• Dungeon Crawl Classics is selling 106 adventures (including 4 physical ones) for just $40. Cyberpunk Red is selling 35 books for $30.

• DriveThruRPG has a big sale on RPGs in the cyberpunk genre, including OSR titles like Cities Without Number.

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This Month at Questing Beast

• On the channel I examined the poll from the last newsletter that showed many DnD players didn’t remember basic information about the game. I also talked to Mike Mearls about what WotC’s polls looked like when he worked there.

• I also reviewed books like The Magical Code of Regulations and the psychedelic setting The Painted Wastelands.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor…

These sponsors help support the channel and this newsletter. Give them a look!

• Traumatarium: Deckulus is back with a new expansion! The solo dungeon crawl card game returns to Kickstarter with Relic Hunter! Played standalone or alongside the original, it provides new cards and mechanics evolving the experience. Quick and compact to set up and play, the perfect game for the adventurer on the go!

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (25k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (122k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Ten Foot Pole declares two adventures to be “The Best” this month: Shrine of the Cabbage God and Escape the Devil’s Eye.

• Playful Void reviews the Mothership module Blackout.

Blackout is a stellar Mothership one-shot, which takes the typical “lone alien stalker” set up and turns it into a murder mystery.

• Pointless Monument reviews the Mothership module The Dose Makes the Poison.

This is a very slick module, with more going on (and crucially, more explained) than most Mothership modules of comparable size.

• Session Outline reviews my ruleset Maze Rats.

Maze Rats is amazing. It’s so elegant, and so simple, and so effective in its endeavors as an OSR primer. It’s a system I can sit with, stew on, and really get to know over time. Ben Milton took the OSR gameplay styles and expectations and found a way to get to those experiences quickly, while still maintaining an easy rule system with the necessary amount of depth. It has become my go-to system for new players, and may overtake some other Oddlikes when it comes to delivering a classic experience in as little fuss as possible.

• Deficient Master reviews the Lands of Evershade board game, which people are calling one of the best RPG/boardgame hybrids.

• Agranak Studios reviews Fatherfog, the new fantasy adaptation of the Mothership rules.

• Jorphdan reviews his favorite RPG: Land of Eem.

News and Gaming Culture

• Tom Van Winkle’s Return to Gaming has a simple way to convert the monsters from Skerple’s excellent Monster Overhaul book so they use stats from my game Maze Rats.

• A group of fans of the abandoned Kickstarter project The Forest Hymn and Picnic are trying to rebuild it.

• Beneath Foreign Planets has a free OD&D horror dungeon for you to grab.

• From Channel News Asia: a trend in China of women paying for scripted, romantic roleplaying sessions.

• Esper the Bard released a complete history of Dungeontube.

• John Blanche, the massively influential artist behind the world of Warhammer 40k, has passed away. Check out this great interview with him from The Grim and the Dark.

• The Ship of the Dead podcast interviews Joseph R. Lewis and Kelsey Dionne.

Theory and Advice

• 3x5 Arcana: Choice, Change, and Chance

• Rise Up Comus: Keying a Dungeon with Class-specific Descriptions

• Lonely Star: How Arden Vul uses its size

• Cryptic Keyway: The Prison Megadungeon: Doors as Exploration Complications

• Patchwork Paladin: Playing the Social Game

• Bastionland: Ski Jump Design

• Pretendo Games: Three Round Combat

• Explorer’s Design: Dying from the 1 HP Dragon

• Ropeblogi: A sketch of RPG design tradition history

• Fluorite Guillotine: the lost manifesto: optimizer culture

• Lex Gray: How To SOLO RPG: Sample Starting Session [Using Maze Rats]

Worldbuilding

• Straits of Anian: ignore all previous instructions

• All Dead Generations: The Tyrant’s Hand

• Murkmail: I’m tired of touchstones

• Numbers Are Real: How to Set Up Factions So They Can Be Toppled

• The Nothic’s Eye: A Faction to Topple in FIRMAMENT

• Late Night Zen: 20 more unusual potions

• Behind the Helm: d60 guns

• This Vorpal Coil: Principles of Geochemy

• Dungeonfruit: In Favor of Repetition

• Hill Cantons: The Old School (Hyperborean) Renaissance and Kratka Lidova Republika: A Brief Account of the Republic of the Short Peoples.

• People Make Games covers one of the best worldbuilding projects of all time: Jerry Gretzinger’s map.

This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.

• Free League is selling 29 digital RPGs for less than a dollar per book, including Forbidden Lands, Vaesen, Dragonbane and Symbaroum. Frog God is selling 79 books for a great deal, including a physical book.

• Exalted Funeral has sales on a number of physical OSR books, including the OSE Referee’s Tome, The Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e Bundle, and The Molt RPG (standard and collector’s edition) for Mork Borg. Use code QUESTINGBEAST to get an extra 10% off on anything published by Exalted Funeral.

• DriveThruRPG has finally made Moldvay Basic D&D available for print-on-demand. They also have a 60% off sale on Pathfinder Adventures and Savage Pathfinder Rules and there’s a 50% off sale on Necropolis for Swords and Wizardry, Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes, Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls, and Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.

• Green Ronin has 65% off of tons of physical books, including Fantasy Age and Mutants and Masterminds.

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This Month at Questing Beast

• This month I made three videos showing how to hack RPG systems, looking at the rules for Initiative, Encumbrance, and Armor.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…

These sponsors help support the channel and this newsletter. Give them a look!

• Strigovia — A Slavic Darkfolk RPG — launching June 1 on Kickstarter. Darkfolk fantasy RPG: no heroes, only survivors. Debt Magic on standard D10s, deadly zone combat, 400+ pages. The Chort, a 160mm forest devil miniature, is Kickstarter-exclusive. Art: Larek (WotC), Truściński (Witcher).

• LONE WOLF: LIGHT OF THE KAI. The long-awaited finale to the Lone Wolf gamebook series, completed faithfully from Joe Dever's original notes. The series that helped invent solo fantasy gaming returns: choose-your-path adventure, dice-rolled combat, Kai Disciplines to master, and a new darkness rising in Magnamund. Illustrated jacketed hardback. £35 from Holmgard Press.

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Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (24k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (121k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Ten Foot Pole declares Under the Caustic River to be “The Best” this month.

Great specificity. Good challenges. Good formatting. A good and solid basic adventure that, white not exactly the most memorable, is setting everything up for success.

• Quinns Quest reviews the massive, detailed world of Stonetop.

• OSR Rocks reviews the new 0e edition of Fatherfog, Tuesday Knight Games’ fantasy follow up to Mothership.

• Playful Void reviews A Familiar Tower, an OSR puzzle dungeon by Direct Sun.

. . . the rooms themselves are absolutely choc-a-block with interactive content; typically at least 2 or 3 things to interact with. There are 14 locations in all, and at least each of the five floors features a puzzle for the players to figure out . . .

• Zzarchov Kowolski reviews my game Knave 2e!

• Dragon Dreams reviews my Ennie Award-winning RPG of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, and provides some advice on how to tweak the game.

This is a really great little game that is a ton of fun as a palate-cleanser. I really can’t recommend this enough.

News and Gaming Culture

• Bob Worldbuilder has created a massive poll attempting to figure out which RPGs are actually the most popular. It closes on June 1, so vote for your favorite now.

• Troy Press did a survey of 1,253 US adults on what DnD’s rules are like, and got some very…odd results.

• Mythic Mountain’s Folk Gaming Blog: The Common Bulwark of Folk D&D (related to the link above)

• Patchwork Paladin: A Dolmenwood Retrospective

The campaign book is so loaded with lore and so well-structured that anything I did was automatically supported and flavored beautifully. The Dolmenwood Campaign Book is the best RPG book I’ve ever had. The monster book is no slouch either. Gavin Norman is a genius and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

• Rise Up Comus has created an online dashboard for running his Middle Earth hexcrawl.

• Olden Demon: Why Old Warhammer Looked Better (And Why It Changed)

• Professor DM interviewed me and lots of other YouTubers at Green Dragon Fest on whether Dungeontubing is dying or not.

• Luke Stratton of Pirate Borg hosts another State of the OSR panel at Gary Con, where they argue about my complaints with DCC’s formatting.

Theory and Advice

• Murkmail: The 2 axes of abstraction, ‘No’ is the most interesting answer, and Unbalanced Combat is Cool

• 3x5 Arcana: The Bonkers Loop, The Door Tax, and The Mythic Engine

• Valeria Loves: My Dad’s First RPG was Roach Motel

• Jay Dragon: The Three Secrets of Making Games

• Syd Lonreiro: The Guide to Old School Tournaments

• Being An Asshole To A Goblin: Elements of a Key 4: Rules for Key-Writing

• Periapt Games: Winning the game by being well-rested

• Limithron: How to Write and Run OSR RPG Adventures

Worldbuilding

• False Machine: I Read Generators of Underground Worlds

• Cryptic Keyway: The Roadside Shrine Test

• Hilander RPGs: How to Eat Dice Soup

This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.

• DriveThruRPG has a huge sale on nearly everything from Dungeon Crawl Classics. Only a few days left!

• D&D has discounted a big bundle of 1e adventures, like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and more.

• Humble Bundle has very steep discounts on PDFs and physical items for the Dune RPG, a 41-item bundle for Pathfinder 2e, and a 22-item bundle for BattleZoo.

• Team Covenant is giving away free sample decks (just pay shipping) for Gudnak, Warlord: Saga of the Storm, and Alpha Clash.

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This Month at Questing Beast

• At Questing Beast, I interviewed Mike Mearls about the changes WotC is implementing for D&D, convened a panel of RPG YouTubers to talk about how the OSR is transforming modern campaigns, and looked at the recent explosion of “fake videogame” art books.

• I also reviewed some really excellent adventures by Munkao, set in his new Kala Mandala SE Asian setting.

• I’ll be attending the Green Dragon Fest this weekend as a guest GM! There’s only 55 tickets each year, and they always sell out, so secure your spot now for the next one.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…

These sponsors help support the channel and this newsletter. Give them a look!

• Citadel of the Sun Kings is on Kickstarter! A Silverarm adventure for Old School Essentials. Beyond the walled town of Najad lies the Red Wastes: blazing sun and shifting sands, scattered with imperial ruins turned dust. Whispers speak of a cursed ziggurat emerging from the dunes, spewing an ancient doom.

• Discover Warpland Miniatures — an official miniature range set in the sci-fi & fantasy world by Gavriel Quiroga. Designed to be system-agnostic, these miniatures are perfect for DnD, homebrew worlds, one-shots, and long campaigns. Characters classes, NPCs and terrain built for narrative play.

• Virtual Battle Mat is a FREE browser-based VTT that feels like playing around a real table. No plugins, no setup, no rules engine — just upload a map, drop your tokens, and play. Voice and video built in. Works with any system. VBM is the easiest VTT you'll ever use.

• Still hauling dice, books, and minis in a beat-up bag? From dungeon crawl to game night, your gear should hold up. Upgrade to Alkem Gear—purpose-built tabletop gear built to last through every campaign. Kickstarter coming soon. Follow now to get notified and access limited first-run editions.

• Honest Dice on Kickstarter: beautiful, hand-poured dice that are engineered for fairness! They feature mathematically balanced numbering and were tested with 15,000 rolls. This is a limited edition batch that is already made, so the dice ship right after the project ends!

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (24k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (121k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Ten Foot Pole names two adventures, Fortress Tomb of the Ice Lich and City of the Ape-Men, “The Best” this month. From the City of the Ape-Men review:

This is a better jungle crawl than [Isle of] Dread. Where Dread was a little sparse this contains the makings of a nice long game, with factions and complications, as well as a base, to help support that longer arc of a game. There are real rewards for dealing with a group of forty flying dinos, or making it through the ape-city, or climbing the highest peak. Intelligent play, by following ruined roads that see from up high, will help direct the party to most places. Three is a place to recruit and offload loot. The apes are presented as SO hateful, though, that it doesn’t leave much room at room for factions, other than, perhaps, subtly working them against each other.

• OSR Rocks! reviews the new adventure from the Merry Mushmen, Drought Dragon Desolation.

In the end, Drought Dragon Desolation is simply a joy to run. There’s no plot to follow, no predefined story beats to hit—just situations, tensions, and a world that invites interaction. It’s OSR design through and through: a toolkit of characters, locations, encounters, monsters, and treasures that naturally pull play forward without ever prescribing solutions.

• Patchwork Paladin reviews Dungeon Inc., also by the Merry Mushmen.

• The Dolent Chronicles flips through Fatherfog, the new Fairy Tale Horror RPG from the publisher of Mothership.

• Olden Demon tears into Warhammer Quest: Darkwater, a Games Workshop production that seems to have been released entirely broken.

News and Gaming Culture

• Someone has created a wiki just for TTRPGs.

• Tabletop Turtle looks at how interaction in board games has changed recently.

• Vaults of Vaarn releases a public preview of the game’s second edition. 81 pages of content!

• Rise up Comus releases a free, heavily expanded retroclone of the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game, perfect for using in his Middle-Earth Hexcrawl project.

• The creator of A Rasp of Sand has released Pilgrim’s Passages, a free set of rules for OSR-like games focusing on travel and crafting.

• Distraction Makers examines how gamers are looking to the past for better games, both in TCGs and in the OSR.

Theory and Advice

• Mindstorm: Energy Coin Adventure Design

• Cryptic Keyway: Studying Noita to Build Deadly Dungeons

• Beneath Foreign Planets: Ritualised Spellcasting, Meta-Material Components and Performative Witchcraft

• Explorers Design: 5 Rpg Ideas from Urban Design

• I Cast Light: JUST THE FACTS MA’AM: Using Sean McCoy’s Investigation Sheet in CoC

• The Foot of Blue Mountain: Arcade Gaming

• Prismatic Wasteland: Play is Canon

• A Knight at the Opera: How to Talk About Difficulty

• Beau Rancourt: Contra: Apologia for Plain Paragraphs

• Among Cats and Books: Fullstack Refereeing, Against Maps

Worldbuilding

• Rise Up Comus: Stats as Hammers, Stats as Nails

• Vaults of Vaarn: COURT OF THE JIGSAW AUTARCH

• Throne of Salt: 100 Pulls from the Folk-Motif Index

• Garamondia: Moppetry

• Exeunt Omnes: What is Zonecore?

• The Wondering Monster: Better Gods for Your Game: Rethinking Deity Design

• Cryptic Keyway: Dynamic Domains: Four Options for Proactive Pantheons

• Whose Measure God Could Not Take: d20 Yet More Magic Items

• Rhystic Studies: The Tortoise

• Paul Chadeisson: Second Skin

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• DriveThruRPG has 25% off on all classic Ravenloft modules.

• Troika! is 72% off.

• The Old-School Essentials core books are 25% off.

• Hubris: A World of Visceral Adventure is 50% off.

• Many of Free League’s physical books are 20% off, like Dragonbane, Cy_Borg, and Tales from the Loop.

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This Month at Questing Beast

• At Questing Beast, I made a video walking through my experience running Matt Colville’s tactical RPG, Draw Steel.

• I also made reviews of Pirate Borg (my favorite Pirate RPG), Settlers of a Dead God (a weird, body horror setting for OSE) and Dark Age: Feudal Lords (the most beautiful card game ever made).

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…

• At Mythic Roll: The Return, you’ll rediscover our iconic, support-free 3D printable dice towers. Built to make the table fall silent before every roll, these towers are already backed by hundreds of tabletop gamers. With just 3 days left, this is the final chance to back.

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Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (24k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (120k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Four new RPG adventures received “The Best” on Ten Foot Pole: Against the Horselord, Eldritch Borderlands, Into the Many-Towered Twilight, and Orestruck. From the review for Into the Many-Towered Twilight:

I’m a big fan of this. It’s relatively rare to see something with both this breadth and depth to it. You can come back to places for more. The factions add even more. There are shades of here of classic adventures, and the exploration element is front and center while still containing those moments of terror from the monsters … and people . . . Thisis 100% going in to my Dungeonland game tomorrow.

• Prismatic Wasteland: Rating Every Room in White Plume Mountain

• Save Vs. Total Party Kill reviews His Majesty the Worm.

• Playful Void reviews my mansion crawl adventure The Waking of Willowby Hall.

. . . it is a hell of a lot of fun, and easy as pie to run, even if it doesn’t nail every inch of its landing. I’d definitely recommend it as a one shot, even if it’s hard to recommend as a campaign drop-in unless your campaign has a very, very specific flavour.

• Sam Sorensen has a very in-depth review of Crooked Moon, the most successful third-party 5e campaign of all time.

Now that I’ve finished it, though, I sort of can’t stop thinking about it. It is creatively aspirational, shockingly derivative, frequently gorgeous, horrifically disorganized, thoroughly bland, frequently tedious, highly polished, deeply inconsistent, typically painful, unintentionally hilarious, and—above all else—utterly gargantuan.

• False Machine reviews the classic RPG Tunnels & Trolls. Particularly good timing now that the new edition is kickstarting.

News and Gaming Culture

• James Introcaso at MCDM is working on an OSR game called Crows, partially inspired by my game Knave 2e, especially the classless “you are your equipment” aspect. It also integrates usage dice, town building, and Shadowdark’s real-world timer in an interesting way.

• Luke Stratton of Pirate Borg hosts a panel of OSR creators at PAGE: Kelsey Dionne (Shadowdark), Tiger Wizard (Exalted Funeral), Levi Combs (Planet X Games), and Robert Conley (Bat in the Attic Games).

• CARpg TCG: How Kickstarter’s most funded TCG died | Altered TCG

• Among Cats and Books: Rootring is live!

• Daniel Sell: Join the New Old Gaming Blogring

• Widdershins Wanderings: Teaching Cairn to Kids

• Eldritch Fields: Twenty-one eldritch dungeons...

• Pointless Monument: 60 systems and 600 sessions. 3 years in the life of a TTRPG meetup.

Theory and Advice

• Traverse Fantasy: Stationery & Maps

• I Cast Light: DECLARE ACTIONS: Communicating The Stakes For Interesting Combat Choices

• Goblin Punch: Divine Patronage: A Separate System for Party Advancement

• Traipse: MIGHT DICE: New House Rule for Fighters

• 3x5 Arcana: Dungeons are People

• Daniel Sell: Henchmen are Tools

• The Old Dog Blog: Gears of System, Gears of Lore

• Nate Whittington: Tyranny of the Form

• Sam Sorensen: Apologia for Plain Paragraphs

• Monsters and Manuals: The Holy Grail of Dungeon Representation

• BAATAG: Elements of a Key 3: Actual Keys

Worldbuilding

• Puzzle Dungeon: 20 level-less spells

• Pillar of Worms: Philosophical Metals

• I Cast Light: RATLINGS NOT HALFLINGS: Or Why Beast Folk Are Better Than Demihumans

• Kill It With Fire: Side effects of having spells in your noggin

This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.

But first, have you seen my new review of the ultra-obscure game Dark Age: Feudal Lords? What happens when legendary artists like Brom, Tim Bradstreet, and Phil Hale design their own CCG in 1996? Perhaps the most beautiful and immersive card game ever made.

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GM’s Day Sale

• My best-selling game Knave 2e is on sale, along with The Waking of Willowby Hall, Maze Rats, and Summer’s End.

• Most classic DnD books like the Rules Cyclopedia, as well as the 1e and 2e core books, are 50% off.

• The Dolmenwood Campaign book is 50% off, the best deal I’ve seen for it. This was my choice for best RPG of 2025. Most of Necrotic Gnome’s other books are also 40% off, including the Player’s Book, Monster Book, Winter’s Daughter, and The Ruined Abbey of Saint Clewyd (see this review for more info about the last two.)

• The new Pendragon Game Master’s Handbook is 50% off and the Starter Set is discounted as well. I got to play this at GenCon with Seth Skorkowsky and Bud’s RPG Review and loved it.

• Worlds Without Number and many other Sine Nomine RPGs are 40% off. I liked this one quite a lot when I reviewed it a little while back.

• The Halls of Arden Vull, which many reviewers have called the most detailed and interconnected megadungeon ever, is 40% off.

• Pirate Borg is 40% off. This has quickly become my favorite Borg game, especially after I got to play it with Dave Thaumavore and Justin Alexander at GameHoleCon. I’m working on a review of the game’s latest adventure right now!

• All of Swordfish Island’s books are 40% off, like the groundbreaking setting The Dark of Hot Springs Island. This doesn’t usually go on sale.

• Ultraviolet Grasslands is 40% off and perfect for people who want a completely nuts mashup of stoner rock, science fiction, and Oregon Trail.

• Completely Unfathomable is one of the most creative, funny, and surprising settings I’ve ever read.

• There tons more books on sale too, so check out the rest of the discounted OSR products right here.

This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.

• DriveThruRPG has a big sale on all things Dragonbane, with all of the core books 50% off.

• Lots of RPGs on sale at Humble Bundle, including PDF megapacks of Forgotten Realms, Shadowrun, Fallout, and The Witcher.

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This Month at Questing Beast

• At Questing Beast, I reviewed the Cairn boxed set, Mythic Bastionland, the Nimble RPG, and the Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself series (available here), which turned into the surprise hit video of the month.

• I’ve also continued working on the Maze Knights RPG, my squad-playing follow-up to Maze Rats. Version 0.0.18 is up on Patreon now, and at the end of this newsletter for paid Substack supporters. Changes include streamlining character creation (thanks to my patrons for feedback on that), fleshing out 12 Rogue Guilds and 12 Fighter Schools to help differentiate PCs, changing modifiers to advantage/disadvantage, expanding on how feats work, and more.

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And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…

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• Tunnels & Trolls returns in a bold new age... When trolls arose, the world fell into ruin. The world's second ever roleplaying game is reimagined for a new generation. Live on Kickstarter March 17th. Follow now! Want to try it yourself? Download the Quickstart rules to begin your adventure today!

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Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (119k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Ten Foot Pole give “The Best” to two adventures, Bergummo’s Tower and Fly Me To the Moon. From the second review:

I like this vibe/theming a lot. It’s consistent. And it provides interactivity for a party willing to mix things up. As a view of the moon, in terms of theming and encounters, I would be hard pressed to believe someone could do better. . .

Experienced murder hobos are gonna have a field day.

• Justin Alexander reviews Brindlewood Bay. I played this last year, and although I enjoyed the theme and the characters, I did find it frustrating being in a mystery that didn’t really need to be solved, but instead needed to be written.

• Quinns Quest reviews Public Access, a creepypasta RPG.

• Valeria Loves reviews Daggerheart.

News and Gaming Culture

• The 2026 Bloggies have come to an end! Check out the top three blog posts in each category here, or go read the five winners: Writing Rooms in Pairs, How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Random Encounter Tables as Adventure RAM, Why Medgadungeons?, and Mapping the Blogosphere (which also won best overall post).

• Dungeon Masterpiece forecasts the future of the tabletop gaming industry (regarding tariffs) using his background as a geopolitical strategist.

• Prismatic Wasteland starts a new blogging bandwagon: The Map is Not the Territory But It is the Topic

• Patrick Stuart has released Queen Mab’s Palace, his new sci-fi/medieval novel.

• Dreaming Dragonslayer has created a Mythic Bastionland Syllabus, collecting resources for the game from around the internet and hosting them in one place.

• GGNORE releases a new episode of their RPG advice column, Dear Gary.

• Chris McDowall announces the playtest of Intergalactic Bastionland. Check out the files here.

Theory and Advice

• Mazirian’s Garden: The Sacrament of the Minotaur

• A Knight at the Opera: Navigation Games

• Nrdblog: Gifts of Food and Shelter, Not Gold and Silver

• Goblin Punch: Be of Good Cheer

• Failure Tolerated: Talking to the Dungeon

• The Graverobber’s Guide: Tell, Test, Twist

• Knavelands: Treasure in Knave

• Detect Magic: Stealth Damage

• Blog of Forlorn Encystment: The Player-Drawn Dungeon Map is a Fast Travel Hack

• Bastionland: Threaten Me with a Bad Time

• Cryptic Keyway: Class, Ancestry, Background — Choose Two, Drop the Other

• Explorer’s Design: Designing Lore Blocks

• Gordian Blade: If You Haven’t Tried Group-Based Initiative, You’re Missing Out

Worldbuilding

• Goblin Punch: Gender Among the Elves

• Vaults of Vaarn: Seekers of Eyeless Wisdom

• The Novel Game Master: The Time Tuner - An Adventure Location

• On Unnamed Horizons: Cities, Circles, and Venn Diagrams

• In the Company of Monsters: Trophic Encounters

• Beneath Foreign Planets: Calendar-Weather/Weather-Calendar and d30 Months of Weird Weather

• Cavorting Whorl: Soviet Baztiumstan

• Dungeonfruit: Chemic Red (6 Magic Colors)

• Ponder the Goose: Spellbooks as Encounters

• _nubmark: Empire Army Showcase

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Sales

• Sales on DriveThruRPG include On Downtime and Demesnes (50% off), Exploring Greyhawk AD&D bundle (37% off), Adventures in Greyhawk Bundle (36% off), FlexTale Hexcrawl Toolkit (75% off), Land of Mist (58% off), Pest Control (66% off), and The Big Squirm (66% off).

• Humble Bundle is selling 26 Call of Cthulhu books for $25.

• At Exalted Funeral, physical copies of Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme are 25% off and the Herbalist Primer Bundle is 50% off. Use code QUESTINGBEAST at checkout for an extra 10% off.

This Month at Questing Beast

• At the end of 2025 I made a video ranking the top 10 books I reviewed that year.

• I also made a video looking at the the problems I have with the presentation and design of adventures in Dungeon Crawl Classics.

• This generated a lot of interesting discussion online, with responses from Save Vs Total Party Kill, Orthopraxy, Dungeon Merlin, and Doomslakers. I responded to the comments in a follow-up video.

• I’m currently in three different RPG campaigns at the same time, a first for me. I’m playing Mythic Bastionland with Ram at Save Vs Total Party Kill, The Sunless Citadel with Mike Mearls using his new Odyssey system, and The Wildsea with my in-person group.

• I’ve released the first draft of my Maze Knights rules to paid Substack and Patreon supporters! This new game is taking Maze Rats in a new direction by giving every players whole team of PCs to control and exploring how to make large groups fun and fast to run. Supporters also get access to the secret discord server where we’ve been talking about its development.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor…

• At Green Dragon Fest, you’ll immerse yourself in a fantasy village where you game with DMs like David Wesely, Questing Beast, Kelsey Dionne, and Professor Dungeon Master, feast family-style, and forge a tight-knit gaming tribe. Over two action-packed days, play four one-shot sessions at a premium venue, learn from legends, and connect with passionate TTRPG fans.

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (117k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Ten Foot Pole declares Eastern Spark “The Best.”

Man, this thing is great! There’s no wormhole monsters or saving the world or anything exotic or set piecey. I’m not even sure there’s a whole lot of treasure in it. But what there is a game world full of shit that you are just BEAMING to run as a DM. Glee, just glee. Or, maybe, scene after scene that builds to a great finale.

• Familiar Waves writes up a play review of Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier.

• Playful Void reviews Castle of the Veiled Queen, an adventure for Beyond Corny Groń, which is a setting designed for my Knave rules.

• Missives From the Meatcastle reviews the Mothership module Dead Weight.

DEAD WEIGHT has a special premise at its center (the Pearl), weaponizing something Mothership has in steady supply - corpses - as an additional means of ratcheting up the tension and adding to the chaos of cascading failure.

• The Alexandrian reviews 3 more Mothership modules.

On the strength of Norgad’s Dead Weight, which I very much enjoyed and have previously reviewed, I immediately grabbed a copy of Brackish, written by Norgad and C. Bell. I recommend you immediately do the same, because I love everything about this adventure.

• Valeria Loves reviews both issues of The Electrum Archive.

Issue 2’s existence commits Emiel to a frankly bonkers implied promise - that one day, each of those big circles on Issue 1’s world map are going to receive their own sandbox module. Over time, Orn will morph into one weirdo’s fantasy google street view. If we support him enough to keep that passion burning, he is going to map every building on the entire continent. Ultimate Legwork.

News and Gaming Culture

• Among Cats and Books presents data on the state of the OSR blogosphere in 2025.

• Explorer’s Design recaps the winners of the previous Bloggie Awards.

• Submit entries to this year’s Bloggie Awards here! Only 1 day left.

• Throne of Salt rounds up the most interesting media entering the public domain this year.

• All Dead Generations predicts the future of the OSR.

• Grumpy Wizard remembers Tim Kask, who passed away recently.

• Alone in the Labyrinth proposes City ‘26, a challenge to build a city over the course of a year.

• Playful Void hands out the Idle Cartulary Awards for Excellence in Elfgames

• I found this fun website for a “Universal Character Sheet.”

• Puzzle Dungeon looks back at the Puzzle Game Jam. Lots of innovative ideas.

• GGNORE is back with some Beyond the Wall gameplay.

Theory and Advice

• Knavelands has been posting a series attempting to replace normal game prep by just rolling on the generative tables in my Knave book. The results are a lot of fun.

• Silverarm: All Hail King d12

• Rotten-Pulp: High Impact Enemies in Mythic Bastionland

• Direct Sun has a video series where he collaborates on a puzzle dungeon with bloggers such as I Cast Light, Arnold K, Rise Up Comus, A Knight at the Opera, and Joseph R Lewis.

• Dungeon Scrawler: Dungeon Room Opinions: Mapping at the Table, Part 2 - Abstract Mapping Toolkit

• The Alexandrian: Thought of the Day: GenAI and RPGs

• To Distant Lands: How to Not Do Zines Wrong

• Explorer’s Design: Against Dominant Mechanics

• Dungeon Mecha: Solving the 1 HP Goblin

• Fail Forward: The Loot Sicko’s Dilemma

• Dungeon Masterpiece: 3 Dungeon Design Patterns Game Devs Keep Secret

• Mazirian’s Garden: Monster Presentation

• Sam Sorensen: Sam’s Three-Question Taxonomy

• Prismatic Wasteland: All Along the Clocktower

• Among Cats and Books: Common, Recalled, Obscure

• Daniel Sell: Strategies in Bibliomancy

• Occultronics: A Really Obvious Solution to Player Consumable Hoarding

• Rise Up Comus: Forging and Artifice

Worldbuilding

• False Machine: Spider is a Mushroom Now; Concepts for an ‘Avatar’ RPG

• I Cast Light: SIX HEX CRAWL: A Mini-Setting Proposal For A Megadungeon

• Daniel Sell: Relics of the Saints

• Traipse: Vivid Worlds Will Kill You

• Paradiso: Megadungeon Level One

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Here’s the new draft of Maze Knights, my spiritual successor to Maze Rats, where each player controls a whole team of fantasy adventurers.

It’s still in its early stages and there’s a lot that will be revised and expanded over time. This version includes two setting sketches (Scepter and The Wormwood Crown), a toolbox of checks to help GMs learn to make rulings, the core of how the three classes work, character creation, basic combat rules, and more.

All paid supporters here on Substack or on Patreon will get access to it below the paywall, as well as all future updates. Supporters also get access to the secret Questing Beast Discord, where you can chat about it with other playtesters.

Read more

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Sales

• Paizo is selling 34 Pathfinder books for $30.

• Andrew Kolb’s setting books Neverland, OZ, and Wonderland are all deeply discounted right now in print. Wonderland is under $15 for the hardback!

• Jon Peterson’s magisterial Playing at the World 2e, Part 1 is 25% off.

• Free League’s CY_BORG is 20% off.

• Justin Alexander’s So You Want To Be A Gamemaster is 36% off.

• The Troika! RPG is 72% off.

• All of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar books are 50% off, like the Boxed Set, Tome of Adventure, The House of Jade and Sorrow, and The Greatest Thieves in Lankhmar.

• Almost everything at Frog God Games is 50% to 75% off, including the megadungeon Rappan Athuk.

This Month at Questing Beast

• On the channel, I reviewed The Dark Crystal, a complete RPG/Setting that followed up the Labyrinth RPG that I worked on. Turns out it’s really good! Unfortunately it sold out and is unlikely to be reprinted, but physical copies might still be found at places like eBay and the PDF is still available.

• I also reviewed the Dolmenwood Core Books and all of the new adventures for the setting!

• Sorry for the lack of bonus posts recently, I’ve been working on a new dungeon in the background! More info coming soon…

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor…

• The dead are hungry, and we are all edible. Can you survive the Extinction? Coming soon to Kickstarter - Extinction 2nd Edition! Rules Lite, Highly Lethal, Kinda Gory…ok, it’s really gory.

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (116k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Justin Alexander reviews a ton of Mothership zines over two posts. A common theme seems to be adventures with cool high concepts, but which simply aren’t developed into something playable.

• Valeria Loves reviews The Menagerie of Unbearable Things, a monster book by the author of Crown of Salt.

• Playful Void reviews Turn it Off, a module for Knave 2e!

I think Turn It Off slaps. This is precisely what I’m looking for in a one-shot. I do think it might do better with pre-generated characters, particularly given the hopeless outcomes associated with the devil’s bargains your characters are forced to make. If you’re looking for a one-shot and your table is one that takes delight in hard decision making, then I wouldn’t hesitate to pick Turn It Off up.

• Wyloch’s Armory reviews Shadowdark!

• Professor Dungeon Master reviews his top picks for the best TTRPGs of 2025.

News and Gaming Culture

• Dave Thaumavore interviews Sam Sorensen, the creator of the Over/Under megagame experiment that took the RPG world by storm.

• Primastic Wasteland has a free dungeon: The Keep on the North Pole.

• The Bloggies, the yearly celebration of excellence in RPG blogging, is coming back! Submissions open on January 1.

• But prior to the Bloggies we have the Gloggies! These are awards for blog posts from within the sub-sub…sub community that focuses on Goblin Punch’s The Goblin Laws of Gaming. Confused? Don’t worry, it’s still fun to read all the nominations, as they point you towards lots of great posts.

• Weird Place has the game show I’ve always wanted: “Is This a Borg?”

Theory and Advice

• Grinning Rat: Just tell them what they need!

• Puzzle Dungeon: Mastering the Puzzle Dungeon Through Challenges and Lessons

• The Dododecahedron: The OSR Onion and Crossing the Dungeon Rubicon

• Murkmail: The only 12 NPCs you need

• Blog of Forlorn Encystment: B1 and Toyetic Dungeon Rooms

• Skeleton Code Machine: Everything is pointcrawl!

• Explorer’s Design: The Jackian Magic System

• Sam Sorensen: Sam’s Three-Question Taxonomy and Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript

• cryptickeyway: Dungeon Rooms are Nouns, Dungeon Corridors are Verbs

• Was It Likely?: the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen

• Save vs Total Party Kill: Advice for Running a Hexcrawl, A Decade Too Late

• Kill it With Fire!: Level Titles as Quests

Worldbuilding

• cryptickeyway: An Even Closer Look at the Medusa: Seven More Variant Gorgons

• Murkmail: Let’s burn down Dolmenwood

• Daniel Sell: Relics of the Saints

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Black Friday RPG Sales

• All of the print copies of my RPGs (including the Premium Edition of Knave 2e) are 30% off until Monday (PDFs are included)! Physical copies don’t usually go on sale, so grab them while it lasts.

• Jacob Hurst’s edition of Jack Vance’s novel Wyst: Alastor 1716 is also 50% off.

• Exalted Funeral also has some crazy steep discounts on physical OSR RPGs. Make sure to use the coupon code QUESTINGBEAST at checkout to get an additional 10% off of any books that they publish, on top of the Black Friday sale. Standouts include the Ultraviolet Grasslands bundle, The Land of Eem Combo bundle, the OSE Advanced Referee’s Book and the Dolmenwood Core Books! (There seems to be a glitch on their website where it sometimes adds 2 copies of a book to your cart, so watch out for that).

• ALL of Patrick Stuart’s print books are 50% off, just use the discount code HOHOHO. Useable once per email address, expires Christmas day.

• Humble Bundle is selling 25 Dungeon Crawl Classics books for $12.

• Amazon has a big selection of boardgames and RPGs on sale, some up to 45% off. I’ve been stocking up! I especially recommend Heat, Splendor, and Mysterium.

• DriveThruRPG has a ton of PDFs on sale (including some of my games). Here’s the whole sale, and here’s just the OSR books.

This Month at Questing Beast

• MAZE KNIGHTS, the evolution of my Maze Rats RPG, is getting revived. Questing Beast supporters will get updates as it develops!

• On the channel, I reviewed WotC’s new setting guide Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun. I don’t normally review official 5e material, but I was curious to take a look at the current state of adventure design in 5e. Despite some layout improvements, I was not impressed. This one sparked a lot of debate on the RPG and DnDnext subreddits. Jorphdan even posted a rebuttal video!

• I also reviewed the 2nd edition of the landmark OSR setting Yoon-Suin, the spaceship-building book An Infinity of Ships, and a collection of new dungeon adventure zines.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor…

• The final Terror of the Stratosfiend is coming! A planetwide adventure through the insides of a god, leading to the birth of a laughing titan. Call down Starships and Beasts from the Drop-Astral Plane in a mess of tentacles and sorcery. Follow Now on BackerKit!

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (115k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• TenFootPole gives “The Best” to Manic at the Monastery.

• Professor Dungeon Master at Dungeon Craft reviews Chris McDowall’s Mythic Bastionland.

• Ram at Save vs. Total Party Kill reviews Trench Crusade, Space Gits, and MAC Attack. It’s great to see him wring long-form reviews again.

• Playful Void reviews the Oubliette megadungeon zine.

News and Gaming Culture

• Early Wyrm pricing is still available for Green Dragon Fest, the convention where you can play in games run by your favorite YouTuber gamemasters like Baron De Ropp, Professor Dungeon Master, Bob World Builder, and Kelsey Dionne! I’m planning on attending the next one as well. The price goes up on January 1, so reserve your spot now.

• Among Cats and Books has put together an enormous interactive map of the TTRPG blogosphere. You can see how different blogs group together, and even how the network has evolved year by year. A really incredible feat.

• Mothership’s text-based MMORPG Over/Under has concluded, and the stories emerging from it are wild. Onslaught Six explains one event, The Chokespawn Incursion. Valeria Loves explains How to Replicate Over/Under.

• Chris McDowall has fired up his podcast again, discussing obscure tabletop games with guests like Luke Stratton (Pirate Borg), Amanda Lee Frank, and Cole Wehrle. I’ve been having a great time with these.

• Weird Place looks at the history of play-by-mail games.

• Legend of the Five Rings has started a series looking back at 30 years of the game. So far Part 1 and Part 2 have been released.

• In 1994, a player videotaped his experience at a Magic: The Gathering tournament.

• Zedeck Siew released a free RPG where you play a Chapter Serf, a lowly servant of a Space Marine chapter doing the menial work of keeping all those candles lit.

• Seth Skorkowsky breaks down all three waves of RPG Moral Panic.

Theory and Advice

• Mindstorm: Pocket-sized Powder Kegs

• Dododecahedron: The OSR Onion

• All Dead Generations: Dungeon Design Note: Obstacles Support Exploration

• Prismatic Wasteland: I’d Rather Be a Mouse Than an Elf

• Rise Up Comus: Stepladder Tables

• Widdershins Wanderings: Play Style Preferences: The Hand You Are Dealt

• Matt Colville: Community

• goblin.zone: Making Hacking an OSR-style problem

• Sage’s Sanctum: Expand the Possibility Space and My Hole Theory of Interesting Combat

• Subjunctive Moods: Unfair Initiative

• The Alexandrian: D&D: Designing Backwards

• Rotten Pulp: Mythic Dungeons

• Bastionland: Ludum ex Ludo

• Dice Goblin: You’ve Met Me At A Very Flux Time: More Flux Dungeon Thoughts

• Mythic Mountains Folk Gaming Blog: An epic Classic Traveller campaign of 17 players all at once?

• SPGD: Meaningful Player Choice

Worldbuilding

• Spiceomancy: 24 Sun Gods

• Beneath Foreign Planets: d20 dungeon critters you can just snatch up and gulp down

• Rise Up Comus: d10 Special Doors

• False Machine: Currencies of the Dark

• Throne of Sale: The Polyps

• I Cast Light: LAW, ORDER, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Gameable Suggestions from English Medieval Law

• The Greatest Poster in the World: 1d10 martial arts manuals found in the Stygian Library

• Wifies: Searching for a World that Doesn’t Exist

This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.

Maze Knights was a project I was working on before Knave 2e, an evolution of my Maze Rats game that pushed the design in a very different direction. It fell by the wayside as I worked on Knave 2e, and my enthusiasm for it waned as I felt that it wasn’t coming together in the way that I wanted.

But the key feature of Maze Knights is something that still really excites me and has me working on it again. It’s a feature that virtually no other games are exploring: giving each player run a squad of characters to control rather than only a single PC. “Funnel” sessions for RPGs like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark and other OSR games are really the only times this sort of thing is attempted, and those games are typically intended to be one-shots. You get four nearly useless level-0 PCs to control, run them through a meat grinder, and see who comes out the other side alive.

But it’s not the carnage and meatgrinding of these games that excites me when I play them, it’s the way that controlling four characters completely changes how you interact with RPG game worlds.

My favorite aspect of RPGs is planning and problem solving, where I have to use the tools and resources I have available to overcome obstacles in unexpected ways. This is the most fun when all the PCs are working together, but coordinating these stunts often runs into a lot of friction. Every player has their own idea of what would be cool to do and they often don’t like one player planning out their actions for them. Some don’t want to play a risky part in the scheme and prefer to play it safe instead.

The advantage of controlling multiple characters is that you can pull off these coordinated feats all by yourself, without having a debate about it. If other players want to help using their characters, that’s great, but it’s not required. It just makes everything so much smoother when you can orchestrate and execute a multi-person plan yourself. Those big teamwork moments that used to be few and far between in normal sessions? You can do them all the time now!

Controlling a squad also makes the world more interactive. When I play in a game, my PC is like a hand that I use to reach into the fictional world and affect it. When you have multiple PCs, you have multiple hands. You can mold and prod the world in many places at once and feel it push back. A charismatic wizard can affect the world differently than a surly thief, so controlling both immerses you into the world at a deeper level, because you can experience more sides of it. In some ways it allows you to be a kind of mini-GM because you can play out whole scenes where your characters each react to a situation differently.

Multiple PCs also means you can have a higher risk tolerance. When you only play a single PC, your whole session is riding on them staying alive. If they die, your story is over, and you have to spend time either sitting out or making a new character from scratch. When you play a team, the death of one character doesn’t slow you down. You’re not discovering his story, but the story of the whole group. While you still want to keep everyone alive, you’re more willing to try risky gambits, which keeps the game exciting.

In sum, controlling multiple characters fits remarkably well with the OSR playstyle. This is something that was more common in early D&D, as a PC would often have any number of hirelings or henchmen at their command, but this has fallen out of favor in recent years. Maze Knights aims to make it a central feature.

So what were the problems with Maze Knight’s original design, and how am I evolving it from here?

Read more

Sales

Tons of sales are on right now for Halloween! Here’s some of the standouts.

• My highly-acclaimed haunted mansion crawl The Waking of Willowby Hall is 50% off (only $3.75) for a limited time!

• Exalted Funeral has a 20% off sale on their horror titles, and if you use this link or the code “QUESTINGBEAST” at checkout you should get an extra 10% off the books they publish, like OSE’s Halls of the Blood King.

• At Humble Bundle, World of Darkness has a Physical Bundle and a Digital Bundle where you can get hundreds of dollars worth RPGs for a fraction of the MSRP. Magpie Games also has a massive bundle of 27 of their games.

• DriveThruRPG has a big Halloween Sale here, or you can check out just the discounted OSR titles here, including titles like Ashes Without Number, The Stygian Library, and The Shrike.

This Month at Questing Beast

• I published several new articles for Questing Beast supporters. If you would like to read them, as well the rest of my locked posts, consider becoming a paid subscriber here or on Patreon! Building the Real-Time Dungeon explores how far we can take Shadowdark’s real-time torch mechanic by applying it to other subsystems and Truman Show Campaigns asks: “What happens when RPG worlds revolve around the PCs’ lives?”

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• I published five new book reviews on YouTube: The Land of Eem Boxed Set, 28 Collected (a look inside the grimdark Warhammer subculture), Parsely (a text-adventure party game that my kids love), Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, and Barrows & Borderlands.

• I also attended two conventions: GameHoleCon in Madison, WI and TsunamiCon here in Wichita. I played a ton of games, including Mythic Bastionland, DCC XCrawl, Daggerheart, Nimble 2e, and five games of Shadowdark, including one set in Barkeep on the Borderlands! I got to meet and hang out with James Maliszewski, Mike Mearls, Ben Riggs, Dave Thaumavore, Justin Alexander, Travis Miller, Tyler Stratton (of Pirate Borg), Esper the Bard, and many others. Thanks to everyone who said hi, came to my panel, or played in my Knave game!

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor…

• ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE: EcoMofos sets sail! Adventures from Leo Hunt (Vaults of Vaarn), Zedeck Siew and more. Windwaker meets Waterworld in this rules-light psychedelic adventure game, solo and group play. Explore a hazardous but hopeful world, discovering Mecha beneath the waves. OSR that’s weirdhope not grimdark. Follow now for free pdf.

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (113k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Mythlands reviews James Spahn’s White Box: Cyclopedia

. . . if you could only ever game from a single rulebook for the rest of your life, it’s hard to imagine a game that would yield more good times at the table than this one. I don’t think I can give higher praise than that really.

• Playful Void reviews the delightfully weird What Ho, Frog Demons!

Overall, What ho! Frog Demons is a flawed but fascinating module, that innovates on a few interesting things that clearly haven’t caught the popular imagination . . . The series as a whole is probably one of the consistently strongest I’ve read, despite my criticisms.

• Valeria Loves has a very interesting take on how to make Fabula Ultima work by playing it completely “wrong.”

• Old Men Running the World reviews the free game False Kingdom.

IN A SENTENCE: It’s Medieval Forged in the Dark Paranoia.

• Deficient Master reviews Taryn Pound’s (Indestructoboy) game Vagabond.

News

• The biggest news in RPGs right now is the completely bananas Mega-wargame OVER/UNDER that’s being run as part of Mothership Month 2025. I can’t wait to hear about what happened once it wraps up.

• Two adventures that got their start on the Knave 2e Adventure Jam are now crowdfunding! Check out Duginthroat Divided (amazing art) and Turn it Off: An Eldritch Horror Adventure.

• James Spahn is developing a solo RPG called Torch and Blade based off of my game Maze Rats!

• The recent Appendix N Jam ended and produced a ton of excellent, free adventures to run. Here are some of the best.

• Direct Sun will be launching the Puzzle Dungeon Jam in 5 days!

• Cats Have No Lord has launched the Onegeon Jam, which is all about creating a single interesting dungeon room.

• Patrick Stuart’s books are once again shipping again to the USA.

• DriveThruRPG is apparently now selling offset books as well as POD ones. Curious to see what the quality looks like.

• Gavin Norman announces an important update to OSE.

While publishing the game in these multiple formats caters to different tastes and preferences, it’s also proven to be confusing for new players, not to mention logistically complicated keeping all the different formats in stock. Going forward, we’ll be consolidating Old-School Essentials into a pair of core books: the OSE Player’s Book and Referee’s Book. These two books form what we’re calling the 2026 Update of OSE.

Theory and Advice

• Fae Errant: The Lost Art of Getting Lost

• Puzzle Dungeon Design: Themes and Gimmicks

• Dungeonfruit: Zero Sum Game (A Magic System)

• Cryptickeyway: SOMETHING Happens on Every Watch

• Patchwork Paladin: Making Good Choices

• Traipse: The 10 types of special rooms

• Pointless Monument: Bastion Station Mall: Alternate Mothership Starting Equipment Loadouts

• Tales of the Lunar Lands: Modules as DM Screens

• Among Cats and Books: Glory as Reputation

• Grinning Rat: 100 Ways to Improve Your GMing

Worldbuilding

• The Nothic’s Eye: Consumerism, Consume Me (Treasures from the Maul of America)

• I Don’t Remember That Move: STRANGE AEONS - SYDNEY

• The Alexandrian: Elven Teeth

• Nerd of the Rings: ArdaCraft: A Tour of Middle-earth in Minecraft 2025! This might be the most astonishing worldbuilding project I’ve ever seen.

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Sales

• All of Karl Kristoffersen’s West Marches books are on sale.

• Humble Bundle has huge RPG bundles for Warhammer Fantasy, XCrawl, and Swords and Wizardry on sale now. More than 60 books for the price of one, including some physical books!

• Three Classic Greyhawk bundles are 36% off.

• The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Set is 50% off.

• Free League’s whole Alien RPG line is 30% off.

• Most of Patrick Stuart’s physical books are 50% off (but shipments to the USA are currently paused.)

Reviews

• At Questing Beast I reviewed the boardgame Vantage, an fascinating attempt to make an open-world exploration RPG without a GM.

• Jorphdan’s Jocular Junction reviews Ballads of Oraed for Old-School Essentials.

• A Knight at the Opera reviews the adventure I wrote for Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game.

Short review: 10/10, quite likely the finest experience I’ve ever had using published RPG material at my table . . . It’s like hitting a button that generates a good time and an evening well spent.

• Michael Ghelfi studios reviews my RPG Knave 2e.

Knave second edition is a double recommendation from me. I think it’s a brilliant system, for sure; however, it’s also a fantastic resource regardless what tabletop RPG a gamemaster is using.

• Ward Against Evil reviews the Michael Prescott’s free adventure The Sky-Blind Spire, an adventure that I ran on my channel 8 years ago.

• Eric Vulgaris does a full retrospective on his Halls of Arden Vull open-table campaign. 153 sessions!

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor…

• A martial arts RPG by a REAL martial artist. Randy Brown (creator w/ multiple black belts) spent 5 years crafting the indie game Fists & Fiends - authentic martial arts meets survival horror in 1800s China. Six fighting styles, authentic techniques, familiar Year Zero mechanics. Back the Kickstarter today!

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (111k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Game News and Culture

• Daniel Sell from the Melsonian Arts Council discusses why he is moving away from using Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms and just using Shopify.

• Grognardia unearths the 1978 audio recordings of a panel discussion where Fritz Leiber, S.T. Toshi and other Lovecraft scholars discuss the topic of “What if Lovecraft Had Lived into the ‘60s?”

• Sean McCoy interviews Courtney Campbell (On Downtime and Demesnes) on his new Shadowrun-like game, Sinless.

• Shannon Appelcline is preparing a four-volume history text examining the history behind every book released by TSR for OD&D, AD&D 1e, and Basic D&D.

• Chris McDowall looks back on his game design career so far.

• MiniWarGaming explains why the 1999 skirmish game Mordheim still has a loyal following today.

• Patrick Stuart (Fire on the Velvet Horizon) joins the sock-puppet-themed show Fantasy Art History, talking about the legendary artist John Blanche.

Theory and Advice

• Orbital Crypt: This Sword has a Story: How Heroes Carry Things

• Pointless Monument: The OSR of the first level of Deus Ex and How to Make Huntable Monsters

• Quinns from Quinns Quest interviews Chris McDowall about the combat system in Mythic Bastionland.

• Sam Seer’s Blog: One, Two, or Three Exits

• Ars Ludi: The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing

• I Cast Light: WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives

• A Knight at the Opera: How Do You Handle the “Inside” of a Hex?

• Mike Mearls: The Gap in TTRPG Culture

• The Alexandrian: Mothership: Thinking About Money and The Speed of Leveling

Worldbuilding

• The Dododecahedron: Character Studies

• Prismatic Wasteland: Pick Two Inspirations and Combine Them

• Whose Measure God Could Not Take: d20 Armors and The Better Parts of Earth for Hexmaps

• Hill Cantons: Chris Kutalik is back with 10 people you would meet in the prisons, bathhouses, and wilds of Marlinko.

• Numbers Aren’t Real: Drugs

• Strange Aeons: Treasures 5

Crawling Midas. Translucent bruise-coloured ooze trapped in a Mason jar. Converts any living thing it engulfs to gold. Somehow extracts energy from this process. Grows larger when fed. Always hungry. Initial coin-sized blob purchased from warrior women on the Rio Negro by Francisco de Orellano in 1542.

• The Nothic’s Eye: Dungeon Rations

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I was going through my old RPG development files, and I stumbled across something that I had completely forgotten about: my rules for simplified D&D. This was written after Maze Rats but before Knave came completely into focus. It’s more similar to 5e than to what Knave became, fits on two pages, uses race and class, and is great for getting a table of new D&D players up and running fast. The only thing it’s really missing is a spell list or spell generator, but if you have Maze Rats or Knave then you’re already set on that front. I’m linking to it after the break below as a thank you to all the paid subscribers who have been supporting the channel. You guys are the best!

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Comics

Calvin and Hobbes: I grew up with every C&H collection and read them so much that my parents had to put them away so I would read anything else. Now I have to do the same thing for my kids.

Calvin and Hobbes, more than any other comic, instills a sense of wonder in the reader, a love of creating imaginary worlds, and of course a commitment to investigating the great questions of western philosophy. It also led me to the comics masterworks that inspired Watterson, like Krazy Kat, Pogo, and Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Asterix: My dad grew up reading the Franco-Belgian comics Asterix and Tintin, and passed them down to me and my siblings. Tintin is a classic, but I was always more of an Asterix fan. I liked the cartooning better, the non-stop puns, the expressive characters, and the setting of ancient Gaul. It’s still surprising to me how many Americans have never heard of it! If you do pick it up make sure to avoid the new editions by Papercuts, which are printed too small and have an inferior translation.

Astro City: Astro City is the only superhero series I’ve read that feels like what you imagined superhero comics were like before you read them. Each issue or short series looks at the world of superheroes from a new angle, using a vast array of completely original characters. Also, the covers and costume design work by Alex Ross are incredible.

Hellboy: Mike Mignola is my favorite comics artist, bar none. Every page of Hellboy could be framed on the wall. It was the first comic book I read where I became aware of what the medium was capable of, in terms of controlling the reader’s experience through layout. It’s a huge shame that he doesn’t really illustrate anything in the Mignolaverse anymore, mostly sticking to overseeing the story. I did enjoy the B.P.R.D series through, especially the ones illustrated by John Arcudi.

Bone: Bone is the best all-ages graphic novel ever. A complete fantasy epic, written and illustrated by a single master cartoonist, and great example of how silliness and whimsy can exist alongside serious themes. You can get it in the original black and white (which I prefer), or the color edition (which my kids prefer).

Books

The Once and Future King: This book ignited my love of Arthurian legends, and introduced me to the channel’s mascot, the Questing Beast! Funny, anachronistic, melancholy, and impossible to forget.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell: This is probably my favorite fantasy novel outside of Tolkien. When I first bought it as a teenager I read all 780 pages straight through over the course of a couple days. It tells the story of magic’s return to England during the Napoleonic wars, in an alternate universe where medieval England had once been ruled by an immortal magician-king. One of the best examples of how to convey an atmosphere of mystery, awe, and slow, creeping dread. Don’t listen to the people who tell you to ignore the fake footnotes, those are the best part.

A great follow up to this book is Clarke’s Piranesi, about a character trapped in a surreal, megadungeon-like structure.

The Hobbit: Although The Lord of the Rings is the better book, and more influential, the Hobbit had the most influence on my RPGs. It’s a perfect adventure story, where a character goes on a trip to the end of the world (from his point of view) and becomes a different person along the way. All of the encounters are iconic, and I think the implied world is better for running RPGs in than LotR. One thing that stands out is how incredibly specific and detailed the descriptions of the landscape are as the party travels. It’s a great model for how to narrate journeys in RPGs.

A Wizard of Earthsea: This was the first fantasy novel to really blow me away after getting pulled in by Tolkien. Le Guin’s novels are short but luminous, a masterclass in how to imply a huge, detailed world with very few words. She also demonstrated how to create a magic system that makes the world feel more magical rather than less. There’s a great mix of internal and external conflicts, as characters battle against their inner demons while facing down dragons, escaping labyrinths, and sailing to the Land of the Dead.

The Timeless Way of Building / A Pattern Language: Christopher Alexander fundamentally rewired my brain when it comes to architecture, design, and the creative process. His principles are applicable to book design, dungeon design, setting design, and just about everything.

Video Games

Riven: Riven was recently remade for modern systems with all-new puzzles, so if you’ve beat it before everything will be new. This was the first videogame I played that took worldbuilding very seriously, designing whole cultures and languages to investigate as well as new worlds. A great example of how the problems players face should be integrated into the setting.

The Curse of Monkey Island: You might be seeing a pattern here, where my favorite games are all point-and-click. These types of games prioritize exploration, dialogue, item usage, and out-of-the-box thinking to solve problems, which are big themes in my own games and adventures. The Curse of Monkey Island is also one of the funniest games I’ve played, and I’ve reused jokes from it in adventures like Labyrinth.

Grim Fandango: Tim Schafer’s masterpiece, Grim Fandango, is my favorite adventure game. A beautiful, original world that blends film noir and Aztec mythology, snappy dialogue, and characters you fall in love with.

Morrowind: I played a lot of Morrowind. Probably more than Oblivion or Skyrim, but that might have just been because the default walking speed is so slow. Morrowind was the first open-world RPG I discovered, and has set the standard for me ever since. The factions, the handcrafted dungeons, the bizarre creatures, the highly customizable magic, the deep worldbuilding…despite it’s many flaws and dated graphics, this is the Elder Scrolls Game that’s felt the most like a real place.

Movies and Anime

Time Bandits: Many of Terry Gilliam’s movies have a special place in my heart (like Brazil), but Time Bandits probably had the biggest impact on me growing up. A boy gets whisked away on a interdimensional journey by a group of angels (who look like little people), who have decided to steal all the greatest treasures of history by using a map of creation that they stole from the Supreme Being. Many of my talking head videos have that very same map in the background. Bizarre, wacky, and full of RPG-like situations.

Princess Mononoke: This has everything I want in a fantasy story: samurai, mutated giant boars, forest gods, and multiple factions locked in a morally ambiguous conflict. Animation, characters, music, and story are all phenomenal. Frankly, most of Miyazaki’s movies should be on here. Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc.

Metropolis: This is an anime adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s manga adaptation of Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis. It was probably the first anime I saw that wasn’t aimed at kids, and had a huge effect on me, mostly due to its unbelievably detailed background art. I had never seen a movie, animated or live action, the portrayed a fictional place in such excruciating detail. Movies like this, such as Akira or Tekkonkinkreet (and the original manga they are based on) make you believe that their setting is real and that every cranny is inhabited and alive. I recently picked up this book on that topic, which I recommend.

The Legend of Drunken Master: I watched a lot of Hong Kong action movies as a kid, but none more than this one. It’s the perfect blend of Jackie Chan’s slapstick humor and insane stunts and fight sequences, which continuously layer in new complications and danger that the characters need to work around.

Board Games

Space Hulk: Space Hulk is my favorite board game. It’s unfortunately out of print at the moment (and therefore expensive), but GW seems to publish new editions of it every decade or so, so maybe it’ll be back soon. It’s a super-thematic recreation of the battles in the Aliens movie, where a squad of Terminator Space Marines explores the cramped confines of a wrecked starship. Meanwhile, the other player controls near-endless hoards of Genestealer aliens, which appear as radar blips on the board until they come into view, quickly closing in on the Marines from every angle.

Everything in the game is about managing risk and ratcheting up the tension. The Space Marine player even has a sand timer for their turn, simulating the panic of not having enough time to make good decisions. The marines can blast through hallways full of aliens, but eventually their guns will jam, and if they are attacked from the side or back it’s all over. It perfectly captures the terror and claustrophobia of a dungeon crawl in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Twilight Imperium 2e: TI is on its 4th edition, but I still prefer the 2nd edition from 2000. Its main attraction is that it avoids all the additional layers of euro-style mechanics that were tacked on starting in 3e. Everything is much more straightforward, intuitive, and direct. This also makes it much faster to play than the later editions (although it’s still a long game). It feels much more like you are playing against a simulated universe, rather then trying to manipulate a rules system.

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A quick thought:

One of the ways that people talk about OSR games is that they “don’t have rules for everything,” implying that there are stretches of gameplay where no rules are being used. Rulings over rules, as the saying goes. But I don’t think this is quite right.

In the past, I’ve talked about how the core feature that sets RPGs apart from other tyles of games isn’t actually roleplaying but tactical infinity, where “anything can be attempted.” This isn’t really a rule but a principle; the actual rule that implements it is something like, “you can affect the imaginary world by describing what your character does, and the GM will tell you the outcome.” Let’s call this Rule One (Jacob Hurst proposed calling it the One Simple Rule, which is funny but probably confusing in the end.)

The trouble is that Rule One is so fundamental to RPG gameplay that oftentimes people don’t think of it as a rule. For example, all the debates over whether RPGs really need rules or not are actually about whether they need rules other than this one. The necessity of Rule One is never debated because it’s invisible. It’s the water we swim in.

Nevertheless, it is a real rule, perhaps the most revolutionary rule in gaming history. Implementing this rule is what shifted games from closed to open and it unlocked a vast array of experiences that were impossible without it. What the OSR does is put a laser focus on that rule and look for ways to make it fun as possible to use. For example:

• How do we design problems that can be overcome with critical thinking rather than mechanics?

• How do we design NPCs that seem like real people, rather than quest dispensers or automatons?

• How do we design worlds and adventures that give the players freedom and consequences, rather than fixed paths?

All games are about interesting choices, but the OSR just wants those decisions to be in-world rather than mechanical, open-ended rather than limited, and resolved more by human judgment rather than by a strict procedure. In other words, it wants the game to revolve around Rule One.

So, paradoxically, the “rulings over rules” mantra is really just about prioritizing the most fundamental rule of RPGs. And once you start perceiving it as an actual rule it becomes much easier to run campaigns that make the most of it.

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Sales

• DriveThruRPG has a sale on Horror RPGs that’s ending very soon, check it out before it’s gone!

• The West Marches Campaign Playstyle Guidebook is on sale.

• Crypt of the Devil Lich (DCC) is 40% off.

• Humble Bundle has a sale on the The Witcher RPG: $15 for $170 worth of books.

Reviews

• Bryce at Ten Foot Pole declares two adventures to be The Best this month: Turn It Off and Mana Meltdown. From the the Turn it Off review:

This sixteen page adventure describes a lighthouse with seven rooms. It has TOP NOTCH atmosphere, providing a foreboding and eerie environment. There is a level two and level three baddie to face, the former keepers, and then the world ends. So, you know, maybe some pacing issues in what is quite the atmospheric adventure.

• Playful Void reviews A Perfect Wife by Zedeck Siew.

If you are a fan of Siew’s writing, this is amongst his best work. The only modern-set module I’ve read of his, it brings an immediacy and precision that makes this feel more imminently runnable and understandable from a thematic and geographic perspective. I am very, very keen to get this to the table, even though I don’t typically enjoy playing in modern settings.

• Rise Up Comus examines how Moria is presented in three different Middle Earth RPGs.

• Jorphdan’s Jocular Junction reviews the Ballads of Oræd setting for OSE.

• Weird Place explains how to play Break!!

• The Dungeon Dive looks at a number of Old-School games that received deluxe editions, including my game Knave.

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (110k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Game News and Culture

• Knave 2e (Premium Edition) has been reprinted and is now available on the Swordfish Islands webstore! Only 500 copies of the new silver-foiled cover have been printed.

• The Appendix N Jam is over, and now there’s 226 new adventures based on pulp fiction titles for you to peruse!

• Goblin Punch has released a new (free!) dungeon: The Mouth of Mormo.

• Someone sent me this incredible time capsule of pre-5e D&D: a documentary about what game mastering was like in the 4e era.

• The best awards are awards put out by one guy with good taste, so here’s the Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming 2025.

• Zzarchov Kowolski explains how Lovecraft’s fiction is a perfect fit for RPGs.

• Speaking of which, Grognardia interviews Mike Mearls on his work adapting the Cthulhu mythos for 5e, and interviews Sean McCoy on the Lovecraftian inspirations behind Mothership.

• Ben Riggs recorded an excellent talk he gave at GenCon that explains what’s been happening behind the scenes at WotC, based on extensive interviews he’s conducted with ex-employees. Essential viewing.

Theory and Advice

• Among Cats and Books: Running Mythic Bastionland

• cryptickeyway: More Monster Metamorphoses, Please and Should Party Pace Be a Player-Facing Mechanic In More Games?

• Murkmail: Hyperclusters

• Grognardia: Story Isn't the Enemy

• Dice Goblin: Why The **** Am I Reading RPG PDFs On My Computer?

• Joseph R. Lewis: Writing RPG Adventures: Interactivity

• Dungeon Merlin: A Pattern Language for (OSR) Adventure Design

• Blog of Forlorn Encystment: Dealing with NPCs Should Be Expensive and Irritating

• Goblin Punch: A Dungeon of Your Own (Part 1) (Part 2)

• Viridian Void Productions: Minimum Viable Person

• Idraluna Archives: The Mapping Game

• Cats Have No Lord: The Onegeon Manifesto

Worldbuilding

• Mindstorm: Sicko Worldbuilding

• Revivify Games: The Overachiever’s Guide to Lazy Hexcrawl Building

• I Cast Light: DOWNTIME DEMANDS OF SENTIENT WEAPONS: Or The Care & Feeding of Excalibur

• Sam Sorensen: 1d20 Diegetic Rules, 1d20 Hypo-Diegetic Rules

This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.

• I appeared on the Game Master’s Laboratory this week, talking to the authors of the popular 5e-focused Game Master series about the OSR style of play.

Types of player skill in RPGs

When I talk about games online, especially games that avoid mechanics and dice rolling, a frequent refrain from commenters is that the “G” in “RPG” stands for Game, and that the mechanics are the game. If you remove the mechanics, the protest goes, then you aren’t playing a game any more.

I don’t think this is correct. In my recent video on the OSR style of play, I talked about how OSR games test the players’ problem solving skills, and mentioned that every game tests something. Even the most laid back, “cozy” RPG is asking something of its players, and the players could be good or bad at that thing. Most importantly, if they play the game enough, they could get better at it.

For me, a critical part of what makes something a game is not mechanics but challenge. This challenge could be easy or difficult, cooperative or competitive, and it could be mathematical or based on judgement calls, but the challenge is the key.

This got me thinking about the different player skills that RPG systems, adventures, and groups could test to produce a challenge. Goblin Punch investigated a similar line of thought in 2015, but it was focused on dungeons. I want to look at the different ways that groups challenge their players, and the cultures that arise from doing that. Some examples off the top of my head:

• In-World Problem Solving. This is what the OSR tests the most often. It challenges the players to overcome a difficulty in the game world by interacting with it in-world. Requires lateral thinking skills. Success is determined more by GM judgement calls than by mechanics.

• Systemic Problem Solving. This type of challenge asks the players to overcome in-world problems by manipulating the game’s rules system. It requires a more mathematical and analytical mindset. Examples would be games like D&D 4e or Draw Steel, which emphasize chess-like, abstracted combat arenas that must be beaten by activating the right abilities in the right combination. The most boardgamey of the challenges. Success is determined by the rules.

• Optimization. This is similar to systemic problem solving, but the goal is less about solving in-world problems, and more about overcoming the limits of the game system itself by finding exploits in the rules. Groups that focus on “character builds” are optimizers. The cultures surrounding Pathfinder and D&D 3e tend to be very optimization focused, although this can be true of any RPG that has very robust character generation rules or large numbers of special abilities that can be chained together. Like Systemic Problem Solving, it requires a mathematical and logical mindset, although one that is less concerned with the game world. Success is determined by how much the GM lets you get away with it.

• Anticipating the GM. This is something I particularly dislike, but it’s certainly a skill that some groups test. You tend to see it the most in badly written adventure modules. In this challenge, the GM knows the plot of the session ahead of time, and the players’ challenge is to figure out what to do to unlock the next pre-determined scene. Success is determined by the GM.

• Humor. There aren’t a lot of comedy RPGs, but ones like Paranoia are really just testing how well you can create funny situations. This can also be emphasized in recorded live play sessions, where the goal is to entertain. Your success at the game is measured by how many laughs you get.

• Acting and Immersion. This is mostly about table style, although some games like Burning Wheel grant mechanical rewards for players who are good at it. Groups that emphasize this push the players to adopt the mannerisms, voices, and perspectives of their characters. This tends to be what many actual play sessions are really testing. Success is determined by how much the group believes in your character.

• Storytelling. There are storygames like Fiasco that directly test how well the players understand story structure and when to inject the most dramatic moments or scenes. Many “GM-less” games are like this too, or any game that shares GM authority with the players. I’ve found that for many players this is the hardest skill to master, because it’s not something that most people have thought about. Success is determined by how much the group enjoys your additions to the narrative.

Note that the types of player skill being tested in a session (and there are often several) are going to be influenced by the rules system, the adventure being run, and the table of people playing it, not just the rules alone. In fact, I’ve found that the table has such a big influence on the kinds of player skills being tested that two groups playing the same system and adventure can feel like they are playing completely different games.

Think about how the game will feel for group one, which tests “can you use the rules and your abilities to defeat the orcs” versus group two, which tests “can you realistically portray how your character would act and feel regarding the orcs.” The text of the game, the mechanics, and the adventure content in both groups is exactly the same, but the experience of play will be fundamentally different.

Let me know what you think below, especially if I’ve missed any player skills that a session could test.