The Glatisant: Issue #75
The Tabletop Gaming newsletter from Questing Beast
Sales
Free League is selling 29 digital RPGs for less than a dollar per book, including Forbidden Lands, Vaesen, Dragonbane and Symbaroum. Frog God is selling 79 books for a great deal, including a physical book.
Exalted Funeral has sales on a number of physical OSR books, including the OSE Referee’s Tome, The Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e Bundle, and The Molt RPG (standard and collector’s edition) for Mork Borg. Use code QUESTINGBEAST to get an extra 10% off on anything published by Exalted Funeral.
DriveThruRPG has finally made Moldvay Basic D&D available for print-on-demand. They also have a 60% off sale on Pathfinder Adventures and Savage Pathfinder Rules and there’s a 50% off sale on Necropolis for Swords and Wizardry, Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes, Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls, and Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.
Green Ronin has 65% off of tons of physical books, including Fantasy Age and Mutants and Masterminds.
This Month at Questing Beast
This month I made three videos showing how to hack RPG systems, looking at the rules for Initiative, Encumbrance, and Armor.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
These sponsors help support the channel and this newsletter. Give them a look!
Strigovia — A Slavic Darkfolk RPG — launching June 1 on Kickstarter. Darkfolk fantasy RPG: no heroes, only survivors. Debt Magic on standard D10s, deadly zone combat, 400+ pages. The Chort, a 160mm forest devil miniature, is Kickstarter-exclusive. Art: Larek (WotC), Truściński (Witcher).
LONE WOLF: LIGHT OF THE KAI. The long-awaited finale to the Lone Wolf gamebook series, completed faithfully from Joe Dever's original notes. The series that helped invent solo fantasy gaming returns: choose-your-path adventure, dice-rolled combat, Kai Disciplines to master, and a new darkness rising in Magnamund. Illustrated jacketed hardback. £35 from Holmgard Press.
Virtual Battle Mat: a browser-based VTT with isometric 3D tokens that look like miniatures on a battlemat. The closest thing to playing at a real table. No rules engine, no setup. New: Premium packs from Heroic Maps. Send your players a link and they're in. Free at vbm.games
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 declares Under the Caustic River to be “The Best” this month.
Great specificity. Good challenges. Good formatting. A good and solid basic adventure that, white not exactly the most memorable, is setting everything up for success.
Quinns Quest reviews the massive, detailed world of Stonetop.
OSR Rocks reviews the new 0e edition of Fatherfog, Tuesday Knight Games’ fantasy follow up to Mothership.
Playful Void reviews A Familiar Tower, an OSR puzzle dungeon by Direct Sun.
. . . the rooms themselves are absolutely choc-a-block with interactive content; typically at least 2 or 3 things to interact with. There are 14 locations in all, and at least each of the five floors features a puzzle for the players to figure out . . .
Zzarchov Kowolski reviews my game Knave 2e!
Dragon Dreams reviews my Ennie Award-winning RPG of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, and provides some advice on how to tweak the game.
This is a really great little game that is a ton of fun as a palate-cleanser. I really can’t recommend this enough.
News and Gaming Culture
Bob Worldbuilder has created a massive poll attempting to figure out which RPGs are actually the most popular. It closes on June 1, so vote for your favorite now.
Troy Press did a survey of 1,253 US adults on what DnD’s rules are like, and got some very…odd results.
Mythic Mountain’s Folk Gaming Blog: The Common Bulwark of Folk D&D (related to the link above)
Patchwork Paladin: A Dolmenwood Retrospective
The campaign book is so loaded with lore and so well-structured that anything I did was automatically supported and flavored beautifully. The Dolmenwood Campaign Book is the best RPG book I’ve ever had. The monster book is no slouch either. Gavin Norman is a genius and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
Rise Up Comus has created an online dashboard for running his Middle Earth hexcrawl.
Olden Demon: Why Old Warhammer Looked Better (And Why It Changed)
Professor DM interviewed me and lots of other YouTubers at Green Dragon Fest on whether Dungeontubing is dying or not.
Luke Stratton of Pirate Borg hosts another State of the OSR panel at Gary Con, where they argue about my complaints with DCC’s formatting.
Theory and Advice
Murkmail: The 2 axes of abstraction, ‘No’ is the most interesting answer, and Unbalanced Combat is Cool
3x5 Arcana: The Bonkers Loop, The Door Tax, and The Mythic Engine
Valeria Loves: My Dad’s First RPG was Roach Motel
Jay Dragon: The Three Secrets of Making Games
Syd Lonreiro: The Guide to Old School Tournaments
Being An Asshole To A Goblin: Elements of a Key 4: Rules for Key-Writing
Periapt Games: Winning the game by being well-rested
Limithron: How to Write and Run OSR RPG Adventures
Worldbuilding
False Machine: I Read Generators of Underground Worlds
Cryptic Keyway: The Roadside Shrine Test
Hilander RPGs: How to Eat Dice Soup
This newsletter uses affiliate links, which help support Questing Beast at no cost to you.