Inferno: City of Glasya-Labolas Review — Hell is a lot like South Florida

In high school I had to read Dante's (Divine) Comedy, at least parts of it, mostly the Inferno part about Hell and its 9 circles. While largely meant to be political satire of the day, the vivid descriptions and sheer depth of the descriptions of Hell really leaves an impression. Which is why it's remembered so well today and used for some many products - at least books and games.

Back in the old days Geoffrey O. Dale must have been similarly captivated, because he released a hex crawl of Dante's Hell, Inferno. Well, more like 4/9s of them. I actually had missed this back in the day, but Fight On! published a 5th circle and it really impressed me. So I've been following Mr. Dale's attempts at continuing his Inferno line (along with Erik Elkmann), despite the fact that the modern releases are not really compatible with D&D, old school or modern, except very vaguely like any fantasy RPG is.

Inferno: City of Glasya-Labalos is the latest product in the line, detailing a small city on the plane of Gehenna. The name of the city might be familiar, as it's a "real" name of a devil/demon which EGG re-purposed as the name of Asmoedeus's daughter (Glasya). At 163 pages (plus another booklet with stats for NPCs) it's a remarkably detailed look at the city and its environs, but the level of detail in the city itself comes at the expense of flavor, or even coherence, really.

New OSR Products at RPGNow/DTRPG — June 6th, 2018

Recovering from an early summer cold, so excuse me if I missed anything this last week.

Adventures

Adventure Framework 13: Gift of the Silent God -  9 pages, $1

Blackfalls Hall: The Palace of the King Under the Water -   70 pages, $3.99

DNH4 Confronting Hastur -  This is actually a pretty decent series, albeit with Rick Hershey's terrible art. This is for 10th level characters (and probably higher if not using AD&D based rules).  $6.95 and 64 pages, including illustration booklet.

Sea Hag's Folly -  From Starry Knight Press comes this 28 page aquatic module for 2-4 levels.  $7.50

What's Wrong with the Woonder Well? - Besides being a terrible Britpop song, that is. Adventure from Unbalanced Dice Games, 36 pages and $3.50

Rules

Condensed Creature Card Codex for B/X, Labyrinth Lord -  Because books are too hard or something. $4.99 and 176 pages of cards. 

Old School Fantasy Roleplaying: Skills - 10 pages, $1.99. Personally I have grown to like the system from BECMI where you roll under your ability score (if you know the skill) on a d20. It's basically 50% +/- 5% each ability point above or below average.

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 6-1-18 -  Another cave complex like the last few weeks. But apparently they connect up. $1

RPGP Presents #34 Misc Wonders of the Last Sun - $2.49 and 13 pages.

Frostbuy: The Lost City Review — More Like a Lost Half a Block

After a hiatus of about 2 years, Sharp Mountain Games and John Fredericks is back with a new module for Labyrinth Lord, Frostbury: The Lost City. His past modules were centered around a town called Adela, this is based around a hobbit (or halfing) shire. I've always thought that halfling adventure were very under represented, if not quite non-existent, but they offer a lot of opportunity for Wodehouse style absurd humor with country people acting silly. (E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series is another good example)

Alas, this module is not like that. Instead it reminds me a bit of Ramsey Campbell's Inhabitant of the Lake meets Star Frontiers, although not fully developed. Essentially the PCs are hired to find a lost halfling, one who is adventuresome and has not come back from visiting a nearby ruined city by a lake. Both lake and ruins are reported to be haunted and avoided by the halfling community.

New Dark Fantasy OSR setting in the works

Woodfall it's apparently called. Doesn't seem to be much details on their website, but the creator also sent me an Instragram link that presumably makes sense to people who know what Instagram is

Looks like there's a Kickstarter planned, so hopefully more details will emerge before then....

New OSR PRoducts at RPGNow/DTRPG — May 30th, 2018

Amusingly, the 3rd Edition of Boot Hill appears to be a top ten seller. There is a lack of serious wild west games.

Official (I don't know if these are new or just now in print)

B1-9 In Search of Adventure -  Perhaps one of the most radical revisions in the supermodule line, this takes the first 9 B modules and turns them into a long, but not linear, campaign. $9.99 for the PDF and $19.99 for a softcover.

FMA1 Fires of Zatal - Part of the Mesoamerican adventure series. $4.99 PDF, $9.99 in print

Poor Wizard's Almanac II -  I loved this things, they made Mystara feel alive. Until they killed it with Joshun's Almanac.  Originally digest sized, this is $7.99 for the PDF and $14.99 in print.

Adventures

Assault on Yaxley Manor -  The #33 issue of RPGPundit Presents is an adventure. 17 pages, $2.99 and allegedly "Medieval Authentic"

Inferno: City of Glasya-Labolas -  From Geofrrey Dale comes another Inferno product (originally started back in the JG days), this time detailing an infernal city.  157 pages, $5.50

Inferno: Gasya-Labolas Denizens - I guess this contains the stats for the monsters. While he claims compatibility with old school D&D it actually has little (almost more with 5e). But still an interesting product line and definitely old school. 47 pages, $1.25

Inferno: City of Glasya-Labolas Bundle - Both of the above for only $4.80

Into the Troll's Den - Not just trolls, but trolls with traps.  25 pages, $2.50

Remembrance - Modulo 1B -  Modulo isn't a typo by me, it's a module in Italian (I think) for Labyrinth Lord. PWYW and 64 pages.

Rules

0E Monsters of Jordoba 2 -  4 new monsters, including the punny "kuo-togre". 11 pages, 99 cents.

Six New Old School Character Classes - For B/X and LL. This is actually a bundle of 6 of Sharp Mountain games - Gambler, Alien Elves, Forest Gnome, Paladins of Space, Carven (think wooden smurfs) and Wanderwood (treants). $3.

Untold Adventures (Sword & Wizardry) -  My gosh! Another version of Swords & Wizardry! And this one is even lighter and easier. Who'd ever thought we'd see one of those? At least it's PWYW so you can see how it compares to the 843 other "lighter" versions of S&W.

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 5-25-18 -  Underground cave-lake. $1.

PWYW Stock Art - Arabian Thief on Flying Carpet - Ironically, this probably violates his "May not appear in Works deemed racist, sexist, or similarly offensive works" merely by its stereotype, but it's a pretty nice piece of art.

Ghosts The Incorporeal Undead Review — This must be what a sage's treatise is like

One of the staples of the RPG industry since about 1990 or so is the "sourcebook", basically one really detailed look at one aspect of the game (or setting), be it a class, a place, or a type of monster. Perhaps because of the rules light nature of the OSR, there really has not been much of this — a few books on cities, detailed looks at witches by that guy who really likes witches, and a few general supplements on magic.

Ghosts — The Incorporeal Undead from James Mishler & Jodi Moran-Mishler is another exception. It's one very detailed look at the ghost, or incorporeal undead, as monster. In many ways it reminds me of one of the Von Richten's Guides for Ravenloft 2e, but it's written in a much more casual, breezy style (and a number of jokes). Plus it's written for Labyrinth Lord and thus the old Basic/Expert D&D set as opposed to AD&D. (As I am mostly an AD&D guy I am not always familiar with D&D monsters and their differences.)

It essentially consists of three parts: different types of ghosts, once for every hit dice from 1 to 10, unique powers said ghosts might have, and various additional rules to deal with ghosts.

New OSR Products at RPGNow/DTRPG — May 23rd, 2018

Bah, working on a couple reviews but can't quite seem to finish them, since I'm meh about either one. (Things are hard to review when you have no strong opinion about them and not getting paid for it).

Also somewhat notable is Boot Hill 3rd Edition is up on DTPRG. I guess it was 2nd edition we played back in the day, I'm not sure how different 3rd is. Previous editions were clunky, but worked really well in play.

Adventures

Delver's Keep -  I think it's an adventure and not just maps.  But at $9.99 and 28 pages, I'm not going to find out for sure.

Pyramid of the Lost King -  I think this actually came out last week and I missed it. But big adventure for S&W. $8, 106 pages

Pyramid of the Lost King Extra - The Howling Dolmens - Add on for above. $1 and 3 pages.

The Graydeep Marches - This is interesting, a smallish setting and 3 short adventures from Peter Schweighofer who worked at West End Games and did a lot of work on Star Wars D6. Definitely on my "to buy" list.  34 pages and $6.99

Rules

Demi-Human Adventurers -  Rules for playing race as class in S&W.  Why you'd want to, and if you did, you couldn't just use the LL rules (or other B/X clone) for free. 75 cents, 9 pages.

Non-Human Player Codex for Early Era  Fantasy Gaming -  I'm not sure what it is, sounds like it's a reference guide to the non human classes in Labyrinth Lord.  I'm not sure why you'd need this, much less pay $1.49 for it, nor do I think the B/X era is really "early", as it's basically 7 years after OD&D was first published and 3 since AD&D.

The OSR Chymist - This is a conversion of the Pathfinder alchemist class to OSR. I've read a number of Pathfinder novels and while most are dreadful, there's one series that features an alchemist that I quite enjoy and I wanted to convert that to OSR.  PWYW, 15 pages.

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 5-18-18 -  Looks like a heart shaped cave. $1

Nod 34 - John Stater's excellent zine continue, this time focused on Persia. 117 pages and $3.99  If there's a better value (besides free stuff) in the OSR (or even gaming), I don't know it.

RPG Presents #32 - $2.49 and 13 pages for info on his fantasy campaign. Bleh, I'm starting to think I should ignore him like the Filbar guy.