out great prophecies to the Magi of the Great Wheel who ponder and pontificate upon the Great Wheel and its direction and the Merchants of the Great Wheel who scavenge from the ruins left in its wake and sell what they find. These Disciples of the Great Wheel, along with the accompanying legends bring a delightful sense of the manic to this set-up and the Great Wheel is essentially its an ecology of its very own in perpetual motion. Adding this to campaign is another matter, but that is up to the Dungeon Master to decide and then handle the damage it would literally do to the fabric of her campaign.

‘Terror on Tridentfish Island’ is an adventure module for characters of Third to Fifth Level. It takes place on the eponymous island, once the exotic resort for the nobility, but its pleasure palaces, wildernesses for safe hunting and exploration, decorative gardens, and more, have long been abandoned. Now though four parties have taken an interest in the island—a feckless noble looking to make his name, a garbage scow whose pariah crew wishes to plunder the island free of valuables, a second nobleman wanting to uncover the island’s secrets and wealth, and of course, the player characters. The latter are free to act on their own or work for one of the other interested parties, but either way, they will find themselves having to deal with the whims and desires of said parties. This has potential for some interesting encounters and the scenario supports this by indicating what the various NPCs will do at any one location of note on the island.

Whether it is encounters with Winged Apes or Nightgaunts, there is a weird atmosphere to both the island and the scenario, one which threatens to just let it slip in H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. In fact, there is more of a science horror feel to the scenario once the adventurers begin to uncover the island’s secrets which are intended to feed into the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign. The scenario though, is not example of what previous issues of the fanzine have aimed to provide, that is, ‘good vanilla’ fantasy. It is better than that, for rather than vanilla, the fantasy in this scenario is slightly weird and exotic, far from that of Western Europe and traditional Dungeons & Dragons. Overall, this is a nicely done exploration scenario, one that could easily be dropped into the Dreamlands or even on Tékumel connected by Tubecar.

The issue reflects the publisher’s personal interests with ‘Monsters of Wizardry’. This adapts nine monsters from his favourite computer roleplaying game, Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, for use with the retroclone, OSRIC. Fans of the computer game will probably appreciate this. Some of these monsters appear in setting described in the next article.

The remaining half of Echoes From Fomalhaut #03 is dedicated to one article, ‘Erillion, East’. This is the first half of a gazetteer detailing the island of Erillion, previously described in Echoes From Fomalhaut #02, the second half to be published in the next issue. This issue though, includes a separate map of the island for easy reference. Thus, there is some crossover between the gazetteer and the overview, but here the gazetteer goes into more detail, taking both Dungeon Master and her players away from ‘Gont, Nest of Spies’ detailed in the previous issue and out into the island proper. Numerous locations are described such as the Forest of Death at heart of which stands a poisoned and bitter Treant; a sacred grove whose trees may give prophecies, open a portal, or curse intruders with sleepless nights; and a high mountain garden protected by the ghost of a hermit. In general, the island has a feeling of age and increasing decrepitude, of a realm where lawlessness is not quite rife, but the accepted all the same. Many of the places are locations that might be passed through or discovered rather than necessarily visited with any purpose and the Dungeon Master will want to create that purpose or use the scenarios published in the previous two issues which are set on the island.

Behind a fun cover, what is readily apparent about Echoes From Fomalhaut #03 is that it has benefited from it containing fewer articles. None of the issue’s content feels as if has been cramped in together and it gives the issue a stronger focus than the previous issues. It is lightly illustrated, but much of the artwork is really quite good, especially that depicting the secret at the heart of ‘Terror on Tridentfish Island’. The cartography is also good, both in the issue and on the separate map. Overall, there is a pleasing sense of professionalism to the issue—and not just in terms of the presentation, but also in terms of the content. In particular, the first two articles standout, ‘The People of the Great Wheel’ bringing a sense of community and ecology to an ongoing mobile apocalypse, and ‘Terror on Tridentfish Island’ beginning to hint at the dark weirdness to come in future issues from the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign as well as providing a solid scenario. Lastly, ‘Erillion, East’ continues laying the groundwork for the island setting which will hopefully be further supported with scenarios in future issues.
Overall, Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism pulls away from the ‘vanila’ fantasy of previous issue and in doing begins to give the fanzine more of a focus, more of an identity, and more of a reason to want to read future issues. That can only bode well for future issues.

Fanzine Focus XIII: Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed 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 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.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continues this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign.

It opens with Lazlo Feher’s ‘The Four Wives of Xantun’, a scenario outline for Levels two to four, set in and around Hlanith, a city state on the Cerenarian Sea in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. The first of Xantun’s wives was famously lost to a shoggoth, whilst the other three are shades of her by way the murderous protoplasm. Although stats and descriptions are included, it is perhaps a bit generous to describe this as an outline. It is much more of a scenario set-up or seed which the Dungeon Master will need to develop further herself.

The bulk of the fanzine though, is devoted to the island of Erillion and Gont, a port town on the island’s east coast. ‘A Guide to Erillion’ presents the island in some detail, placing the island kingdom between the Empire of Kassadia and the Confederacy. At its heart lies the Valley of Brazak Bragoth, guarded by the knights of Yolanthus Kar lest the Wraith Queen Arxenia and her court rises from their deep catacombs. This gives rise to the islanders’ practice of burying their dead in the valley, storing them in houses of the dead until this is possible. The last druids on the island were wiped out by Queen Arxenia some three centuries ago, so any on the island are recent arrivals; low magic is easily learned, but higher spells require wizards and illusionists to undertake a trial at the hidden Mage Tower and clerics are expected to undertake a quest by their deity. The gods commonly worshipped across the island are also detailed, although their descriptions do feel as if they could have included more detail.

Although there are several other locations given in ‘A Guide to Erillion’, it is Gont that receives the most attention. The full description of the port is given in two parts—‘Gont, Nest of Spies’ and ‘Down the Smuggler’s Walk’. The first presents the town above ground, including some twenty or so locations and the town’s most notable inhabitants. These include Lord Gramatik, who rules in conjunction with the Captain’s Council, its members all loyal to him after his having sent their predecessors to the Chaining Stone on the harbour’s edge; the merchant Hadik Hurzol, intermediary to the Combination, the organisation which dominates  criminal activities on the island; and Arkander the Enchanter and Drunken Peggy, whose tavern, The Sink, has a barroom the floor of which can be rotated to dump everyone into the sea or a fighting pit.

The second explores what lies beneath Gont, a series of cellars, escape tunnels, and oubliettes. There are some forty locations to be found under the town, from empty reservoirs and abandoned cellars to fighting dens and the home of the leader of the Combination. Many of them have a relatively mundane use, which give the complex an interesting utilitarian feel. This sets up a nice contrast with the more fantastic and private of locations under the city. Together, ‘Gont, Nest of Spies’ and ‘Down the Smuggler’s Walk’ give a grimy, salt encrusted feel to the fishing port, everyone getting along with tensions just beneath the surface. Many of the locations described come with scenario hooks too, though some more would have been useful to get the player characters to the port and involved in its affairs. A lovely touch is the inclusion of a large double-sided map, one side of which has a hex-map of the island of Erillion and the other a blank map of Gont.

Rounding out Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont of Spies is ‘The Swine Lord’, a scenario of characters of Level Four to Level Six. The player characters are hired to do two things—one is to recover the debts of a veteran adventurer who has disappeared into the Highlands of Sibirk in the southern part of Erillion. The other is to find out what happened to the tracker who they already sent out and is yet to return. On one level the adventure is quite straightforward, a simple tale of debt collection, but there is a magical mystery here too. It is not an obvious mystery and the Dungeon Master may have to push and nudge her players to take an interest, but again, it serves as a nice contrast to the mundane nature of the party’s employment. It needs a sequel of sorts, especially if the mystery is solved. Overall, this is a solid adventure.

Physically, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies is well presented with some very decent artwork in places. One or two of the lesser articles feel a bit cramped and out of place in comparison to the main pieces, which all are pretty good. The cartography in general is quirky and somewhat rough, but it is still legible and easy enough to use.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies is certainly lives up to the author’s aim of it being designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. It presents good material in the main, but it feels just slightly bland, as if there should be stronger hook or reason for a gamer to want to use that material. One such hook is that blandness itself, which allows the contents of the issue to shifted easily to a setting of the Dungeon Master’s own design. The other hooks are to be found deeper into the content of the issue, but they are local and the fanzine really needs to the hooks to visit both Erillion and Gont. Perhaps they can be included in the next issue of the fanzine, either as hooks or as a proper scenario.

Overall, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies is decent enough, but it needs to find an identity for itself and its content to really grab people’s attention and for them to use said content.

Fanzine Focus X: Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how 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 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. Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. It also showcases some of the content from the Hungarian Old School Renaissance roleplaying game, Kazamaták és Kompániák, or ‘Catacombs & Companies’.

Published in March, 2018, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper! comes with a dungeon as well as two other adventures and various articles listing things. As mentioned in the editorial, the aim of this inaugural issue is to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. In ‘The Rules of the Game’ though, it sets out the parameters of its fantasy—NPCs of Fifth Level and above are rare, as are spells above Fifth Level, magical items are limited to +3, Experience Points for treasure are gained through hedonistic expenditure of said treasure, and after inflicting a killing blow, Fighters can carry damage over.

Having set out its stall, the issue leaps into its first article, ‘Bazaar of the Bizarre’, a percentile table for determining who is selling what, what they are like, and what complications they might bring. It is followed by ‘Caravan Goods’, a thumbnail guide to merchant caravans. Both are sort of filler articles, nothing really new, but decent enough spurs for the Game Master’s imagination. In comparison, ‘Philtres & Dusts’ is much more detailed, listing various alchemical bombs, dusts, and oils, such as the Dust of Mung which when sprinkled on a recently deceased corpse causes them so much agony that they are forced to answer questions or the Dust of Desiccation, which lowers water levels, reduces ponds to puddles, and anyone foolish enough to imbibe or sniff it, into a dried-out husk! There is a dark, sometimes ghoulish quality to all of the various substances described here, each of which should arouse the interest of any player character or NPC with an alchemical bent. If not that, then each is a perfect addition to the list of things to be found in a wizard’s laboratory.

The fourth article is again a short piece. ‘Morale & Men’ by Istvan Boldog-Bernad and Sandor Gebei is a short set of rules from Kazamaták és Kompániák for hiring retainers and soldiers and handling their morale once hired. The rules are straightforward and relatively easy to use and expand.

The three main pieces of writing in Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper! are in fact, adventures. The first of these is ‘The Singing Caverns’, which is designed for characters of between Second and Fourth Level. The longest entry in the issue, it describes the caverns close to Heartless Hugo’s Keep. Set across two levels, they include an apiary run by mad, sometimes murderous old coot—everyone is told to ‘Beware the Beekeeper!’, a tavern in the caves run by Orcs, where most are welcome if they behave themselves, great oaks that grow out of the caverns and onto the hill, a bandit lair, and more. The dungeon has an odd feel to it, with a mix of quite civilised inhabitants are not necessarily spoiling for a fight with the player characters—hence the Orcs running a tavern, separated by mysterious rooms and passageways. There is far more of the home to these caverns than there is threat, though the inhabitants will protect themselves if they are attacked. The emphasis here then is much more on exploration and interaction rather than combat. One issue with the dungeon is the lack of reason to go there. A few hooks to that end would have helped, although the Game Master should be able to create some of his own. Another issue is that maps are cramped and scrappy, so not always easy to read, especially as they have to show a lot of detail.

The second adventure is ‘Red Mound’. It is quite short, detailing only a handful of locations and it does not suggest a playing Level, but characters of Third and Fourth Level should be suitable. It describes a great stone outcrop in the desert wastelands, a regular stopping point for travellers which is also said to be the tomb of a great hero. Guides and the Red Men of the nearby deserts never ascend beyond the lowest sacrificial chamber, so what lies on the path beyond this? The scenario manages to fit in encounter with dark god who might bestow the ability to summon ‘invisible’ Black Puddings as servants and the discovery of a thrice cursed great sword—all with caveats! This is a good mini-encounter or side trek adventure with a strong Swords & Sorcery feel to it, which would make it suitable for use with North Wind Adventures’ Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea: A Roleplaying Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Weird Fantasy.

The third and final adventure is ‘The Mysterious Manor’, which again is designed for player characters of between Second and Fourth Level. A shorter encounter than ‘The Singing Caverns’, it describes a tumbledown manor, once the seat of a minor noble family, and the cellar and tombs below. The family has long died out and the building is now the base for the dread pirate captain, Saydir the Kassadian, who has staffed it with monsters of sorts, all of them in his service. The upper areas are where they live and work, whilst below, the original owners have their tombs. This gives the adventure two areas with quite distinct feels to them, one rough and ruined, the other sepulchral and sinister. Certainly, the latter section will challenge any Thief! One inclusion which does seem unnecessary is that of the full write-up of Saydir the Kassadian, since he is an Eighth Level Fighter and can thus outfight any of the characters supposed to be exploring his base. The maps for the manor and the cellar below are easier to read, primarily because there this is less detail to cram in.

Rounding out the issue are some maps for the Game Master to use—sadly better than those used elsewhere in the issue, such as in the scenarios—and an advert. This is notable for being for Helvéczia, a roleplaying game with a Swiss or middle European feel to it. Hopefully this will make it to English language hobby.

Physically, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper! is neatly presented, though it does feel rather cramped as if it could have done with a few more pages. It is generally well written with a range of artwork which varies from the amateurish to the professional, plus the odd bit of publicly sourced pieces thrown in. Unfortunately, the amateurish pieces really do not do the content justice, though they do make the maps look decent in comparison. What does let the issue down are the maps, which are often cramped and scrappy, in places difficult to read. It should be noted that the issue also comes with separate, unkeyed city map. This is extra to the fanzine and is essentially a free map on heavy stock paper. It is up to the Game Master to put the map to a good purpose.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper! provides a good mix of material—‘Philtres & Dusts’ is excellent—and the three adventures are all different in tone and content. In setting out to offer ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart, the issue has certainly achieved that. Problematically, this makes it difficult for this issue of the fanzine difficult to stand out from the crowd and anyone coming to this first issue wanting to read fantasy roleplaying content with a Hungarian flavour is likely to be disappointed. Despite this, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper! is an assured first issue whose teething problems will be easy to overcome for the second issue.