Welcome to The Glatisant, Questing Beast’s monthly newsletter. You can read previous issues here and support the newsletter on Patreon here. Due to the length of this email it may be clipped by Gmail. Click “view entire message” at the bottom to see the whole thing.
Reviews
Bones of Contention and Reviews from R’lyeh review the the Mothership Module What We Give to Alien Gods, an adventure inspired by the Event Horizon and Arrival films.
Squidmar Miniatures has an overview of Mordheim, GW’s roleplaying/ wargaming hybrid from 1999.
Axian Spice reviews The Frost Spire, Jacob Hurst’s new adventure.
Seed of Worlds reviews Paolo Greco’s Burgs and Bailiffs: Warfare Too, a manual on running battles and building castles.
Seth Skorkowsy reviews Viral, a Call of Cthulhu scenario by Bud’s RPG Review.
Dave Thaumavore reviews EZ D6, a fast, simple RPG by DM Scotty.
At Questing Beast I reviewed The Sepulcher of Seven, Through Sunken Lands, and two new Mausritter boxed sets!
If you would like to submit a book for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail it to: Ben Milton, 6505 E Central Ave, Box 127, Wichita, KS, United States, 67206.
Sales
DriveThruRPG has a huge Stranger Things-themed sale going on right now, which includes products like Dark Places & Demogorgons, Eldritch Wizardry, Tales from the Loop, Monster of the Week, and lots of monster manuals from many D&D editions. Definitely worth checking out.
Courtney Campbell’s trilogy of DM supplements is available in a bundle at 46% off! I’m planning on making video reviews of these soon.
Lots of Troika! products are up to 35% off right now.
Many of the Midderlands products are up to 38% off.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
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Mythis is an upcoming d20 roleplaying game that focuses on customization, exploration, and dynamic combat. Create the character you want to play, roam a world packed with themed locations, and engage in thrilling battles where there is always something to do. Look for it on Kickstarter on July 15th!
Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (9,700+ email subscribers) or on Questing Beast (56,000+ subscribers) by emailing me at questingmaps at gmail dot com.
News
Through Ultan’s Door, the gorgeous Dreamlands Zine by Ben Lawrence, will be available in print again on July 17th.
Gavin Norman announces that Dolmenwood’s Wormskin zine will no longer be available after July 31st. Get them now while they’re still available!
Backerkit, long used as a pledge manager for Kickstarter, has announced that they are starting their own crowdfunding platform.
The legendary One-Page Dungeon contest has returned. Submissions are open until July 31st.
There’s a Mork Bork/OSR megadungeon game jam going on at Itch.io right now. Submissions are open until July 16th.
Emiel Boven is giving away a big folder of RPG art under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Podcasts and Interviews
I traveled to the North Texas OSR Convention recently and interviewed a bunch of old-school creators there!
Dieku Games interviews Nate Treme of the Highland Paranormal Society and Deborah from Geek Gamers.
Sean McCoy (Mothership) interviews James Maliszewski (Grognardia) on his seven-year Empire of the Petal Throne campaign.
RPG Theory
Marcia B. has a quite comprehensive history of the OSR movement, along with an excellent list of blog posts that were crucial to its development. Richard Grenville responds, and Marcia adds an addendum.
Necropraxis and To Distant Lands challenge Marcia’s idea of a “founding myth” of the OSR.
Mazirian’s Garden considers the problem of incorporating dream aesthetics into OSR games.
Lich Van Winkel challenges the idea that Classic and Trad styles of play are distinct.
Liche’s Libram explains how his interest in RPG lies at the intersection of “fiction that is not stories” and “play that is not games.”
Necropraxis examines this difference between reflective and formative rules.
To Distant Lands describes the problem with minimalist games leaving holes in their rulebooks over three posts.
Lots of bloggers this month were looking at how procedures affect game play: Nested Loops & Baseline Activities, Structure vs Resolution, Proceduralism, What Even Is a Procedure, Loops, Matrix Campaign Structure.
Worldbuilding
Patrick Stuart looks at elements of proto-indoeuropean myth that haven’t made is into the fantasy noosphere.
Throne of Salt reworks the demihuman classes as social classes and describes a nightmarish sci-fi setting called The Chain.
Late Night Zen has 20 unusual potions.
Goblin Punch describes his Orcs and Beastmen.
Archons March on explains his vision for the Plane of Steam and the Great Wheel in general.
Against the Wicked City has a delightful write up on historical Corpse Medicine and how to adapt it to D&D.
Coins and Scrolls writes up descriptions for Alloy, Civic, and Potion Wizards.
DM Advice and Rules
Rise Up Comus has 15 cheap DMing tricks, dungeon crawling advice for players and rules for freeform illusion magic.
Papers and Pencils explains why you should prep tools, not adventures.
Paolo Greco explains how you can improve your spells by making them more concrete.
Dice in the North breaks down the different types of wards and how to design your own.
Dungeon Masterpiece covers some of the consequences of building a stronghold.
The Alexandrian has started a new series on running hexcrawls.
Silverarm Press explains why they prefer pointcrawls to hexcrawls.
Idiom Drottning considers which environments work better as pointcrawls and which as hexcrawls.
Detect Magic back in 2014 had a third method: the pathcrawl.
Olobosk has invented a clever push-your-luck mechanic for journeys.
Hexfriend is a new, super simple, browser-based way to make hexcrawls.
Tuesday Knight Games explains the TOMBS system for creating monsters, as well as how Mothership’s new initiative system works.
A Knight at the Opera discusses how to design Puzzle Monsters.
Coins and Scrolls shows off some creative ways you can index a monster manual.
Permanent Cranial Damage and Prismatic Wasteland both have great posts on using time and calendars in your games.
Justin Alexander suggest rolling encounters for off-screen NPCs to increase the sense of world continuing to live off screen.
Sean McCoy explains Mothership’s new ship combat system, which puts the focus squarely on hard decisions rather than tactics.
Alex Schroeder gives examples of how to describe environments so players can map them.
To Distant Lands has a rules for literally putting death on the table.
Liche’s Libram explains leapfrog tables and eliminative progress tables.
Goblin’s Henchman has a Field Guide to Random Table Design.
History
Sean McCoy lists the first line of every edition of D&D.
Monsters and Manuals muses about how inevitable D&D really was.
Found on reddit: an illustration of what a standard dungeon door should look like, according to the 1e DMG.
That’s it for this issue, see you next month!