(I told someone I would review their zine (not this one) and that one is really long so I am procrastinating by reading other zines)
I picked up Black March #1 today by Castle Grief.
I don't know much about Castle Grief (that's what I've seen them go by, so I will refer to them as such unless corrected), minus that they make really neat physical-media based zines (type-writers, pens, cutting up pieces of paper) and selling them digitally and really like dark fantasy shit. Also they have a substack.
They posted a few pieces of art in the rainbow OSR discord, and that made me really want to see what they had made. Something about actually putting something down on paper really makes me wet. All of my campaign notes are situated in obsidian, which I like for convenience purposes, but there's something about shacking up with a stack of papers and pens that really gets me off. I don't know why this is coming off as sexual but it's not untrue.
I'm not that into
. Knowing this information does not at all affect what one could get out of the zine, I am just mentioning it.
Okay, now for my random thoughts on the zine:
- I really like that the area covered in the zine has a connecting hazard: The Black Blight, the fungus plauge that is a problem for anyone in the region. Most of the keys in the hex reference it or just fugus in some way. Fungus is just a general connecting theme as well, from the cover to the goblins that cultivate it (which is what the goblins in my game do too!).
- I really like that there are multiple different goblins tribes in play. It doesn't seem like there's a huge difference between them, based on my quick read. Their names are also really similar and hard to distinguish for my dsylexia-addled brain. I also like that they aren't silly little local creatures. They are deadly, have their own ways of dealing with things that makes them smart and tactical, and have lots of intelligence that players would love to know (their pharmaceutical knowledge, for instance).
- Did I mention how much I loved the hex map? I think the scale is a little silly, I just think 1 landmark in a 5-mile hex is silly for how large 5 miles is (this is likely just a very personal preference) but besides that, there's so much to steal here. The best compliment I can give the hexmap and key is that it gaves me a ton of thoughts on how I want to spruce up the hexmap I am writing. There is so much here that is connected. It's not overhwleming, it's not like every key relates every other one, but you know. I'm going to skip listing examples because you can just buy the zine but it's really good at seeding ideas throughout the map.
- Maybe the most important one is having the not-yet-identified antidote
being a key on the map. That makes sense, right? Aren't cures for
things often located their the related poisons and such?
- "HEXKEY: Steal, alter, & destroy!" Boy will I!
- The descriptions in the key were also really evocative. I sort of queston sometimes why I would need the prose of a key or a dungeon to be written 'well' when it's going to be translated through me to my players but I kind of get it now.
- I think I also just really like reading materials that come from the sweat of a home camapaign. You can tell someone put love into this, and that's neat as hell.
- I glanced at the dungeon at the end, the key seems good and terse and the map very cool looking (it's a side profile, very chill) but I didn't read it yet.
- A little thing: Weapons and items drawn in the cool art also get simple magic item write-ups. I don't know if that's a
No comments:
Post a Comment