I Got A Moth In The Mail Today

And There Was A Troglodyte
Underneath It

I looked in the mail, and there it was. A greeting card-sized envelope that indicates a zine, and on the envelope was a creepy moth stamp.

I'm pretty sure that he has more copies to order, and if he doesn't you can always wuss out and get a pdf version from RPGNow.

What are you waiting for? You need to know more, you say? OK…

There's some nifty art, from the Troglodyte cover by Jason Sholtis (which you can see there to the left in a smaller, fuzzier version) to the Umber Hulk inside by Johnathan Bingham.

There are six articles and an introduction. The first two are useful together (one is a mini-adventure, the other is a table that can be used at one point in the mini-adventure or elsewhere). One is an encounter/mini-adventure for a fantasy modern setting, set in rural PA. Next up is a short bit of gaming poetry. The fifth article is a set of 20 random encounters for a small forest. Finally is a description of an interesting NPC and his associates, along with some scenario seeds, sort of like the old Traveller Casual Encounters in the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society.

Tim uses a silver standard for his treasure and ascending AC (which latter, well, is one of the places I disagree with him, but he does it because too many retroclones use it these days), writes for people who aren't afraid of the word "shit", and includes guest contributors in each issue. That's all pretty cool.

The only typos I could find were on the contents page (seriously, Tim, "blogstop"?), but I might have missed something. I doubt it, though, because The Happy Whisk was one of the proofreaders, and the other one was Trey Gausey.

So, in short, you know you want it. What you didn't know was that you need it. Neeeeeeeeed it.

Zines!

There are now two print zines out there, plus a one-shot zine/module. This is a good thing.

There's Loviatar, of course. Christian's zine is excellent. Currently, much of the space is being taken up with a hex-by-hex publication of a hexcrawl for D&D type games (specifically statted for B/X, and so directly compatible with Labyrinth Lord and BECMI, but also good for most other D&D-based games with more or less conversion).

And there's now Dungeon Crawl. I don't know what this one is like yet, as I've only just ordered the first issue. Looking forward to it!

There's also the estimable Zogorion, Lord of the Hippogriffs. A one-shot zine/module, I highly recommend this short adventure, statted for Swords & Wizardry, but obviously an easy conversion to any similar rules. Nominally for levels 3-7, I don't recommend that any players approach it as a hack-n-slay opportunity.