The Glatisant: Issue #44
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Sales
The highly rated dungeon adventure Falkrest Abbey is 85% off.
Artifices, Deceptions, & Dilemmas and Bestial Ecosystems Created by Monstrous Inhabitation are both 60% off.
Demon Driven to the Maw is 75% off.
Castle Zagyg (by Gary Gygax) is back in print at Troll Lord Games at 50% off.
Have a product that’s on sale? Notify me using this form.
Reviews
Bones of Contention reviews the storygame Trophy Gold, which is inspired by the aesthetics of the OSR.
Ram: When I first read Trophy Gold I found the whole ruleset very meta: it sounded like a game designed to simulate the act of playing an OSR game. Its original incarnation had instructions for deconstructing your favourite modules into higher level sets that your players could explore. What are the key beats of Deep Carbon Observatory? Let’s just go on a tour of those. As written, players generally have a lot more knowledge about what’s going on in an adventure than you would find in your typical OSR game, often being told upfront what the end goal of a particular area might be, or contributing directly to the overall narrative and fiction of the world they are exploring.
Mazirian’s Garden reviews the new Mothership adventure anthology Hull Breach.
Hull Breach sets a new standard for anthology companions. It lays down a template that could and should be replicated for almost any game or genre. The main innovation has to do with the way in which these 26 discrete contributions are woven together so that they can each be used not only a la carte but also as a single campaign.
Familiar Waves reviews the A Thousand Thousand Islands adventure Reach of the Roach God (currently out of print).
In sum, in Reach, the norms of adventure writing and the style of ATTI clash, at least in part. It is both a big, damn adventure and a place to hang out, and these things are in some tension. I could see this tension be annoying for GM’s trying to prepare to run it, but also might result in interesting things that happen during play as the players engage with the material and become attached to particular characters or places. . .It feels like, and is, an indulgent pleasure of a book.
At Questing Beast, I review the Merry Mushmen’s Folklore Bestiary.
I’ve been playing Crokinole recently, a Canadian disk-flicking game. It’s been a refreshing change of pace from all the very involved tabletop games I usually play. Here’s Alex, a friend of mine, explaining how the game works on his new YouTube channel.
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News
Vermis II is now available for pre-order!
Alphastream breaks down the recently leaked BookScan data showing the actual number of books that WotC sells through big box stores.
Looking at these numbers we see that combined sales of 1E PH and DMG are just above 750,000. The combined sales for 5E are 2,386,702. 5E has sold about three times what 1E sold, just through the BookScan sources alone!
Troll Lord games has some news regarding Gary Gygax’s out of print products.
After years of turmoil, the Estate of Gary Gygax was taken over by a court assigned estate manager. As part of the agreement to raise money to secure the debts of the estate, Troll Lord Games was granted the right and privilege to reprint several of Gary Gygax’s works. To wit, The Gygaxian Fantasy World Series, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh, and The Hermit are each coming back into print.
The New York Times investigates the men playing D&D on death row.
Into the Megadungeon has released two new episodes interviewing Gus L and Josh McCrowell.
Justin Alexander talks to the What Would the Smart Party Do? podcast about his upcoming book So You Want To Be A Game Master.
Bardic Broadcasts talks about a Larry Elmore painting for 29 minutes.
Theory, Rules, and Advice
A Knight at the Opera: The Least Interesting Type of Crunch and Nested Tasks
Rules, resources, and procedures that complicate basic task resolution do basically nothing for me 99% of the time. I cannot get excited over this sort of thing. And the worst part is, this is also the focus of, like, 75+ percent of all RPG design discussion. Just go onto reddit.com/r/RPGdesign and see how much of it is literally just talking about dice mechanics.
Sachagoat: Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 and Part 2
Indre Auge Studio: What is High Trust Trad Adventure Design?
Unboxed Cereal: The Monobranch Fallacy
The Scholomance: System Scorn: The Excesses of 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Graphite Prime: Practical Insanity
Hallucinatory: In combat there is a 25% chance, after you've resolved an action, that you did so against a foe that isn't really there.
The Pastel Dungeon: Three Action System for Exploring Dungeons
Beau Rancourt: To The Right Buyer
Mythlands of Erce: Stunting for Profit in D&D combat
Idiomdrottning: Describing Rooms
The Alexandrian: Adapting Linear Stories
Skeleton Code Machine: 10 Affinity Publisher Tips
Advanced Gamemastery: Bluebooking
Worldbuilding
Throne of Salt: 7 Grimoires and Lost Texts
Playful Void: Trick Monsters
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: Seven Parable Monsters
Idolie- a great saturnine magician with vague features and a cloak that seems to change colors. His great trick is to summon faces in any surface wide enough to bear one, and to command these faces to look out for intruders, bite passers-by, or yell real loud to distract from his escape. Will perform complex auguries with the tarot for PCs, but instead of coming true the auguries will just summon more faces at the appointed time.
Goblin Punch: The Cult of Flesh (and the Three Great Gifts)
The Nothic’s Eye: 1d10 Counterspells
Friulo’s Disjunction [2]: Creates a cylindrical area of space somewhere within [sum] metres. It exists for [sum] minutes. Without using an action, you can apply a revolving force to the interior of the Disjunction, turning things clockwise around a vertical axis. This can cause arrows to miss or throw people off their feet.
Monster Garden: How to make a Pillar man
That’s it for this month! This newsletter makes use of affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.