This book is the revised version of the author’s home campaign. The main significant change from the old 2016 PDF is the conversion to the Warriors of the Red Planet system: a good choice for the subject matter. The new version also includes an introductory adventure. The document starts with player-facing information on the races and classes of the planet Xuhlan. The Mentalist class is supplemented with a gracefully simple psionic combat system. The gazetteer details a 9-by-11 hex map (at 5-mile scale). The region is a flipped and rotated map of Greece – pretty nice trick if you want to have a natural looking coastline! The hex descriptions are in the Judges Guild/Carcosa style, so very terse, just an indication of the main feature and basic data (e.g. “Mabarra, a port city of 5000 scarlet men, ruled by the Council of Seven. Pays tribute to Yankara”). Sometimes a weird thing is described, but its function or background is left up to the Referee (or, as it usually happens, the players: many groups, when presented with an enigma, quickly generate half a dozen theories… and the Referee can riff off of these. Practice this with caution, though). There are some interconnections between hexes (e.g. the city of Mukhtar [hex 66] controls a bridge [hex 56] and a mining operation [hex 79]), but they are not collected anywhere. I think a good solution would be to at least note in brackets if the hex has links to another area. I would have wished for more such interconnections. The central hub of the region, the arcology/city state Yankara, gets a 4-page write-up, with notable locales in the four distinct sectors of the city. Then there are all kinds of tidbits: info on the calendar of Xuhlan, info on other planets in the system, regional and terrain-based random tables of encounters with creatures and NPCs (incl. the azure-skinned gentleman adventurer, Amon Düül – can’t wait for Amon Düül II to show up). The last main section is the introductory dungeon adventure. Single paragraph background, map (from donjon.bin.sh, which I’m not a fan of [visually], but it does the job and the areas are numbered in a logical progression), a single page with 22 keyed areas. The complex is small, but has three different points of egress & looping corridors. The dungeon rounds out the book pretty nicely and provides rudimentary, but instantly playable material for the first session or two. The logical entry point, for players, their characters, and Referees, then, is the port city of Mabarra [hex 28], where you can start “straight off the boat”. Then nudge the party towards the aforementioned small dungeon, located conveniently in the adjacent hex. Then prep something for the next session: perhaps use the only other thing we learn about Mabarra – that it pays tribute to the hi-tech city state of Yankara. Maybe it’s time to send the yearly caravan train up north, and the players can join as guards… or perhaps execute a heist, cue wilderness adventure. In many ways, Xuhlan is the quintessential pulpy science fantasy setting (“Gamma Barsoom” & “Conan on Tatooine”, in Nordin’s own words). Barbarians, mutants, technology indistinguishable from sorcery indistinguishable from technology, you know the drill. Nothing radically new, but it’s all there, at your fingertips. What would be the planetary equivalent of meat-and-potatoes? It is also, as presented, a very niche product. There is a LOT of stuff crammed into these 40 pages… All of it useful – but it takes an experienced Referee to run it. So, the usual caveats apply. If you are comfortable working with, and elaborating (or even improvising on the spot) upon barebones descriptions, then you can have a lot of fun with Xuhlan. Even if you don’t use it wholesale, or if you have your own campaign world, I think it provides a good template for writing up your own stuff in a laconic, focused way.

This review originally appeared in the Ulfire Tablets zine #1: https://eldritch-fields.itch.io/ulfire-tablets-1

Overall, I think this book strikes the perfect balance between being an atmospheric and authentic in-setting text, while maintaining actual gameability and content you can utilize when running your campaign. If you run Lamentations of the Flame Princess – pick this up. If you need some classic (as in “going back to antiquity”) beasts and some weird, interesting monsters for your OSR game – pick this up. It is a delight and a good source of inspiration. Full review on my blog: http://eldritchfields.blogspot.com/2021/11/review-groats-worth-of-grotesques.html

Highlights: evocative historical setting with an adjustable weirdness level, good layout and art, dense hexcrawl (there are no "empty" spaces!), plenty of hooks and stories for the players to interact with. It can be played both as a straightforward historical game, or a weird investigative horror that truly tries & fries your soul!

Overall, I really like Times That Fry Men's Souls! I definitely want to run it eventually. If you want a historically grounded campaign, with plentiful weird opportunities, you should get it too. Great for OSR systems (and especially LotFP), but certainly usable with Colonial Gothic or Call of Cthulhu too.

More detailed review here: https://eldritchfields.blogspot.com/2019/02/review-times-that-fry-mens-souls.html

The Stygian Library follows the same structure as The Gardens of Ynn: it is a procedurally generated environment, with plenty randomness, but also with a strong thematic coherency at the same time.

The Library is made up of randomly generated locations (mostly rooms). The player group begins on Depth level 0, then move deeper and deeper. For each step, the DM rolls a Location and a Detail, combines them. The Depth rating is always factored into the generation of the next room, so the Stygian Library gradually opens up, and the players are able to reach the more obscure and weird places.

There are also randomized Events and Encounters with the inhabitants of the Library. The Bestiary is quite extensive, full of library-themed creatures: animated books, origami golems, dust elementals, and, of course, the Librarians: they are divided into five color-coded orders, each with its own set of duties, spells, abilities.

I really dig the atmosphere and the tone of this setting. This is how Emmy describes it in the introduction: Whilst some of the contents in this book can be portrayed in a rather dark light (it is, fundamentally, about necromancy), it’s not intended as a particularly grim setting. One thing that often strikes me about the fiction I enjoyed in my youth is how the dark and the whimsical so often go hand in hand. Not as a subversive contrast, but rather how the imagination (when allowed to wander) will flit between ideas that fill us with wonder and with dread. Like exploring an empty house, all it takes is a slight change in context (nightfall, say) to make the experience creepy. So, The Gardens and the Library are built using the same principles, There is one major difference between the Gardens and the Library. Ynn is all about exploration, wonder and adventure. The Stygian Library offers the same "sense of discovery", but it is also vast (potentially infinite) repository of knowledge, so it is very likely the player characters visit it with a specific goal in mind.

Emmy presents a simple, but elegant subsystem for tracking the players' progress towards their goal. There is a Progress score, its initial rating is tied to the highest Intelligence rating in the group. The score increases if the group talks with somebody knowledgeable, or finds a book about the topic they are researching, etc., and decreases if the party is lost or misinformed. The DM sets the difficulty of finding the information (e.g. 20 for basic knowledge, 35 for dangerous obscurities). If the Progress reaches this value AND the group is deep enough into the Library, the precious information is found.

Furthermore, the presence of the Librarians, their active and engaged factions, also gives the Stygian Library a different, more "narrative" style, than the slightly more passive, dreamy, utterly lost inhabitants of the landscapes of Ynn.

So, overall, I think The Stygian Library is not only a great follow-up to The Gardens of Ynn, but also presents its own developments.

The only minus is that the .pdf is still just a simple text, without any hyperlinks or bookmarks... This book would benefit ENORMOUSLY from a well-marked structure. For example, it'd be great to be able to click a header on the Location Table, and be taken to the description. Maybe something for a future edition?

Review originally posted at https://eldritchfields.blogspot.com/2018/10/reviewoverview-stygian-library-by-emmy.html

A collection of highly evocative and utterly creepy spells! Reading them feels like reading a setting description... Pure horror science fantasy cannibalism. Dune goes Lovecraft, Metamorphosis Alpha goes Alien, Erich von Däniken doesn't go anywhere, just stays in his chrysalis?

(This is the conclusion of a review of the PDF version)

I can say that Apes Victorious definitely lived up to my expectations! It has everything I wanted to see in it, it all seems practical and highly usable; a stand-alone niche game for people who love Planet of the Apes. And I think it has the potential to appeal to non-die-hard fans as well.

The writing is top-notch. Brief, to the point, yet personal. Formatting and layout is clean and readable. There aren't many illustrations (maybe 15 pictures for 120 pages?), all done by Mark Allen. This isn't eye candy... but it's easy on the eye. I think the book could have taken more pictures, and maybe included other artist (not that I have any problem with Allen's style - and it's a good fit for the theme). But it's a conscious laconic approach.

Read the whole review here: eldritchfields.blogspot.com/2016/10/apes-victorious-reviewoverview.html