The Glatisant: Issue #62
Tabletop Gaming Links for April
It’s time for the monthly link roundup! This is a free public post for all subscribers. If you want full access to the weekly bonus posts, consider becoming a premium subscriber here or a supporter on Patreon. Recent bonus posts include What All my Worst RPG Sessions Have in Common, What RPGs can Learn from Boardgames, and Mechanics That RPGs Don’t Use.
Sales
The Planar Compass series of zines for Old-School Essentials are now FREE in PDF.
Andrew Kolb’s new hardcover adventure Wonderland is less than $20. That’s a ridiculously good price for what you get. See my review here.
Patrick Stuart’s print books are all on sale. Deep Carbon Observatory is really good.
Reviews
Temple of the Beggar-King is declared “The Best” by Ten Foot Pole.
Almost nothing here feels forced. It feels like everything fits in well. It’s challenging in places. You had better have brought your divination spells and your A game as level nines. We’re not talking Tomb of Horrors, but also I did invoke that name in relation to this adventure. It is quite amazing that tis coming from someone who is seemingly a first time adventure designer, at least for publication. The wordsmithing, the design, the consistent theming without forcing things. Top notch.
Familiar Waves describes the experience of playing through The Estate, a collection of short, linked adventures for Mausritter, which over time evolved into a wargame (my review here).
Playful Void reviews This House Hungers, a six-level dungeon for Knave.
All said, room-by-room and floor-by-floor, this is a really competently put together dungeon, with solvable puzzles, clear mechanisms, that really rewards approaching challenges in creative ways, and telescopes danger effectively most of the time even while keeping danger levels high.
At Questing Beast I reviewed The Shrike by Leo Hunt, The Vast in the Dark Expanded by Charles Ferguson-Avery, and Black Sword Hack by Kobayashi.
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News and Culture
MSSV: The Making the First English Jubensha. An interview with the creators of the first English Jubensha, a scripted Murder Mystery/RPG/LARP format that’s enormously popular in China.
Designers and Dragons: The Top 10 RPG Industry Magazines. A look through some of the major gaming magazines of the past, many of which I’d never heard of before.
The Dispatch has Heaps of Zine-Making Resources.
Thaumavoria observes that WotC appears to be trying to claw back terms like The Deck of Many Things, which they have already released under an irrevocable Creative Commons license.
The Alexandrian: RPGs: The Essential Reading List. Justin asks: “If you were teaching a intro-level college class on roleplaying game design, what would be the reading list?”
The Play.Fearless blog responds by proposing a different list.
Scrap is releasing a new art book of monsters, the first since Fire on the Velvet Horizon, which is one of my favorites.
Goonhammer looks at the the impact of tariffs on the gaming market.
Bandit’s Keep: Vancian Magic is Made for Sandbox Play in D&D
Super Bunnyhop: Kriegsspiel! How Napoleon Accidentally Invented Strategy Games
Tolarian Community College: The Creator Of Magic: The Gathering | A Conversation With Richard Garfield. This was especially interesting because Garfield hadn’t heard of the Universes Beyond concept, where half of all Magic sets are now themed around things like Spongebob Squarepants, Spider-Man, or Avatar.
Theory and Advice
Widdershins Wanderings: Player-Facing Pointcrawl: Regional Sandbox
Grognardia: I Hate Combat
Lumpley Games: Revisiting GNS
. . . you and I could put our heads together and come up with interesting game dynamics all day long, limited only by our inventiveness as creators. Narrativism is exactly one of them. We’re supposed to divide the rest between gamism and simulationism? Why?
Behind the Helm: Why I Like Binary Resolution Systems
Save Vs. Total Party Kill: A Hazard Die for Mothership
Onslaught Six: Overloading the Treasure Die
Prismatic Wasteland: Slush Magic
The Blog of Holding: Adding Texture Into Your Campaign
Among Cats and Books: Sandbox Settlements: Downtime
cryptickeyway: TTRPGs Can Make Even Tic-Tac-Toe Interesting
Levi Kornelsen: Waking the Artifact
The Fantastic is Fact: Getting Started With Original Dungeons & Dragons
Worldbuilding
Vaults of Vaarn: Nanomachine Infections
Strange Aeons: Treasures 3 and Books and Spells 3
Thunder Casket. Gilded copper reliquary holding three teeth of the Buddha. Found by David Spooner in the ruins of the Kanishka stupa outside Peshawar. Captures and stores lightning - leave it outside in a storm to fire off a thunderbolt at a later date. The Korean pilgrim Hyecho describes its use in war by the White Huns.
Throne of Salt: Exorcists and Wizard-Hunters: Alternate D&D Frameworks
Dungeon Scrawler: Dungeon Room Index: Sewers and Water Rooms
The Nothic’s Eye: Three “Beholders”
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So much great information in these newsletters. Thank you.