The Glatisant: Issue #40
48 hours left to grab Knave 2e!
Welcome to The Glatisant, Questing Beast’s monthly newsletter. You can read previous issues here and support the newsletter on Patreon here. Subscribe for free by clicking the button below to get new issues in your inbox.
Knave 2e
There’s only 48 hours left to grab a copy of Knave 2e before the Kickstarter ends. Supporting the Kickstarter helps ensure that I’ll be able to continue making videos and newsletters like this one for years to come. And you’ll get a cool book!
Over at Questing Beast, I made a video examining the Hazard System that powers Knave 2e’s hex crawling and dungeon crawling procedures.
At the Thaumavoria newsletter, Dave Thaumavore interviewed me about Knave 2e and the OSR in general. Lots of probing and insightful questions that were very fun to answer. Dave made a summary video of it below:
Reviews
Ten Foot Pole declares two adventures to be “The Best:” Odious Uplands (a companion to Operation Unfathomable) and The Caverns of Steel. From the Odious Uplands Review:
Sholtis writes ‘sticky’ descriptions. The locales are memorable. You ran riff on the information present, make it your own, expand on it. You understand what the core concept is and have enough to run with it. Evocative. It’s really quite a skill to be able to produce locale after locale like this. But, that should be no surprise given the Dungeon Dozen.
Bones of Contention reviews Vampire Cruise.
The map is an engaging and, more importantly, gameable piece of art. There is so much detail in the cutaway map that you get a good idea what the adventure entails just by looking at it. The additional top-down maps of the major decks are just an added bonus, helping you conceptualize exactly where everything is.
Beyond Fomalhaut reviews Vault of the Mad Baron.
Vault of the Mad Baron is an exemplary adventure in both content and presentation. It lies slightly outside the standard D&D paradigm – it is a more-or-less realistic, low-magic Late Mediaeval setting with an underlying element of science fantasy, focused on a combination of cloak-and-dagger intrigue and dungeon infiltration instead of reckless adventuring . . . It is a large-scale, high-effort scenario that does “everything”, and does it very well.
Dungeon Craft reviews The Black Sword Hack.
Jorphdan reviews the new Dying Earth RPG for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
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.
Gaming News
Luka Rejec announces the release of Synthetic Dream Machine, his ruleset formally known as S.E.A.C.A.T. It has a free version and a deluxe, full-art version. Also, Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e is in the works! Unwinnable has an interview with Luka on the changes.
Fighting Fantasy illustrator Russ Nicholson has passed away.
Luke Gearing looks back on the success of his Wolves Upon the Coast grand campaign setting, confirming that a print edition will be happening.
Volume 5 of the amazing 28 Magazine is out. The best publication out there for grimdark miniature design.
Someone has converted all of D&D 3.5’s monsters to Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Justin Alexander, of the Alexandrian blog, announces that he is writing a full book on GMing.
Theory and GM Advice
Some very important and serious advice on how to make your own OSR system, from reddit.
Monsters and Manuals: Metagaming PC Death in Old School D&D: the Party as Ship of Theseus
Rise Up Comus: Matrices of Blorbiness
Direct Sun Games: Building Better Puzzles for “Lair of the Lamb.”
Mindstorm: Question-Based Adventure Design
Augury Ignored: The Big Story and the Small Story in Roleplaying and Wargames
Prismatic Wasteland: How Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Proves Me Right
Bob World Builder: Dungeon Design Mastery: Zelda Case Study
Game Maker’s Toolkit: How Nintendo Solves Zelda’s Open World Problem
Art
Games Workshop has begun showing off some of their new models for The Old World, focusing on Brettonia and Tomb Kings, two little-played factions from Warhammer Fantasy Battles.
The Analog Games Logos Project sets out to document the logo design work of the tabletop scene. An amazing source of inspiration.
Tony DiTerlizzi shows off a number of unused monster drawings he created for the TSR Monstrous Manual.
Hedron Rockworks carves a d20 from an Amethyst.
Legendary GW illustrator Adrian Smith has a new YouTube channel!
Worldbuilding
Coins and Scrolls: Eight Diseases of Wizards
Tower Madness
Also known as Pre-Traumatic Euphoria, Tower Madness is the combination of agoraphobia, megalomania, and l’appel du vide that strikes a wizard with a tower. From the top of a tower, all problems appear inconsequential. The landscape is painted scenery, the people merely ants. What can a wizard in a tower not do? Anything displeasing in their view rankles like a bloom of mold on a painted wall or a stain on a carpet.
Cavegirl’s Game Stuff: Another take on demihumans as social constructs
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: 35 Eerie Knight Abilities
The Bottomless Sarcophagus: SORCERER (Afterword)
Profane Ape: Wizard Kings of Fornax
Goodberry Monthly: Fantasy Martial Arts
Throne of Salt: Paths of Android Rampancy
The Pastel Dungeon: Faction Alignment: A Way to Represent Faction Relations With an Alignment Grid
Tales of the Lunar Lands: Interesting Terrain for Better Combat
Monstergarden: I redesigned Dwarves.
That’s it for this month, see you in the next one! This newsletter makes use of affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.