[ZINE] Echoes From Fomalhaut #06 (NOW AVAILABLE!)

Echoes From Fomalhaut #06

I am pleased to announce the publication of the sixth issue of my fanzine, Echoes From Fomalhaut. This is a 44-page zine dedicated to adventures and GM-friendly campaign materials for Advanced old-school rules, with cover art by Stefan Poag and illustrations by Denis McCarthy, Stefan Poag, and the Dead Victorians.

This issue holds a special significance for me, containing materials I have been hoping to publish for many years. The City of Vultures, a sinful, crumbling metropolis ruled by bizarre customs and malevolent conspiracies, has been the setting for three campaigns and multiple one-off games I have refereed. So far, precious little of these adventures have seen publication: by the time they were ready for release, both flagship old-school fanzines had folded, and I was left without a publication venue – clearly, it was simultaneously too big and too fragmentary to fit a single module. You could say I needed my own fanzine to make it happen – and here we are. Welcome to the City of Vultures!

The current issue offers a primer on the city, introducing its cruel gods, weird customs and labyrinthine secret societies. This article is reprinted from Knockspell, but updated and expanded to reflect the multiple years of play that has taken place since, and accompanied by a dual city/wilderness map with player-level detail. Some notes are also offered on the lands surrounding the City – these wilderness modules (there are two maps’ worth of them) are also forthcoming in later issues. The main focus of Echoes #06, however, is The Gallery of Rising Tombs, describing one of the four major Underworld complexes beneath the Beggars’ District. This is not a single dungeon; rather, an interconnected maze of entrance levels (three of them), sub-levels and side-complexes, for a total of 81 keyed areas. This scenario is suitable for characters of quite different power (but mostly in the 4-6 range). From a disreputable caravanserai to the under-temple of the rat-god and the domain of a damned warrior yearning for his lost love, mysterious discoveries and horrible death await in equal measure in… The Gallery of Rising Tombs!

Gaming dice not included

From the Isle of Erillion, this issue brings you an enchanted forest. The Wandering Glade is of no place and every place, appearing at different points of the land. For some, the glade is a place to seek lost treasures and hidden knowledge. For some, it is a site for nighttime revels and human sacrifice. And for some, it is a trap with no easy way out. Yet there is something about the place which no living being has discovered… yet! This wilderness adventure for 4^th to 6^th level characters (but suitable for repeat incursions at different character levels) describes the twisting trails and hidden clearings of this arboreal realm, as well as a hidden mini-dungeon for those who would seek its ultimate secrets (26 + 13 keyed areas). And, finally, if you need to kill things properly, there is The Armoury, a storehouse of 30 magical weapons. Confound your foes with The Sword of Barriers, master the treacherous Axe of Many Runes, or take up the choice of champions, mighty Frogbringer!

The print version of the fanzine is available from my Bigcartel store; the PDF edition will be published through RPGNow with a few months’ delay. As always, customers who buy the print edition will receive the PDF version free of charge.

IMPORTANT SHIPPING NOTE: Due to project meetings and conference season, orders between September 28 and October 11 may ship with some delay. I will try to do my best, but I will spend most of this time out of town.

[REVIEW] Through Ultan’s Door: Issue 2

Through Ultan’s Door: Issue 2 (2019)

by Ben Laurence

Self-Published

Low-level

Glgbghhhbghhh *flrp* glgg

This is the second issue of a fanzine dedicated to presenting materials from the author’s long-running campaign (that, as I understand, mostly took place on Google Plus with a rotating cast of characters). The first issue served as an introduction to the setting of “Zyan Below”, a set of dungeons below the floating dreamland city of Zyan, and the Inquisitors’ Theatre, a sub-level built by one of Zyan’s eccentric guilds, and now taken over by a carnival’s worth of bizarre rival factions.

The second instalment follows the structure of the premiere issue. Two introductory articles offer a primer on the setting’s lost souls, and guidelines for adventuring in Slumberland (combining genre authenticity with practical solutions for what happens when someone gets randomly disconnected from an online game). However, most of the text is dedicated to a self-contained dungeon along the Great Sewer River, apparently the main connecting thoroughfare in Zyan Below. Catacombs of the Fleischguild is the holy place and burial ground for Zyan’s butchers, who have taken their art to macabre heights. Unlike the Inquisitors’ Theatre, the catacombs are still in active use, making for a different play dynamic. While the location key is based on static locales of interest and an encounter table, the level’s defences are more systematic, strife among the inhabitants is harder to identify and exploit (although it is not impossible), and repeated incursions invite increasingly strong defensive measures. The interesting strategic choice here is found in the degree and means of engagement: the intruders can move relatively freely while they are sightseeing (this is almost a museum of sorts), but things become increasingly dangerous as they start messing with things.

A trick that already impressed me in the first issue – and which is repeated here – is using a straight 1d6 roll for random encounters, but dedicating one pip to a “sign”, a hint at the creature’s presence somewhere around you, which is logical, a source of good tension, and a hint for the players to get ready! I believe that good D&D is built on small quality-of-life innovations like this: simple, elegant, adds to the play experience.

The dungeon is more “thick” than expansive. It has a small footprint with only 31 locations (and no empty rooms), but each of the keyed parts have a great deal of both descriptive detail and interactive elements. There is a specific style to this campaign that’s best described as decadent. Everything is ornamented, everything has archaeological context, and it is all opulent and slightly rotten. It is a strong flavour and it is easy to find it too rich for your palate. For example, one room has “a head wearing a porcelain hawk mask (150 gp)… a head wearing a crystal ape mask (200 gp)… a bronze amulet with underwater scene of clustered fish set with cabochon sapphire bubbles (375 gp)… a jadite mantis mask (150 gp)… a golden armband of serpent with two heads that meet at the clasp, their eyes agates (200 gp)”. There is a great amount of creativity on display, and the treasures are not just lying around randomly (a weakness of many old-school modules), but as the room entries listed their procession of weird treasures, I found myself thinking there was some advantage to the “16*100 gp gems and 8 pieces of jewellery at 1000 gp each” approach.

The dungeon is themed to the limit. The Fleischguild’s master butchers have built themselves a wondrous and very disturbing abbatoir/sanctum where marbles resemble choice meats and fatty tissue; you can sacrifice to meat-loving deities (one altar is piled with “delicious cooked sausages of rare flavour” and a stack of “candied meats”, “dusted in powdered sugar like Turkish delights”); and you can encounter fat spirits, giant flies prowling for rotted meat, as well as a demon who is a disturbing, man-shaped mass of ambulatory veins. It even finds a use for M.A.R. Barker’s outrageous invention, the eye-spoon (you can find multiple ones among the treasures) – indeed, you could place this dungeon right under Jakallá, and nobody would bat an eye. This is a very specific and peculiar kind of fantasy, but it works – and it makes for an excellent dungeon crawl.

Through Ultan’s Door’s strength is not limited to its exotic backdrop setting; rather, it lies in combining setting details with D&D’s exploration-oriented gameplay. The fit is not 100% seamless, since the dazzling amount of detail does make the rooms slightly hard to “read”, which does have an effect on the action therein (“You forgot about the ceramic bowls on top of the pillars! Now you shall die!”). But this is a quibble, since in general, the writing is clear and effective. This mini-dungeon rewards careful exploration, inventive problem-solving and shrewd negotiation; its traps and challenges are inventive and require out-of-the-box thinking to best; and it is heavy on well-integrated, interesting secrets (more than a third of the level, and most of its interesting treasures are hidden from the casual observer). It is good D&D in an exotic setting the same way Empire of the Petal Throne is good D&D in an exotic setting. It is not “too weird to live.”

Through Ultan’s Door comes with a detachable cardboard cover, showing Russ Nicholson’s grotesque depiction of the catacombs’ entrance on the front cover, and Gus L’s dungeon map on the inside. This is a good map, combining visual appeal with practicality. I think there is also a “monster card” displaying the encounter table (a boon for table use), but I must have misplaced it – or was it all a dream?

No playtesters are credited in this publication. [Correction: The zine credits the playtesters right on its first page.]

Rating: **** / *****

[REVIEW] Goddess of the Crypt

Goddess of the Crypt (2019)

by Vagabundork

Self-published

Low-level

Goddess of the Crypt

Into the Odd is one of the worthwhile old-school D&D spinoffs of the last decade: it has a strong vision, simple but well thought out mechanics, an interesting implied setting, and a well-structured game framework which encourages going out on hazardous but lucrative adventures. It is kind of like OD&D for a rusty and very weird Victorian England; a place where you might encounter morlocks, Martian war-machines, occult mysteries and temporal/spatial anomalies, and where your beginning characters are largely disadvantaged nobodies hoping to make it big by hook or by crook. Like OD&D’s beginning murderhobos, there are bizarre and dangerous dungeons to plunder and occult treasures to unearth. Like OD&D’s name-level characters, the endgame involves retiring as wealthy and powerful eccentrics, and there is a pre-built career path to reach that destination.

What Into the Odd is missing is the same thing niche games tend to miss: a steady support of interesting, well-thought out adventures (Silent Titans, which uses the game system, and even includes its core rules, is the major exception as a full-length campaign). This is a shame, because, ItO is precisely the kind of game that’s fairly easy to develop scenarios for, and a good fit for smaller, pamphlet-sized projects. So here we are: Goddess of the Crypt is a published ItO mdule – and a fairly well hidden one.

The adventure takes the characters, working on behalf of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, into a temple populated with serpent-men and super-science. A previous expedition has been lost down there, and it may also be swell to uncover some of the precious artefacts they have been looking for. This is a dungeon with 11 main keyed areas, which is not much, although most of the rooms have a neat multi-layered complexity with multiple things going on. This complexity is both a boon and a hindrance, as the module is structured in a nested bullet point structure

• that theoretically makes information well structured and easy to find,
• unless there are several levels of the bullet points and the information is scattered among them
• in a labyrinthine way
• no kidding, it really looks like this
• sometimes there are five levels.

Obviously, this is a wee bit too much of a good thing, and ironically makes the text harder to decipher than just sticking with boring old paragraphs.

What makes Goddess of the Crypt worth checking out is the dungeon itself. It has the spirit of OD&D’s “mythic underworld” concept, working more along the lines of loose association than strict logic. As a temple/crypt, the dungeon has somehow established connections with laboratories and extra-dimensional pockets. It mixes meso-American feeling snake temples with early 20^th century weird (pseudo-)science-as-magic devices. It has superb ideas like a bas-relief of one-eyed men serving as an opening mechanism for a secret door (opened with a freshly plucked eye), or an enchanted key that fits every door, but turns them into an entrance to a specific extra-dimensional place. There is a roster of monsters representing various stages of serpentile evolution and cross-breeding, and bizarre monsters from dimension X. It is an interactive dungeon with imaginative things to mess with.

However, it is still more a first step in a great direction than a fully formed dungeon that hits all notes. The map’s frequent use of one-way doors introduces some interesting choices, but also results in inevitable backtracking, and turns a seemingly non-linear dungeon level into a significantly more restricted one. At least if I interpret the map correctly: some of the door symbols are deceptively similar, and for something done with a mapping programme, it is surprisingly hard to read. I also believe the contents could have been spread out a little more with the good use of empty rooms (and less pointlessly winding corridors, unless that is part of the snake theme). The issues with structuring information have already been covered. I would be interested to see further releases from Vagabundork, with a slightly less fragmented structure – the potential is there, if the presentation can be improved somewhat.

No playtesters are credited in this publication.

Rating: *** / *****

[NEWS] Saving Throw: A Fundraiser Fanzine to Help James D. Kramer

Saving Throw

While Echoes #06 is undergoing some essential fine-tuning before release, I would like to draw your attention to a recently published fanzine. Saving Throw has been assembled and released for the benefit of James D. Kramer. You may know James from his illustrative work, which is found in various adventure modules and game supplements. You may have handled his editing work if you have browsed through a copy of Knockspell or OSRIC. You may know him as a publisher and author of fine adventures through his Usherwood Publishing imprint (which also sells an A5 version of the OSRIC rules). You may know him as a family man, too.

As you may also have heard, James has been fighting a malignant brain tumour for a while, and has had to undergo multiple surgeries in the process. Saving Throw – sold for the auspicious price of $13.00 – is a fanzine whose proceeds will go to Jim and his family in this trying time – and it is also intended as a thank-you note and as a gift to cheer him up. In 64 pages, Saving Throw contains a wealth of articles written by members of the old-school community. Therein, you will find six complete mini-adventures (I wrote one of them); random inspiration tables to generate fantastic islands; variant rules; maps to great treasures; new monsters and NPC parties; and more.

Saving Throw is currently available in PDF from DriveThruRPG, and a print version is also forthcoming (sold at discount to those who purchase the PDF). Buy yours today!

[BLOG] More Adventures in Morthimion & The Sideways Level

[Spoiler-free, player-safe section]

One of the fun things about The Ryth Chronicle – perhaps the single most useful document of early OD&D play, and more useful than some actual OD&D supplements – is seeing the campaign take shape through the actions of multiple different adventurer groups. Ryth had an enormous player roster involving guests and regulars, apparently even going as far as to lease out some characters on expeditions where the players could not be present. The earliest listing from March 1975 counts 26 players and 17 characters (not counting the recently dead), the highest-level being Pontius, a 5^th level Cleric, and Felsord, a 5^th level Dwarf. The last one, from October 1976, counts 50 players and characters… three 9^th level Magic-Users (Fazzlefart, Sondin and Kodiak), two 8^th level Fighters (Ragnar Lodbrok and Grobard BenGon), and two 8^th level Clerics (Benelux V and good old Pontifus).

You get a good idea about how things went when you read the earliest expedition reports – brief snippets along the lines of 

• “Morbundus, 2^nd level. John Van De Graaf led 15 players, losing 3, in a search for passages to lower depths. They defeated a wyvern, gnolls, toads, zombies, bandits, giant snakes, giant rats, and giant ants. They found a magic toad statue of unknown properties, and cleaned out the remainder of the Troll Room treasure.”
• Or: “Weir, 2^nd level. Paul Michaud led 14, five died, and two high-level characters (a hero and a curate) were at death’s doorstep. They defeated 3 giant snakes, but met their match with 2 manticores and left without treasure.”

One of the fun things about Castle Morthimion is seeing a similar thing play out, even if on a much smaller scale. Morthimion operates as an occasional campaign – there is no planned schedule; it goes on the menu when we can’t organise one of our regular sessions, or on special occasions.  As such, expedition parties are organised on an ad-hoc basis – whoever is present can bring a previous PC or roll up a character (one 2^nd level or two 1^st level PCs). More than that, Morthimion’s guest players are a prestigious lot: as of the last post, we had Zulgyan visiting us from Argentina; the next session, Lord Metal Demon came by from the frozen lands of Canada. What is even better, I am hearing both are now entertaining the idea of running an OD&D dungeon of our own – hope we will hear about them in due course! I don’t usually do open table games (my attempt to do so with Helvéczia back in 2012 triggered an immediate player revolt), but this comes reasonably close.

As it always goes with OD&D projects, there is a trick to all this. As envisioned, OD&D is a game without boundaries. It is meant to expand; not just through the continuous vertical and horizontal expansion of the dungeons, or in the incorporation of new “stuff”, but often in the scope of play as well – from dungeoneering to wilderness exploration, castle building, airborne and maritime combat, and “more”. Meanwhile, recreating an LBB-only game today is inherently laser-focused and based on setting limits – a specific mindset and specific rules (fortunately, it does not require LARPing 1970s hipsters) But the game will, inevitably, be something different. We can’t remake Ryth with today’s tools. But we can learn from it and adapt it to our current needs.

***

Our third July game was again conducted in English, with Lord Metal Demon dropping by for an afternoon.

• L.M.D. brought Balta the Axe, a 2^nd level Fighting Man (the character’s name would translate as Axe the Balta). He was joined by Tumak the Shaman, 2^nd level Cleric of Chaos; Brother Tivold, 3^rd level Cleric of Law; Tycho the Ascetic (Cleric 1 of Law) and Weirlord (1^st level Magic-User) returned from the first expedition, and Ravenheart (who runs Vorpal Mace) brought Grimly the Poor, a 2^nd level Dwarf who rolled particularly badly for starting money. They brought two light footmen (Rudolf and Ragnarr), a bowman (Robin), a porter (Ale) and a torchbearer (Chort); as well as a cart for all the treasure!
• This time, we could actually start in the wilderness, as I had a player map and some basic notes ready. Starting from King Donald’s Wall, the company immediately went off track and scouted a collection of burial mounds from the time of the Faerie Princes, encountering a host of elves exploring the valley.
• They also found a hidden way into a valley ruled by the castle of Lord Moltgaard, who, seeing they could neither just nor pay a toll, had them run off with the threat of siccing the dogs on them!
• …as well as a second valley with a pool of comely naked ladies close to a grove of trees. Balta was charmed after a botched altercation, and had to be physically dragged off before he would join them beneath the water surface.
• …and a small lake with an island, a troll bridge, and a gazebo where they avoided a trap, learned of an imprisoned princess, and found some treasure.

Domains of the Faerie Princes

• Arriving in Morthimion, the company descended to the dungeons and continued exploring the southern passages of the first level. This did not go very well: Brother Tivold was paralysed by a ghoul and taken out for most of the action, and disturbing a nest of centipedes, Grimly and Balta were both bitten with only 2d6 turns to live! After a mad dash for the exit, they sought an audience with the Wizard Wörramos for help. Balta was saved in due time with a potion, but poor Grimly died a horrible death. In exchange for saving Balta’s life, and the second vial of poison cure, Wörramos bade them via geas to find the Chantry of the Centipede Lord, and find therein a small brass statuette.
• For the second expedition, Grimly was replaced with Joe Average, hobbit Fighting Man of no remarkable stats. Right near the entrance, they encountered yet another fellow, a handsome man wearing plate and a mace. Introducing himself as Milius, he joined the company despite suspicions of being up to no good, and managed to stay in the back without doing anything useful.
• This time, they went to explore the northeast. They found a passage that turned into a 90-degree horizontal pit trap. Descending with the aid of a rope, Balta found himself in a new level with deep pits and shafts, but they collectively decided this place was located too deep for the Chantry, their primary objective.
• They encountered a Stone Hero who challenged them to single combat to let them pass, and Balta completed the challenge! These passages brought them to an area of stone doors (which they decided were fake), pit traps, and mysterious chambers with brass bowls on pedestals. Robin and Ragnar fell into the pits and died. Three black gemstones retrieved from one of the bowls proved useful in conjuring a spirit of the Underworld, who agreed to transport them to the Chantry of the Centipede Lord, which was located right below their feet on the second dungeon level!
• Now in unknown territory and only a vague direction of where their exit may lie, they set to explore the nearby area. The entrance to the chantry was easy to find, but before, they decided to prod a nearby stone door, releasing a gelatinous cube from an overhead chute! The chute, in turn, lead to the hidden Diamond Laser Room, containing a fabulous 5000 gp diamond suspended in the air between several laser beams and a system of mirror walls. Choosing the brute force approach, Balta chucked a stone against the gem and knocked it out of place, triggering the lasers which cut poor Joe Average into ribbons. Since the hour was late and L.M.D. would have his flight back the next day, we called it a day with the company stuck down in the dungeons, and went for a few beers in a nearby pub.

Level 1 Player Map

Our next game, in August, included three players, of whom only Premier had previous experience with the dungeons (or OD&D). Since the previous crew were stuck down there, we generated a new set of characters (two per player, all 1st level), who had bought the previous party’s map off of a weaselly character who had somehow “acquired” it.

• Premier brought Axbjard Bjardax, a Dwarf; and Hijo de Emirikul, a Chaotic Magic-User. My PhD student (whom I had known much longer as a gamer before our paths would cross professionally) brought Bandar, a Cleric of Chaos; and Tomrik, a Chaotic Fighting Man who did not speak a single word during the game. His wife (also a veteran gamer, as well as PhD in regional studies) brought the elven sisters Erien (operating as a Fighting Woman) and Glerien (operating as a Magic-User), who lead most of the expedition. They hired two spearmen, Sam and Jack (who was extraordinarily capable), and the porters El  Mulo and Owl.
• This expedition also started in the wilderness, but the company did not go off track and struck right for the dungeon, only stopping at a seedy roadside tavern in the woods, where they learned of the previous group’s disappearance in Morthimion about a week earlier. They decided that a rescue operation could net them new, generous allies.
• In Morthimion, they headed straight for the second level stairs, found by the earliest expeditions but never taken. Erien and Glerien’s elven senses, along with Axbjard’s knowledge of construction, came quite handy; and they found first a hidden stairway leading upwards from the first level, and then a second set of stairs going down north from the second level landing, but choked with generous fungal matter. These would be left for later expeditions (“Castle Morthimion, Department of Construction” sign / inaccessible).
• Here, the expedition almost ended with annihilation. Exploring a sequence of abandoned barrack rooms marked with the sign of a yellow beak, the company was cornered in a room by an enormous number of orcs. Only Hijo de Emirikul’s sleep spell allowed them retreat from the ambush, but their escape was cut off again by a group of orcs and an ogre who had blocked their path through another route. Soon to be caught by mustering forces from both before and behind them, a desperate fight was won with the aid of flaming oil, which they spilled in great quantities behind them to give the pursuing orcs a fiery surprise. So they escaped with their lives, but no loot at all.

Level 2 Player Map

• For the second expedition, they planned more carefully, investing their funds into generous quantities of flaming oil. Back on the 2^nd level, they explored a series of dank storerooms with fungi and peaceful giant lizards, and found a place called “The Shrine of Doors”, where a sinister man named Thassaro the Theurgist was guarded by a group of squat halberd-wearing humanoids (tromes). Tassaro agreed to reveal the mysteries of the Underworld for 200 gp.
• Further exploration helped them avoid a deahtrap, brought them to an underground garden of dragon statues and a faerie pool they did not dare to mess with, a group of neutral bandits guarding an elevator down to the deepest level (blocked with a “Castle Morthimion, Department of Construction” sign), and a slimy section of pipes, downwards stairs, and a pool with a mysterious statue. Beyond careful tactics, the characters were aided by no random encounters, and lucky reaction rolls; however, Sam died when he fell into a pit.
• Eventually, they found an enormous hall where a feast had recently taken place, and extinguishing their lanterns, saw a group of short-statured cooks clean up the long table. Not wanting to tackle a kitchen full of these strange beings, they went the other way, northeast into a section of side rooms identified as “The Vaults of Rabad the Fearless”. They were pursued by loud footsteps, and they soon learned by their own experience that turning to see who was behind them would bring invisible swordstrikes. Although a room of spiders brought some loot, they chose to retreat from this dangerous-looking place.
• With their loot, they sought out Tassaro the Theurgist in the Shrine of Doors, and learned that “They would have to overcome their fear” if they wanted to find the lost explorers. At first, Erien was furious Tassaro had cheated them with this non-advice, but they soon concluded it was a hint, and they’d have to return to the Vaults of Rabad, who was indeed Fearless.
• The vaults revealed yet another room of several gemstones labelled “The Gems of Pain”, which they carefully avoided. But here, their luck almost ran out as they faced to see two Thaumaturgists, powerful magic-users from the deeper dungeons! Most of the party fell to a sleep spell, only Bandar, Glerien and the torchbearers remaining standing. Bandar’s wits saved the way. “Behind you!” he shouted, and the Thaumaturgists reflexively turned back, immediately struck by the invisible swords, one of which cut off the first M-U’s head. Glerien threw a dagger but rolled a natural 1 and almost ended up killing poor Erien by friendly fire. The only character still to act, Owl, bereft of weapons, desperately rushed the second M-U and dashed his head against the stone until he was dead (critical hit; a natural 20 doing the full 6 damage – M-Us are squishy!) The dead had some personal treasure, and a lucky roll yielded a single piece of jewellery rated at the highest value category – an amulet worth a princely 7000 gp!
• From here, they quickly found the Chantry of the Centipede Lord, and the previous party, still stuck in the Diamond Laser Room and suffering from paralysis. Glerien pocketed the 5000 gp diamond, and the characters hauled the hapless adventurers out of the room. They could be returned to their senses, but were weak and basically useless – they were somehow paralysed by the treacherous Milius, who had left them along with their treasure to die as motionless statues.
• The last thing to tackle was the Chantry, which turned out fairly small. The idol was easy to retrieve, but the company was surprised by centipedes from down the corridor. In the melee, El Mulo went down under giant centipede bites, not even needing to save vs. poison. Worse, stealing the idol seemed to trigger a skittering sound from all around, and the characters decided to beat it – to their good fortune, finding the way out without further random encounters.
• This was a very successful trip: two major treasures were retrieved (Bandar decided they’d keep the diamond as a “rescuers’ fee”) along with miscellaneous loot. With monster experience (using LBB rules, these are fairly good at low levels), there was enough XP to advance everyone to 2^nd level, and Bandar the Cleric to 3^rd level (I disregarded the “only one level per session” rule). Furthermore, Jack and Owl, who had distinguished themselves during the expeditions and showed sufficient individual heroism, were each given 250 gp, the amount I require to turn them into regular player characters.

[Here ends the spoiler-free section]

***

[BLOG] Third Year’s the Charm: The End of the OSR

The first post on this blog went up 5 August 2016, so this is the time of the year I do my usual stock-taking and retrospecting (as all Internet blowhards are wont to do). What has happened last year, and what is yet to come? Well:

The State of the Blog

You know the way blogs work. They start high and they kinda taper off into gruff “I am still here… anyone? anyone???” kind of updates. Beyond Fomalhaut’s first year had 55 posts, the second had 42 posts, and this last one had 37 posts. That puts me in the “still mostly alive” zone. (How does David McGrogan do it? It honestly beats me.) This year, I had a lot of unwritten posts – the kind of elegant, well thought out arguments you put together in your head, hone carefully while taking a walk or doing your shopping, and never actually end up writing. There were a lot of these, and they were great. Next year, there will be more of them.

I continued reviewing old-school products – there were 16 in the first year, 23 in the second year, and 18 this year (about half my posts). The average rating has climbed slightly, from 3.1 and 3.0 to 3.3. For some reason, I came across more good materials than last year, while deftly avoiding the bad ones. Most bad adventures share fairly similar problems – bad scope, overdeveloped front with little actual meat, excessive linearity and low interaction potential – and after a while, you mostly filter them out. The gems, on the other hand, are mostly unexpected and highly individual. Not necessarily “special”: high-concept can easily obscure shoddy execution. Great adventures simply go beyond expectations.

This year’s ratings break down this way:

• 5 with the Prestigious Monocled Bird of Excellence.This rating was not awarded this year. (Note: this is a lack of effort on my part. I do know something that deserves this rating, but I never sat down to write a proper review that could do it justice.)
• 5 went to one new product, Sision Tower. This is an obscure gem of an adventure with a haunted atmosphere and great exploration-oriented gameplay in a unique environment. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
• 4 went to six products. Some of them are highly polished (Anthony Huso’s Mortuary Temple of Esma and Keith Sloan’s Forgotten Grottoes of the Sea Lords are both honest-to-goodness high-level AD&D), and some are oddball things that deserve your attention (The Sea of Vipers is a terse, modern Wilderlands-like setting which would make for a great hex-crawling campaign).
• 3 went to eight adventures. “3” ratings are for the decent stuff, or for things which are highly creative but flawed in execution. My picks from this category are Into the Jungle, a Nam-meets-D&D thought experiment, and The Black Maw by “Craig Pike”, back when he had not yet been revealed as “Bryce Lynch” trying his hand at adventure design.
• 2 went to three adventures. A lot more bullets have been dodged based on vague hunches and sheer laziness.
• 1 was not awarded this year. If I came across one, it would have happened – these things tend to be annoying enough to merit writing about them – but this year has been fairly quiet, for reasons I will soon go into.

A Year Later

The State of the Fanzine

This has been a good year! In the latest annual round-up, I could mention two issues of Echoes From Fomalhaut and one module, The Barbarian King. This year, I had a bit of trouble including all the printed stuff in a single picture. EMDT’s print catalogue has grown to thirteen titles, even if this involves some sleight of hand (since some releases have technically seen publication twice). I could not have done this without help. Help from my co-authors who have written three of the adventures, published stand-alone or as zine articles; my illustrators (particularly the heroic Denis McCarthy and Stefan Poag, as well as Peter Mullen, Matthew Ray and Andrew Walter – a lot of dead Victorians have also contributed), my printer (who also plays Orestes, a retired legionary in our Kassadia campaign), regular or occasional playtesters, and all the people who have bought an issue in print or PDF. Thanks!

Echoes is now in its fifth issue, and the sixth is slowly taking shape. As the zine has settled into its place, I have found that it is best served by medium-length articles. This is a natural outcome of the campaigns we play: individual adventures take between one to three sessions to play, and re-usable background materials are usually of a similar scope. There are exceptions – typically campaign-defining “tentpole” locations, or utility products like The Nocturnal Table – and these will be better off as separate releases.

The fanzine’s focus through its first five issues has mostly been on our Isle of Erillion campaign. Together, these materials represent an almost complete mini-sandbox, consisting of modular pieces you can use as a linked whole, or take apart and use in different contexts. This year will hopefully see the completion of Baklin, the isle’s capital city – a neutral port town of merchants, sailors and the occasional thief. Since Baklin is too large for a single zine issue, it will be published separately. There are more materials I would like to publish from this campaign, but they will be even more general, with only hints of setting-specific information.

The City of Vultures

The next year will have a slightly different focus. One of my big plans for the zine (and one of the main reasons for launching it in the first place) has been the release of materials set in The City of Vultures, a sinful fantasy metropolis known for shady conspiracies, glittering palaces gone to rot, and great multi-level dungeon complexes hidden beneath the street surface. The city, which has served as the backdrop for three of our campaigns (one now ongoing), would have been impossible to tackle as a single supplement – it was always too sprawling, too forbidding to even begin. An introduction was published in Knockspell, issue #3, but of the adventures, only Terror on Tridentfish Island has seen release. To be exact, it needed a fanzine. Starting with Echoes #06, I am planning to publish my materials for this grand metropolis – focusing, most of all, on its dungeons and secret societies. See you in… The Gallery of Rising Tombs!

We have also started a new campaign with a new group, set in the lands of Kassadia. Kassadia, located south of the Isle of Erillion, is based on the premise that the local equivalent of the Roman Empire never fell, only decayed to the point of disintegration. It is now a land of early Renaissance city states, fallen grand projects, surviving imperial traditions, pastoral hinterlands and strange old villas in cedar groves. The campaign moves relatively slowly (scheduling, jobs and travel are constant issues), but we have been having a lot of fun with this one. Two modules are already written (the first one by my good friend Istvan Boldog-Bernad), playtested and basically complete in the Hungarian – they will be translated for release late this year, or more likely early 2020. Some of these materials will also appear in Echoes.

When I started Echoes, I had a fairly limited understanding of the business end of publishing, and it would be arrogant to claim I understand it now beyond a basic hobbyist level. But on that level, things have worked out fine. No niche fanzine is ever going to be a moneymaker, but mine sells well enough to pay for the art and printing, and generate some extra I can invest into larger and more expensive projects (Castle Xyntillan has been this year’s main money and time sink). My big excel file tells me I have shipped 759 packages (including larger wholesale orders, but not convention and personal sales), which never fails to impress me.

Kassadia Rises

Businesswise, most EMDT releases are done in print runs of 240 copies (Hungarian ones are in 80, but even that’s only because I am building a catalogue for the re-release of Sword&Magic). It is 240 copies because the coloured paper for the cover comes in packs of 250, and we have to submit 6 printed copies to the archives of the National Library. It turns out that’s a good, sensible number for an old-school fanzine, too. Echoes #01 to #03 have sold out their first print run (Echoes #01 has also sold through a 120-copy reissue, and is in a 60-copy third printing). The Barbarian King is nearing the end of the first batch, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. I would like to keep the zines in print and available, even if subsequent print runs will invariably be smaller (I don’t want to convert my home into a warehouse, so the number of cardboard boxes I am willing to put up with is naturally limited.)

Would I recommend zine publishing to others? If you believe you have something to say, hell yes! Publishing a zine has been one of the most rewarding forms of hobby participation I have been involved in (nothing, of course, beats sitting down to game with friends). It is a creative outlet which produces tangible results, and while time-consuming, it handily beats computer games and television (both activities I have mostly dropped or reduced to a light level). Do you have time for a fanzine? You probably do if you convert your junk time into quality time.

Castle Grounds (art by Denis McCarthy)

The State of My Other Projects

Recall all those empty promises I have made on the blog about Castle Xyntillan? Yeah right! In fact, it is actually happening, and hopefully happening before Christmas! This will be a large funhouse dungeon for Swords&Wizardry (but compatible with most other old-school systems). Xyntillan is intended as a beer-and-pretzels experience with a versatile application: you can run it as a one-off, a convention game, or as a complex dungeon-crawling campaign that takes characters from first to about 6^th or 7^th level. It can be played as a mostly hack-and-slash affair, but there is enough background complexity to add plenty of interaction and intrigue to the mix, and let the players devise complex schemes in the context of a fantastic, not entirely serious dungeon.

Most of the layout for Xyntillan is done. Illustrations are coming in (the one above is by Denis McCarthy), and Rob Conley has completed a set of poster maps which are really the bee’s knees (or the cat’s meow). The book will have four map sheets on the usual heavy-duty paper, two for the GM and two for the players (one each will be double-sided). The physical book will be an A4 (letter-) sized hardcover, about the size of the idol cover PHB. We are shooting for a durable, accessible, good-looking book that can withstand a lot of play.

After Xyntillan is out, I would like to dedicate my attention to the unjustly neglected Helvéczia RPG. Yes, the translated rulebook has been languishing mostly untouched since 2016, along with the first supplement. This is the curse of large projects: I have learned by personal experience (and not a few Kickstarters I have lost money on) that a big release is not equivalent to five or six small ones of equivalent length. No – the complexity of tasks increases along what seems like an exponential curve, while the chances for failure and delay multiply. Fortunately for all of us, I did not take any Kickstarter money for Helvéczia. I think it can come out in 2020, probably as a hardcover / hardcover-in-a-boxed set dual edition. Quasi-historical RPGs have been kind of a minority taste, but I believe I have something worth saying with this one – it is, probably, the closest to where my heart actually lies.

The State of the Old School

No U

So it actually happened. The old-school community split this year, and its surviving pieces have gone their separate ways. It is gone. There has been surprisingly little talk about it, and most still speak in terms of a general scene, but in my eyes, the divorce has clearly taken place. The fault lines had been present for a few years, and the conflicts were visible for all to see. Google+’s shuttering by its corporate overlords provided a good opportunity for things to come apart, but it has also obscured the OSR’s disintegration. I never liked the term, not when it was coined, and mostly avoided using it except as a shorthand or in mockery. It sounded pretentious, and too much like an astro-turfing attempt to create a brand. It was hubris. But I was proven wrong after all. There was undoubtedly something there for a few years, and now there isn’t.

Is it a tragedy? No, although it is a loss of creative potential – for now. It was for the better. Late 2018 was the absolute nadir of the community as it became clear that people could not coexist in a single space. Every creative community has its in-fighting, contentious issues and scenester posturing (this is probably crucial to their creative well-being, even if it stinks). Splinter groups drift off and new people come in with their new ideas.

Trying to go after people for ideological missteps of failing to demonstrate appropriate piety is something else. That’s really at the core of it. If people can’t put their differences aside and get along without being at each others’ throats, no creative dividends are worth it. Ironically, the last and most prominent target of these sorry fights was no one else but Zaximillian Wokespierre, one of the principal drivers of the OSR’s ideological witch-hunts. Here is a man who has had his reputation destroyed more thoroughly and permanently than the people he had set his sights on. I think there is a lesson there; maybe more than one.

But enough of the dead. What exist now are separated communities which have increasingly little in common, and do less and less communication as time progresses. There will always be individual connections, and some people will doubtless remain involved in both spheres. Things are never tidy and clear-cut. But there is no big tent “old school community” in the way there was one on Dragonsfoot ca. 2004-2008, the blogs ca. 2007-2012, or G+ for a few years afterwards. These will be smaller groups with more focused interests.

On one side, there seems to be yet another round of re-examining what made D&D in the first place. These discussions always involve a slightly different bunch of people, and always come to slightly different conclusions. Increasingly, the people who ask the questions and provide answers have no direct connection to (A)D&D as it had actually existed from the 1970s to the 1990s, but nevertheless see something in it that modern editions do not offer. That’s a clear testament to the game’s staying power. However, the split has definitely brought a lull to both discourse and published material. There are notably fewer people around, and I suppose every missing contributor represents eight or ten missing lurkers.

On the other side (which I am not really familiar with), there seems to be a drift away from D&D’s baked-in assumptions towards a general use of its lightweight systems, and a convergence of old-school and indie sensibilities. To be honest, its first big effort, “Sword*Dream” sounds like a deliberate straw man caricature of online progressivism, and the first DreamJam’s output kinda lives up to the stereotype (GOONS is probably more my style). If your answer to “So what do you do, I mean apart from the Class Struggle” is “Urm, but everything is Class Struggle”, that might be a problem there. But what do I know, I did not shell out $7 for the dragon fucking game, so I might have missed something. I actually like some of the stuff that has been retroactively “sworddreamed”, so perhaps there will be more of those down the line.

In the end, I will be controversial and say it was worth it. For one thing, the OSR as it had existed had clearly outlived its usefulness, and the community around it started to get acrimonious. Second, the separation has removed a lot of conflict from the community. MeWe has been pleasantly light on drama, and the blogs and forums I am part of have just kept on discussing old games and their modern applications. I assume the other community feels that way, too. Who says divorces have to be acrimonious?

In the Grim Darkness of the Post-OSR, There is Only * * * SWORDDREAM * * *