Welcome to The Glatisant, Questing Beast’s monthly newsletter. You can read previous issues here and support the newsletter on Patreon here (where you can also get access the the latest version of Knave 2e). Subscribe to get new issues in your inbox and get entered in my RPG giveaways!
Reviews
At Ten Foot Pole, four adventures are declared “The Best”: The Witches of Frostwyck (for the Dungeon Age RPG), Peril in Olden Wood, Holy Mountain Shaker, and Ascent of the Leviathan. From the Peril in Olden Wood review:
This is, I think, as close as your going to come to matching the really good Judges Guild s*** from the olden days. Or The Keep. It could serve as a model for how to write a regional adventure, from the formatting and style used to the degree of detail and specificity, to the number of things going on and the degree of interconnection. This continues to the main dungeon, the multiple ways in, the maps of the dungeon proper with its interconnectivity and so on. It is almost worth me recommending as the regional setting that you graduate to, that EVERYONE should graduate to, after their adventurers grow up past level 3.
Dieku Games has a review of my Knave ruleset over on his channel:
Worldbuilding and Woolgathering has some initial thoughts on Patrick Stuart’s Broken Fire Regime adventure.
The Alexandrian reviews The Gardens of Ynn and The Stygian Library. He even has a simulated run of Gardens of Ynn on Twitch if you want to see what it’s like to GM it.
Either or both of these books get my highest recommendation.
I’ve run The Gardens of Ynn several times, including with the Alexandrian Game Club, and it’s been a smashing success every time. . . It’s Emmy Allen’s crystal-clear creative vision, which effortlessly flows from the page directly into your campaign with soul-searing pathos, innocent whimsy, and a delightfully surprising pulp steampunk.
The Halfling’s Hoard reviews MAZES, Welcome to the Deathtrap reviews EZD6, and Beyond Fomalhaut reviews Wyvern Songs.
At Questing Beast, I review some system neutral books on hirelings and floorplans, James V West’s GOZR (James later posted some rules clarifications on his blog), the “rules light, procedure heavy” RPG Errant, Zzarchov Kowolski’s City of Tears, and a pair of game books that let you have a multiplayer, FPS fight in a dungeon.
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, USA, 67206.
Sales
Only three days left for DriveThruRPG’s huge Halloween sale! You can see everything on sale, just the OSR books, or check out all of my top picks here. Some of the titles include my adventure The Waking of Willowby Hall, Falkrest Abbey, The Stygian Library, Desert Moon of Karth, and Halls of the Blood King.
Wicked Ones: Deluxe Edition is currently free!
And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
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WIN $200 in store credit from Exalted Funeral and many other prizes as part of Dieku Game’s #HallowZine celebration! Watch the daily reviews of Indie zines leading up to the livestream draw at 1PM EST on Oct 31. Enter to win at DiekuGames.com/HallowZine
Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (11,000+ email subscribers) or on Questing Beast (63,000+ subscribers) by emailing me at questingmaps at gmail dot com.
Gaming News
After a long hiatus, the creator of Labyrinth Lord is back, promising a second edition of the influential B/X retroclone.
Dicebreaker has announced The Tabletop Awards, with categories for boardgames, CCGs, RPGs, designers, publishers, and people’s choice. Submissions close November 15th!
The first issue of Knock! magazine is being reprinted: pre-order it here.
Tolarian Community College discusses the consequences of WotC trying to sell 60 random non-tounament-legal proxy cards for $1000.
Free Adventures
The results of the 2022 One Page Dungeon Contest are in! Grab the complete compendium. Someone on reddit has posted their top picks.
James V West has published the text-only version of GOZR for free.
Throne of Salt gives away three adventures.
From The Graverobber’s Guide: The Devil’s Own Luck.
Chris McDowall has a free horror adventure for Into the Odd: The Droner House.
Eero Tuovinen has a free primer for playing D&D as a wargame. I’ve skimmed through it and like it a lot so far.
Hexcrawl and Dungeon Design
Permanent Cranial Damage explains how a good hexcrawl operates much like a point crawl.
Prismatic Wasteland presents a step-by-step guide to building your first hexcrawl.
Silverarm Press make a strong case for the 3-mile hex over the 6-mile hex.
The Alexandrian has a three part series on building rumors for hexcrawls.
Idiomdrottning has three posts on dungeon design: Your Seven Sources of Dungeon Maps, How to Stock Dungeons, and Diagram Dungeons.
Worldbuilding
The End of All Things sets the stage for his Night-Haunted Hogwarts campaign, in which PCs explore the abandoned ruins of Hogwarts in a timeline where Voldemort won.
Profane Ape has Three Cancerous Curses and Three Tiny Peoples. Lots of excellent ideas.
Coins and Scrolls has a list of 100 Alchemical Reagents and Rare Herbs.
False Machine speculates that microchips don’t work in Star Wars.
Rotten Pulp has a great concept for modern horror:
Corporations are people. So when a corporation is murdered, it leaves behind a ghost. A vast invisible presence that slowly rolls across the country. Spectres like this commonly rise after a company has been gutted by a private equity firm. If you could see it, it would look like a rolling wave of pale corpse-fat stretching across the horizon.
Whose Measure God Could Not Take proposes distinguishing languages in RPG by putting artificial constraints on them.
Remixes and Revelations breaks Dwarves down by caste, which is based on the type of metal they eat.
Reckless Dweomer explains the learning styles of the eight wizard schools.
Rules and Advice
Mazirian’s Garden shares his whole process for designing adventure locales, from conception to publication.
The Cosmic Orrery explains how he runs diceless violence.
Dreaming Dragonslayer expands on the same concept.
Rotten Pulp has a dead-simple system for keeping a mystery adventure exciting.
False Machine has a soothsayer class with some fun metagaming powers.
Unholy Knowledge - Through a foul and disturbing ritual which must not be observed, the Soothsayer discovers a hidden truth. The Soothplayer can write a single question on a note and pass it to the DM. The DM writes a note back and MUST answer honestly, though they are free to be terse. If the character OR Soothplayer ever directly or specifically mentions what they have learned from that answer the DM is allowed to change the truth of it.
Cavegirl’s Game Stuff has a clever system for tracking breaches in the masquerade in V:tM, but it could easily be adapted to other games.
Monsters and Manuals discusses something that struck me hard: On Not Being Logged. I’ve recently refurbished my gaming basement into an analog oasis and it’s been wonderful.
Videos and Interviews
The Sanctum Secorum podcast interviews Michael Moorcock, author of the Elric books and last living Appendix N author.
Dave Thaumavore interviews Sean McCoy over at his substack newsletter. He made a video covering a few of the highlights, but the whole thing is worth a read.
The Eldritch Archives has a three part series on the origins of the Folk Horror genre.
Reynaldo from the Break!! RPG project has made a video walking through character creation.
That’s it for this issue, see you next month!