Welcome to The Glatisant, Questing Beast’s monthly newsletter. You can read previous issues here and submit advertisements to the newsletter here. Subscribe for free to get new issues in your inbox, or support the newsletter on Patreon or Substack.
Sales
The Melsonian Arts Council has a 90% off sale on all its products going on for just a few more hours! Grab Troika and its adventures for dirt cheap.
Dungeon Crawl Classics has a megabundle of adventures for sale. $1047 worth of books (75 of them) for just $25! If you like even two of them you’ve got your money’s worth.
Reviews
Ten Foot Pole gives a “Best” to the Tomb of the Twice Crowned King:
Formatting is great. The maps are clear and interesting, one has an iso view. Different elevations present, rivers, statues, etc. And the text is clear and easy to read. Seriously, this is one of the easiest to read things I’ve ever seen. So much so that I hazard to say that any other font/spacing should be illegal.
Bones of Contention reviews my own Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game.
Labyrinth is the most instant fun right-out-of-the-box game I've ever seen. It's like hitting a button that generates a good time and an evening well spent.
Dreams in the Lich House reviews The Yellow Book of Brechewold (see also the book’s design notes here).
The Yellow Book of Brechewold answers the question, “What if Jack Vance wrote Harry Potter as a sequel to T.H. White's The Once and Future King?” It's quite different from anything else in the LOTFP catalog. It might also be one of the best LOTFP books in recent memory.
Bath's writing, especially his 1973 work, Setting Up A Wargames Campaign, is remarkable because despite it being written about wargaming for wargamers, much of it (especially the thought process and philosophy) is directly applicable to Dungeons & Dragons and the burgeoning Dungeon Master seeking to build their own RPG campaign. Conclusions that I've only reached after decades of playing and pondering and reading the blogs/writings of folks much smarter than me, were carefully outlined by Tony Bath years before I ever laid eyes on the Moldvay Basic box.
The Vintage RPG Podcast reviews Skerples’ Monster Overhaul.
Chaoclypse looks at Monsters &, Luke Gearing’s minimalist, evocative monster manual for Wolves Upon the Coast.
I take a look through the current draft of Dolmenwood, now in its last week on Kickstarter (I’m a backer).
Ranger Lemure reviews The Gallery of Rising Tombs.
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Gaming News
Break!! has put out a non-commercial license.
Noisms (author of Yoon-Suin) shows off some stunning early art for his next setting-construction toolbox, The Great North.
Mazirian’s Garden has released the first two episodes of Into the Megadungeon, where the author of Beyond Ultan’s Door interviews DMs who have run extensive megadungeon campaigns. Highly recommended.
Broodmother Skyfortress is back in print. I made a review it a while back.
Chris McDowall has put up the pre-launch Kickstarter page for Mythic Bastionland: Before Into the Odd.
Chris was also interviewed on his recent wargame The Doomed, which sold out at Gen Con.
John Blanche was recently interviewed about some of his most famous works.
Dieku Games interviewed me!
At Gen Con, I got Luke Crane to explain the goal of his B/X D&D-derived system, Miseries and Misfortunes.
Game Theory and Design
Traverse Fantasy: Towards an Abstract D&D Language
I Cast Light: THE D&D IN MY HEAD: In Only 6 Load-Bearing Numbers
All Dead Generations: 7 Maxims of the OSR
A Knight at the Opera: Clashing, Not Attacking and Clashing, Continued
Rise Up Comus: Pointcrawling Character Design
Wizard Thief Fighter: On Generative AI
Orbital Crypt: The Palette RPG - Books of Rules, not Rulebooks
David J. Prokopetz: The Gremlin Game Designer’s Creed
Randomised outcomes should be made mandatory with care and restraint; randomised outcomes should be made available with delirious abandon. As far as is practicable, players should always have the option of asking the dice what unhinged bullshit should happen next. Corollary: lookup tables are your friend.
Chris Gonnerman: Boxed Text and Bullet Points
Games and Culture: Story Machines Vol. 1: Introduction to Mechanical Storytelling
MCDM: The Dice
GM Advice
Permanent Cranial Damage: An OSR Approach to Spotlight
I Cast Light: BASIC IS STILL EXPERT: At Introducing New Players To D&D
My big takeaway is still that the best way to get people to like D&D is to get them playing D&D in as short a time as possible. And by "playing", I don't mean sitting around in ye olde tavern shooting the shit. I mean making impactful choices and taking risks. And for me, 1981's Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook by Tom Moldvey does that beautifully.
Grumpy Wizard: How Good Players Play in a Sandbox Campaign
The Pastel Dungeon: Better Torches and Why I dislike 10-Minute Turns (And Why I Love the Clock)
Mindstorm: Ringing the Bell, A Simple Reputation System
Bob World Builder: The Secret to "Balanced" Combat Encounters in D&D 5e
Bandit’s Keep: The Players ARE your D&D Campaign
Ranger Lemure: Using Locks in your D&D or OSR game.
History
Polygon: Starfield owes its existence to Traveller, one of the first tabletop RPGs
Rhystic Studies: Summer of the Gaak | The Story of Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
Worldbuilding
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: On Roads Untrod: Wilderness Encounters as Hexcrawling Challenges
Questing beast- Lead a hunting party of 3 or 4 other random encounters. Flee towards hidden features of the hex. Locate water.
Seed of Worlds: Strange weather from magical terrain
Underworld Adventurer: Let the Adventure Begin
Dungeon Fruit: Blood of the Fang
DRAGON 𝚫 - GLUTTON KING'S CLARITY
Eat the most valuable item in a dragon's hoard. If you cannot find a way to eat it or keep it down, start again. Beware - knaves' eyes and dwarves' noses will be able to sense the treasure lingering in your guts.
You have an innate sense of how valuable items are both monetarily and emotionally to their owner.
You can move nearby gold objects you could reasonably wield in one hand with your mind.
You deal +1d4 damage against those with less money on their person than you.
The Manse: 10 Low-Fantasy Bandit Gangs
Spicomancy: Nomothetic Harmonics (d100 Spells)
Gwyllgi: Forgotten Grimoire of the Entombed Wizard: d666 Level-less Spells for Oraia and the OSR
Monsters and Manuals: On the Characteristics of Demihuman Empires
Arcane Library: Boneless Demons?! | Let's Make A Shadowdark Monster!
That’s it for this month! This newsletter makes use of affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.