The Glatisant: Issue #74
The Tabletop Gaming newsletter from Questing Beast
Sales
DriveThruRPG has a huge sale on nearly everything from Dungeon Crawl Classics. Only a few days left!
D&D has discounted a big bundle of 1e adventures, like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and more.
Humble Bundle has very steep discounts on PDFs and physical items for the Dune RPG, a 41-item bundle for Pathfinder 2e, and a 22-item bundle for BattleZoo.
Team Covenant is giving away free sample decks (just pay shipping) for Gudnak, Warlord: Saga of the Storm, and Alpha Clash.
This Month at Questing Beast
At Questing Beast, I interviewed Mike Mearls about the changes WotC is implementing for D&D, convened a panel of RPG YouTubers to talk about how the OSR is transforming modern campaigns, and looked at the recent explosion of “fake videogame” art books.
I also reviewed some really excellent adventures by Munkao, set in his new Kala Mandala SE Asian setting.
I’ll be attending the Green Dragon Fest this weekend as a guest GM! There’s only 55 tickets each year, and they always sell out, so secure your spot now for the next one.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
These sponsors help support the channel and this newsletter. Give them a look!
Citadel of the Sun Kings is on Kickstarter! A Silverarm adventure for Old School Essentials. Beyond the walled town of Najad lies the Red Wastes: blazing sun and shifting sands, scattered with imperial ruins turned dust. Whispers speak of a cursed ziggurat emerging from the dunes, spewing an ancient doom.
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Honest Dice on Kickstarter: beautiful, hand-poured dice that are engineered for fairness! They feature mathematically balanced numbering and were tested with 15,000 rolls. This is a limited edition batch that is already made, so the dice ship right after the project ends!
Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (24k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (121k 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.
Reviews
Ten Foot Pole names two adventures, Fortress Tomb of the Ice Lich and City of the Ape-Men, “The Best” this month. From the City of the Ape-Men review:
This is a better jungle crawl than [Isle of] Dread. Where Dread was a little sparse this contains the makings of a nice long game, with factions and complications, as well as a base, to help support that longer arc of a game. There are real rewards for dealing with a group of forty flying dinos, or making it through the ape-city, or climbing the highest peak. Intelligent play, by following ruined roads that see from up high, will help direct the party to most places. Three is a place to recruit and offload loot. The apes are presented as SO hateful, though, that it doesn’t leave much room at room for factions, other than, perhaps, subtly working them against each other.
OSR Rocks! reviews the new adventure from the Merry Mushmen, Drought Dragon Desolation.
In the end, Drought Dragon Desolation is simply a joy to run. There’s no plot to follow, no predefined story beats to hit—just situations, tensions, and a world that invites interaction. It’s OSR design through and through: a toolkit of characters, locations, encounters, monsters, and treasures that naturally pull play forward without ever prescribing solutions.
Patchwork Paladin reviews Dungeon Inc., also by the Merry Mushmen.
The Dolent Chronicles flips through Fatherfog, the new Fairy Tale Horror RPG from the publisher of Mothership.
Olden Demon tears into Warhammer Quest: Darkwater, a Games Workshop production that seems to have been released entirely broken.
News and Gaming Culture
Someone has created a wiki just for TTRPGs.
Tabletop Turtle looks at how interaction in board games has changed recently.
Vaults of Vaarn releases a public preview of the game’s second edition. 81 pages of content!
Rise up Comus releases a free, heavily expanded retroclone of the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game, perfect for using in his Middle-Earth Hexcrawl project.
The creator of A Rasp of Sand has released Pilgrim’s Passages, a free set of rules for OSR-like games focusing on travel and crafting.
Distraction Makers examines how gamers are looking to the past for better games, both in TCGs and in the OSR.
Theory and Advice
Mindstorm: Energy Coin Adventure Design
Cryptic Keyway: Studying Noita to Build Deadly Dungeons
Beneath Foreign Planets: Ritualised Spellcasting, Meta-Material Components and Performative Witchcraft
Explorers Design: 5 Rpg Ideas from Urban Design
I Cast Light: JUST THE FACTS MA’AM: Using Sean McCoy’s Investigation Sheet in CoC
The Foot of Blue Mountain: Arcade Gaming
Prismatic Wasteland: Play is Canon
A Knight at the Opera: How to Talk About Difficulty
Beau Rancourt: Contra: Apologia for Plain Paragraphs
Among Cats and Books: Fullstack Refereeing, Against Maps
Worldbuilding
Rise Up Comus: Stats as Hammers, Stats as Nails
Vaults of Vaarn: COURT OF THE JIGSAW AUTARCH
Throne of Salt: 100 Pulls from the Folk-Motif Index
Garamondia: Moppetry
Exeunt Omnes: What is Zonecore?
The Wondering Monster: Better Gods for Your Game: Rethinking Deity Design
Cryptic Keyway: Dynamic Domains: Four Options for Proactive Pantheons
Whose Measure God Could Not Take: d20 Yet More Magic Items
Rhystic Studies: The Tortoise
Paul Chadeisson: Second Skin
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Appreciate the link to the wiki! Trying to make something awesome for the community :)
I find this newsletter format way easier to look at than long blobs of text. Thanks!