It’s back around to that time of the month, with the April Mythoard having shown up in my mailbox.
The hoard this month is heavily in the magazine end of things, covering a wide spectrum of gaming aides.
Into the Red Planet is the gaming scenario included in Foreign Element a Sci-Fi RPG by Precis Intermedia. Everything in this book is slimmed down, keeping it a clean sci-fi game free of the bloat so common among the sci-fi games I’ve read so far. Since I’m not a big sci-fi rpg player, you can take that with a grain of salt. =D
This Advanced Adventures module, The Forsaken Sepulcher, by Alphonso Warden of Expeditious Retreat Press, is all about a lost plane created to house the insanely rich and powerful. The puzzles and monsters are unique and great campaign fodder. Shout-out to Sol Invictus, an awesomely named super-buffed Wisp (how often do you see such a normally innocuous monster turned badass?)
Tossed in with a quick-and-dirty sci-fi time traveling game that fits on a single sheet of paper, two digital coupons (one for Playground Adventures, a family friendly series of game modules, and one for adventure a week, which is exactly what it sounds like), a Fernmoss Falls treasure generator written by the Mythoard organizer himself, and plastic pieces for an inspiration token and direction arrow. I’ll be tossing this direction arrow out for my overland map if my players get tired of using a silly plastic fish.
A Dungeon Crawl Classics module, Sailors on the Starless Sea, by Harley Stroh. I’ve been hearing so many good things about the ‘meatgrinder’ style of 0-level dungeons in OSR games. With this module in hand, I’ll have to see if I can round up some players to give it a try. Maybe I should try to find a GM running a DCC game first, to see if I like the feel of the game.
Judges Guild Journal No. 18, December 1979. It is both cool to see how much the ideas and culture of gaming has changed over time. There was a whole extensive list of tables for every possible random monster encounter you could have based on temperature and terrain type (much longer than 3.5 had). What really caught my eye was a whole section on the economy and skills behind various poisons. The next page beyond the one shown lists all the ways one can fail to apply a poison, without the, silly in my opinion, fall-back of ‘you poison yourself’. You can spoil the poisons, crack the needles, make a leak in the canister, or cause the poison to slide right off your blade.
AnarchyDice 