Thoughts on Van Richten's Guide

     So, I got the newest 5e setting book Tuesday, and have had enough time to digest it, and watch and read what some others have said about the book.  This isn't a review.  I want to be clear about that coming in.  Not a review, but just my thoughts more on reactions to the book that I keep hearing from people old like myself, and older.  

    The book isn't bad at all.  It does what I wanted it to do, and that is give ideas, some light lore, and sets a tone for Ravenloft and broad concepts of horror genres.  What more do you want?

    I get it, I have been complaining about WotC for decades now.  It has become as much a part of the hobby for me as painting miniatures.  However, most of it is just bitching and complaining for the sake of bitching and complaining.  After talking to people I know, and suffering through YouTubers complaining, I felt compelled to say something.  Here it goes.

    First, and most importantly, don't say the new book isn't "proper horror" or "horror for kids."  Especially don't do this if you cannot give a single example of what proper horror is.  Ravenloft is, and has been  a very Hammer Horror inspired style.  This works well, especially since the cleric class was heavily inspired by a certain character right out of Hammer films who hunted vampires, but his name escapes me.  At least, that is according to Gary Gygax, but my tongue is in my cheek, and I digress.

    Second, stop complaining about the use of end pages instead of making the books look like a shitty textbook by throwing tables on them.  It really shouldn't be that big of a deal.  If you want access to tables, use a DM screen like a normal person.  If I hear another Gen X'er complain about something so insignificant on their channel, I will probably spend even less time on YouTube.  No, Dungeons and Dragons didn't go to total shit because the inside cover doesn't look like a Wal-Mart notebook now.  

    My final point, and the most important, is about the whole "keep your politics out of my game thing.  Nothing at all has changed about the Vistani to take from your game.  If it has, then your game was filled with ethnic stereotypes.  The only real difference, is that a certain word that is often seen as a slur, isn't included in the content covering them.  If you don't follow what I am saying, then you cannot make fun of diversity training anymore, because you are the reason we have it in the corporate world now.  

    That is all I really have to say about it.  I think the book is fairly good overall, and there are probably hundreds of reviews of it on the internet, so I didn't feel like I would contribute much.  I do not know if it was the week I had, or the people I talked to, but I felt like I needed to develop this thought.  Toxic fandoms are the worst. 

    As always, I wasn't paid by WotC, although I wish I were, to write this.  The ideas are purely my own, along with any and all typos and displays of good old fashioned shitty grammar.  

Review: Glimmering Crypt of the Ioun King

 I have been meaning to get to this, but I have returned to work full time, and haven't had as much time as I would like to dedicate to this.  Let me just start off by saying that Levi Combs, and Planet X in general, are putting out some of the best content for 5e right now.  It all fits well into any 5e campaign, and will make your games weird as hell, basically gonzo gaming.  The real benefit for this for me, is I tend to run games in established settings, and all of this content is a great way to break up the feel of the campaign for a short time, and is a great pallet cleanser for me as a DM, and my players.

Obviously, this is set in the Underdark, or whatever servers as the Underdark in your game.  I personally feel that this is a perfect adventure as far as going underground goes.  The descriptions of the locales are unique, there is a heavy alien feel, and it is extremely dangerous.  One of my favorite places to set adventures is underground, and sometimes it can get a little repetitive.  This adventure gives off a heavy feeling of isolation inside of an already isolated world, so it really enhances the setting.  One other thing that I want to add about this, is that this would perfectly fit as a short trip underground, and would be really effective in a campaign that takes place on the surface.  It is open ended enough to where you can use it in either, and that is exactly what I want in adventures.

As far as the plot goes, I do not want to give up spoilers, but I will say that this brings a very flavored old school feeling adventure that could easily be dropped into any setting, and not feel forced.  I am planning on running this in the Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and I don't feel like any major reskinning would be needed.  I really can't say that about a lot of adventures, particularly thrid party ones.  This is generic enough without feeling... well, generic.  Replayability for an adventure is huge for me, and this has it.  It also has monsters that fit well into 5e, and seem well thought out for monsters.  I want to be honest, sometimes I feel like third party monster stat blocks are my least favorite part of TTRPGs, but I can't say that here.  I do not really want to dig more into the plot, but a lot can be gathered from the title alone.  

Overall, I cannot really think of any downsides to this adventure.  Everything from the art, to the inside covers, and the content of the adventure make this stand out.  While I haven't had a chance to run this yet, I have been dropping bits and bobs of the Phylactery into my games, and I am sure this will be as well received and memorable to the sessions as that content was.  

Random Table

 I have been making some random 1d6 tables to compile into a publication, and some are foods you would find in locations.  I have decided that I do not want to use these in the collection, so I am boing to periodically post some here.  Feel free to use them if you like, they should be suitable for any fantasy style TTRPG.  Layout was done on The Homebrewery, and you can find it here.  

Return of the Blog...

 Holy smokes, I have been busy.  I returned to work like the before times, turned 41 (yikes), and have fallen into more of a routine than I have in a little over a year.  I have been absent from the World Wide Web, and it has been two weeks since I spammed any social media about how they should check out my blog (if they are into that kind of thing). 

I have also been slowly working on some content, and I have decided that I am going to do some small dungeons that will go up on DriveThruRpg.  I have a few I have ran in some sessions that I think would work well with 5e, and I am working on some other things as well.  Since I am suddenly busy, it will take some time.

I also am going to be reviewing more stuff.  My ZineQuest pickups have been coming in, as well as a few other things, and most of if is stuff I feel like people should be buying.  Third party creators are absolutely killing it right now, and I hope to join your ranks soon.  

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.