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| The recent arrivals at Grubb Street ... |
The Sassoon Files 2nd Edition by Jason Sheets, Damon Lang, Andrew Montgomery, and Jesse Covner, Sons of the Singularity 272 page hardbound, 2025. Kickstarter. This is the 2nd Edition, and I should note that the 1st edition had problems seeing print since doing a project about pre-communist China hit some push-back from printing in China. The setting is Shanghai, which is touched on all-too-briefly in the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep and gets a deeper look in The Nyarlathotep Companion. I was the Keeper on a long-running Masks campaign (Which I may someday bore the heck of everyone here by talking about it - unsurprisingly, I have things to say).
But anyway ...
Sassoon Files is really good, and attempts to capture the flavor of Shanghai in the pre-war era. It is at the time where the city is overseen by a bunch of Western powers that broke it up into rival fiefdoms, have native Chinese movements verging on a split between Communists and Nationalists in the wake of the death of Sun Yat-Sen, has a collection of local criminal organizations of varying levels of control, and is in general being a hub of intrigue and adventure in a historical sense. And add new mythos cults, deep ones, ancient mystic relics elevates the entire setting. On the down side, the timing of the adventures overlap with each other and with Masks, so the Keeper may have to do some re-orging to run everything, and while the players can throw in with gangsters or the communists, they always tend to come back to dealing with Victor Sassoon, a wealthy bon vivant with a eye towards protecting the city from Mythos threats. Hence the title.
Daggerheart Core Set by Spenser Stark et. al, Darrington Press, 266-page hardbound, boxed set of 280 cards, 2025, Midgard Comics and Games. This is the most recent of the declared "D&D-Killers" I've encountered over the years, and has an excellent pedigree with the Critical Role folk. The book is colorful, well-organized, and hits all the beats of traditional RPGs, though it adheres to the more free-form Powered by the Apocalypse/Blades in the Dark style of play (I have opinions, but that will wait for another day as well). I'm not sold on the plethora of cards that came with the rules, but that may just from previous experiences, and I'll see how well they fit into the game. So this one is under investigation. I got this from my local friendly comic shop, which has a small section of RPGs and discovered that customers were amazed they had it, since it had sold out in more traditional gaming venues.
The Excellent Prismatic Spray Volume 1, Issue 2, 72-page squarebound, Pelgrane Press, 2001, from the collection of John Rateliff. John (known the blogosphere as Sacnoth). John has been clearing out his collection, mostly on Ebay with the aid of Bill Webb, but occasionally something offers something up to the rest of the gang. This is the 'zine for The Dying Earth RPG, which is in the category of "Great RPGs I've read but will probably never play" - the gaming version of tsunduko. The game and 'zine both emulate the flowery, ornate, robust, superfluous language of Jack Vance's books perfectly, and to be frank, the game deserves to be featured in those podcasts where they talk about games that are no longer published. In addition, this particular volume contains a four-page essay by Gary Gygax on "Jack Vance & the D&D Game".
Curse of Candlelight Manor, by Heidi and Erik Gygax-Garland, 32-page self-covered digest booklet, 2023, Gaxland Pooduction, Shadows over Lake Geneva, A Sanguine Horror by Heidi and Erik Gygax-Garland, 32-page saddle-stitched booklet, 2023, both also from the collection of John Rateliff. Heidi is Gary Gygax's daughter, and she and her husband are continuing the family tradition. Curse is a wonderful, short, old-school style adventure written for 5E, and set in a haunted house. Sanguine is usable for both 1E and 5E, and is a modern adventure set in Lake Geneva of 1948, dealing with the old Oak Hill Sanitarium, which is one the site of now Colonial View Condos where I lived in the early 80s. I am really curious if the maps provided are based on the original Sanitarium. Both are volume 2s in a series, so I'm going to have to pick up the first volumes the next time I am at GaryCon.
Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games by Fred Van Lente, Tom Fowler, and Bill Crabtree, 112-page hardbound, Clover Press, 2025, Kickstarter. Fred Van Lente has done one of my favorite comic book series, Action Philosophers, so I was very interested in seeing what he did with the more recent history of RPGs. He covers the basics of history (sort of what you'd read in the first Playing at the World, traveling through Chess, miniatures, wargames, and the Braunsteins which birthed modern RPGs, as well as covering the more real-life salacious and scandalous adventures over the years (Dallas Eggbert, the FBI raid on Steve Jackson). But where it excels is when it starts talking about other, non-D&D RPG games, like Call of Cthulhu, West End's Star Wars and (ahem) the original Marvel Super Heroes by myself and Steve Winter. Its pretty good, though I have to note that liberties were taken in presentation (Yes, Lake Geneva had a Playboy Resort, No, there were no Playboy Bunnies at the first GenCon (At least in uniform)), and some of the stories are of the "yeah ... kinda", but its an excellent, entertaining look at our hobby and industry.
An Infinity of Ships by by Adam Good and Jamie Peters, Illustrated by Rob Turpin, 152-page digest hardcover, published by STATIONS, 2025, Kickstarter. I love the art and idea behind this one - the ability to create your own spaceships. But not a formulaic "Here is how many credits the astronavigation unit costs", but a more free-form "Here, roll on a huge number of tables and tell me what you and you players can make of it". It is more inspirational than instructive. The ships themselves range from mechanical to organic to beyond, and the AI ranges from simple servants to godlike commanders. The names are out of IMBanks novels.("for example, "This Could Have Been an Email"). It doesn't try the define the universe that these ships operate in, but in covering all types and options (and running light on operating systems), they portray a radically diverse and chaotic galaxy where there are few known constants. Still, worth hacking about with it. The Kickstarter included stickers, bookmarks, and 115 cards to randomly create ships on the fly.
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| ... and one that arrived after I took the photo. |
And that's it for this round. Now I settle into the more boring stuff about very local politics. Its cool if you find something else to read. I'll understand.
More Later,
