[Fanzine Focus XLI] The Hobonomicon #2

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 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. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

The Hobonomicon #2 was published for GenCon 2022 and differs differs greatly from its previous issues. It still heavily features the artwork of Doug Kovacs—and others, but there is much less gaming content in its pages. The first two issues focuses upon the flight and survival of refugees from the planet of Punjar, in the very far future of the fabled city of Punjar, setting for many of Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics line of scenarios, particularly those for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. The Hobonomicon #0 presented ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, a classic Character Funnel, in which Zero Level characters going out on their first adventure to hopefully survive and return as First Level adventurers. What happens after the surviving Player Characters escape the lightless, lawless bowels of the ecumenopolis that is Planet Punjar is explored in The Hobonomicon #1.

The Hobonomicon #2 does not explore what happens next and is not a continuation of either ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ or ‘Meat Planet’ from The Hobonomicon #1. What it does continue is the previous issues’ comic strips. ‘Dreams of a Klartesh Fiend’ continues the drug induced nightmares written by James MacGeorge and drawn by Stefan Poag, whilst Doug Kovacs’ ‘Death of a Reaver’ continues the telling of the backstory of one of the members of ‘The Band’, the cast of adventurers who have appeared in the artwork for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. Here the hero, having dealt with the bandits in her way in the previous episode and now with a captured prisoner, Ratface, attempts to find out why she was attacked. It is an engaging story whose only problem is that there is a long wait between issues. Both are followed by ‘Never Trust a Wizard’ by Stefan Poag, which is actually longer than both together! It tells the tale of a young woman who is driven to kill a sorcerer and take his head back to a wizard because he is holding her partner hostage. This is a tale of revenge and bloody violence as you would expect within the Dungeon Crawl Classics milieu. It is very well done, and a fun read. Together, the three comic strips take up half of the issue.

The actual gaming content in the issue begins with ‘Verses of Natraz’ which together with ‘The Missing Mercurial Magic’ extends the range of spells in The Hobonomicon itself. For example, Burning Glyphs causes glyphs in green living fire to appear above the target’s head and lights up the area and makes him easy to spot, whilst Bat Country summons a screeching swarm of neon psychedelic bats that cause those caught up in their flight to flee unless they make a Saving Throw versus Will. ‘Verses of Natraz’ includes a fantastic piece of artwork by Jeff Easley. Further spells are fully detailed Dungeon Crawl Classics fashion. These include Corporeal Engloblement which changes a wizard’s body into a sphere for various effects such as a one-ton rock, causing a sonic boom as it expands and suddenly contracts, and so on; Gnormby’s Plasmatic Force Phlanges creates a force hand; and Immolation shrouds the caster in protective magical flames. Other spells include Shadow Poppet, Thraxil’s Gift, Path of the Worm, and Name of the Beast.

‘Return to Magic Mystery’ lists twelve alternatives to giving NPCs and monsters the same spells that Player Characters have access. For example, a bolt of burning or freezing irritation that is so itchy, it reduces the target’s Armour Class, whilst ‘Empathic Shackles’ forces a target’s rolls to be in alignment with another character, meaning that the target’s player cannot roll higher than the other character. Thes effects are all fun and inventively different, so should surprise the players and their characters. Lastly, ‘1D12 Beastmen’ gives three sets of stats for the ‘Feral Beastman’, the ‘Savage Beastman’, and the ‘Towering Beastman Monstrosity’, but backs them up with twelve fantastic illustrations of different beastmen. All the Judge has to do is roll the die, determine what the beastman looks like and attach some stats. It is very basic, but the artwork adds flavour aplenty.

Bar the cover—which is done in colour, front and back, inside and out—as with previous issues, The Hobonomicon #2 is heavily illustrated in black and white throughout. The artwork is excellent, ranging from grim to gruesome, from daft to disturbing, but it all fits.

The Hobonomicon #2 is a fanzine of two halves, one with the gaming content, one without. Both are good in their own way, the new spells and magical effects are nicely inventive, but there is nothing here that a Judge and her gaming group has to have. It is good, but not good enough, and it does not help that the gaming content is essentially all spells and nothing else. Before that, the comic strips are enjoyable, but again no more. Ultimately, The Hobonomicon #2 is an issue of the fanzine that is for the collectors and the fans of Dungeon Crawl Classics rather than an must have issue.

[Fanzine Focus XVIII] The Hobonomicon #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 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. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ was actually a character funnel. One of the features of both the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is that is possible to play Zero Level characters going out on their first adventure to hopefully survive and return as First Level adventurers. In a character funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but several, ultimately going on to play whichever one of them survives and so achieves First Level and attains a Class. In Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the Zero Level characters are likely to be peasants and in Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, they are simple tribal folk ready to undergo their Rite of Passage, but in ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, the Zero Level characters are citizens living in the lightless, lawless bowels of the ecumenopolis that is Planet Punjar. It is the year 50,000 and the collision of the Doom Planet with Planet Punjar is imminent, and so it has been decreed by the High Lords of Punjar that the planet be evacuated.

Published in August 2nd, 2018 at Gen Con, The Hobonomicon #0 was the inaugural issue of a fanzine written for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Unlike other fanzines, it comes not in A5 format, but letter size. Written and drawn by many of the some writers and artists who work on titles for Goodman Games—whether Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic—The Hobonomicon is the book of the void and of unbelievers, a legendary shadow tome of doom architects and fallen chaos martyrs. Or rather, it presents ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, a full scenario based on Doug Kovacs’ after hours game at Gen Con.

At the end of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ in The Hobonomicon #0, the surviving player characters got off the planet. What happens next is the subject of The Hobonomicon #1. Again, this comes in letter format rather A5 and is written and illustrated by the same team as The Hobonomicon #0. Yet even as you flip open the pages of this issue, you still have to wait to find out. This is because unlike in The Hobonomicon #0, the comic strips appear at the front. ‘Dreams of a Klartesh Fiend’ continues the drug induced nightmare written by James MacGeorge and drawn by Stefan Poag, whilst Doug Kovacs’ ‘Death of a Reaver’ shows us happens to the lone warrior who was beset by a trio of bandits in the first issue who bar her way over a bridge. It is a bloody continuation, but again it does leave the reader on a cliffhanger and really does not tell much in the way of a story in its four pages. In between them is ‘The Cube’, a tale of despair of working in a cube farm by Stefan Poag. It has the style of an underground comic, but really is not adding that much to the issue.

The subtitle of The Hobonomicon #1 is ‘Meat Planet’. It is a continuation of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ from The Hobonomicon #0, but not a direct continuation, for it takes place some five hundred or so years after the ships escaped Punjar and joined up with the flotilla of Astro Grenadier vessels. As the scenario opens, the descendants of those who fled doomed Punjar are called to service as part of an Expeditionary Force to the planet below. The player characters are the best that their ships have to offer and in joining the service of the Astro Grenadier, will plead affiliation with one of the flotilla’s four Astral Lords. They will undergo a series of procedures—hypno-training, cyber-surgeries, chemical enhancements, and more—and sent to the planet below.

In game terms, a player can create a character anew, or take the stats of his character who escaped Planet Punjar, but then the player rolls for the character’s Astral Lord Affiliation, mutations from the flotilla effects, flotilla generational effects, and what equipment loadout each Astral Lord provides the character with. The four Astral Lords are Urcommandus, Quintestus Rex, Alpha Divinatus, and Felis Matronus. There is a distinctly Warhammer 40,000 feel to these, but odder and weirder.

Fingle Woznekki IV
Astral Affiliation: Quintestus Rex
Gender: Female 
Occupation: Anarchist Rabble Rouser
STR 18 (+3) AGL 11 STM 16 (+2)
PER 13 (+1) INT 17 (+2) LCK 16 (+2)
Hit Points: 30
Saving Throws
Fortitude +1 Reflex +0 Willpower +1
Mutations: Attracted to anything sticky, only two teeth and ear cancer (immune to sound attacks)
Flotilla Generational Effects: Bad Seals & Low Atmospheric Pressure, Inbreeding and phobia of crowds, Cyber-prosthetics Reliance (genitals), Increased Gravity
Equipment: Robot Legs (+10’ Mov), Flail Arm (1d10), Metal Carapace (+4 AC), Oil-Stained Vestment
Skill: Tinkerer (Combine two items to create a one-use techno-cantrip)

Once done, the newly developed Astral Lord adherents are dropped onto the newly discovered planet. The planet has a strange atmosphere and weirder features, walls which drip fluids, rooms with bone-like supports, veiny-walled corridors, and odd multi-buttoned protuberances. As the player characters explore the planet, they find themselves drawn deeper and deeper towards the centre. What they find there will have profoundly apocalyptic effects…

‘Meat Planet’ requires more preparation than the average scenario. The Judge is provided with a series of tables for randomly generating rooms and corridors, features, and more. She is also provided with a table of possible endings and one of these is generated as part of the scenario preparation. Some of these elements can be rolled on as the player characters progress through the bowels of the weirdly fleshy plant, but these should be mixed in with those already rolled for. Essentially, from the start, the Judge sets up the scenario’s ending and is directing the players and their characters towards it.

Ultimately in terms of a story, there is not a great deal to ‘Meat Planet’. Although there is a certain degree of cleverness to the guidance it gives on running the scenario at a convention as part of an event in which ‘Meat Planet’ is being run at each table, beyond a sense of doom, it is just not that interesting. The main problem is that ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ from The Hobonomicon #0 is a better scenario, more involving for the players and their characters, and with a sense of urgency to the plot. In ‘Meat Planet’ less so. Plus, the fact that ‘Meat Planet’ is set five centuries after the events of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ means it fails to capitalise on the terrific story that ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ told. 

Bar the cover—which is done in colour, front and back, inside and out—The Hobonomicon #1 is heavily illustrated in black and white throughout. The artwork is excellent, ranging from grim to gruesome, from daft to disturbing, but it all fits. The writing is also good too, perhaps a little underwritten, but enough to nudge the Judge’s imagination, although that will be limited by the environment of the ‘Meat Planet’.

One of the things that The Hobonomicon #0 did do was showcase how the Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might start, and one of the things that The Hobonomicon #1 does is showcase how such a Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might go in a particular direction. Unfortunately, it is not a desperately interesting direction. Again, if what you are looking for is a potential introduction to a Science Fiction version of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, a scenario which can be semi-improvised at convention after convention, or perhaps you like Doug Kovacs’ (and others’) art, then The Hobonomicon #1 is perfect for you. Be aware though, The Hobonomicon #1 is simply not as good or as engaging as Hobonomicon #0.

[Fanzine Focus XVII] The Hobonomicon #0

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 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. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

The Hobonomicon #0 is the inaugural issue of a fanzine written for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, launched on August 2nd, 2018 at Gen Con. Unlike other fanzines, it comes not in A5 format, but letter size. Written and drawn by many of the some writers and artists who work on titles for Goodman Games—whether Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic—The Hobonomicon is the book of the void and of unbelievers, a legendary shadow tome of doom architects and fallen chaos martyrs. Or rather, it presents ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, a full scenario based on Doug Kovacs’ after hours game at Gen Con.

‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ is actually a character funnel. One of the features of both the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is that is possible to play Zero Level characters going out on their first adventure to hopefully survive and return as First Level adventurers. In a character funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but several, ultimately going on to play whichever one of them survives and so achieves First Level and attains a Class. In Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the Zero Level characters are likely to be peasants and in Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, they are simple tribal folk ready to undergo their Rite of Passage, but in ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, the Zero Level characters are citizens living in the lightless, lawless bowels of the ecumenopolis that is Planet Punjar. It is the year 50,000 and the collision of the Doom Planet with Planet Punjar is iminent, and so it has been decreed by the High Lords of Punjar that the planet be evacuated.

Starting with ‘Escape from Planet Punjar Introductions’, which provides ways to introduce the characters, the main feature of The Hobonomicon #0 takes the Zero Level characters step-by-step through their increasingly desperate efforts to get off planet. This includes ‘Zero Level Occupations’, and goes on through a map of the shattered levels of the city, ‘Planet Punjar Encounters’, ‘Gangs, Cops, and Cults’, ‘Chance Happenings and Random Shit’, and lastly, ‘Escapes From Planet Punjar’. This is presented in a rich mix of table entries and pictures. So the map presents a cutaway view of the lower depths of Punjar marked with locations, none of which are given illustrations. Instead, the Dungeon Master is expected to work from the illustrations which are good enough to inspire any Dungeon Master. ‘Planet Punjar Encounters’ work on the same principle, although some details and stats are given, whilst full stats and thumbnail descriptions are given for the ‘Gangs, Cops, and Cults’. ‘Chance Happenings and Random Shit’ works slightly differently in that sometimes the Dungeon Master interprets the results and sometimes a player does. Lastly, ‘Escapes From Planet Punjar’ provides fuller, but no less random final encounters in which the player characters have the opportunity to get off the planet.

Fingle Woznekki
Zero Level Citizen (Mutant)
Gender: Female (Pregnant)
Occupation: Anarchist Rabble Rouser
STR 15 (+1) AGL 11 STM 13 (+1)
PER 13 (+1) INT 06 (-1) LCK 16 (+2)
Hit Points: 5
Saving Throws
Fortitude +1 Reflex +0 Willpower +1
Mutation: Sensual Tail (master key for all meat kiosks)
Equipment: Fire bomb, protest flag, gas mask, pepper spray

‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ is a lot of fun. It has a surprisingly British feel in its humour and style, echoing the gonzo ‘Judge Dredd’ and ‘Nemesis the Warlock’ comic strips of 2000 AD as well as the grim feel and grit of the Warhammer 40,0000 universe. It is primarily a sandbox, the players free to have their characters wander they will in their desperate efforts to escape their dying world. Since it primarily consists of random tables, ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ is also highly replayable, or rather, highly rerunnable, because the Dungeon Master can run this again and again and the results will be different almost every time. It does call for a high degree of improvisation upon the part of the Dungeon Master, but plethora of tables help, as does the format. The format and rerunnable also makes ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ suitable as a convention scenario.

The problem though with ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ is that there is no Science Fiction equivalent of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game—no Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. So there are no rules for running quite this sort of game and that will require some further improvisation upon the part of the Dungeon Master. Not a huge amount, but this in addition to the improvisation already required. Thus it really needs a Dungeon Master of some experience rather than a novice as it is a toolkit rather than a fully written out scenario.

Rounding out The Hobonomicon #0 are a pair of comic strips. Doug Kovacs’ ‘Death of a Reaver’ is the first part of a series and sees a lone warrior encounter a trio of bandits who bar her way over a bridge. It is well drawn, but does leave the reader on cliffhanger and really does not tell much in the way of a story in its four pages. ‘Dreams of a Klartesh Fiend’, drawn by Stefan Poag and written by James MacGeorge is a drug induced nightmare that although well drawn feels at home on the inside back page.

Bar the cover—which is done in colour, front and back, inside and out—The Hobonomicon #0 is heavily illustrated in black and white throughout. The artwork is excellent, ranging from grim to gruesome, from daft to disturbing, but it all fits. The writing is also good too, perhaps a little underwritten, but enough to nudge the Dungeon Master’s imagination.

The Hobonomicon #0 is scenario as fanzine. And in that scenario, ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, The Hobonomicon #0 showcases how the Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might start. If that is what you are looking for, or a scenario which can be semi-improvised at convention after convention, or perhaps you like Doug Kovacs’ (and others’) art, then The Hobonomicon #0 is perfect for you. Hopefully, The Hobonomicon #1 will see the characters escape to the stars after they have made their ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’.