[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Keep It Together

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. Similarly, the fanzine has been a popular format for Mausritter. However, the format has in the main, been a vehicle to provide specific support in the form of scenarios, rather than general content, such as Keep It Together.

Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a scenario for Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying, the rules-light fantasy adventure microclone in which the very big and very dangerous world is explored from a mouse eye’s point of view. This is our world, but one in which the mice are anthropomorphic and can talk, as can other species. Beyond the walls of their home, the world is one of opportunity and adventure, fraught with hazards natural and unnatural, those untouched by mankind and those imposed by mankind. Using the base mechanics from Into the Odd, mice in Mausritter need to be brave, resourceful, and clever, as well as lucky if they are to survive. Scenarios for Mausritter tend to be location based. Either the mice having to explore a single location, which could actually be a tree stump, a human-sized suit of armour, a grandfather clock, or an abandoned human-made shack, as in Mausritter: Honey in the Rafters or a sandbox setting containing numerous locations, such as Mausritter: The Estate Adventure Collection or Mayfield. Keep It Together is sandbox setting, but with a twist.

Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine was published by The Necropede as part of ZineQuest #3. Describing itself as ‘An Adventure Area for Mausritter’, it details the area between two mouse towns—Willowthorpe and New Willowthorpe. There is a New Willowthorpe because nearby development by humans uprooted trees, diverted the stream, and destroyed an area nearby, and so the inhabitants of the village decided that they would be better off elsewhere. Packing their belongings, they moved three miles away, on the other side of a pond. However, some of the mice in Willowthorpe did not want to make the move, after all, Willowthorpe was their home and they were unsure of whether New Willowthorpe would be a success or not. Now it has, and the inhabitants of New Willowthorpe want their friends and neighbours from their old home to move into their new home with them. However, the journey to New Willowthorpe was dangerous and none of them feel ready to brave it again. Thus, they put out the call for adventurers. Can they make the trek across the wilds, including tall grasses and dangerous, to bring news of New Willowthorpe to old Willowthorpe, persuade the inhabitants to make the journey, and then lead them to their new home?

The Player Characters have two primary routes between the two towns. Either by sailing or rowing boat across the pond and along the streams, or through the grasslands. Both offer their own dangers and both are replete with their own encounters and locations. Travel by boat is simpler, but predators can more easily see the mice from the sky, whilst the grass is taller than the mice and harder going, it both hides the mice from predators from above and the mice from seeing the predators above. Of course, the weather and time of year will travel conditions too. Between the old and new towns lie the Great Log, hollow with end in the water, and the easternmost point of the nearby Rat Lady’s kingdom; an Old Graveyard where it is always cold and foggy, no matter the weather, and now beset by some strangeness; and field of rocks below there are caves where ancient treasures might be found. There are only a handful or two of such locations, but they are nicely detailed and each one comes with an encounter table.

At either end of these encounters stand Willowthorpe and New Willowthorpe. Of the two, New Willowthorpe is more briefly described, but there is more than enough information to support the Player Characters with rumours, rafts to use to get across the pond, and even some hirelings who will accompany them. Old Willowthorpe is described in more detail, as are its NPCs, and the village is also given a map as well. The seven mice still living in the village are simply and directly detailed, a handful of bullet points listing background, the reason why they have not yet left, views of the other mice, and so on, all providing the Game Master with sufficient information for her to portray them effectively. Each is also accompanied by a thumbnail portrait that the Game Master should use to show her players. There is also a table indicating the relationships between the remaining mice and a table for randomly determining what they might be doing day or night. Whilst each of the remining inhabitants’ homes and the village’s major businesses are detailed, another table provides random descriptions of the abandoned buildings.

Once the Player Characters have arrived in Willowthorpe, their aim is to persuade and then the remaining mice to New Willowthorpe. Some do not want to leave, some are scared of leaving, some do not want to leave anything behind, some do not want to leave anyone behind, and some want everyone to go elsewhere. The Player Characters will need to sort through who wants what and why, and then persuade to change their minds, all before making the journey back. This is all complicated by the interest of several external factions who have taken an interest in the current state of Willowthorpe. These factions, including the Rat lady and the Fey are described at the end of the adventure are the monsters that might be encountered. Plus, there is list of new spells, such as Calm water, Protection from Undead, and Float. Lastly these new spells as well as several items are provided as tokens to cut and slip into a Player Character’s backpack and so take up space.

Physically, Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a neat and tidy affair. It is well written and the artwork is good. The artwork is cute, though the look is sometimes more fifties suburbia than the usual medieval look of Mausritter.

Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a there and back again adventure for Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying. The ‘there’ being a straightforward trek through the wilderness, whilst the ‘back again’ has the feel of pioneers on the frontier of the Old West, the Player Characters guiding a wagon train home. The scenario can be played through as is, but there is scope for expansion, which the Game Master may want to consider if her Player Characters want to go and investigate the caves and other locations. The Game Master may also want to add a little more treasure, as there is very little to be found in the pages of the adventure. Should the Game Master want to add Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine to an existing Mausritter campaign, the size and the scale of both setting and story make it very easy to add.

Overall, Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a solid adventure for Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] The Beholder Issue 3

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine

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, not all fanzines written with the Old School Renaissance in mind need to be written for a specific retroclone.

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine does something different and interesting. Published in 2019 by Technical Grimoire Games, best known for Bones Deep, it takes a campaign to the Southeast coast of the United States, specifically during the early half of the nineteenth century. This is a land of shifting, disappearing and reappearing Barrier Islands running along the coast, of marshes low and high, of sandbars, and the thick Pluff Mud which often rings them, hindering progress between them. Or at least the idea and the romance of them, rather than being specific. It incudes tables to create them and populate them with interesting features, a complete mini-point-crawl, and details of often eerie creatures to be encountered along the Barrier Islands and magical gewgaws and knickknacks to found and even bought. It is inspired by the region and its mythology, but it is ahistorical rather than specific. What this means is that the fanzine avoids the complexities and sensitivities of the history, whilst still acknowledging that they exist, and has rightly employed a sensitivity reader in order to do so. What remains is a moody, sense of isolation and strangeness lost in mist-soaked islands.

The fanzine begins with an ‘Island Generator’ that with a roll of twenty-sided die four times lets the Game Master create islands of her own, including their size, environment, and name. It is quick and easy, so that together with an explanation of the possible environments—sandbar, marshland, rocky, forested, structures, and other—the Game Master can have her string of islands with a handful of rolls. The ‘other’ option includes anything odd or weird that the Game Master deems, but an accompanying table suggests haunted islands, prison islands, cannibal islands, and more.

The centrepiece of Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is ‘Island Crawl: An Adventure For LVLs 1-2’. This details four Barrier Islands, running from north to south, from the last major settlement on St. Erasmus down to Wildys, once a hunting reserve belonging to a foreign sorcerer, but now gone to seed and populated by exotic and magically augmented creatures. In between, Backwater Bay on Aloyin is rife with pirates, including Captain Seymour Foy, whose ship is pulled by a chained kraken, upsetting the other pirates, and Fort Assumption, a former military installation, then former plague hospital, still said to be manned by the spirits of those who died there. There are only a handful of locations per island, but they are nicely detailed, just enough to intrigue the Game Master, but with room aplenty for the Game Master to add her own content.

Travel and time across the islands is nicely handled. Each day is divided into six four-hour increments called watches. The trail between one location and another can be traversed in a single watch, but getting across country takes longer. Accompanying detailed locations are a pair of splendid encounter tables, one for ‘Coastal Encounters’, one for ‘Inland Encounters’. Every entry consists of two elements, the encounter itself, and an ‘Omen’, a harbinger of what the Player Characters are about to encounter. For example, whether the chest they discover is an actual buried chest or a mimic, the indication of metal and wood above the mud, and the smell of salt, timber, and rust presages its discovery. These signs add to the atmosphere and mood of the Barrier Islands, enforcing their sense of difference and separation, and perhaps worrying the Player Characters as they begin to recognise the Omens and what they mean.

The ’Creatures’ article has just the six entries. They include the Boohag, a scrawny, mean-tempered old by day, bloody red skinless spirit by night, that like La Llorona, rides sleepers at night to steal their breath; the Plat-Eye, a shifting shadow with one large eye that sometimes takes the form of a dog and attempts to lead you astray and away from any treasure it guards; and Tommy Rawbones, a maniacal skeleton with tattered skin and too many teeth which particularly lies the taste of liars and children. Another mysterious denizen of the region is the ‘Low Tide Merchant’, which wanders the Barrier Islands at low tide, carrying an assortment of strange and useful items, that if he likes you, will let you purchase, such as an island map or ghost flintlock (one shot, kills anyone, but they return to haunt their killer!). Not all of the goods will truly benefit the purchaser, or in the case of spells, work quite as accurately as they are supposed to, so buyer beware when it comes to perusing the wares that he carries in his burlap sack.

Lastly, ‘Magic Items’ describes some six magical items particular to the Barrier Islands. These include ‘Sticking Chaw’, a chewing tobacco as black as tar with the stench of sulphur that when chewed makes the teeth black and creates a wad that can be spat at a distant target to encase and bind a target like a Web spell or a Raccoon Baculum, a very reliable love charm that enhances Charm effects which is made out of the phallic bone of a raccoon!

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is a thoroughly engaging fanzine, but it is not complete. There are a couple of issues that it does not address. For example, it uses the terms ‘Haint’ and ‘Root Doctor’, but it never explains what these are. In this way, it feels underwritten and waiting for more detail. It also feels underwritten in that the Game Master will need to develop the included ‘Island Crawl: An Adventure For LVLs 1-2’, especially given that it lacks hooks or objectives.

Physically, Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is very nicely done. It is fantastically illustrated and the cartography is very good.

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine was published the same year as Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying and it would actually make a fantastic setting for that roleplaying given that both have the Player Characters engage with the local folklore. In addition, two other roleplaying supplements have been published since that explore the folklore of the United States of America—Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game and Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse. Could either of them be extended out of the mountains and forests as far as the coast? Then again, Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine need not work with a fantasy Old School Renaissance retroclone. For example, Into the Odd would work very well with it, as would any Pirate-themed roleplaying game.

Lowcountry Crawl: A Southern Gothic RPG Zine is sadly the first and only issue. It is a pity, because it promises and hints at so much with an eerie mystery and salt-soaked mud flats just waiting for the tide to rush in. With no more issues to come, it is perhaps the Game Master’s task to do more for it with her own content than the publisher will.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 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 showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will 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 and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games.

Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 is another fine looking issue of the fanzine published by Blind Visionary Publications. It continues to provide long-term support rather than immediate support for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. This is not say that none of its content is not of use or even useless, for that is very much not the case, but rather that it requires a bit of effort upon the part of Judge to work it into her campaign. In fact, all of content is detailed, interesting, and worth reading. Published in April, 2020, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, where the previous issue, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 strayed into the territory of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, this issue very much remains in the territory of Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 opens with ‘King of Beasts’. This is a new Patron, one who is the noble lion, wily tiger, nimble hare, slithering snake, and fluttering crow—and includes tables for invoking him as a Patron, suffering Taint when that goes wrong, and so on. The new spells include Speak with Animals; Bloodsense, which enables the caster to sense the blood in his quarry and track where they are; and Awaken enables the caster to activate a spirit animal, and so gains two boons and a bane from them. The roll is really for the length of the effect, which can be days or months, and then the Player Character gains the effect of a selected spirit animal. For example, the Toad spirit animal grants the ability to breathe underwater for thirty minutes and extra jumping distance, but becomes lazy and will act if there are immediate and obvious benefits.

The Dwarven Jäger is a subclass of dwarf, a warrior that allows the use of ‘Mighty Deeds of Arms’ like the Warrior Class, but prefers to fight with two weapons rather than a weapon and shield. They have a Deed Die that increases as they go up in Level for both attacks and damage, and if strong enough, can fight with a battle axe in each hand! This though, reduces the Class’ Initiative die. With ‘Mighty Defence’, the Dwarven Jäger can increase his Armour Class at a cost of stepping down his attack dice. Stats are also included for the throwing hammer and the hand crossbow. The Class is a serviceable variant, offering a viable alternative, especially for the player who wants a two-weapon wielding Warrior.

‘Rites & Rituals Part II’ continues the expanded use of magic and rituals in Dungeon Crawl Classics, begun in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1. Rituals are more powerful than normal spells, and their inherent power, unlinked to any god or deity, means that anyone can cast them. What this leads to is the creation of standardised rituals to achieve the same objective, but which are different from one cult or organisation to another. To support this aspect, it provides more than the one variant for several rituals, the variants being for different faiths, in this case, worshippers of Cthulhu and of Osiris. The rituals include Blessings of the Grave is a ritual that protects those buried in graveyards, cemetery, or necropolises, from raised via the animate dead and similar spells; Liturgy of Blessing, which brands the faith of a consenting worshipper with an imprint of their god, which puts them on the path to becoming a member of the clergy; and Rite of Consecration, which creates a sanctuary space for the specific deity. These are very nicely detailed, and of the two choices of deity, the rituals dedicated to Cthulhu rather than Osiris are probably more gameable, but both series of rituals do serve as examples upon which the Judge can base her own.

‘Cullpepper’s Herbal’ continues the regular feature begun in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1. Here there is a guide to creating decoctions and herbal restoratives, and this is followed by detailed descriptions of agrimony and bastard agrimony. This includes descriptions, flowering times, astrology, shoots, and more. In some ways, there is too much information here, on too few herbs, but for a Player Character with an interest in alchemy or herbalism, the degree of detail is wlcome.

As the name suggests, ‘Shoggoth’ continues the Cthulhu theme. This takes the Mythos monster which first appeared in At the Mountains of Madness and gives a potted history of its appearance in gaming before providing stats for its for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Judge can roll for Shoggoth size, age, and martial abilities, such as poison glands, hypnotic glands, and of course, mimicry. They can also also have esoteric abilities like Assume Form and Bioluminescence, and all together this provides the Judge with the means to really individualise one Shoggoth from another, and so make them unknowable for the Player Characters.

Accompanying this is ‘Find Familiar (Cthulhu)’, which enables the Wizard with Cthulhu with Cthulhu or other Lovecraftian horror entity, such as Mother Hydra, Father Dagon, Nyarlathotep, and so on, as a Patron, to gain an appropriate familiar. Options include Zoog, (Brown) Jenkin, and Cat of Ulthar, but there is an emphasis on gaining a Shoggoth as a familiar. It cannot be fully grown, so is typically young or newborn (budded? decanted?), small or medium. Of these, having a Shoggoth as a familiar is going to be the most fun and again, this and the previous ‘Shoggoth’ article lets the player and the Judge really individualise a Shuggoth, whether a familiar or a threat.

Joel Philips’ ‘Onward Retainer’ continues the comic strip about the retainer in the fantasy roleplaying games begun in the first issue. It is nicely drawn and is a reasonable enough read, though not as funny as it is trying to be.

Penultimately, ‘What is the Smoking Wyrm?’ is the editorial in the second issue of Tales from the Smoking Wyrm. It is a more personal piece than in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1, recounting how Joel Philip got his start in gaming and how those adventures and characters influenced the creation of the ‘Onward Retainer’, so gives a bit of context. This is more interesting than the comic strip is either entertaining or amusing. Lastly, ‘Wyrm Words’ is a word search puzzle of Gygaxian words which is okay if you like that sort of thing, a waste of space if you do not, and this review leans towards the latter rather the former.

Physically, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 is well written and the fanzine as a whole, has high production values. The artwork is good throughout, and the front cover again echoes the illustration from the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, by Dave Trampier, which is based on the Street of the Knights on the Greek island of Rhodes. This is an illustration that the fanzine will return to again and again for its front covers.

Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 picks up where Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 left off. It is a second solid issue, especially if the Judge wants to add the Lovecraftian mythos to Dungeon Crawl Classics with the inclusion of Cthulhu—as detailed in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1—and Shoggoths. None of the content is necessarily ready to be dropped into a campaign, but for the Judge who wants to add the Lovecraftian mythos and more detailed herbalism, there is good amount here to further develop.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Strange Visitors to the City

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. A more recent retroclone of choice to support has been Mörk Borg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a non-professional 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. Then there is also Old School Essentials.

In the early days of the hobby, following the publication of first Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, and then Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the nascent hobby was awash with creativity much of which would find an outlet in the fanzines of the day. Yet due to the vagaries of time and history, much of the content of those fanzines have been lost. What though, if a creator today, could delve back into that history and resurrect that content for today’s audience? This is the conceit behind The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes, ‘A GATEWAY TO ADVENTURE supplement for use with the Original Edition Fantasy and Old School Essentials Retro Adventure Game’. Published by Appendix N Entertainment, this is an attempt to resurrect two Classes for Dungeons & Dragons that never made into print and present them for use with the Old School Renaissance. Conceit, because truth be told, the author has relatively little on which to base the new Classes he creates for the fanzine, and consequently, they are more his creation rather those of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. This does not means that the four Classes presented are bad, but rather that their heritage is perhaps not as strong as the author might wish it to be.

Further, it should be noted that two of the four Classes are not Arnesonian and feel as if they are drawn from other sources, being the creation of the author. The two Arnesonian Classes are the Merchant and the Sage, whilst the two that are not are two of the Beast Folk Classes, the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk. Then, both the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk are presented as Races rather than Classes. In this way, The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes supports both the ‘Race as Class’ of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and the ‘Race & Class’ of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or in contemporary terms, the ‘Race as Class’ of Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and the ‘Race & Class’ of Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy.

The two Arnesonian Classes, the Merchant and the Sage, are highly skill-based. The Merchant knows more languages, and besides ‘Find or Remove Traps’ and ‘Open Locks’, has ‘Bargaining’ and ‘Appraisal’ for dealing with the buying and selling of goods (and treasure found too), and ‘Equivocate’, the ability to hide the truth, avoid commitment, and so on. Combined with the ‘Know Direction’ ability, and what you have is a Class dedicated to travel and trade. The Merchant is also a member of, owes dues to, a merchant’s guild, which the Game Master can use as a factor and influence in the Player Character’s life and career. The Sage also knows more languages and is a member of his own guild, but primarily specialises in ‘Sage Knowledge’, an academic area like Botany/Herb-lore, Astronomy, Theology, and Archaeology. The more Intelligent the Sage, the more areas of expertise he specialises in. Although not a spellcaster, the Sage Class can use arcane magical items, such as wands. Lastly—quite literally—the Sage has one special ability that he can use when dying due to a malicious act. This is the ‘Sage’s Cure’. If bestowed by a high-Level Sage, it can be really powerful, like not being able to make any Saving Throw ever again!

Both the Merchant and the Sage Classes are interesting, the latter perhaps more familiar because it was included as an NPC type in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Both though, are limited as adventuring Classes in the classic sense. The Sage in particular, has limited adventuring skills and whilst he knows a lot, the problem really is how to bring that knowledge into play and have it be useful in a game, since this is not a feature of Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games. This is less of a problem for the Merchant, since the Class does possess abilities and skills that can be useful in a game. Nevertheless, the Game Master is going to have cater for the trading aspect of the Merchant in her campaign for a player to want to play it and use all of the Class’ abilities, whilst working extra hard to bring the areas of knowledge and expertise of the Sage into play and make them pertinent and useful. This may well be so challenging, that the Sage may still be best suited to an NPC role.

The other two Classes in The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes are the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk. The Chimpanzee Folk is like the Sage in having ‘Chimp Knowledge’, which works like ‘Sage Knowledge’ and extra languages, but otherwise more physical with the ‘Climb Sheer Surfaces’, ‘Falling’, and ‘Tightrope Walking’ skills, whilst the ‘Evasion’ ability enables a Chimpanzee Folk to tumble out of melee and avoid an opponent’s usual bonus to hit. The Duck Folk is viewed as an aberration, touched by Chaos, by almost everyone bar other Duck Folk and the most knowledgeable of Sages. A Duck Folk has the innate abilities of ‘Know Direction’ and ‘Natural Swimmer’, but also loathes the undead, so can ‘Turn Undead’ and has bonuses in combat against the undead with ‘Undead Slayer’. Rounding out The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is a more detailed examination of both the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk as Races and the fanzine’s own ‘Appendix N’. In the case of the descriptions of the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk as Races, it does flesh both out, whether they are being played as ‘Race as Class’ or ‘Race & Class’.

Of the two, the Chimpanzee Folk feels more sensible than the Duck Folk. In both cases, the inspiration is obvious. The Chimpanzee Folk is inspired by Doctor Cornelius and Doctor Zira of Planet of the Apes, whilst the Duck Folk feels inspired by the Humakti undead-hating Ducks of Glorantha of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in the Glorantha as much as Howard the Duck and Duck Tales.

Physically, The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is well presented. It is well written and the artwork decent enough even if the major inspiration upon the illustrations of the Duck Folk is Disney.

The usefulness of The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is debatable. The easiest Class to play and include in a campaign is the Duck Folk and that is also the silliest, the one most likely to stick out in a standard campaign, and the least interesting. The Chimpanzee Folk is not quite as silly, but not as easy to bring into play, because catering for the knowledge aspect of the Class, as with the Sage Class, shifts some of the emphasis of play away from action and adventuring. As does the need for trade and barter with the Merchant Class, but that Class does include adventuring skills alongside those required for trade and barter. This does not mean that the Classes in The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes are unplayable, but rather that in many cases they make demands of a campaign that will need to be accommodated. Consequently, the best use of the Classes in The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is to create worlds where they fit rather than shoehorn them into standard fantasy worlds where they do not.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Crawling Under A Broken Moon Issue No. 5

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. 5 was published in in December, 2014 by Shield of Faith Studios. It continued the detailing of post-apocalyptic setting of Umerica and Urth which had begun in Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1, and would be continued in Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 2, which added further Classes, monsters, and weapons, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 3, which provided the means to create Player Characters and gave them a Character Funnel to play, and Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 4, which detailed several Patrons for the setting. The setting has, of course, gone on to be presented in more detail in The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, now distributed by Goodman Games. The setting itself is 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.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is where the fanzine really begins to deliver on its promise of gonzo post-apocalyptic content. This is because it has to take its inspiration—its very obvious inspiration—and adapt that without incurring any legal issues, making it playable, and making its source recognisable. This is because that inspiration is He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the cartoon series based on the toy line from Mattel of the same name. Unfortunately, the history of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and gaming has been decidedly spotty, including a poorly received Masters of the Universe Roleplaying Game published by FASA, Inc. in 1985 and the more recent He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Battleground miniatures skirmish game from Archon Studios. Sadly, the planned Legends of Grayskull: Masters of the Universe Tabletop RPG using Cortex Prime from Fandom, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons online tool D&D Beyond, is yet to appear. In the meantime, there is Crawling Under A Broken Moon, Issue No. 5, which serves up something almost, but not quite like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

The issue introduces a land that lies in the northern reaches of Umerica. This is Aetheria, where the Masters of Castle Oldskull do fierce battle with the lich Skull-Or and his mighty minions in the Darklands beyond! The setting is introduced in ‘The Kingdom of Aetheria’, a land of forests and wetlands surrounding the Great Inland Sea, whose scattered tribes were united by the mighty hero, Mach-O [sic] with the strength of his sword arm and mystical arts. Dotted here and there throughout the kingdom are the ‘Grey Castles’, actually bunkers from the Forgotten War, in which can be found powerful arms and armour and even vehicles. The great Aetherian Heroes, worshipped as such by the populous, and employed by the kingdom’s rulers as protectors, covet this leftover technology, so controlling it is important. Thus, many provincial rulers take these bunkers as their headquarters and armories, controlling the flow of the technology into the hands of hired heroes.

This hero is detailed in ‘The Aetherian Hero Character Class’. Each follows the code of Mach-O in fighting evil, though the interpretation varies, so that some just fight evil and do nothing else, whilst others undertake other duties. Either way, the Aetherian Hero expects to be paid for his services. The Aetherian Hero will also need to achieve a great deed or survive a Character Funnel, if he is to be rewarded with a hero’s name and whilst he is trained in the use of most weapons and armour, he regards using anything other than Forgotten Tech artifacts or Aetherian Tech arms and armour as dishonourable and anathema. The Aetherian Hero Character Class begins play with set of Aetherian Armour and one Aetherian weapon, but can go to a Grey Castle at each Level and ask for more. The origins, material, appearance, and even Armour Class bonus of the armour is randomly determined, whilst the Aetherian Tech weapons are impressively oversized, so are not as easy to use, but do inflict extra damage and impress or intimidate in equal measure.

The Class also possesses an Honour Die, which is added to feats of Strength, attempts to intimidate or impress, and all damage rolls with melee or Forgotten Tech weapon attacks. However, it can be lost if the Aetherian Hero uses normal weapons and armour, undertakes menial labour the likes of which the peasantry would do, or refuses a challenge offered by an opponent of worthy stature. Overall, the Aetherian Hero Character Class has the feel of the big dumb, but honourable barbarian warrior, offering a technology-focused option in feel rather than play.

The technology itself is discussed in ‘Forgotten Tech of the Un Men’, the Un Men being robotic warriors programmed with human consciousness. Their technology is leftover from the Forgotten War, and whether it is a blaster, jetpack, armour, or personal vehicle, requires a power cell to work. Worse, the technology is temperamental and if it is used too often—even in the course of a day—it can suffer a meltdown and drain the power cell. The meltdown means that it simply stop functioning after rebooting, suffers a delay in its function, or even detonate! Common devices, once ubiquitous and cheap before the Forgotten War, include Power Harnesses and Power Swords, their abilities varying from device to device.

‘Into the Dark Lands’ describes the blighted, rocky land that lies to the north of Aetheria under sulphurous clouds, riddled with tunnels leading to horrible sites of ancient power and evil. It is home to two different factions which would change Aetheria if they could. The warrior Black Sun leads a number of Aetherian freemen and Tree-Hobbits against the southern kingdom in an attempt to reform the conditions of the common man, whilst the Warrior Lich, Skull-Or, powerful and corrupt wizard-hero

of Aetheria who was imprisoned in Castle Oldskull byMasters of Aetheria, where he learned its darkest secrets before escaping into the Darklands. That secret is very dark indeed—especially for wizards—and adds a nasty twist to the inspiration for Crawling Under A Broken Moon, Issue No. 5. Both Black Sun and Skull-Or are fully statted, so can appear as NPCs in the Game Master’s campaign, and in the case of Skull-Or, cackle a lot. The article really focuses on the NPCs, so the Dark Lands are underwritten.

Penultimately, ‘Castle Oldskull and the Masters of Aetheria’ details Castle Oldskull, a sapient extra dimensional fortress dedicated to the eradication of ‘evil magic’. Interestingly, it is possible for a First Level Player Character to pledge himself to Castle Oldskull and join the Masters of Aetheria. A successful applicant needs to complete a dangerous quest and only then will he become a squire. There are benefits, including healing and free ammunition for ranged weapons, but members cannot use sorcery and nor can they kill evil sorcerers. They have to be returned to Castle Oldskull for imprisonment. Included are descriptions of the current Masters of Aetheria—Mighty Man, descendant of Mach-O, Maste-at-Arms, cyborg with excellent scientific skills, Slam Man who magic helm is so tough he can survive any blow to the head—and more, most notably Geek-O, an inept and bumbling magician from another dimension! Castle Oldskull is essentially a character in its own right with its own agenda, not always aligned with those of the Player Characters.

Lastly, the regular column of ‘Twisted Menagerie’ details two new monsters. These are the ‘Serpentoid’, a muscular two-headed serpent man with an evil outlook and a liking for the mutagenic herbs that grow in the Dark Lands, each has a different mutation, like a prehensile tongue or a hideous rattle, and an ‘Un-Men’, one of the Robotic Tyrants from the Forgotten War, rarely found, but if so, typically in hibernation mode. These range from flamethrowers and plasma cannons to extension arms and Hypno Vox, and that is in addition to the Drones—effectively flying blasters—hosted by each ‘Un-Men’. Together, these add an extra pair of threats to the Dark Lands and are decently done.

Physically, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is serviceably presented. It is a little rough around the edges, as is some of the artwork, but overall, it is a decent affair.

The problem with Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 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 and superseded by a cleaner, slicker presentation of the material.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is a big improvement over Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 4. It has more usable content, even if it is devoted to one theme. And what a theme it is! Over the top, ever so slightly tongue in cheek post-apocalypse Swords & Sorcery, very knowingly inspired by Saturday morning cartoons of the eighties, given an ever so slight, but dark twist. The result is engaging and entertaining, with easy to spot and embrace references, such that even the gamer with the barest of knowledge of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (and to an extent, She-Ra: Princess of Power) can play with the contents of Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5.