conocimiento-ocultozine

[conocimiento-ocultozine]

[conocimiento-ocultozine]

[conocimiento-ocultozine]

May 28 2020 - Protesters in LA demanding justice for George Floyd burned a flag, and smashed the windows of a police car when it drove into the crowd. One protester was injured when he fell of the hood of the escaping police car, after which the crowd attacked another cop car nearby. [video]

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Those without hope travel here seeking an end to pain, a golden afterlife beyond this dark and ruined world. They gather in suicide cults and the valley’s few twisted trees begin to droop strange fruit from hempen rope. Others plumb the crypts seeking Verhu, believing they can persuade him of other fates. Some simply and stupidly leave gifts and sacrifices to a power they cannot comprehend. Gloom grows, obscuring the world like an oil-stained image.

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Gandalf + his staffs  ►  Last came one who seemed the least, less tall than the others, and in looks more aged, grey-haired and grey-clad, and leaning on a staff.

Unfinished Tales, Part 4, Ch 2, The Istari

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Courage, Merry, courage for our friends.

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This is the second edition Black Hack (2018). Why is it called the Black Hack? Because it is by David Black and it is a homebrew reimagining of the original D&D system with modern RPG design mixed in. The first edition of TBH was pretty brief and interesting, but in no way prepared me for the beautiful thing the second edition would become. Oh, and @SkullFungus did the cover art, which, of course. Its pretty perfect.

Having recently tried to re-read the old White Box D&D rules, I can tell you that those books are a mess (it was first, and they were doing this on the fly, so it is forgivable). TBH, in contrast, is super light and streamlined. The core rules take about 30 pages. They are so polished, you’re liable to slip on them. They’re recognizable as the old classics (hey, fighter, thief, wizard, cleric), but there are plenty of modernizations (advantage and disadvantage are in here) and clever rules created from whole cloth (experience and armor, for instance, are radically reimagined). And the core rules are arranged to be learned on the fly as you’re playing, so they are clear and to the point.

The GM section is like, glittering perfection. It is part workbook, part tool box, packed with tables, generators, you name it. It breaks down everything you need to run a game into easy to use, easy to comprehend chunks, then nudges you to just mess around with them. There are piles of ideas here that will take you back to your old haunts and into brand new territory.

The whole thing is so elegant it approaches the platonic ideal of an old school RPG; easy to pick up, fast to run, not an ounce of nonsense in it, but open and flexible enough for you to fill it with whatever craziness you want to bolt on. Damn near perfection in 128 pages.

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Castle Xyntillan (2019), is my first exposure to Gabor Lux and the First Hungarian D20 Society and I immediately want more. It is nominally for the Swords & Wizardry rules from Frog God, but it is easy enough to run it with any D&D-like.

It is one big dungeon crawl through a haunted castle. It is clearly inspired by Tegel Manor, the 1977 Judges Guild module, with its large castle and evil family, but at a very dense 132 pages, Castle Xyntillan easily dwarfs its predecessor. It is also a good deal stranger, with bizarre locations (like a vast indoor wilderness) waiting to be discovered in the reaches bellow the dungeon. Players could easily hack away at this for dozens of sessions and still find new areas and strange ways to die.

I don’t generally ascribe to the idea that bigger is better. Bigger, in RPGs, usually means underdeveloped in my experience. That is definitely not the case here. While individual room descriptions are largely brief, allowing GMs to embellish and develop on the fly, the sum total of the castle is wonderfully overwhelming. The evil family is mind-boggling huge, weighing in at 60 personages both alive, undead and of varying personal dispositions. You can easily get lost, both in the castle and in the web on intrigue weaved by its inhabitants. Repeatedly. I love the idea of a group of players hurling character after character at the castle and uncovering its secrets bit by bloody bit.  

There are maybe obvious comparisons to be made to Keep on the Borderlands and The Temple of Elemental Evil, especially since Castle Xyntillan comes with the village of Tours-en-Savoy available for the players to use as a base. But the presence of the (mostly) evil family and the weirder portions of the castle wound up reminding me of the old videogame Clive Barker’s Undying. For what it’s worth.

Excellent art throughout. Whenever Peter Mullen puts pen to paper, I’m here for it.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHaNbTkbPrA

‪Poster designs by William Stout for JURASSIC PARK (1993).‬