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!
Sales
Castles and Crusades Adventurers Backpack (50% off), Castle Keeper’s Guide (60% off) and Monsters and Treasure (60% off).
Demon Driven to the Maw (60% off)
On Downtime and Demesnes (50% off)
The Mothership adventures Dead Planet, A Pound of Flesh, and Gradient Descent (all 47% off)
Bunnies and Burrows (60% off)
The Great City of Lunden (67% off) and Adventures in Great Lunden (50% off)
Warlock! Traitor Edition (42% off)
Humble Bundle has Pathfinder 2e deal where you can get $422 worth of books for $25, 28 books in all.
Reviews
Ten Foot Pole gives his “Best” award to two adventures: Rites of Weeping and The Dragon’s Gullet. From The Dragon’s Gullet review:
Ah, the classic dungeon level! A thing of beauty, seldom seen these days. Lair dungeons dominate the market, with their claustrophobic five room design. They have no room to breathe! Being little more than maybe one encounter idea stretched out. But, ah, the dungeon level … enough room in it for a murder hobo to stretch his legs! A map with variety on it! Maybe some loops and alternative passageways. Some variety to what were exploring. Room for traps, tricks, empty rooms, friendlies and monsters galore … perhaps, dare we ask, in their own zones?! And that’s what we have here. A real dungeon level.
At Questing Beast I made video reviews of The Isle, Frontier Scum, Shadowdark, and Vaults of Vaarn.
Bones of Contention reviews Frontier Scum.
Plastic Polyhedra reviews Skycrawl.
Ranger Lemure reviews In Search of the Unknown.
If you would like to submit a product for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail it to: Ben Milton, 6505 E Central Ave, Box #127, Wichita, KS, 67206, USA.
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Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (14,000+ subscribers) by emailing me at questingmaps at gmail dot com.
News
Bob World Builder interviews D&D Executive Producer Kyle Brink on what happened during the OGL fiasco.
At the Hill Cantons, Chris Kutalik announces that the Slumbering Ursine Dunes Omnibus is the works!
In a move that no one saw coming, the BREAK!! RPG has announced that they will actually be running a kickstarter for the project, which has been in the works for many years.
The second edition of Labyrinth Lord seems to be moving away from being a retroclone.
Necrotic Gnome announces that the upcoming Dolmenwood setting will be published as a standalone game, using a slightly tweaked version of OSE.
The Bastionland Presser shows off a preview of Chris McDowall’s new wargame The Doomed, which will be published by Osprey.
History
RPG Diegesis investigates the origin on the term “railroading”. Tom Van Winkle responds.
One of the quirks of studying RPGs is that, despite the astounding and enduring influence that D&D has had on videogames over the decades, RPGs remain folk games. It's almost impossible to make definitive statements about rules or mechanics or design because they're so unique and individual to their own tables. Even extremely tight, rigid RPGs vary wildly from table to table and group to group.
Explore: Beyond and Beneath completes his timeline of every D&D adventure published in the 1970s.
Bruno Dias on Cohost has a fascinating series of posts on the history of Magic: The Gathering’s metagame.
Theory and Advice
Patrick Stuart interviews David McGrogan about his new edition of Yoon-Suin (and much more).
Dododecahedron: Refereeing Forgery
Demogorgon: The Fragility of Linearity and Leave it in a Broken State
Grumpy Wizard: Old School D&D was Built For Sandbox Campaigns
The Alexandrian has videos on ending sessions and dealing with dead ends.
Traverse Fantasy examines a strange feature of some old character sheets.
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: Against Quests
Trilemma Adventures has some definitions for D&D terms that cracked me up.
Indre Auge: What is High-Trust Trad Adventure Design?
RPG Diegesis: The Overloaded Overloaded Encounter Die
Mindstorm: Tension Cheat Sheet
Seth Skorkowsky: Player vs. Player Conflicts
Worldbuilding
Baron from Dungeon Masterpiece put together a random magic item generator using GPT-3 and the tables from my game Maze Rats.
The long-dormant blog Straits of Anian returns after 9 years with a new post on their Pacific Northwest-inspired setting.
Rotten Pulp: Entity 08: The Existential Threat
Rhystic Studies: Phyrexia is Hell | A 30-Year History of Magic's Biomechanical Monsters
Coins and Scrolls: Industrial Wizard Towers and d100 Library Research Results
Grisly Eye: Cities in Cities
From the Sorcerer’s Skull: The Gygaxian D&D Implied Setting Recipe
Rise up Comus: Making Magical Items Feel Magical
Goodberry Monthly: Twilight City Calendar
S. John Ross: Medieval Demographics Made Easy
Archons March On: Random Numbers (much cooler than it sounds).
Goblin Punch: Dragons, Part 2
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: 15 More Magic Items
Miscast: How to Recast Warhammer
That’s it for this issue, see you next month! This newsletter makes use of affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.