The Glatisant: Issue #52
Early Knave 2e reviews, Play-Doh wargaming, and the importance of legwork
New Questing Beast Releases!
Knave 2e, Summer’s End, and the print edition of Maze Rats are all publicly available now, along with the Knave 2e poster and patch! Get the PDFs at DriveThruRPG, or physical copies at Swordfish Islands. I also have flip-through videos of Knave 2e and Summer’s End so you can see exactly what’s inside.
Reviews
Early reviews of Knave 2e are in from Fumble Table and Destrier Studios.
Ten Foot Pole gives “The Best” to the adventure Black Blade of the Demon King, but with some caveats:
I could, I think, go on and on about this. It’s fascinating. Much of it, in my journey, elicits a scowl. And yet it’s clear that the sum is greater than the parts. The wilderness and town, because of their more events driven nature, in particular suffers from some focus, and those descriptions in the dungeon are winning no awards. But man, it’s also a pretty sweet little fucking ride.
Quinns Quest reviews TEETH and Swyvers.
Taskerland reviews Volume 2 – Monsters & by Luke Gearing
Playful Void reviews Gus L’s Curse of the Ganshoggr.
At Questing Beast, I review the Mothership 1e boxed set.
I also review the Necromolds wargame.
And Now A Word From Our Sponsor…
Hey everyone!
Sean McCoy here from Tuesday Knight Games. I just wanted to drop you all a line and let you know that my game Mothership is (finally) out. You maybe heard about it on twitter or YouTube or even on this newsletter. We won a few awards and raised over a million dollars on kickstarter -- but the real test of the game begins now that it's out in the real world.
We've tried to make it as easy as possible for you to try. The PDF of the rules is free, we've got a free online tutorial the explains everything in more details, and we've even got a free Companion App that acts as a character creator and dice roller. There's a Core Set that has all the rules and a great starter adventure, and a Deluxe Set which contains all the official adventure modules we've released so far.
I don't want to take up too much more time because this is my favorite newsletter and I want to get to the good stuff. So for those of you who have followed along and been so patient, thank you. For everyone else, I'd love for you to give it a try. I think you'll have a great (read: terrifying) time.
--Sean
"Well worth the wait." -- Ben Milton, Questing Beast
Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (19,000+ 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
Seed of Worlds digs into the data on OSR Kickstarters that I shared in a previous video and has some interesting insights, like that OSR Kickstarters are more likely to fund than 5e ones.
When We Were Wizards, a 14-episode podcast on the origins of D&D, has been released, drawing from “nearly 30 interview subjects – including Gary’s ex- wife, two children, employees, friends, and partners.”
Dave Thaumavore interviews Baron De Ropp on the process of setting up his recent con, Green Dragon Fest.
Rules, Theory and Advice
Sam Sorensen: In Praise of Legwork
This is what I call legwork: the long, slow, detailed, sometimes painful process of going through to figure out and then write down all the important details of everything that’s supposed to exist in the imaginary world of the game . . . I come now to my sharper point: legwork is so hard that sometimes it feels like RPG writers and designers aren’t willing to do it at all.
Necropraxis: XP Potential as Inverse Encumbrance
However, if encumbrance limits advancement, players can see the open “XP slots” in the unit of potential advancement. In essence, this approach puts a clear price on preparedness and, more to the point, provides an incentive for adventuring on various forms of hard mode. Conan in a loin cloth and carrying only a 50 GP-weight broadsword can earn a lot more experience than a tanked up fighter in plate dripping with armory and utility belts.
The Alexandrian: Empower Your Prep: The Rachov Principle
Call it the Rachov Principle: Instead of prepping a bunch of contingencies featuring Rachov (and scattered across a dozen different pages), you are instead prepping Rachov himself — a toy you can play in myriad ways and a tool that you can use to solve an infinite variety of problems.
A Knight at the Opera: EVERY Initiative Method??
Mazirian’s Garden: Group Downtime Activities: Remembering the Dead
Prismatic Wasteland: The TTRPG Cooking Minigame
Monsters and Manuals: Wilderness Exploration Design Approaches: Tight and Loose
Hugh Lashbrooke: Brawl of the Odd
Worldbuilding
False Machine: Demons on a Moth’s Wing
In a Fantastic world in which Demons, and other supernatural creatures that prey primarily upon humanity, exist, and which are so utterly dangerous that humanity has developed a hyper-prey response to them, then humanity will be simply unable to name or fundamentally conceive of them, because any attempt to hang around and analyse, observe, understand them or to integrate that understanding into a larger scheme of knowledge, will get you killed.
Goldwag's Journal on Civilization: The Moral Economy of the Shire
Tolkien does not describe the political economy of the Hobbits in any detail, because it’s rarely relevant to the story, but I think we can learn a lot about it from what he does mention. In Tolkien’s legendarium, the Shire is built out an idealized version of rural English society. By looking at how he depicts this–and what eventually happens to it–we can learn a lot about how these sorts of societies function and change over time, and what the benefits and drawbacks of living life Hobbit-style really are.
C.W. Howell: The Book of the New Sun Is the Dark Souls of Books
Monsters and Manuals: Space Wolfe: Or, Why Grimdark Needs a Theology
Archon’s Court: Three Oddities
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