The Glatisant: Issue #64
Counterspells, the death of a fanzine, and a free hexcrawl
It’s time for the monthly link roundup! This is a free public post for all subscribers. If you want full access to the bonus posts, or you just enjoy Questing Beast and want to support the channel, consider becoming a premium subscriber here or a supporter on Patreon. Recent bonus posts include Cracking the Casket of Souls and Can Boxed Text be Saved?
Sales
Maze Rats, my first (and maybe most popular?) RPG, has a steep discount for a limited time.
Humble Bundle has a set of 11 RPG Game Master Books for $15.
Highland Vice, a system neutral Martian cowboy hexcrawl is currently FREE.
Acid Death Fantasy, a Troika setting by Luke Gearing, is 64% off.
On Downtime and Demesnes is 50% off.
Gathox Vertical Slum, a gonzo science fantasy setting for Swords and Wizardry, is 50% off. It’s supplement, Quake Alley Mayhem, is 72% off!
FIST: Ultra Edition and Mandelbrot Set, a paranormal mercenaries game inspired by Maze Rats, are both 50% off.
Emerging Paths is a new FREE set of solo gaming tools for my game Knave 2e.
False Machine’s sale on print books is still going on, with some books like Demon Bone Sarcophagus 50% off.
Reviews
Bryce at Ten Foot Pole declares two adventures to be The Best this month: Fog Valley Retreat and Sharky. From the Fog Valley review:
Ben does this over and over and over again. Effortless looking rooms, easy to grok, with something to do and interact with. This is a solid f****** adventure. Greatest thing ever? No. But a solid solid adventure. And those get a Best around here. And I’ve not even covered the fog effects in the rooms! Solid.
Dave Thaumavore looks at a bunch of new Mothership trifold adventures.
Matt Colville explains why you should play Nethack, perhaps the most detailed and D&D-like dungeon crawler ever designed.
Over at Questing Beast, I reviewed Scrap’s Malustrious Brood, John Blanche’s Voodoo Forest and Scions of Voodoo, Ian Livingstone’s Casket of Souls, and Jason Lute’s The Perilous Void (it’s basically the Knave 2e tables, but in spaaaace.)
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Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (22k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (106k subscribers) 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 #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.
Game News and Culture
Daniel Sell: Things I Learned From Talking To One Of The Biggest Book Distributors In The Uk This Weekend
Alarums and Excursions, the longest running RPG fan zine of all time, has come to an end.
The One Page Dungeon Contest is about to accept new submissions! The theme of this year: Never Split the Party!
The podcast Nat Fun has started a campaign of Maze Rats! Scroll to the bottom of this page to listen.
Grognardia examines the Hidden Masters of Pulp Fantasy. He has also started his own newsletter (no posts yet) devoted to his RPG design work on Secrets of sha-Arthan and Thousand Suns.
The FREE Designing Dungeons course by Rise Up Comus is now complete. This is one of the best resources for dungeon design I’ve ever seen. If you’re new to making OSR adventures, read it.
Theory and Advice
Two theory posts I wrote this month: Roll Windows and Choice over Chance.
One of my highest priorities is getting players to directly engage with the game world and make impactful choices in it, and rolling dice skips past that.
So, how can we shift things back into the players’ control?
Sword of Mass Destruction: Polymorphic Dispel
cryptickeyway: Counterspell Hacks for More Interesting Worldbuilding and Finding Your Own Meaning in the Dungeon
Benign Brown Beast: Daylight Initiative
Direct Sun Games: Magic item identification, the fun way
Patchwork Paladin: Tallying Damage
Double Crit Fail uses the movie Labyrinth to discuss the importance of player agency in a lavishly produced video with far too few views. And he refences the Labyrinth RPG that I helped create!
A Dungeon of One’s Own demonstrates how Knave 2e can rapidly generate all the content you need for adventures.
Knave empowers you to create an entire dungeon crawl module, with completely unique cre atures and scenarios that self-generate as you play, in a matter of two hours or so. Incredible.
The Alexandrian: Untested Shadowdark: Real Time Dungeon Depths
Murkmail: Escalation dictionary
Planarian Calamarium: Hit Points as Doom Timer
A Knight at the Opera: Review of Initiative Methods
Ben Riggs interviews Jacob Hurst (Hot Springs Island) and W. F. Smith (Prismatic Wasteland) on the topic of hexcrawls.
The Novel Gamemaster: Storytelling Through Violence in Mothership RPG
It was during violent encounters that I noticed something surprising - in combat, Mothership operates more like a story game.
Trollish Delver: Refining Young Adventurer’s Guide D&D
False Machine: Loopy Tombs
Fallen Constellation: “For the Princess? ...To the death?”
Worldbuilding
Prismatic Wasteland: The Languages of D&D Imply a Specific Setting
Blog of Forlorn Encystment: Your High-Level NPCs Should Ride Dragons and d100 Woefully Encysted Creatures
Dice in the North: A Note on Dragons and 1d66 False Eyes
False Machine: Go Nuts in Veins of the Earth and Dead Eye Dwarves.
Silverarm Press: Scooby Doo as Post Apocalyptic RPG Setting
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I remember Alarums from ages back - are they going to do a ‘best of’ like White Dwarf did when it was a classic rpg mag?