Welcome to The Glatisant, Questing Beast’s monthly newsletter! You can read previous issues here. Subscribe for free to get new issues in your inbox, or support the newsletter on Patreon (patrons get access to the secret Questing Beast discord).
Sales
Humble Bundle is selling 20 Runequest books for $18, and 51 Pathfinder books for $30.
Both issues of The Electrum Archive are 25% off (my review here).
The physical edition of the Deluxe Mothership 1E boxed set is 40% off at GameNerdz.
Reviews
Ten Foot Pole declares two adventure The Best: Pestilence at Halith Vorn and The Lions of Tell-Arn. From the Tell-Arn review:
This isn’t Thracia. But man, it may be one of the closest things I’ve seen that gives off a Thracia vibe. It feels intricate and subtle. A weirdly mixed degree of hazards and interactivity. That odd OD&D feeling of not quite ever knowing what is going on, as a player, and yet having a lot laid out in front of you. “Why is there a greek temple here behind this waterfall, in the middle of Laos?”
Playful Void reviews the Knave 2e adventure The Curious Creeps of Crimson Creek.
The locations are absolutely packed with gameable content — for me, it’s almost too much. But that too much translates to making it impossible for the players not to stumble into interesting things, which is a good thing. There is a huge amount of connectivity between locations, there are so many reasons to find new places from each place you explore.
At Questing Beast, I take a look at the Dungeon Crawler Carl novel and my favorite RPG notebook.
Mythlands looks at the strengths and weaknesses of ACKS II (like that it’s 800,000 words long!)
Geek Gamers looks at the 10 RPGs she’d keep if she had to pick.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
Traumatarium: Deckulus is a dungeon in a deck box! Easy to track hero cards help you delve through a shuffled dungeon in search of the Mutated Penitent Boss at the end! Meant for those quick solo play sessions between games, or during a lunch break!
The Blades Of Gixa is "The best dungeon to come out of #dungeon23." —Zedeck Siew. "You've done it again. I can't wait to get my hands on this." —Sean McCoy. Get the megadungeon/art project from Quadra that's got your favorite RPG creators abuzz, live now on Kickstarter!
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
At Questing Beast, I sat down for an in-depth interview with 4e and 5e designer Mike Mearls on how 5e lost its way.
Grumpy Wizard breaks down the key points he took away from the interview.
Deadline for submitting to the Ennie Awards is March 31!
A Knight at the Opera announces a wuxia tabletop fighting game he’s developing.
RedMageGM creates a huge overworld map that integrates many of the best OSR adventures I’ve reviewed on Questing Beast.
RndStranger explains an old mail-in RPG from Japan. You can create a character and play along as you watch!
I recently discovered this very clever solo dungeon-crawler that only uses a deck of cards.
Theory and Advice
One Player, One Character: Grognardia discusses the phenomenon of a player controlling multiple PCs.
You Don’t Need a Game System Before You Play: The Calvinball Experiment: Prismatic Wasteland recounts a campaign where the participants invented the rules as they went.
HOW MUCH IS TOO LITTLE? Calculating Treasure in Dungeons: I Cast Light has a useful formula for distributing gold in your dungeon levels.
Different Character Creation Methods at Different Times: Rise Up Comus proposes that players use different chargen methods when at the start of a campaign, when a PC dies, and when a PC is retired.
Good Lore/Bad Lore: Mazirian’s Garden discusses how to incorporate lore into your setting that players will use.
Rolling all saves to escape the megadungeon: Kill It With Fire creates a new method for finding out what happens when you end a session in the dungeon.
At Questing Beast, I give my take on the “safety tools” discussion.
A Lock With No Key: Designing Obstacles for OSR Play: Widdershins Wanderings investigates hard locks vs. soft locks.
The Problems Department: Gem Room Games has some very useful advice on what makes a good problem.
Predatory Encounters: Improving the Random Encounter: Beneath Foreign Planets invents a new random encounter system that gradually ratchets up the danger.
Another Underclock: Ten Foot Polemic combines the virtues Necropraxis’ Overloaded Encounter Die and Goblin Punch’s Underclock.
Reactions to OD&D: The Influence of Little Rules: The Alexandrian discuses how even small rules in OD&D can completely change the nature of play.
What is Folk Tabletop?: Mythic Mountain Musings looks at features of a table-centric culture of play.
Joseph R. Lewis, author of some of my favorite adventures like Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, has started a YouTube channel where he explains how he does it.
Worldbuilding
The Art of Environmental Storytelling in Riven: The Sequel to Myst
Dungeon Room Index from Dungeon Scrawler
Five Not-Boring Elementals from Playful Void
More spellbooks and treasures from I Don’t Remember That Move
Cipher Block. Brick from Solomon’s Temple. Absorbs heat. Hums when left in sunlight. Inscribed in Hebrew with a Name of God. Any building constructed using it will develop rudimentary consciousness, capacity to grow. Taken from foundations of Keziah Brown’s Arkham cottage.
Yet More Monsters from Archons March On
Six Flames from A Blasted, Cratered Land
Ghastflame Lantern: The glass in this lantern is silvered to prevent the lantern from becoming haunted, and has shutters to conceal the flame when the sights of shades of the dead would be inconvenient. If the glass breaks, it’s just large enough to become a will-o-wisp, so be careful!
Corpsewax Torch: A single corpse provides just enough fat to render into a single torch of corpsewax. While any spirit will take the chance to haunt a lick of ghastflame, the spirit of the person whose corpse was used takes precedence. Spirits prefer corpsewax of a similar age to them when they died, and some palaeoalchemists have claimed to have created ghastflame from burning fossils.
This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.