Unknown Dungeon Newsletter March24
The Unknown Dungeon Newsletter for March 2024
It’s been a quiet month on the blog, but the wider world has been busy! Here’s a showcase of cool stuff.
What I’m Reading
I’m slowly working my way through the beast that is Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground by Vintage RPG’s Stu Horvath. It’s a fantastically thorough and detailed look over all of tabletop roleplaying history (Empire of the Petal Throne and Paranoia notwithstanding). I highly recommend it, but be careful not to drop it on anything fragile, like your foot or a child.
Deals
The Best of Magpie bundle on Humble Bundle is stuffed with great PDFs: Masks, Root, Bluebeard’s Bride, and Avatar Legends all have their core rulebooks included, along with expansions and supplements, plus games like Pasion de las Pasiones and Cartel, and three volumes of Fate Codex. On top of all that, the Physical box set of the Avatar Legends Starter Set is included. I think I buried the lede there.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/best-of-magpie-games-books
Blogs
This month saw the launch of new independent TTRPG news site Rascal, founded by Lin Codega, Rowan Zeoli, and Chase Carter. The site is in its early stages, and with a lot of articles behind different levels of paywall, but the pedigree of its principal writers is enough to make it interesting (and I’m not just saying that because they already gave a shout out to one of my one-page RPGs).
https://www.rascal.news/
Chris Bissette over at Loot the Room breaks down the structure of several styles of adventure module presentation, and rewrites the same encounter in each one. It’s a brilliant look at various house styles, and what games/writers consider important to present to the GM.
https://loottheroom.uk/form-and-structure-the-dna-of-adventure-modules
In a currently-unfinished blog post, I looked at The Holy Roller’s article on Hit Points and R.E. Davis’ Every Scar a Story supplement. As the post is languishing in Google Doc limbo, I want to link to it here. Consider it reading ahead for when I finally get around to finishing my thoughts on it all.
Masaki Yanagida gives an overview of the history of Dungeons and Dragons in Japan, it's influence on tabletop and videogaming, and the reason it ultimately failed to become as big as it has in the west.
https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-dnd-in-japan
Prismatic Wasteland’s W.F. Smith considers the late Akira Toriyama’s worldbuilding, and the lasting effect his work had on the way Smith approaches his own setting.
https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/toybox-creativity-the-genius-of-dragon-ball
This was then followed up on by Sandro on the Fail Forward blog, who took the idea of Toybox Creativity and contrasted it with Gygaxian Naturalism to expand upon the Toybox principles.
https://failforwardblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/toy-box-naturalism.html
I find both of these posts interesting, as Toriyama’s work (it seems to me) manages to be anachronistic without straying into the realm of gonzo. Is it entirely down to a consistent aesthetic? Or is there more to it than that? If so, what? It makes me think of games like Brave Zenith, which is eclectic - with catfolk and jellies living alongside humans - but also doesn’t feel ‘weird’.
Podcasts
Between Two Cairns is one podcast I listen to as soon as a new episode is released. This month, one of the episodes had Quinns from Shut Up and Sit Down as a guest, and they took a look at the amazing and (in my experience) mind-boggling Silent Titans by Patrick Stuart.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042709/14654272-silent-titans
Crowdfunding
The Lost Bay is a rules-lite suburban gothic game and setting by designer and podcaster Iko. The core game rulebook is a 160 page A5-hardback, and the campaign includes higher tiers which include a second book of adventures and extra adventure zines.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelostbay/the-lost-bay-suburban-dark-fantasy-rpg
Cairn 2E by NSR-name Yochai Gal finds itself far from its first edition’s monochromatic zine roots. This box-set includes a trio of colour-illustrated softcover books covering the core rules, a GM advice, and a starter adventure, as well as a GM screen and character sheet pad. A lower tier for just the three books without the box is also available.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1557907976/cairn-2e-boxed-set
Astroprisma is a fantastic-looking retro-futuristic solo space exploration game by Crescent Chimera. Navigate the hexcrawl and discover new planets, interact with various factions, and customise your ship.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crescentchimera/astroprisma
Finally, this project hasn’t gone live yet, but you can already sign up to be notified of when it does, which will be before next month’s newsletter: The remaster of Emmy Allen’s Gardens of Ynn will be coming early April with new art from RiotBones and published by SoulMuppet. A reprint of Allen’s Stygian Library with a new cover will also be available from the campaign.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/soulmuppet/gardens-of-ynn
That’s everything for this month. Thanks for reading.