And then, a large, heavy box, attached to a large, heavy deadline, shows up on my doorstep. The Three Castles nominees have arrived.
The Three Castles Award (3CA) is given every year at the North Texas RPG Con, in Dallas, which this year is the weekend of 7 June. NTRPGCon is a small, definitely old-school convention that celebrates the older games of our shared histories, including the early editions of D&D. The process consists of four or five ancient eminences reviewing the presented product, filling out their votes based on previously-agreed-upon standards, and go from there. I am occasionally one of those grey eminences. Sometimes the project I think of as best doesn't win. Sometimes it does. Here are the nominees.
A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633, by Ezra Claverie, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, three clothbound hardback digest volumes - Volume I: Jamestown and Environs, 96 pages, Volume II: Lo! New Lands, 192 pages, Volume III: Prodigies, Monsters, and Index, 130 pages, 2024, 3 Castles Award Candidate. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a weird game in the literal sense – it thrives on the weird, strange, and occult. This is an extremely impressive adventure both for size (three hardback volumes) and the nature itself (An alien ship crashes into Earth, in the process creating a rip in reality 150 years previously outside of Jamestown Virginia in the seventeenth century). The melding of historical accuracy (a lot covering the time period) and outré strangeness (mutated plants and animals, animated corpses, alternate realities) make it a very interesting read and should be an interesting play as well. This is the sort of thing that RPGs can do very well.
The End of Everything by Alex Kammer and Alan Patrick, Frog God Games, 216-page hardbound, 2023, 3 Castles Award Candidate. Once upon a time, the 32-page saddle-stitched booklet was the standard for adventures, covering a single location and adventure. Now they tend to be larger, in full cover, and cover a lot more levels and a full campaign. This one couples an epic “end-of-the-world” threat (very Cthulhian in nature) with an out-of-the-ordinary fantasy setting (The Haunted Steppes of the Lost Lands) with its own unique cultures (horsemen, tribal groups, and convivial Gnolls). Carries the players from level 1 to level 12 and spans the width of this rolling, roiling land. Nicely done.
ShadowRim by Greg Christopher, Chubby Funster Games,
200-page digest hardbound, 2023, 3 Castles Award Candidate. My day job is a Senior Writer on Elder Scrolls
Online, so imagine my surprise when I saw this volume, which uses the ShadowDark
rules (which it recognizes) in the Skyrim setting (which it doesn't recognize, at least not directly). It does not SAY
Skyrim, but it uses the races (name-changed), pull-quotes from the game, the Skyrim map
(available separately, but also name-changed), and a declaration that it was “Inspired
by the greatest CRPG of all time” (again, without mentioning that CRPG by name).
Oh, and the back cover has a hand print with the words “We Know” written
beneath it. It reads well, uses the ShadowDark layout, and looks
like a labor of love, but … really?
Dragonslayer by Greg Gillespie, Old School
Publishing, 298-page hardbound, 2024, 3 Castles Award Candidate. My gaming group
has played in some previous Gillespie adventures – Barrowmaze and Lost Canyons
of Archaia. We had a good time with the old-school feel, and our GM (hey, Steve!) transposed what was there into D&Dish
terms (%E 2014 edition). This is the rule set that ties more directly to it. It is definitely
old-school right down to its Jeff Easley cover, and embraces the original rules
with a strong eye towards combat and a delightful lethality. Some of the
material has appeared in the adventures where they first showed up, but now they are
gathered in one spot. Strong, intense rush of old-school nostalgia here.
Don’t F*ck The Priest by James Edward Raggi IV,
Lamentations of the Flame Princess, box set, 64-page hardbound digest, cards,
dice, 2024, 3 Castles Award Candidate. Good points? Excellent production values,
that outré, weird, mushy organic vibe that exudes from LotFP products, and a
card-based dungeon design that actually works for the story they’re
telling. Bad points – Black on puce interior text, unreadable death metal heading fonts,
extreme sexuality and grossness, and edgelord GM approach that tells you that if you
play the adventure in any way other than being a CPU for the brilliant design,
you’re having badwrongfun. Can’t mention the title at dinner parties. Didn’t
even know if I want to show the cover. It's there, but didn't like it enough not to censor it.
And the winner is: TBA
And as for the rest that has come over the transom recently:
Rapscallion by Elizabeth Chaipraditkul (Product
Management) and Whistler (Lead Designer/Lead Writer), Magpie Games, 288-page
digest hardbound, GM Screen, playing maps, dice, dice tray, 2024, Kickstarter. So I’m a fan of pirate
games, and this looks like a good one. It is of the Powered By The Apocalypse (PBtA) family, so we’re talking playbooks and moves. One of the key things I like
about this is the rising tendency to make the case ship as a separate character
with its own playbook. This sort of group identity has shown up in games like Blades in the Dark, and creates a cohesive identity for the
players, as opposed to just “You are adventurers meeting in a bar”. Worth
further investigation.
Dreadnought Return of the Black Maw by Alex Beisel and Nicholas Ross, Liminal Artifact, 88 page softbound, 2024, Kickstarter. The was part of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest, but it really is a bit large for that moniker. It is a horror game with a nautical theme, where tidal waves destroy a fantasy-ish Port Royal and an evil black submarine (?) washes up in the ruins, leaking evil from its reactor. Your choices are to investigate it or run away. Neither are good options. It is yet again Powered by the Apocalypse (uses moves) but is mostly statless and uses a unique fear (dread) determining mechanism - 2d8 roll against a third die (starts at a d4 but ratches up). Interesting.
Flying Circus by Erika Chappell, Newstand Press,
304-page digest softbound, 2020, Page Turner Books. OK, besides pirates, I always
had a fascination with WWI air games. Dogfight from Milton Bradley, Ace of
Aces from Nova Games, Richthofen's War from Avalon Hill. Flying Circus is a fantasy air game, which means dragons and biplanes among
other things. It is PBtA again, and uses a playbook for your aircraft as well.
However, the playbooks are not in the book, but can be found online, and the
links provided in the book are no longer accurate. I had to dig around in Reddit and their
Discord to figure out where they were. Cool thing, unlike a lot of PbtA, the game gets
down into the nuts and bolts of air-to-air combat.
Cthulhu Dark Ages by Chad Bowser and Andi Newton with
James Holloway and Mike Mason, Chaosium, 272-page hardback, 2020, Page Turner
Books. So the conventional wisdom about old TSR was that it put out too much
stuff – splatbooks and new settings and revisiting old ones. Yet the modern Chaosium
has been doing the same thing and seems to be doing OK. This is a revision of
earlier Call of Cthulhu books covering Cthulhu adventures in the medieval world, and is a
serious, serious upgrade. It has the standard features of new and modified
investigator skills, game systems tweaked to the new setting, and appropriate mythos
monsters, but also has a history of 10th century England, a new setting
(in the Severin Valley, of course) and a few new adventures. Very well done.
Get It at Sutlers by Daniel Sell, Melsonian Arts
Council, 110-page digest hardback and numerous small booklets, 2024, Kickstarter.
Troika is a very weird little game, and this is an … I think “adventure area” would
be the best description of it. Imagine a weird tales version of Harrods of London, or
Mike Moorcock writing an episode of “Are You Being Served?”. The setting is an all-purpose
department store (remember department stores? And malls? Yeah, good times), which
has a eclectic clientele, bizarre staff, and unique and alien challenges. You’re
assumed to be working a shift there. Bunches of random encounters. Sort of an
opium dream of a setting.
Bounty Kingdom
Gazetteer by Simone Laudiero, Acheron Games, 184-hardback, 2024m
Kickstarter. Well, half a Kickstarter – the other half (a monster book) will show up eventually.
This is an expansion/setting book for Brancalonia, a whimsical Spaghetti
Fantasy based on Italian folklore and more than a dash of Commedia delle-Arte. New
races, new classes, new subclasses, then a long tour though the city-states of the
Italianish peninsula. This one’s set up for 5E, but it is just a good
sourcebook.
And that is it for now (though more has shown up in the meantime). Stay tuned for the winner of the Three Castles Award, and as always -
[UPDATE: And the Winner Is - A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum. Congratulations to Ezra Claverie and the LotFP team]!
More later,
