Spot Reviews Nov 2021

Ok got some kickstarters and POD stuff and sold some things, Issue 2 of zine out Patreon and will be hopefully working on the second ed of my murder hobo manual and pulling the 1st version from circulation on my downloads page. 2nd ed has more on crime and punishment and prison life plus more lady murder hobos. Sending some stuff to a vid review show too mostly for interest in Patreon.  My internet got fixed early only after a month, Many trees out front need a trim and touching lines and over my house. 

The Temple of Elemental Evil - 2 vol slipcase Goodman Games Harback 
I'm enjoying reading this and looking over differences in maps, the new content, revised maps and all the old-school style artists depicting scenes I have played dozens of times. Actually, I play the videogame yearly and am surprised this was not mentioned. I'm selling my original this is a great mix of nostalgia and quality. Also now I have aged since vol 1 in this edition I appreciate large type and clear layouts mostly. They are still doing monster stat blocks with zero lore which is a bit odd. Also, art depicts old-school adventurers vs modern Ankheg which my grok 80s backbrain feels incongruence. Bring back fat monsters. Im still reading but it is pretty good and ringing all the surface bells. I will report more detail later but probably will rate 4th best in the 6 similar revisions series so far (s3 was worst to me).

Slumbering Ursine Dunes & Fever-Dreaming Marlinko POD
Two awesome PODS and yes I had PDFS. Was waiting for one book does all but got impatient and got these. A mix of the campaign setting, hexcraw and several adventures. A Slavonic feel but also some weird stuff like tech I could probably have this a plane or bit of planet psychon. Both 68 pages laid out illustrated with good maps and the kind of dense weird DND you would get out of G+.  Inspiring stuff not like your average western European + Americana fantasy. 

Neverland (on sale online quite a bit so I nabbed it)
Its a beautiful book and a weird setting. While I have since a child been creeped out by peter pan and think of Wendy as a kidnap victim. And those runaway kids well apparently some died fighting pirates or something. This setting draws on those books and brings out the horror and weirdness a bit more and you could amp it up or down as you please for kids or your edgelord gamers. It is beautiful as an RPG artifact and has great information design well actually some of the best in any game product and you could run it from a skim partial read and find things. Kinda old-school agnostic playable. You could easily change elements or take out some hexes and locations and re use in any game. The dungeons and locations are very stylish. You could do some weird crossover games with this like mix with Hotsprings, or Gygax Dungeonland, Blue Medusa, or Ravenloft. Pretty amazing despite being a literary franchise I have life long dislike of.  Inspiring stuff.

Arkham Gazette Issues 0 1 2 & 3 for Call of Cthulhu POD
Recently I expressed some disappointment in a mythos RPG mag as being too much about collecting the game and having some design flaws. This in contrast is one of the best. The design is like 1980schaosium layouts, boxed text and works. It's beautiful to me and easy to digest than coffee table colour books. You can especially use them to run the classic campaign books of the game dealing with Dunwich, Arkham, Miskatonic University, Innsmouth and Kingsport. As I ran a sandbox game using these adventures for years these would have many fine bits and pieces. They mention products briefly when they feature locations and apparently they will update these. 

The first 0 deals with The Aylesbury Pike location with some good rural road historic details and things to explore for amateur folklorists. There are interesting NPCs, a possibly haunted train tunnel, fake and real pictographs and monoliths in 42ish pages.

Issue 1 features Arkham and includes new locations, lore, books, an encounter, adventure seeds, diners with maps and locations in Arkham. The section linking location to published scenarios is extra big here. 

Issue 2 is on Innsmouth and has some Polynesian inspired relics, local graves, a shipwreck, Dagon facts, a useful marine scientist, other Innsmouth like places, books, lore, feejee mermaids, Innsmouth weird curios, deep one gold, Newburyport and a fairly long scenario at 115ish pages. 3 Features Witches and Witchcraft are possibly usable in a few games. Mix of history and mythos fantasy. Nice folk magic section of creepy things and familiars. Changelings, faeries, mythos witch cults and more 118ish pages. These are dense and I love them.