Some Quick Reviews...

EMO zine #8 and 3fold on the Necropolis of Yor recently on Patreon 

Like a few people I have been getting the POD releases for 80s D&D books I probably never saw in the day and as I was a propper boy with bigboy pants I probably snubbed basic dnd when we started AD&D. All these are POD on drive-through and Im pretty happy with them in most cases.

Maps are one of the main problems and in some cases, it was the map I remember and to have them made useless then print up my own in some cases from a non legal PDF its a bit rough. I wish they did poster maps from old products as separate items so you could get all the TSR marvel maps but that seems unlikely. In the case of the Dragonlance DL1-4 compilation, it is quite bad. Some gazetteers at least shrink maps to be readable while others have random bits printed that at least from the PDF you might work out what was happening. Some do better than others in Gazetteers Some of those later poster maps like the High Clerist Tower would be nice or the wargame map from DL series. Sometimes the cover art is overly dark on these prints.

Gazeteer series detailing the DnD Mystara known world has been great to have them all again and a few I never saw. Still reading some but its a wonderfully imaginative series. I hope they get all the hollow earth stuff now as they complete the setting a bit. For the flaws of its time, it at least was imaginative. I was anti flying boat myself for most of my gaming days (sorry steve next game you can have a flying boat). Possibly the empires book/box of these changed my mind when I saw the cost and economy to run them. I prefer a flying castle myself.

Are a few I'm struggling with - long winded, little art. lack of strange content. But more like this coming. I have been reading lots of old comics too.

My house on lockdown and feeling off - unsure if my normal bad hayfever and medical problems. Ive written a bit

Arkham Gazette Issue 4 Kingsport Dreams 💓💓💓💓
The best Call of Cthulhu magazine ever - each reads more luck a supplement expanding Miskatonic county and full of titbits and trivia. Lots of locations, hints of stuff, characters and trivia that helps you fill out the setting for sandbox play or to develop your own adventures from these fragments. Feels more disciplined than most magazines and lacks bad fan art, reviews for stuff I have or other stuff I am a bit over with magazines in general. 

WG5 Mordenkainens Fantastic Adventure 💓💓💓💥
This assumes you will play the famous wizard and his friends. The hook is there is a strange door in a castle ruin adventurers found and gave up on. Some disappeared. Thats it. You arrive by magic carpet at the door with an artifact in hand (no mention of using your own characters). It talks about magic keys and some artifact key hints to drop in your setting for clues and then refers to location as key locations lots. Some redundant writing and three situational damage tables for specific effects seem overly complex and a bit petty. Once inside its a mad wizard funhouse with an implausible geomorph looking map. By level three you would know this place is increasingly insane. I am inspired by historic architecture and function over gaming tropes. The art and design on this is good and shame they dropped the look of this module on later ones in series like Puppets. I do like the minions are depleted by being sacrificed and already suspicious of their mad demon using boss. The new monsters are mostly good, especially the demon and the evil book described (one of the best in DnD lore). As it's for levels 9-12 its a good example of a high-level dungeon and I like the idea a high-level party can ignore wilderness crawl and just turn up at the door. It feels like you could do this in a long session and have a good old wizard butt-kicking fun time. On the other hand, this is a late appearance of one of those crazy old dungeons at a time when the railroad cinematic adventures with mini locations were all the rage. I would like to run this without too much modification. It has some very strange funhouse stuff like the Purple Stone. I like it tries to add lore, items, and monsters to the canon which is a plus.

N4 Treasure Hunt 💓💓💥💥
This is almost an early DCC character funnel for zero to first level characters. Your commoners in a bad spot must escape and depend on what they do they get to adopt a class through play. It has Ad&d rules for zero Lv for those not using some version from Dragon for years by this time. It could be a good start to a campaign but is a survival railroad. Letting people take several characters and having a few die would be fine. Players are kidnapped, escape, then told the island will have everyone killed soon and a narrow window to escape. Having a god involved in a first adventure might not be to everyone's taste but its an unusual situation and one of the more memorable moments. If only the god would just teleport you away. Has some good art and maps you can reuse for certain buildings and good player handouts. Actually, this could be a prequel to the slavelords saga modules and why players hate slavers.

HWR2 Kingdom of Nythia 💓💓💓💥
This is peak cyclopedia era D&D with an Eqpytian flare with the fantasy on high. It has some interesting early weird combat skills I might steal and weapon mods that go in a different direction to AD&D. Some weird magic systems for local use that could help your bronze age empire compete with other peoples. The layout and art are good but the whole line featured wasted design space as a feature with big borders and logos. Adding Egyptian stuff to your setting is pretty old and this take has some unique twists. Has some good maps and lots of ideas to plunder even without the hollow earth stuff. I wouldn't try everything in here but it feels like it made some interesting efforts for unique new magic. Not as good as the Iron Crown games fantasy Egypt but that is an especially awesome product that would work well with this for a setting. The Old Empires setting in the Forgotten realms has some overlap here also like lots of sand spells.

N2 The Forest Oracle 💓💓💥💥
This is a good beginner adventure. It is a wilderness railroad with lots of prescripted scenes but better than many that do this and it would be ok for a first time DM. Good maps and handouts, basic minimal layout. It does have D&D gipsies but I'm sure this is an easy fix to avoid some of these old tropes. I would just make them more upfront about their desperation and why they have been doing their shenanigans. I'm not sure I would return their pegasus to them if I was a nature lover. It offers lots of dynamic locations in a short time and is well-balanced encounter wise. Im not sure I would run it unless I had some noobs or as a speed run for vet gamers possibly. 


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