The Glatisant: Issue #65
All the best RPG links from July!
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 (like Is D&D Inevitable?), or you just enjoy Questing Beast and want to support the channel, consider becoming a premium subscriber here or a supporter on Patreon.
Sales
Knave 2e, my OSR ruleset and worldbuilding kit, is 30% off! See the my previous post here for all the details on DriveThruRPG’s Christmas in July Sale.
Reviews
Bryce at Ten Foot Pole declares two adventures to be The Best this month: Hyena Child and The Ruined Abbey of Saint Clewyd. I ran The Ruined Abbey on a livestream 8 years ago (using the original version from the Wormskin zines) and liked it quite a lot. Like Winter’s Daughter, it’s a great introduction to Dolmenwood.
The Seven Part Pact is a maximalist, wizard-focused, LARP/boardgame, experiment that’s gotten the blogosphere talking over the last month. Here’s a summary from Old Men Running the World and a deep-dive by A Knight at the Opera examining Time, Companions, Combat, Consequences, and Authority.
Technical Grimoire takes a critical look at The One Ring RPG. GGNORE also reviews the system after playing through the starter adventure.
The Valakirian looks back on what a campaign of Barrowmaze feels like, after more than 50 sessions.
Barrowmaze is ambitious, but it’s also a product of its time, and the OSR scene has had a lot of really great developments in the theory of how we play “door D&D” (to quote Brad Kerr) in the last decade. . .At one time, Barrowmaze was a breath of (dead) air, but in 2025, we've come a long way and there are other more interesting campaigns you could be running.
Grinning Rat examines what makes the Wolves Upon the Coast campaign great.
The price tag is admittedly high - at $50 for PDFs, you really have to give a lot of quality content. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Gearing provides. Not a single bit of content is fluff or wasted space. Every word feels carefully chosen. Every location feels tied intrinsically to the world and the characters that exist within it.
Elder Goblin Games reviews The Land of Eem, a massive, open-world RPG aimed at kids.
Quinn’s Quest reviews Mythic Bastionland, the Arthurian reimagining of Into the Odd! However, he does seem to have some misconceptions about the OSR that Knight at the Opera responds to here.
At Questing Beast I reviewed the Japanese Rules Cyclopedia and Joseph R. Lewis’ adventure Raiding the Obsidian Keep.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
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The Gamefound RPG Party lineup is here! Explore the projects selected from 200+ submissions with our partners: Magpie Games, Loot Tavern, Chaosium, and DriveThruRPG. Crowdfunding launches soon so follow your favorites now to keep in the loop and help us celebrate a new wave of creative indie RPGs.
Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (109k 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
Now that Lee Gold’s legendary Alarums & Excursions APA has ended, a new APA named Ever & Anon has been launched to replace it.
Speaking of classic magazines, all four issues of Interactive Fantasy, a cutting edge RPG magazine from 1994, are now available for free.
Mausritter now has a free System Reference Document!
Grognardia is planning on creating a book anthology of its most influential posts. I think this is a great idea, as you never know how long blogging platforms will stay up. Paper is far more durable. Knock! Magazine started this trend, and False Machine and Prismatic Wasteland have done something similar.
Mike Mearls looks at where we currently are in the evolution of RPGs.
Roll for Combat explains the fiasco with Diamond, a distribution company that recently went bankrupt and is threatening to liquidate all of the RPGs in its warehouse to pay its debts. Plus an update.
A group of friends moves from 5e to OD&D and then goes on to develop a massive, open-table campaign world with their own rules. Folk DnD at its finest.
Dungeon Craft announces that his upcoming Deathbringer RPG will be compatible with Shadowdark!
Theory and Advice
Rise Up Comus: Information Architecture in Non-RPG Books
A Blasted, Cratered Land: Conspicuous Secret Doors
Grognardia: From Brontes to Braunstein and Dungeons & Dreamscapes
Goblin Punch: Stargazer (A New System)
Arcane Mutterings: In Praise of the Iron Spike
Playful Void: Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic?
Prismatic Wasteland: Advantage by Default
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: Scaffolds for Disaster
I Cast Light: PRACTICAL MAGIC IV: Magical Mentors Are Useful Tyrants
False Machine: On Guard
Seth Skorkowsky: 3 Questing That Improve Your Game
At Questing Beast, I looked at how to focus the game on player choices rather than dice rolls. I also got to talk to Steve Winter and Ben Riggs over on his channel.
Quadra does an overview of his ingenious method for mapping the history of his megadungeon, The Blades of Gixa.
Worldbuilding
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: The Twenty Unspeakable Substances
Ridan Steel, being an alloy unknown in Druidom, formed from azurized and folded steel, that it may leave its essence in wounds it cuts and drives men to larceny and rampancy.
Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet: Magic Shops and Their Alternatives: d6 distilled spirits
The End of All Things: The Smaug Dragon
It is possible to stat up a dragon in Old School Essentials by taking Smaug’s boasts literally.
Weird Wonder: There is a point to Tom Bombadil (or how I approach lore)
Strange Aeons: Treasures 4
Purgatorius Ignis. Bronze goblet of permanently smouldering embers. Carried out of St Patrick’s Purgatory in County Donegal by the Irish knight Owain around 1140. Can be used to start cleansing fires that burn away the dross of the material world, leaving behind gold-flecked ash and birdlike Heaven-bound souls.
Bastionland: Planesk8
cryptickeyway: You Fell for the Great Drow Psyop
Dungeonfruit: Smoking Gun (Magical Revolvers)
FUNNY MAN
Small and snub-nosed. The trigger resembles a curled finger.
Teleport to the location of the bullet. If it struck a target, animate or inanimate, swap places with them. If you struck multiple targets, they all swap places with each other randomly. On triples, teleport to a random location within [BULLETS] miles.
Archons March On: Some Artefacts - The First Dossier and D6 Social Media Services of the Near-Future
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Look ma, I made it into the Glatisant!
Your roundup is spectacular! It’s going to take me all month just to look through it all!