Zine Quest Review: The House of the Hollow

 Okay, so I am a fan of third party publishing, and Zine Quest is right up my alley.  I want to use this as a space to review some of the things I picked up this year, in no particular order, and first up is The House of the Hollow by Dylan Mangini.  This is an adventure for Mörk Borg, which I should add is hands down one of my favorite systems.

I want to start of by saying that this is a very well done, straight forward adventure. I do want to disclose that I have not used it for the intended system yet, but I did adapt it for a 5e session, and it worked wonderfully.  You could realistically adapt this easily for basically any system, which is a huge plus.  I also want to say that while I haven't had a chance to run this in Mörk Borg, I really like the overall feel of it for the system, and I feel like this would be a great place to start with that system for someone interested in it, but a little hesitant because they want a good place to start.  

The adventure is so straight forward, I don't want to expand on it too much here, because of spoilers.  I will say at times it reminded me of a better version of the 5e Death House from Curse of Strahd. There are also plenty of tables, which is something I love, and something that I love about Mörk Borg as a system.  The adventure hooks are also well done, and open, but not generic.  I will say that this was very easy to just throw into a game and have it feel completely organic.  I used this in an Eberron game, and it didn't miss a beat, and to be honest, all I did was reskin some names, and I had to do little prep at all outside of reading through the adventure.

The use of artwork is decent, for what it is, because I have seen things in the past that came off as way too "clip-arty".  I did not get that feel here, and the look of the book works well for the system, and feels like a finished product, which I will admit is significantly harder to pull off than it looks.  The print quality, especially for the two pamphlet size inserts is good too.  

Overall, this was a good pick up.  I am not familiar with Dylan Mangini, or what he has done in the past, but this is something I would strongly recommend.  I couldn't really find a downside to this at all, the length is perfect, the adventure is clear and not generic, and it is highly adaptable to other systems.  The PDF is also only four dollars, but I would definitely go for the book for ten (since I already did).

Here is a link for the product, if you are interested:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348976/The-House-of-the-Hollow-compatible-with-MORK-BORG

New logo! Upcoming projects!

 

I have been thinking about different options for a logo for things I will be publishing in the future, and I settled on this.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out, and I feel like it captures the vibe I am going for.  Saying that, I am working on some material now, which is a system agnostic d6 table for dungeon crawling RPGs.  Since this will be my first actual release, I think that I want to take my time and possibly launch it during next year's Zine Quest on Kickstarter.  In the meantime, I am slowly working on some adventures that will most likely be coming to DM's Guild.  Thanks for the support so far, I have grown this significantly more than I expected since I launched it in January.  

My Appendix N: The Wizards

The 1977 animation The Wizards has some of the best visuals I have seen that really embrace a great sword and sorcery type aesthetic.  While the point of the movie is a little heavy handed, it is still a very underrated movie.  As far as inspiration for an RPG goes, it is basically gold, especially if you want to run a post apocalyptic campaign.  This movie is definitely 

atmospheric.  

This movie is a great inspiration for my Eberron world.  The way war is presented in the movie is a great way to look at how technology, magic, and the past interact.  The character Necron 99 is an actual NPC/villian warforged in a campaign I am running right now.  I will admit that I have difficulty breaking outside of clichés when coming up with a plot or a session, which I think everyone who runs games does.  This is of course why Appendix N is important, but more importantly, is that drawing and combining on the familiar helps to keep your game feeling immersive and not as boring.  

Personally, playing over Zoom the last year has really had me thinking about how important influences are for my games, because games over Zoom are boring.  At first, there wasn't as much of an issue when it felt new early in the pandemic, but a year later, myself and some players are really starting to feel the lag.  The best way to combat that, is to make games interesting, and the easiest and best way (in my opinion) to do that is to draw inspiration (i.e. rip off) ideas from where ever you can.  I touched on this early in this blog, but I want to revisit it again after rewatching this film this past Friday.

If you haven't seen this movie, I encourage you to.  It definitely has a Dungeon Crawl Classics Wizard Van vibe to it, and since it came out in the era of early D&D, I feel like this movie has a solid place in required viewing for any GM or fan of the genre and hobby.  

Finally, this movie has a weird as hell vibe to it, and I think weird is always a good thing in RPGs.  Even if you don't use it often, totally gonzo feeling elements have their place in almost any campaign.