I played far fewer RPGs in 2017 than I have in previous years. In the beginning of the year I ran a couple sessions of World of the Lost, and I played in a few random games locally and online, but I can probably count all the RPG’ing I did on two hands. This is something I hope to fix in 2018.
I did get into war gaming in a big way, starting with Warhammer in the summer and ending with Kingdom Death by the end of the year. These two games have kept me happy and entertained over the last 6 months. I expect that both Warhammer and Kingdom Death will remain regular fixtures in my life this year—if only because I’ve spent so much money on them both. I’ve found it much easier to meet and play both games, as neither requires anyone prep anything. (Well, besides all that modeling and painting, I suppose.) I still want to figure out how to mix up my Warhammer games with my RPG elements.
My RPG purchasing is still dominated by OSR books. This year many of those books came from individuals new to publishing, or whose imprints are quite small. I’m continually impressed by what people manage to produce. Daniel Sell went from making small zines to publishing two (really nice) hard cover books. Jacob Hurst also transitioned from zines to fancy books with the release of the two books that describe the Hot Spring Isles. LotFP only produced one new book, but what a book it was: we got Veins of the Earth! The indie scene puts the big publishers to shame with what they manage to accomplish.
While 2016 might have been one of the shittier years in recent memory, it was seriously killing it when it came to RPG books. I continue to mostly read books coming out of the OSR. My favourite publisher remains Lamentations of the Flame Princess: they had a stellar year. Maze of the Blue Medusa was finally released and it’s so beautiful it’s unreal. Like last year, I did end up buying some “indie” games: Burning Wheel’s fancy new books], and some interesting looking Apocalypse World games, including the original game itself.
I buy a lot of RPGs, but managed to buy nothing from Wizards of the Coast. I feel like they are leaving money on the table by not catering to a wider variety of tastes with their work. They need an indie imprint.
I buy stuff when stressed and it’s clear I was stressed at the tail end of the year. I ended 2016 with far more books than I had planned to buy. My attempts to limit myself to a book a month has been one of my less successful projects.
At the start of the year I had a goal to buy no more than one RGP book a month. This is less about money and more about actually making sure I have the time to really sit and enjoy the books I buy: it’s easy to collect RPG books for the sake of collecting. Anyway, I didn’t really come close to my goal. (I actually did worse than the previous year I tried this experiment.)
The bulk of what I buy continues to be books from the OSR for use with D&D, but there were a few exceptions. I grabbed Ryuutama’s PDF when it was put up for sale, and then quickly upgraded to a hardcover. The game looks like an SNES manual, and doesn’t remind me of any other RPG I’ve played. I backed The Warren on Kickstarter because I thought Bully Pulpit’s previous game Night Witches was well done. That book arrived at the end of the year and looks to be the game about rabbits I didn’t know I wanted to play. I finally bought Dungeon World, after enjoying Perilous Wilds so much.
There are lots of cool zines and small modules being put out by individuals in the OSR now. A Pernicious Pamphlet and In the Woods are stand out examples of this sort of work. I am hoping to make a zine from bits and pieces of my Carcosa game this coming year.
I only bought one book from Wizards of the Coast. The stuff they put out isn’t really of interest to me. I wish they had an indie-imprint doing more interesting work. Out of the Abyss is an enjoyable read, but it’s also large and cumbersome, and I can’t imagine actually using the book to run a game.
If you were curious what books are in the running for The Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming for 2015, here you go:
RPG
Date
Category
Format
1
Beyond the Wall
January
OSR
PDF
2
Sol
February
???
Print
3
The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem
February
LotFP
PDF
4
Yoon-Suin: The Purple Lands
February
OSR
PDF
5
Infernal Realms‡
February
P&P
PDF
6
The Pale Lady¥
February
LotFP
PDF
7
Kingdom
March
Indie
PDF
8
Microscope
March
Indie
PDF
9
Fire on the Velvet Horizon
April
OSR
Print
10
Perilous Journeys
April
DW
Print
11
Ryuutama
June
Japan
Print
12
A Thousand Dead Babies†
June
OSR
PDF
13
Hark! A Wizard!†
June
OSR
PDF
14
Neoclassical Geek Revival†
June
OSR
PDF
15
Rampaging Monster†
June
OSR
PDF
16
Scourge of the Tikbalang†
June
OSR
PDF
17
Trail of Stone and Sorrow†
June
OSR
PDF
18
Gem Prison of Zardax†
June
OSR
Print
19
Beyond the Wall - Further Afield
July
OSR
PDF
20
The Warren
August
SG
Print
21
A Pernicious Pamphlet
September
OSR
PDF
22
Out of the Abyss
September
WotC
Print
23
The Hell House Beckons
October
OSR
PDF
24
In the Woods
October
OSR
PDF
25
The Price of Evil
October
OSR
PDF
26
False Readings
November
OSR
PDF
27
Cthonic Codex‡
November
OSR
PDF
28
Obscene Serpent Religion
December
OSR
PDF
29
Dungeon World
December
DW
PDF
‡ Gifts from authors
¥ Bonus Kickstarter reward
† I won all of Zzarchov’s modules, including the then unreleased Gem Prison of Zardax, which I own as a giant pile of paper
People, this box! This is the box I have been waiting for. If you could only see my full-body sobs for joy.1 All the way from Finland comes another box of goodies from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Because I have backed so many LotFP Kickstarters I somehow ended up with 4 extra books beyond the 2 I ordered. I will probably write about each in more detail shortly, but I thought I would say a quick word about the books after flicking through them really quick.
As I have mentioned previously, there is no one I am aware of anywhere else in the RPG scene make books as nice as James Raggi, including all the big name publishers: Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, etc. A Red and Pleasant Land has tiny print run compared to the new 5e books, but is comparable in price and is physically a much nicer book. The paper is nice thick and matte, and the binding of the hardback is actually signature stitched. (It’s disappointing how many hardbacks nowadays are essentially casebound books with hard covers.) A Red and Pleasant Land is actually nicer than the Penguin Classics reissue of Alice’s Advneture in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass that I recently purchased—and that book is pretty nice itself! All of the recent LotFP books are produced with a level of care that now seems to be lost in most of the publishing world.
Beyond book fetishism one can also appreciate LotFP books for their art. There is obvious effort put into sourcing good and interesting art. I can’t say I’m always a fan of the choices Raggi makes, but there is never a piece of art in his books that feels phoned in. His books have much nicer covers than most modern fantasy novels, and certainly most RPG books. Of this recent batch of books, I love the cover of No Salvation For Withes the most—the interior art is too gross and terrifying for me sadly.
I love books. It’s refreshing to see there are still people out there who love them as much as me.
Well no, there are no tears, but I am pretty hyped. ↩
There are so many old D&D modules out there that sound a little bit interesting. I decided to write out exactly what older D&D modules and books I want. The goal here was to stop myself from spending money like an idiot on anything and everything I might stumble upon, but also have enough books to buy that I can spend money like an idiot. I don’t consider myself a collector of D&D books, but there is certainly some aspect of collecting at play in my behaviour. I also have a (bad) habit of buying more books than I could possibly hope to read in a reasonable amount of time. I wanted to pick a small set of old books and then forget any others exist.
In the end I decided to look for the following books:
D&D Basic Edition
D&D Expert Edition
B1 - In Search of the Unknown
B2 - Keep on the Borderlands
B4 - The Lost City
T1 - Village of Hommlet
I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City
D1,2 - Descent into the Depths of the Earth
D3 - Vault of the Drow
X1 - Isle of Dread
X2 - Castle Amber
I’ve picked up a few of these books already, finding them used on eBay and Amazon. I have a question for you: have I missed any obviously amazing D&D or AD&D 1e books?1
I have no interest whatsoever in anything from 3rd Edition. There is a part of me that wants to buy up all the 2nd Edition Dark Sun books, but for now that’s not something I plan to do. ↩
I’ve added a new page to this site, listing the D&D books I currently own.1 I like seeing what books (and PDFs) other people own, as it’s a good source for finding new books that might be worth reading. That page will also be a good place to link back to reviews i’ve written about the books I’ve bought. For someone who doesn’t actually play that much D&D, I own a lot of books on the subject. I suppose this page also exists to shame myself into not buying more D&D books.
