The Glatisant: Issue #56
Sales
DriveThruRPG has a big Halloween-themed sale going on right now! Check out the whole sale or just the OSR books. Some notable discounted titles include:
Reviews
Mike Mearls, designer of DnD 4e and 5e (currently at Chaosium) reviews the new DnD Player’s Handbook.
The Alexandrian reviews six of Mothership’s trifold pamphlet adventures.
These trifold adventures are Mothership’s secret weapon, and in large part their strength is collective: None of them are the greatest adventure you’ve ever seen, but they are consistently good. They also do a good job of showcasing the breadth of what Mothership is capable of.
Bob Worldbuilder reviews Dungeon Crawl Classic’s Sailors on the Starless Sea.
Elder Goblin Games is forced to flee his hometown due to Hurricane Helene and chooses which RPGs to bring with him.
At Questing Beast I take a look at LotFP’s epic New England hexcrawl, as well as The Merry Mushmen’s excellent campaign-starter Nightmare over Ragged Hollow.
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Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (20,000+ subscribers) using this form or advertise on the Questing Beast channel using this one. 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
On the Questing Beast blog I’ve created a list of my favorite OSR books to help people new to the hobby get started. It’ll probably change over time!
On January 16 I’ll be attending the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo with quite a few other YouTubers and creators.
A short Covenant documentary on how the Sorcery TCG community built a fan convention from the ground up.
The Knave 2e Adventure Jam resulted in 118 new Knave adventures! Check out my video to see my top picks, or go peruse the ranked list.
Theory and Advice
A Knight at the Opera: In the Mouth of Madness (This one cracked me up)
Silverarm Press: Engage Players by Having Them Build Your Setting
So how can we give players both the joys of setting narrative creation and the joys of discovery in a mysterious world? Let them make the game world with you in the first session! They get to enjoy helping create a setting that is personally interesting and engaging to them and then return to the more limited perspective of the player character.
Archons March On: Physical Game Pieces; Or: A Method By Which One May Loosely Generate A Ruined Wizard's Tower Floor By Floor Through The Rolling And Stacking Of Dice
Benign Brown Beast: Thermodynamics for Game Design
The Alexandrian: Mothership: Thinking About Combat
Pointless Monument: How I run Mothership One-Shots
. . . unlike stat checks, rolling lots of saves in a Mothership one shot is entirely thematically appropriate. These characters are having the worst day of their entire lives. It’s not like you make one Fear save against the killer robots and if you pass you’re never afraid of them again.
Zedeck Siew’s Writing Hours: Mechanics as Bits
How suitable a tabletop roleplaying game is for actual play depends on how easily its mechanics can function as bits or performances, in the improv sense.
Playful Void: Juicy Worms, Local Knowledge and Player Engagement
Don’t Split the Party: Psychotronic Gaming: The Basics
A frequent question is “Why do you think your campaigns last so long?”, a question so common that a few years ago I sat down and summarized my thoughts on it and named the resulting list “Psychotronic Gaming”.
Worldbuilding
Algernon3000 on Reddit creates a charming pixel art map, and gives away the asset pack he used.
Another user creates a faction relationship map for Dolmenwood.
A Distant Chime: World Without Fire
Throne of Salt: MUIR and the Infinite Zoo
Strange Aeons: Books and Spells and Treasures
The Necatrix. A compilation of secrets by the Andalusian astronomer Fátima de Madrid. Written in part as a reply to al-Ghazali’s Destruction Of The Philosophers. Refutes all doctrines. Famous for its proof, using pure reason alone, that nothing can or could possibly ever exist.
Archons March On: Strange Aeonic Spellbooks
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