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
Humble Bundle has a Pathfinder 2e sale right now: 25 books for $25.
Whitehack: 4th edition is almost 50% off.
All of the Melsonian Arts Council’s books have been reduced to $4.99.
Planar Compass: Issue 3 is 66% off.
The Sandbox Generator is 30% off.
The 1e Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II are 40% off.
Reviews
At Ten Foot Pole, Bryce declares Hobbs & Friends of the OSR #1 to be “The Best.”
There’s so much going on here and it’s such a glorious mess. And every element hits just right.
Beyond Fomalhaut gives Skalbak Sneer: The Stronghold of Snow a 5/5 review.
Skalbak Sneer is what you get when a clan of snow dwarves, given centuries of time and work, has dedicated its efforts to building the perfect, unassailable fortress on a frosty mountain peak, with multiple lines of defences to draw in, then grind down and destroy potential invaders. They have been at it for a long time, they have developed battle plans and contingencies, and they expect visitors. If they can stick to their plans, the invaders will die, or be driven off with heavy losses. If the invaders can find ways to break the pattern, they might win
Silverarm Press reviews the Mothership-like video game Lethal Company.
Playful Void reviews Cloud Empress and Slumbering Ursine Dunes.
Dave Thaumavore reviews DCC’s Dying Earth Boxed Set.
Dungeon Craft reviews Justin Alexander’s So You Want To Be A Game Master.
And Now A Word From Our Sponsor…
FIST is a paranormal mercenary roleplaying game about doing the tough jobs no one else can (or that no one else wants) during the Cold War. Media inspirations include MGS, The A-Team, and Doom Patrol, wrapped in a rulings-over-rules, random-table-rich, illustrated package (with 150+ fanmade supplements on itch.io!)
Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (18,000+ subscribers) using this form. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave, Box #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.
News
The One Page Dungeon Contest has announced its winners! Pick up the compendium of all the submissions here.
Overall Winner: Yay! We won! So now what? By Justin Evans
You managed to slay the Dracolich! The battle was action packed and you all looked super cool, but the ruins collapsed, sending you all tumbling down into the flooded cavern below. Now the water seems to be quickly rising around you. Time to find a way out, while hauling as much treasure as you can!
Traverse Fantasy finds numerous examples of the game Unconquered plagiarizing text from Leo Hunt’s Vaults of Vaarn and Luka Rejec’s Ultraviolet Grasslands. Leo responds here and Luka responds here. Unconquered has since been removed from its online stores.
The Second Edition of Hexroll (Beta) is now available. Generate an entire hexcrawl, down to the contents of each dungeon room, in one click.
Roll20 announces that they are overhauling their VTT.
The author of Rise Up Comus announces that he has been appointed the Editor-in-Chief of Knock! magazine. You can submit articles to upcoming issues here.
Dave Thaumavore interviews Luka Rejec about his work, including his new magic supplement, Magitecnica.
Emmy Allen announces that she is working on a second edition of her Paleolithic OSR game, Wolfpacks & Winter Snow.
Zedeck Siew will be hosting the OSR’s annual Bloggie Awards. Send him your favorite 2023 posts for consideration!
Free Adventures
Zzarchov puts his whole Dungeon23 project online!
d4 Caltrops: Dolmenwood Dozen
Wizard Thief Fighter: Climb the Princessberg
History
Mythlands of Erce: Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 2)
Liche’s Libram: Ur-Systems
Someone has translated the original Record of the Lodoss War replays into English. It’s a pre-internet B/X D&D live play that turned into a Japanese pop-culture phenomenon.
The popularity of "Record of Lodoss War" led to two additional serializations in Comptiq (Part II from June of 1987 to July of 1988 and Part III from September 1987 to September 1988), a series of compilations and books by Mizuno, Yasuda and Group SNE, two RPG systems ("Record of Lodoss War RPG" and Sword World RPG), as well as several manga and anime series. Its impact on the Japanese fantasy genre has been transformative.
Coins and Scrolls: Rereading OD&D: Back to the Start and Normal Men, Hobbitouison, and the Orcian Way
Matt Colville presents an introduction to the Edition Wars.
Theory, Rules, and Advice
Prismatic Wasteland: In Defense of Ability Scores
Mazirian’s Garden: Downtime: Home Away From Home
The Lady and the Tiger: Rewriting Dungeon Keys
The Fantastic is Fact: Getting Started with OD&D
Prismatic Wasteland: My Weird Wizard Show
Idiomdrottning: The Quest Queue
En World: Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective
Welcome to the Deathtrap: Redefining the Wargame (for us Lunkheaded TTRPGers)
The Alexandrian: Spell Component Roleplaying
. . . is there anything that could help us brainstorm different roleplaying traits? Well . . . An accent would be a verbal trait. A nervous twitch, on the other hand, would be a physical one. Or, instead of “physical,” we could say somatic.” . . . can we classify roleplaying traits as if they were D&D spell components?
Of course we can.
Worldbuilding
Lucas Roussel on ArtStation has a gorgeous worldbuilding project called Rust and Humus (contains some non-sexual nudity). Part 2 is a work in progress.
Lyman Stone: How Many Hobbits? A Demographic Analysis of Middle Earth
Rotten Pulp: ENTITY 09: THE LOST IN THE MALL MACHINE
False Machine: The Autumn of Summers
Widdershins Wanderings: What Makes a Good Player-Facing Pointcrawl?
Mindstorm: A Demon of Three Notes
Silverarm Press: Glory of the Elder Days: Magic Items and Sandbox Histories
A whole bunch of new GLOG spells from The Nothic’s Eye, Whose Measure God Could Not Take, and Numbers Aren’t Real.
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.