Mortzengersturm Review on Gnome Stew

John Arcadian at Gnome Stew has a positive review of Mortzengersturm up today.

Here's a shipping update on the original batch of print copy orders: All U.S. orders here shipped as of Tuesday. The last two foreign orders I plan to put in the mail today.

OSR Extravangza

There's a sell going on on rpgnow/drivethrurpg it includes basically every OSR thing you can think of and a number of Hydra Co-op products including the Hill Cantons trilogy (Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Misty Isles, and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko) and also my very own Weird Adventures.

There are also some cool D&D megabundles (Known World Gazetteers and Planescape).

Check it out!

Wednesday Comics: Weird Stuff I Read Recently

Rock Candy Mountain #1
by Kyle Starks
This series scratched my Weird Adventures itch. It's the story of Slim (down on his luck even by hobo standards), who encounters Jackson, a hobo badass on a journey to find that hobo Shangri-La, Big Rock Candy Mountain--if he can stay ahead of the Devil. It's kind of like a combination of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and maybe a martial arts movie.

The Grave Robber's Daughter
by Richard Sala
This one's a little bit horror, a little bit black comedy. No-nonsense gal sleuth Judy Drood's car breakdown near the town of Obadiah Glen. The town is deserted except for a group of  ne'er-do-well teens, a little girl--and an abandoned carnival full of sinister clowns. Drood will face sideshow mutants and magic potions before she solves the weird mystery.

Twin Peaks and the Investigative Sandbox

Twin Peaks returned to TV last night, though I haven't seen it yet since I don't have Showtime. But hey, here's a map!

Also, check out this classic post on Weird Towns as "investigative sandboxes."

Prometheus Unhinged: The Dungeon Mad God Machine

Seeing Alien: Covenant yesterday, which (no real spoilers) carries a theme from Prometheus (and from Frankenstein, ultimately) of lesser beings meddling in creation of life, gave me an idea. I've written before (and it's sort of baked into the rules in any case, most explicitly in BECMI) about dungeons in D&D being an engine of apotheosis.

What if dungeons didn't just create gods or god-like being? What if they tended to create mad ones? All those weird D&D monsters are waved off as the products of crazy wizards, but maybe they're more specifically the product of crazy, god-level wizards?

In fact, it's possible dungeons weren't originally a tool of apotheosis at all. One made race, the Engineers (or Dungeoneers) did it all on their own. The first dungeons were their laboratories, their three dimensional journals of magical experimentation. A delve into one charts (and recapitulates) their ascension to post-mortaldom--and their descent in madness. A dungeon then, is a living blasphemous tome, recording secrets man was not meant to know.

It goes without saying that probably all life in the campaign world began their. Everything crawled up from the depths, evolving away from its original purpose to its current form. Unless of course, that evolution was the point. The Dungeoneers might have felt they would only have arrived at godhood when they could create beings that could follow in their footsteps--or maybe even challenge their supremacy. Perhaps there's another, higher level game and they need soliders, or experimental subjects, to win it?

Mortzengersturm Sales and Shipping

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My pre-convention stock of Mortzengersturm is out--but if you didn't get a copy yet, don't despair, I may well have some available after NTrpgcon.

Over half of the orders have shipped as of this week, so if you haven't gotten yours it may be coming soon. I am on target to ship the rest before May 29.

5e Race Creation

I've posted this link before, but it just keeps getting better, so I thought it was time to remind everyone.  JamesMusicus has developed a formula for creating "balanced" 5e races and tested it through all the published races so far. He's also got a catalog of a bunch of new races he created.

Check out the other stuff on his blog here.