[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Polaris Issue 1

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

Polaris Issue 1 was published in the summer of 1987. As the cover states, it is “For Players Of The ‘Call Of Cthulhu’ FRPG’”, it is a British fanzine—actually published less than two miles from where I write this review in Birmingham, which came out towards the end of the British fanzine boom of the period and at a time when the highly regarded Dagon fanzine from Carl Ford was going strong. The concerns of the thirty-six-page volume will be familiar to the Keepers of today, and certainly will be familiar to veteran players and Keepers of Call of Cthulhu. Thus, it contains articles about how to create and maintain an atmosphere of fear around the table, examinations of particular Occupations and Mythos tomes, a description of an occult tradition and its parallels with the Cthulhu Mythos. It also contains two scenarios and so edited by Simon Prest, the issue contains quite a lot of content that is both playable and applicable today.

Written for use for Call of Cthulhu, Third Edition and named after H.P. Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, Polaris Issue 1  opens with a very English concern. This is Green and Pleasant Land: The British 1920s-30s Cthulhu Source Pack, Games Workshop’s seminal sourcebook for the United Kingdom. First, in ‘The Lamp of Alhazred’, Andy Smith reviews the book to positive effect, although he does not think much of either Brian Lumley’s short story, ‘The Running Man’ or the scenario which precedes it, ‘Shadows over Darkbank’. Both are notable low points in the supplement, which otherwise still stands up as a very playable affair. ‘Down To Earth With A Bump’ by Peter F. Jeffery is a set of optional rules for handling aircraft damage, whether from another attacking aeroplane or a flying Mythos creature, such as a Byakhee. Originally submitted as an accompaniment to the aviation article in Green and Pleasant Land, the rules were ultimately rejected and printed in the pages of Polaris. They handle the effects of damage as a series of escalating saving throws, with the amount of damage determining the percentile target which if rolled under has the undesired effect. The base roll is to see if the aeroplane crashes, makes a crash landing, a forced landing, or suffers structural damage, the percentile target more or less doubling each time. Supported by several examples, this is both simple and complex at the same time, with lots of dice rolls which would slow down play at the table and it is clear to see why they might not have been accepted for inclusion in Green and Pleasant Land.

Andy Bennison’s ‘The Heat on the Streets’ is the first of the two scenarios in Polaris Issue 1 . It casts the Investigators as private detectives thrown into a classic Film Noir-like case involving a mysterious femme fatale, a missing man, gangsters, Prohibition, and a grumpy police detective. Not only does the police detective not like the Investigators, but he is also not far off retirement, and these are just the most obvious of the scenario’s clichés. Angelica Peach wants her brother, Jonathan, found as their mother is terribly sick. Given some names to contact, the investigation leads to the door The Dragon Club, a restaurant owned by local gangster, Valentino D’Al, and the first of many shootouts in the scenario. The author admits the scenario is linear and it is also heavily plotted. It leans more into the Pulp style of play and is suitable for a group who prefers a more action orientated type of mystery. The Keeper will also need to provide more a few sets of stats for the various NPCs and there are a few areas where she will also need to add names and personalities to various NPCs. It is also never explained who the femme fatale is, but her presence does lead to some nice moments of horror in the scenario.

Under the Keeper’s Lore department, Dave Hallett makes the point that ‘Fear Is The Key’. This looks at ways in which fear can be invoked in Call of Cthulhu and maintained. His advice is to ground the game in the mundane, then engage and keep the attention of the players, involve all of the senses, and so on, before moving on to undermine the Investigators’ sense of reality, and using tools such as false alarms and ambiguity. It is a well-worn path, seen in subsequent articles over and over, but good advice, nonetheless. ‘The Dark Brotherhood’ by Simon Prest is not a regular feature about cults as the title might allude to, but rather a look at Occupations, what the Investigator did before he began investigating the unknown and tries to do whilst suffering its travails. Here the Occupation is the Author, with suggestions as to what the author might be writing about, what publications he writes for, and so on. Overall, it provides some useful questions for the player to think about when creating his Investigator.

The subject of ‘Illuminating Manuscripts’ is another perennial favourite of Call of Cthulhu—Mythos tomes, showing even back in 1987, the roleplaying game did not provide much in the way of information about them for the Keeper. The particular tome covered by Adrian Jones here is The G’harne Manuscripts, taken from Brain Lumley’s The Burrowers Beneath. The article examines its history and its content, referencing the various works by Lumley where the book has appeared. It is a decent examination of the book with plenty of detail that the Keeper can include should her Investigators want to find and study a copy. Even in 2023, it shows how the Mythos tome is an important part of the game, but there is no definite treatment of them for the roleplaying game. They very much deserve their own supplement. The article adds the spell, Call Shudde-M’ell, and provides guidelines for handling the Chthonian susceptibility to water.

‘The Secret Doctrine’ by Michael S. Carter is an article about Kabbalism, the Jewish esoteric mysticism which for Call of Cthulhu, played a significant role in the scenario The City Without a Name from Curse of the Chthonians. Explored in more detail elsewhere for Call of Cthulhu, the article does not delve too deeply into its subject before making an odd swerve into discussing the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its dissolution and then back again to link Kabbalism to the Mythos by drawing parallels between the former’s Tree of Life and its circles and Yog-Sothoth of the latter. This includes the travel required by separating spirit from body and journeying onwards to make contact with god. The article avoids the subject of numerology and is thus short, direct, and to the point.

It is also the inspiration for the second scenario in Polaris Issue 1 . ‘The Acolyte Of The Ultimate Gate’ by Simon Prest is set in London, but feels a little like ‘The Vanishing Conjurer’ from The Vanishing Conjurer & The Statue of the Sorcerer and ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’ from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth: A Global Campaign to Save Mankind with a secret cult operating in the city about the enact a terrible ritual. The scenario opens with the Investigators staying at a friend’s house for Christmas, when one of the guests collapses to the floor, and before he dies, thrusts a letter into an investigator’s hand and utters a warning. What dread occurrence is he warning about and what was it that was keeping him working even as the other guests enjoyed the celebrations? The Investigators must overcome doctor-patient privilege to get to the nub of the situation and identify the threat, before finding a way to deal with it. Of the two scenarios in the fanzine, this needs less effort upon the part of the Keeper, the Investigators have greater freedom to explore the situation, and the tone is far more restrained and mannerly. It is thus the better of the two and much easier to add to a  United Kingdom campaign set during the eighteen nineties, nineteen twenties, or nineteen thirties.

Elsewhere in the fanzine, there is a decent piece of poetry from J. Pentalow, ‘The Beast of Yaem’, and as with all fanzines, the adverts capture the feel of hobby at the time of their publication. As the first issue, there is very little in the way of adverts or classified adverts in Polaris Issue 1 , but there is a little dig by author Paul Mason at Games Fair for his own convention, Koancon, which points to the attitudes of the hobby at the time.

Physically, Polaris Issue 1  feels slightly rough and is slightly difficult to read in its choice of typewriter typeface, but this is really only at the beginning of readily available desktop publishing software. Yet, much of the artwork is quite reasonable and the layout is tidy.

It is disappointing that it only ran to the one issue because Polaris Issue 1 is a surprisingly good first issue. There is much that will be familiar to veterans of the Call of Cthulhu, and the various articles would have definitely been useful at the time of its publication, if not today. That said, both scenarios could be run today if the Keeper wanted, and likewise, the Keeper could definitely draw inspiration from one or two of the other articles. Overall, Polaris Issue 1 is impressively solid and any Keeper would have been glad to have had this in 1987.

—oOo—

An unboxing of Polaris issue 1 can be found here.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules

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. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, seen in titles such as Crawl! One notable feature of the range of fanzines for Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is that they often support and showcase the settings and campaigns created by their authors. Crawl Under a Broken Moon, for example, details a post-apocalyptic setting which would be collated in the pages of the Goodman Games distributed The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, whilst Ghostlike Crime #01, One of Us, Ninja City, and Black Powder, Black Magic: A ’Zine of Six-Guns and Sorcery Volume 1 all explored familiar genres of their own for the mechanics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game.

Similarly, Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules supports a very familiar genre, one that has much in common with Ninja City. One of the cultural hits of the eighties was the indie comic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and then for roleplaying, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness roleplaying game, published by Palladium Books. Bronx Beasts provides the rules to create and play bizarre mutant animal characters in wild eighties urban action, much in the mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but written of course, for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. In fact, not so much in the mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, but exactly like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. Republished via a Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest #3 by Bronx Beasts, Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules provides the rules to create anthropomorphic animals and mutate and modify them, and then the rules for playing them.

Character creation in Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules is built around a series of tables. Beast Origin is random mutation or deliberate experimentation. Determined randomly, if the former, the player rolls on the Random Mutation Experience Table’, but if the latter, he rolls on the ‘Deliberate Experimentation Origin Table’. The results for this are further tables for ‘Biological Research Origin Experience’, ‘Military Origin Experience’, ‘Criminal Origin Experience’, or ‘Special Interest Origin Experience’. None of these add stat bonuses or other benefits, instead simply creating elements of the Player Character’s background. The ‘Beast Type’ table provides a hundred entries, from aardvark, alligator, and ape to wolf, wolverine, and zebra. None are described, so the player will need to do some further reading, but in the main, these animals are all familiar and easy to read up about. ‘Beast Size’ does modify the character, adjusting Armour Class, Strength and melee check die, Hide and Sneak die, Hit Dice, Movement, and weight. Bigger creatures will have lower Armour Class and Hide and Sneak die, but everything else will be higher.

The player is then free to adjust the ‘Beast Form’ of his animal character, shifting his speech, legs, hands, and looks to be more human-like or more animal-like. Either full, partial, or none, these are randomly determined and adjusted by expending Evolution Points. These can also be spent to change a Beast’s size, for example, to play a larger mouse or smaller elephant, add abilities such as a prehensile tail, natural weapons or natural armour, and better movement. These are not hard and fast rules, so instead the player and Judge will need to work together to create Beast-type character that fits the style and setting of the genre. Otherwise, character creation follows the standard rules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, although Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules does have its own ‘Lucky Signs’ table.

Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules does not provide any new Classes. In fact, a Beast has no Class, and instead, a player can choose between increasing his character’s Base Attack Modifier or Saving Throws Level by Level. In terms of game play, Beasts are Lucky. They always have a bonus on the Lucky Sign and they both benefit and suffer from Fleeting Luck. One way of gaining Fleeting Luck is for the Beast to give into his animalistic urges, typically in socially or intellectually challenging situations. If the player declines the offer of Fleeting Luck in return for his Beast succumbing to his urges, a Beast Check against Personality or Intelligence is required to overcome them. A Player can also do ‘Fur Burn’ or temporarily burn points of Personality or Intelligence to gain a modifier to die rolls. The last big change is to the rules for Armour Class, which is based on Reflex, Beast Size, and any shield carried. Armour is represented by a die and is instead rolled to soak damage. The armour worn is damaged and steps down a die size any time a one is rolled on the Armour Die. The rules for armour use are similar to those for The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, but not as developed.

Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules ends with an announcement of what is in the next issue. This includes an adventure against a criminal ninja gang and ‘Natural Weapon Crit Tables’ amongst other things. It would have been useful to have had the latter in the pages of Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules to make it more versatile.

Physically, Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules is well presented. The artwork has a certain rough quality, but is as cartoonish as you would expect.

As standalone product Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules can be played as is, but it feels incomplete. Certainly, the ‘Natural Weapon Crit Tables’ would have rounded it out. However, plug the pages of Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules into another setting or genre and the content comes alive. Take it into the post apocalypse of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide for possible mutant action or throw it down alongside Ninja City for some real new York eighties action, and Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules feels right at home.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] CY_OPS Issue.One

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. Not every fanzine is written with the Old School Renaissance in mind, with more recent fanzines being inspired by roleplaying games that, if not part of the Old School Renaissance, are often adjacent to it. One such roleplaying game is CY_BORG, a cyberpunk purgatory that is modelled upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing.

CY_OPS Issue.One has the distinction of being the first issue of the first fanzine for CY_BORG. Published by LETTUCE following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it also has the distinction of being one of the smallest fanzines, being only A6 in size. Then, at least in its physical format, it has the distinction of coming with its own cloth patches and its sticker, which is designed to be used to fill in the picture of the empty vest (or possibly body armour) found in ‘PATCHES!’ on pages fifty-seven and fifty-eight of the fanzine and then submitted to the editor to not win a prize. Which one of the three distinctions is actually important, if any of them are, is up to the reader to decide. What is important is that CY_OPS Issue.One provides a lot of support and content for CY_BORG and CY_BORG being a Cyberpunk roleplaying game, a lot of that support is technical in nature. Essentially guns and gear. There is more than that in the pages of the fanzine, but nevertheless, a great deal of it consists of guns and gear. Surprisingly, given that its genre is Cyberpunk and it contains a lot of guns and gear, there are no stats in CY_OPS Issue.One. This lack of stats is also intentional. CY_OPS Issue.One is designed to be player facing, meaning that it can be read by both the player and his character and is thus an in-world artefact in its own right. And doing something as low grade as a physical print fanzine would be both punk and low fi, even anti-corporate if you will.

However, the player-facing nature and the lack of stats in CY_OPS Issue.One raises issues of their own. The lack of stats means that the fanzine is all front and no backend. There is nothing for the Game Master to use readily and easily. So the Game Master will need to supply them. Fortunately, the mechanical simplicity of CY_BORG means that this is relatively simple. The downside to the fact that CY_OPS Issue.One is player-facing means that the fanzine is not necessarily a sourcebook for the roleplaying game that the Game Master can simply take something from and add to her game, ready for her players and their characters to encounter and interact with. Instead much of the fanzine works as a series of prompts that the players can choose from and have their characters go and do something with, whether that is undertake a job, make a purchase, or visit. Which the Game Master will respond to, meaning that CY_OPS Issue.One is an improvisation tool as much as it is a fanzine.

Yet the first article in the fanzine very cleverly helps the Game Master out no matter whether she has a copy in print or PDF. The ‘Classified’ section provides a set of adverts that suggest jobs the Player Characters can get involved in. On one level, the Game Master could go away and create her own, but each classified advert is linked to a published adventure, by a QR code in the printed fanzine and a hyperlink in the PDF. For example, “Alert. Reward available for any information on missing C.A.U Board members. Rogue crazed experiment on the loose. Ignore its lies.” links to the scenario, Cybergorgon. This is clever and subtle and nicely done, serving not only as a series of in-game adverts, but adverts for other authors’ adventures.

Only the first article in the fanzine makes use of this device. Elsewhere, ‘BREAKING INTO A CREDITS TELLER MACHINE’ is a guide to robbing every cash dispenser in the city and ensuring the Player Characters have a ready supply of petty cash until some corpo notices and puts in a fix, whilst ‘Know Your Enemy – Rehabilitation Frame’ describes a ghastly piece of ‘police brutality technology’, a prisoner mounted in a remote controlled drone forced to conduct pacification duties and who cannot be freed without setting off the tamper sensors and crushing the captive. Gear comes in a range of forms. The first is in ‘AD BY UNINF3CT3D_R4P3RD0C_666’, who is selling anti-nanite devices, such as the ‘TL.5HAd3s.rcd’ eye mod which visualises nanoswarms and ‘SCREECH_E-Z’ which encrypts your audio and text outputs against nanite detection. There are services too, the best of which is ‘BOTS.4.HIRE’, which offers bots for hire, the payment being a portion of any job undertaken, though a deposit is required if there is the possibility of the bot being damaged. Several sample bots are detailed and nicely illustrated. ‘Bounties’ provide a wide range of targets for the Player Characters to take down, for example, ‘DOLLY _XD’, a pleasure cydroid gone rogue, whilst ‘NuRelics’ describes items and things which the Player Characters could find, retrieve, or steal, such as ‘0x2020’, a master timepiece whose hands stopped at the moment of thermonuclear impact. Doubtless, there are collectors willing to pay to have them. ‘Tech Request’ gets inventively weird with its devices and weapons. For example, the ‘Head_Cannon’, unnervingly, really does shoot heads at targets, whilst the massive ‘Dreihander’ is a sword so big it has to be supported by a mechanical arm all of its own grafted onto the wielder!

Longer pieces such as ‘[Dispatch from an Abandoned Terminal]’ suggest a hacker at work, using a combination of social hacking and subtle hacking to free the bonds of A.I.; ‘Cold Storage Club’ a venue to frequent and an event, a battle of the bands to get involved in—whether as participants, support, or protection; and ‘Rumours About STNGR’ takes the reader into the underground world of street races to talk about “The Queen of the Streets”, known for her electronic eye-scrambling vehicle and her rumoured generosity as well as her determination to win every race. Their length means they are not quite as easy to bring into play. Lastly, ‘Cydonia Hanging Gardens’ describes a hanging footbridge which has been taken over and turned into a venue of sorts, which seems to be a mycobotanist’s dream gone wild, a sterilised, air gapped bar where lichen and other plant life is allowed to grow unfettered and free of the contaminants rife in the rest of the city. The question is, is it just a bar or is there something going on there? And just what are the staff growing and why?

Physically, CY_OPS Issue.One is presented in the Doom Punk style of both CY_BORG and Mörk Borg, though leaning more heavily into the punk style of the former. Consequently, it has a very busy, frazzled and fractured style, though it is not quite as artful as the core rulebook and is thus easier to read.

Ultimately, the contents of CY_OPS Issue.One do need a bit of effort upon the part of the Game Master to bring into play. Some, like the ‘Classified’ section and their linked scenarios are much easier to use than others, but there still is a wide range of content to pick and choose from. This though, is all for the players and their characters to pick and choose from, and for the group wanting more player facing, player driven play, CY_OPS Issue.One is a solid option.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001

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. Not every fanzine is written with the Old School Renaissance in mind, although that has been one of the driving forces behind their resurgence in recent years. Nor does every fanzine have to be for or about specific roleplaying games. Never Mind the Dice Rolls, published by NMtDRzine, falls into both of those categories—and more. It is not driven by nostalgia and its content is diverse, with articles about games as much for games, but the latter is systemless, written more for the specific type of game than a specific roleplaying game. It also has very high production values for a fanzine. In addition, it is very British.

Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001 was published in September, 2021. It contains a couple of reviews, two scenarios, lots of plot hooks, and other articles about gaming. Its start though, is a little odd. ‘What is a Role Playing Game?’ by co-editor Nicholas Whitney reiterates and expands the section of text found at the beginning of every roleplaying game, which explains what it is and how it is played, classically basing the description on the type of ‘Cops & Robbers’ and ‘Cowboys & Indians’ games we played as children. However, Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001 is not a roleplaying game and the likelihood is that it will never appear anywhere near where someone might pick up a roleplaying game at random and wonder what it is. The article feels like it is preaching to the converted in its redundancy. Thankfully, the next article—‘Do you remember your first time?’ by Adam Buxton is something that every reader can appreciate, recounting as it does the author’s first experiences with play. As much as the first articles in the issue deal with beginnings, this second is a much more engaging piece that also benefits from being shorter.

Fellow co-editor, Kat Simmons-Smith, provides two adventure hooks with ‘Sci-Fi Scenarios’. Both are roleplaying classics of their genre and neither is a scenario as such. In ‘Riches or Mercy’, the crew of a starship discover a heavily damaged cargo ship, seemingly abandoned, whilst in ‘Watch out for the Vents’, something is stalking and killing the crew of a survey ship on a twenty-year mission. Switch out the survey ship for a cargo ship and ‘Watch out for the Vents’ could be a precursor or explanation—in part—for ‘Riches or Mercy’. Neither scenario is accompanied by an explanation as to what is going on. So, the Game Master will need to provide that. Thus, both are really extended, if well written, plot hooks. In fact, more blurbs for the scenarios than plot hooks which could easily be added to the scenarios as handouts in play. ‘Fantasy Scenarios’ by Alex Hussey follows the same format, but to much better effect. With ‘The Boy Who Wished To be King’, on which the Player Characters are sent north to track down fabric for the princess’ wedding dress amidst a revolution, he provides a set-up, an explanation of the situation and its cause as well as a solution, whilst in ‘The Clockwork Dragon’, the Player Characters must find out why a clock tower has been heavily damaged and the Game Master is provided with both a clear explanation of the cause and some Difficulty Challenges to overcome when dealing with both the problem and the cause. In the case of ‘The Clockwork Dragon’, the scenario—or set-up—is clearly written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but either way, both entries in ‘Fantasy Scenarios’ are easier to use than those in ‘Sci-Fi Scenarios’ because they are more developed.

However, ‘Sci-Fi Scenarios’ and ‘Fantasy Scenarios’ are not the only playable content in Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001. The issue includes four ‘Plot Hooks’, two by Kat Simmons-Smith and two by Nicholas Whitney. These vary in length, but there are some nice ideas here across varying genres, such as ‘What’s in a Name?’, wherein the town of Gravesend suffers from a case of nominative determinism, which the Game Master can develop in full adventures. Then the issue contains not just one full scenario, but two full scenarios, both systems agnostic, but both set within clear genres which makes it easy for the Game Master to select an appropriate game system and develop the stats herself. ‘The Doomsday Stone’ by Al Livingstone is a fantasy scenario in the ‘Swords & Sorcery’ genre, in which a long buried and forgotten weapon is causing earthquakes in the mountains, a glacier to shatter, and nearby sleepers to suffer nightmares about a buried gemstone. The Player Characters must find the cause, surviving the agitated monsters in the area and the strange effects of the weapon. Nicholas Whitney’s ‘Thank You For Watching’ is described as “A nostalgic 80s suburban adventure”, so its genre is again fairly obvious and there are plenty of roleplaying games which do ‘eighties kids in peril’. A strange television signal is turning viewers into a zombie-like state, and it is up to the kids to put a stop to it—with the help of the Audio Visual Club, even as Men in Black turn up to deal with the situation in their own way. Both scenarios require some development in terms of stats, but they are otherwise all but ready to run.

Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001 contains two reviews. Nicholas Whitney’s is of the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, whilst Stephen Craig Robinson contributes a review of Nibiru, the Science Fiction roleplaying game of lost memories. Both are solid, informative pieces. There is also the one roleplaying game of its own in the fanzine. Kat Simmons-Smith’s ‘Dungeon Roomba’ is a solo minigame in which the player controls the activities of the classic dungeon clean-up monster, the Gelatinous Cube—equating it with the autonomous cleaning robot, as it goes about its allotted task. It is a delightfully silly procedural rethink of a monster that is typically regarded as a pest or hurdle to be overcome rather than necessarily faced and worth rolling through to see what its day is like.

Three lengthier articles in the fanzine explore the notions and discomforts of stepping away from gaming in your home group and into the wider hobby, although in a variety of different means. Dave Paterson, the host of the Frankenstein RPG podcast, asks ‘Why on Earth did I start a Podcast?’, the answer being to reach out and enjoy the wider hobby, despite the work necessary! Similarly, Sean F. Smith’s ‘How to Host a Convention Game: Flesh and Fibre Optic’ provides an introduction to running roleplaying sessions, typically one-shots, for both in-person and virtual events. In comparison to the other two articles, it is shorter and perhaps could have benefited from more information, but what is there is good. Lastly, Kat Simmons-Smith ends the issue on a more difficult note with ‘The Unicorn Myth’, which examines her experiences roleplaying as a woman, both in her home group’s games and in public games, such as at conventions. Her issue is with gatekeeping and the acceptance of women at the gaming table, not wanting to see her presence—or that of any other female gamer, at the table as anything other than normal rather than special. It is a pity that even in 2021 that this issue has to be raised and the author makes clear and valid points. One particular point is that commenting on never seeing female gamers is both unhelpful and can make the player in question uncomfortable when this is said to her. The obvious response to that is for the reader to look at this and see it from the point of view of the author and other female players, but at the same time, the author could have examined why that was said and what was done to make her and other games welcome. If nothing, then the other players are obviously not thinking beyond her presence as an exception, but if something, this could have been highlighted and further explored to help the wider gaming hobby be more accepting.

Physically, Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001 is a bright, clean affair, done in full colour. Consequently, it feels far more professional than most fanzines.

Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001 is really packed full of playable content, rounded out with some interesting and thoughtful articles. Some of the scenario hooks could have been better developed to make them easier to use, but all can readily worked up into something that the Game Master can bring to her campaign. Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 001 is an excellent first issue, setting a high standard for the issues to come.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Love Letters From The Baker House Band

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. Some fanzines though are not written for a specific roleplaying game or roleplaying games, but are instead about roleplaying and the hobby.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band is not a fanzine about one author’s campaign or his thoughts upon gaming, but instead a collaborative project put together by the various members of a long running gaming group hosted by the games designers, Vincent and Meguey Baker. Funded via Kickstarter as part of Zine Quest #2, its content includes art, reviews, and game design firmly placed in the Indie style or storytelling style of roleplaying, which should be no surprise given that Vincent Baker is the designer of Apocalypse World, the 2010 roleplaying game whose Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics have been adapted to numerous roleplaying games such as Matrons of Mystery and Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse to drive strong storytelling. However, there is relatively little that is specifically for Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games in the pages of the fanzine, and what there is, is easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the reader’s choice.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band opens with Roxanne Gariepy’s tribute to the group, ‘Love Makes a Family’, depicting a group of misfits—the characters if not necessarily, but probably as much, their players—who come together (to play) and are bound by love. Including a bird and a sentient ‘pile of laundry’ and nicely illustrated, this captures the feel of a gaming group sharing experiences and coming together as a family and hints what it is like being a member of the Baker House Band. The gaming group’s influence is also seen in Evan Janssen’s ‘How Gaming at the Bakers’ Helped Me Design Better Video Games’, which recounts how his experience playing and running roleplaying games influenced and changed how he designs video games. Of course, roleplaying and Dungeons & Dragons have been a strong influence upon video games and especially video roleplaying games, but here the author uses the languages and the tools used by a Game Master to improve how he designs video games. The parallels between the two are fascinating and highlight how the skills used in gaming can be useful beyond its confines.

The first gaming content in the fanzine is ‘Barbara’s Book Club & Motorcycle Gang’ by Alix Janssen. This is both a book club and hardcore motorcycle gang of tough women in crisp print dresses, headscarves, heels, and big motorcycles who read and ride. Armed with their rides, their books, their big handbags containing all manner of useful items, the ladies ride the apocalypse bringing manners and a helpful attitude wherever they go. Obviously written for use with Apocalypse World, but pointers and tags rather than stats, this gang would fit into most post-apocalyptic settings, but also a great many other settings if the Game Master wants a memorable set of eccentric old biddies. ‘Tales of Timberwind’ by Elliot Baker and Tovey Baker introduces an anthropomorphic cosy woodland setting in the style of Mouse Guard or Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, which sounds intriguing, but leaves the reader wanting more. However, to learn more, the reader will need to sign up for the family’s Patreon.

Tovey Baker’s other contribution to Love Letters from the Baker House Band is ‘Hvanrost City’. This is a setting for Blades in the Dark, the roleplaying game crime and gang activity set in a Dickensian industrial city. Notably, this city is powered by pipes filled with electric eels or leeches, but it is also ghost haunted and surrounded by a toxic mist which rolls off the sea and changes creatures into giant mindless animals. There is plenty to work with here for the Game Master to use the city for his own campaign.

The highlight and the bulk of Love Letters from the Baker House Band consists of Meguey Baker’s ‘Baker House LARP’. Each year, as a teacher, she has hosted a LARP for her teenage students over a five-day period. This is full of advice on how to set up, run, adjudicate, and get the most out of such event, along with advice and commentary based on her experiences. There is a great deal to work through here and perhaps could have been better presented—likely as a separate guide for other educators—but it is fascinating to how this is done. For most readers, this will be an interesting article rather than a useful one, but for the teacher, or someone with a similar role, looking to host something along the same lines, this is to be recommended.

‘The Care and Keeping of Waifs, Strays, and Castaways – A Practical Guide’ by Adin Klotz is a set of pointers and warnings that works as a narrative too, whilst Micah’s ‘Legend of Mandoom’s Leg’ is a short, four-page comic which hilariously turns a Dirty Harry style confrontation aboard a school bus on its head with an ‘Unnatural Lust Transfixion’ Powered by the Apocalypse-style move. It is funny and weird, but captures that moment a desperate dice roll can send a situation in a completely different direction with an unexpected move. ‘PBTA reviews from the BHB’ by Josh Savoie reviews six Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games including Dungeon World and Masks: A New generation, and is a good overview of some of the best of the very many roleplaying games available using its mechanics.

Josh Savoie also provides the Powered by the Apocalypse move, ‘Last Breath’. It is made when a Player Character is reduced to zero Hit points and has the opportunity to utter his last words. It begins by asking the other players round the table a number of questions, the bonus to the roll being determined by their answers. The Player Character is going to die, but this gives him one last action, whether glorious or helpful. It is pleasingly dramatic. ‘Shadow Magic’ by Annika Sturmer is more straightforward and designed for long term play, providing a means of teleportation or travel via the shadows, though it is not without its perils. Failure gives the result, “You bring something with you or leave something behind that you did not intend.”, which is again a dramatically great result. This move would work in a number of genres, whether fantasy, superheroes, or urban fantasy. It would be good to see this developed into a suite of moves rather than just the one here.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band comes to a close just as it started with tribute. Again, this is to the family and the gaming group as a family. Sebastian’s ‘D&D Day’ captures the feel and joy of play in an all-day session which runs to midnight. It is a lovely memory, which perhaps wistfully, as adults we miss a great deal.

Physically, Love Letters from the Baker House Band is a lovely fanzine. It needs an edit here or there, but is decently presented.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band is a snapshot of a gaming group and the pleasure its members take in gaming together and being in each other’s company. There are useful things to be found in its pages, especially for educator wanting to host a LARP for his students, but those are not necessarily what this fanzine is about. As a fanzine, Love Letters from the Baker House Band achieves a rare sense of warmth and feeling that radiates from the title on the cover to the very last page—and that is what sets it apart.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Crawling Under A Broken Moon Issue No. 1

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. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, such as Crawl! and Crawling Under a Broken Moon. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is the aforementioned Crawling Under A Broken Moon.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 was published in in June, 2014 by Shield of Faith Studios. It introduced the post-apocalyptic setting of Umerica and Urth, which would go on to be presented in more detail in The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, now distributed by Goodman Games. This provides the setting’s first details of a world brought about after a rogue object from deep space passed between the Earth and the Moon and ripped apart time and space, leaving behind a planet which would recover, but leave its inhabitants ruled by savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science. ‘Welcome to Umerica’ introduces the setting and the ideas behind it properly, exploring its themes—the world is fragmented and strange, very little is new, and advanced science is as rare and as frightening as powerful sorcery, and presents the setting’s first table. This is ‘Table DDD: Found Item Condition Table’, which enforces the idea that very little is new. Then it quickly leaps into the first of the setting’s character Classes. This is the Technologist, which is good at Tinkering, including with weapons, robots, computers, and other devices. He gains different bonuses for tinkering with each depending upon his Alignment. For example, the Class has better bonuses for Weapon Tinkering rather than Computer Use, Vehicle Repair, or General Tech. The Class also receives a ‘Use Alien Tech’ Die which works similar to that of the Action Die in Dungeon Crawl Classics, and again, this varies according to the Player Character’s Alignment. The Technologist Class is rounded out with a set of tables to roll on whenever a Tinkering check is fumbled.

Part-engineer/part-repairman/part-scientist, the Technologist is a really good Class. It gives the Player Character a great deal to do and the player lots of ways in which to interact with an aspect of the setting. In general, Player Characters in the setting know what technology is, and even if not everyone knows how any one item actually works, they often have an idea of how it is operated. The Technologist takes this a step further and embraces it fully.

‘Weapons of the Wastelands’ draws from articles previously presented in Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! to provide rules for their use in the Umerica setting. It breaks guns down into four eras—primitive, Western-era, Modern-era, and Futuristic—and provides rules for gunsmithing for each era as well as a table of weapons in the game. Like much of the rest of Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1, these will work in most Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game settings.

The ’Twisted Menagerie’ is a short bestiary of creatures and species for the setting and has four entries. The Sharkhana are descendants of humanoid shock troops engineered by an alien race and since abandoned after their creators were wiped out by a virus. They now live a nomadic existence, driven by hunger rather than anything else. So, their reaction to anyone else will depend upon whether or not they have fed lately! The ‘Debris Elemental, Lesser and Greater’ is a Trash Titan, comprised entirely of rubble and rubbish, which can be several storeys tall and stalk the ruined cities of Umerica hunting the living. They have slightly different abilities depending what rubbish they are made of. For example, if rubbery, they have extra reach for their melee attacks, whilst if wrapped in wire, can lash out with it. Sentrybots can be programmed for different purposes, such as pest control or crime patrol. The most fun use is as a programmed bodyguard, the Sentrybot attaching itself to a random Human and protecting that person at all costs, but refusing to take orders. Imagine the fun the Judge can have with this? The last monster is the Lobstrosity, an alien crustacean which eats processed wood (which is one way to get rid of MDF!) and is difficult to stop given its size. However, if one of them can be killed, its meat can be turned into a stew that grants a special ability, which depends upon the colour of the Lobstrosity. For example, a Lobstrosity with a black carapace can spray acid, but a stew made from its meat is the equivalent to imbibing a potion of Giant Strength. All but the three of the four entries in this section are relatively easy to use and introduce to a post-apocalyptic setting, lending themselves readily to Player Character involvement. The Sharkhana are suitable for a post-apocalyptic setting, but the Judge will need to work harder to bring them into play.

Lastly, ‘Interesting Places To Die’ presents locations for the Player Characters to explore. Here there is just the one, ‘Blooms Fashions: a store with clothes to die for’. It describes a fashion store where the mannequins are actually undead underneath the plastic of their bodies, or rather ‘Mannekills’ created by a necromancer operating out of the shopping mall. It is a fun, dark little encounter which is easily added to the campaign and further developed by the Judge.

Physically, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 is serviceably presented. It is a little rough around the edges, but overall, it is a decent affair.

The problem with Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 is that much of its contents have been represented to a more professional standard in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, so it has been superseded. There are several ways in which the Umerica setting can be explored and the fanzine on an individual and thus piecemeal basis is probably not the best. However, this is where the setting has its origins and from here future issues whose content has not been included in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide can be looked at—and often looked at in more detail than can be done in a review of that book. Nevertheless, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 is a tentative, yet promising beginning to the author’s exploration of Umerica.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01

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. Same fanzines though are not written for a specific roleplaying game or roleplaying games, but are instead about roleplaying and the hobby.

Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 was published in September 2019, originally by Highmoon Press, but now by Lightspress Media. It comes with the tag line, “Play / Design / Create/ Discuss Roleplaying Games” aims to provide short essays, small games, new rules and settings, fiction, and ideas, emphasising roleplaying games as a hobby and art form. The issue does include some gameable content in the form of ‘1d6 Items Found in the First Room of a Dungeon, Six out-of-the-ordinary items found right as adventurers enter a dungeon to fuel further adventures.’ This is a table of items to be found in a dungeon and so would work with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as much as it would Old School Essentials or The King of Dungeons. There are some entertaining items on the list such as a burning lamp still found gripped in the hand of a dead adventurer which is actually fueled by the wielder’s life force or the constantly talking skull of a goblin which promises to guide the Player Characters to where the goblin tribes have hidden their hoards of gold and gems. These are inventive, seriously play affecting items that will influence and change how the opening scenes and more are likely to be played out as the Player Characters begin their exploration of the dungeon… They are all systems agnostic so easily adapted to the rules systems of the Game Master’s choice. However, this table and its contents are not only the issue’s only games content, but they do also feel like afterthought, tucked away at the back of the issue.

The bulk of Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 instead very much focuses on t0he ‘Discuss Roleplaying Games’ part of that tag line with the lengthy, ‘31 Days Thinking About Games’. This is inspired by #RPGaDay, the annual event first run by David F Chapman in 2014. Throughout the month of August, Chapman asks a question—or in more recent times sets a prompt—intended to encourage people to think and discuss roleplaying games and their ideas and thoughts about them. In the almost a decade since it began, Chapman has asked over two hundred and fifty questions. ‘31 Days Thinking About Games’ in particular, is inspired by #RPGaDay2019. Rather than asking questions, Chapman posed prompts, beginning with ‘First’ and ‘Last’, but taking in terms as diverse as ‘Space’, ‘Ancient’, ‘Guide’, ‘Vast’, ‘Love’, and more along the way. ‘31 Days Thinking About Games’ collects the author’s answers.

The author begins with ‘First’ and his first Gen Con, reflecting upon his time there, and it is a subject he returns to, not as an attendee, but rather experiencing Gen Con 2019 vicariously through social media. He highlights the similarity between this and his last experience, in games such as Dungeons & Dragons, but focuses on the changes between the two, how much was unfamiliar to him—cosplay, the role of Critical Role, yet comes to conclusion that this is a good thing. In response to ‘Mystery’ he discusses its role in fantasy games, how the role of the Dungeon Master made him powerful because she held all the information that she could reveal to her players little by little almost as if they had to earn it. That was the past, whereas now he disagrees with this method and wants to see how the players and the characters use the information they learn. For ‘Guide’ he suggests that the role for Game Master is similar to that of the tour guide, drawing parallels between the roles after having done research on how to become a tour guide. This is more interesting in discovering what the role of the tour guide is, because as gamers, we have a good idea of what the role of the Game Master entails.

Elsewhere ‘Door’ allows the author to explore a little of the city of Cincinnati with its stairs that go up hills to nowhere, castle tower-like water towers, and doors on the side of hills and wonder what it would be like as a setting for Changeling: The Dreaming, a roleplaying game that is a personal favourite. It would be fascinating for the author to follow up this one entry in the fanzine with articles dedicated to a version of Cincinnati for Changeling: The Dreaming, or indeed, an urban fantasy RPG. There are some lovely memories too, such as for ‘Surprise’ when a player flummoxed the author by running away from an encounter with a dragon and working out how to get the player involved in the adventure, and for ‘Love’, how a love triangle played out in a campaign. These memories are the longer pieces in the fanzine and given the range of prompts that the author is responding to, the entries can be hit or miss, but these are certainly the most engaging.

Physically, Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 is decently presented. The layout is clean, tidy, and very lightly illustrated. The wraparound cover is thematically appropriate.

Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 is a ruminative affair that does not really offer very much for the casual gamer. There are some nice ideas in here for Changeling: The Dreaming, for example, but this a personal fanzine about a gamer coming out of the ‘deep freeze’—the long period when a gamer is not playing—and finding his way back into the hobby. What makes it interesting is that it is inspired by a global roleplaying event, that is, #RPGaDay. The responses of most participants are posted online to be lost to the churning morass of social media. Consequently, it is rare to see such responses written and even in a small way, recorded for posterity. Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 records the almost random thoughts of a gamer coming back to the hobby and responding to what he finds. In doing so, Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 captures an experience that many a gamer goes through, but rarely write down.