On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.
Guide to Grunts: Inspiration for Creating Fantasy Armies and Soldiers is a companion volume to the highly regarded Pamphlet of Pantheons: Guide to Creating Fantasy Myths and Religions. Where the latter helped the Game Master create pantheons, gods and deities, and religions, this supplement helps the Game Master create units and soldiers for fantasy armies. There are plenty of supplements that do this for fantasy roleplaying, often helping the Game Master create military units modelled using the same stats and details as a Player Character in Dungeons & Dragons, and then, providing rules to have them clash on the field of battle. Guide to Grunts is different and does not that do that.
Instead, Guide to Grunts: Inspiration for Creating Fantasy Armies and Soldiers focuses upon the ways and wherefores of a military unit. Who and what the unit members are made up of, why they fight, how they are paid, what is the unit’s obligation, whether they are conscripts, and so on. It defines the nature of the officers that lead the unit and what the unit is like, how it is equipped, and how it is led. It then asks what daily rations the unit is given and what its members consider to be a special treat, how they get paid, and what happens when they get hurt. If the unit has camp followers, the Game Master can define them, and if currently stationed somewhere, what its camp or fort is like. The first thirteen tables together give the Game Master prompts that when answered, help her create interesting military units, but without any stats. The process consists of rolling a few dice and asking how each element fits together to make narrative sense. The author admits that the inspiration for the entries is the European Middle Ages, but they are flexible enough to apply to other settings inspired by other periods of history or fantasy settings. What the tables do not cover is magic or the more fantastical elements of a setting. That is left up to the Game Master decide on her own, since every world is different.
What is interesting here is not just the nature of a military unit, but the fact that it exists in a world and is a creation of that world. As the author points out, “…[M]iltaries are social and political institutions.” So, who and what the unit is, what it is asked to do, and more can do something unexpected and that is ask questions and suggest ideas about the world and background to the unit. Of course, the Game Master is probably going to be adding a unit to an existing world, rather than creating a unit and building out to create a whole world, but that still leaves questions that in answering, the Game Master can make her setting more interesting and more coherent.
What is interesting here is not just the nature of a military unit, but the fact that it exists in a world and is a creation of that world. As the author points out, “…[M]iltaries are social and political institutions.” So, who and what the unit is, what it is asked to do, and more can do something unexpected and that is ask questions and suggest ideas about the world and background to the unit. Of course, the Game Master is probably going to be adding a unit to an existing world, rather than creating a unit and building out to create a whole world, but that still leaves questions that in answering, the Game Master can make her setting more interesting.
To help bring the unit to life, the fanzine has tables for random encounters and patrols so that the Player Characters can run into the unit during play. This is not the only way in which the Player Characters can run into a military unit. It can be part of a Player Character’s background and so there is a table for his military experience, who his old comrades were, what souvenir he has of his time in service, and what sort of soldier he was. Tie this into a specific unit created using the previous tables and the Player Character has even more background.
This supported by fully worked examples showing how seemingly disparate results from the tables can be worked together to create a coherent unit and suggest some story hooks. Some of them have NPC descriptions too. And again, the examples can be used as is or as inspiration for the Game Master. Plus, there is advice from start to finish on how to use the tables and interpret the results. As the author points out, the tables are much looser and less structured than in the previous Pamphlet of Pantheons: Guide to Creating Fantasy Myths and Religions, and the results thus more open to interpretation and harder to work with. The point though, is to create military units with backgrounds and cultures that whilst not necessarily weird or odd, are anything other than clichés and add to the world even before the Game Master applies numbers.
Physically, Guide to Grunts: Inspiration for Creating Fantasy Armies and Soldiers is clean and tidy. It is lightly illustrated with lightly cartoonish artwork which suits the tone of the fanzine.
Guide to Grunts: Inspiration for Creating Fantasy Armies and Soldiers is not quite as useful as Pamphlet of Pantheons: Guide to Creating Fantasy Myths and Religions and it is not as easy to use. It requires more input from the Game Master who has to be more inventive because more specifics have to be created. Yet just like the previous fanzine, with a few rolls of the dice, the Game Master can use Guide to Grunts: Inspiration for Creating Fantasy Armies and Soldiers to develop her campaign world and help bring to life.
