There's nothing Yule-flavoured about this except that it's magical (or do I mean madrigal?) and riotously delightful and those are essential elements of the season. Jonas Wolf's Renaissance covers are my current favourite thing on YouTube, so I wanted to share the fun with you.
If you're in the north, stay warm, and the sun will resume normal service as soon as possible.
There's a new Casket of Fays just out with the usual blend of high-quality writing and art, this time with some gorgeous full-colour pieces by Inigo Hartas for Jewelspider.
I won't list all the good stuff on offer, but among the articles I liked were Alistair Smith's thoughts on how to cut the "Gallows Wood" scenario from The Elven Crystals down to a single session's gaming. Alistair makes some good points, and I should have done it forty years ago on our DW promotional tour when I had to run the adventure every evening for sales reps and book buyers -- and invariably ran out of time.
Casket of Fays issue 17 is now available on DriveThruRPG.
In The Ashes is a solo roleplaying gamebook written by Pablo Aguilera and published by Devir. Pablo was kind enough to send me a couple of copies. It's a handsome hardback with rich colour illustrations adorning almost every page and I’ve spent some immersive hours diving into its beautifully intricate world.
First off, as you can see in the video, this is by no means your typical gamebook. The story itself is classic high fantasy, taking place on the magical island of Obor and beginning with a scene of great dramatic force and horror: a public execution. You assume control of several different characters over the first three (of four) acts, with the game introducing you to each in turn. While the plot remains mostly linear, your actions still matter, influencing how events unfold in later acts.
One of the standout features of the gamebook is its deck-building mechanic. Yes, deck-building -- In The Ashes integrates cards into its core gameplay. You’ll begin with a small set of cards and gain more as you progress, and those cards are all laid out on the page. While you never physically shuffle them, you’ll strategically choose cards during encounters, making for a uniquely tactical experience.
In fact that's a unifying feature of the game: everything, including your tactical moves, is written directly into the book, right there on the page. Another example: the symbols that you mark on later pages. These are like keywords in a book like Vulcanverse, but with a more subtle affect. You'll reach that page, see that you've marked a symbol, and immediately you know that what's about to happen is a consequence of an earlier choice you made. You can see why you might want two copies.
Though the gameplay is dense, the prose is clean and to the point, keeping the pace brisk without sacrificing the richness of the world. This is crucial for a gamebook that wants you to focus on its mechanics and tactical decisions as much as its story. You’re not just reading—you’re strategizing, managing your resources, and executing complex plans, all while the narrative unfolds.
The variety in character mechanics, the tactical depth, and the smooth integration of board game elements make In The Ashes an experience worth savoring. If you're a fan of solo roleplaying games, especially those with a classic fantasy quest structure and a focus on strategy, this book is definitely worth seeking out.
And while I'm doing the recommendation thing, a couple of other juicy items are, firstly, The Casket of Fays #15 -- the usual superb Dragon Warriors/Legend gaming material. It's pay-what-you-want but don't be stingy. I especially liked Tom Clare's article on doppelgangers, which begins:
"Sometimes, at particular hours on particular nights, one looks into a candlelit mirror and gets the distinct feeling that the person reflected there is somebody else. This is a sign the veil between our world and the murky, warped otherworld of the mirror people has grown thin. And if in that moment the mirror is touched, there is a chance that the gossamer barrier will yield and one’s double will step out into the real world. (Highly reflective ponds count as mirrors for this purpose and, if touched in bright moonlight, have an even greater chance of releasing a double.)"
That's very Legend, that. But I said two juicy items. The other is Travelling at Night, a luscious-looking character-driven CRPG from Weather Factory. It's set in a skewed alternate Cold War period. I've recently been drawn to The Thaumaturge and have been incubating a mid-20th century game of my own involving politics, espionage and ideological tensions, so maybe it's an idea whose time has come. (Relatively speaking, that is; I'm sure orcs and fireballs will continue to hold the top spot for most gamers.)
The darkening nights, the curling leaves, that smoky tang in the chill air -- and to really mark the coming of autumn here's a new issue of Casket of Fays, the Dragon Warriors 'zine. It's the usual high quality blend of scenarios and articles by what I maintain to be the top creative team in roleplaying games today. There are grave knights, poisons, saints, magic items, micro-games, creatures, adventure seeds, and much more.
There's also an expanded version of Stanley Barnes's DW rules conversion of Blood Sword sages which we looked at here a while back.
What will it cost? To you, nothing. And as if a free 32-page magazine isn't enough, you also get the second part of Andrew Wright's traveller's tale cum adventure seed, "Marauders of the Azure Main", complete with maps of the Mungoda coast.
And there's also exciting news at last from Serpent King Games, stirring from their lair as the balefires of the season flare out in the gathering dusk. Next month we are promised The Cursed King with Robert Dale's eagerly awaited Brymstone following early in 2025. All this just in time for Dragon Warriors' 40th anniversary. Don't miss it!
There's very little new material released for Dragon Warriors these days, but I prefer to take a goblet-half-full approach, consoling myself with the thought that what is released is of top quality and written and drawn by the best creative team an old-school RPG designer could possibly wish for. Yes, I'm talking about Red Ruin Publishing, whose latest offering is Casket of Fays #13.
If the cover alone isn't enough to tempt you, look at the contents: a couple of adventures (one of them solo, one of them with orcs), rules FAQs, some very useful campfire magic for travellers, a two-part article adding some details to the light-level rules and how they interact with spells, and creatures both new and really old. And you get bonus campaign material about the port of Gatina on the Azure Coast.
What do you have to pay for such riches? This is where the goblet magically runneth over, for Red Ruin are giving it all away for free. (The madness rules are in DW book 5, you'll recall.) Go and clear out the treasure hall now on DriveThruRPG.
Next year is Dragon Warriors' fortieth anniversary. I'd like us to mark it with lots of new stuff -- Robert Dale's brilliant Brymstone campaign for starters. Here's hoping the stars will align.
"Inspired by the excellent work of Red Ruin Publishing (and a throwaway comment from Wayne Imlach) I wanted to see if Blood Sword and Dragon Warriors were compatible. It took a little while but I created a formula that would turn a warrior’s stats into a knight's, and an enchanter’s stats into a sorcerer's, and then applied this throughout. It worked for humanoid opponents remarkably well, so I just had to find modifications for animals, demons, and giants/dragons. I did cheat with a couple of extreme encounters in book 5; other than that the numbers don’t lie.”
The complete set of stat blocks that Oliver kindly provided for all five Blood Sword books is a bit much to reproduce in just one blog post here, so I'll release them in installments. To get started, though, Oliver also calculated the DW stats for The Keep of the Lich Lord, and you can download those here.
My first published book was Crypt of the Vampire. That was before the Soviet Union fell. A couple of years ago I reworked it as an Alexa app (Amazon call them skills, but apps is what they are) but it never saw the light of day because the coder lost interest. Eventually -- by which I mean after I've finished Vulcanverse book 5, Jewelspider, Tetsubo, Abraxas and Λ -- I'll release that revised version as a book.
But you don't have to wait that long for some sinister vampiric thrills, because Red Ruin Publishing have unleashed another of their top-notch free Dragon Warriors solo adventures, Lair of the Vampire, set in Hudristania, where:
"...tiny villages squat miserably in the isolated mountain passes, like birds’ nests huddled into a crag for shelter. Frightened peasants quake under the rule of a hundred local despots. Terror soars aloft on membraneous wings by night and sifts the carrion in lonely churchyards—for this is the traditional home of vampires, ghouls and werewolves. Black-clad priests trek from valley to valley, but the peasants are always torn between faith and fear. Spend a few days in any of the mountain villages and you will see a funeral procession wending a path down through the narrow streets—old men whose lined faces show the scars of many losses, grim youths with jaws set in sullen defiance, veiled women sending up a shrieking lament, and wailing children who have yet to learn the injustice into which they have been born. The mourners are led by a priest with a silver crucifix on his breast. Watch and wait. After the procession has gone past, once the wailing and the clanging of the priest's bell have faded into the distance, you may see another figure pass by. He follows the mourners at a respectful distance, his eyes showing only a weary determination. On his back he has a heavy knapsack. After the coffin has been lowered into the ground, the priest will linger to pay this man a few silvers before hurrying back with the other villagers to bolt his door. The stranger opens his knapsack and prepares the items he will need. He is a draktoter, a profession that combines gravedigging with another unpleasant duty. He takes the mallet and stake from his sack and turns towards the open grave. It is his job to see that the ranks of the nosferatu will not be joined by this unfortunate soul."
The latest issue of Casket of Fays is now out, and among the many reasons to pick up your free copy is the tribute I've written to Russ Nicholson.
Inside the Rookery did a special episode last week about Russ's artwork, featuring James Wallis, Marc Gascoigne, and Ian Livingstone. Among the revelations is the fact that he taught art to Sean Phillips, nowadays best known as Ed Brubaker's main collaborator. (Here's some of Mr Phillips's artwork. Is there any influence by Russ? You decide.)
The talk there is about Russ’s art but there's not much about the man himself. I like this recent interview because it not only fills in a lot of his biographical info but lets all of us who were privileged to know him hear again the voice of a much-loved friend and thoroughly decent human being.
A new issue of Casket of Fays is always cause for great gladness. Issue 9's highlights are too many to list but they include an interview with Lee Barklam of The Cobwebbed Forest. Lee is a man after my own heart, as this comment shows:
"Combat – and magic – is likely the last resort for embattled adventurers, and I place more emphasis on ensuring the lands in which the characters adventure feel genuinely strange, dangerous, and exciting."
That's exactly what I'm trying to do with the Jewelspider RPG, but Lee is way ahead of me with his homebrew rules. He also once played a sorcerer who didn't cast a single spell in the whole adventure, which is exactly as it should be.
The issue also contains new creatures, weapons, rules, a great piece on heraldry, an industrial-scale gibbet, a much-needed system for balanced character generation, and a Q&A with me that I'd entirely forgotten. (Luckily I still agree with myself on most points.)
Did I mention it's free? What are you waiting for?
As well as those in the Casket, there's another Fay celebrating today - the magician Fay Presto, whose birthday it is. I've only met her a couple of times; each time she was mingling with the guests at publishing parties and performing magic literally under our noses. Close-up magic like that I find much more impressive than the million-dollar illusions like making the Eiffel Tower disappear. (I even managed to make Salisbury Cathedral vanish myself once; big deal.) Her tricks are real wizardry and she's one of Britain's best-loved conjurers. So happy birthday, Fay.
Nothing punctures the dignity of a Dark Lord faster than banishing him to the world of mortals in the body of a 12-year-old kid. That's what happened to Dirk Lloyd, as fans of Jamie's hilarious books will know. And now, as part of his relentless struggle to claim back his powers, Dirk is appearing in a stage musical -- for a limited run to begin with, but Broadway beckons.
The show is written and produced by Kevin Murphy, creator of Reefer Madness and Heathers: The Musical and one of the lead writers on Desperate Housewives. He knows his diminuendo from his demisemiquavers. You can book tickets for the London premiere here.
Equally exciting, issue 8 of the superb Casket of Fays is out today. And by the generosity of the seelie folks at Red Ruin Publishing it's free. What are you waiting for?
Thanks to the instantaneous distributive powers of the internet, there are some Christmas freebies you can scoop up in the time it takes to say "ho ho ho".
Casket of Fays issue #3, for instance, has scenarios, stories and new rules for Dragon Warriors. I especially liked Lee Barklam's article on cunning folk, having heard a friend of mine talk about his Yorkshire heritage and a colourful local character called Conjurer Tom. But there's so much brilliant material packed into this issue that it's impossible to single out any one piece. Many thanks to editor Simon Barns and his contributors for making such top-quality support material available for free.
By the way, have you seen any of Jakub Różalski's art? His work seems like a perfect fit for Legend at Christmas. Here's what I mean:
Still with Dragon Warriors, Jim Desborough has a post on Yuletide monsters like Krampus and (not being as lazy as me) he's even included stat blocks. Don't settle for a lump of coal when you can have this crew of ghastly ghoulies in your Christmas stocking. And while you're there, do take a look at all the great gaming stuff in the Postmortem Studios store.
Straying only a little way from DW into the misty borderland where the English New Weird merges with science fiction and folk horror, John Whitbourn's Binscombe Tales includes a creepy seasonal yarn called "It'll All Be Over By Christmas" which comes in a Kindle chapbook with a couple of other stories. If you're asking my advice, I'd buy the whole series, but that's a good place to start.
But wait, you say; that's not free. True, but here's another Binscombe Tale that is. Draw the curtains, dim the lights, and enjoy "Eyes".
I can't say more about the adventures because one of our group has called dibs on running them, ideally on or around Halloween. But I can tell you that they're free (right here on DriveThruRPG) and look to be the perfect answer to my recent grumble about overlong roleplaying scenarios. Actually, "The Witch Oak" is a short story rather than an adventure, but our referee has embargoed it to raid for ideas, as I expect most will.
You might want to keep an eye on the Red Ruin page on DriveThruRPG, incidentally, as Casket of Fays #2 is due any day now. Also free and filled with encounters, adventures, items, spells and articles by the top creative talent working on DW today, it's better than the luxury suite at Gully's Inn -- and without the goblins waking you up at two in the morning, too.
