Dragon 144 (April, 1989). I dig this Daniel Horne cover painting. I don’t dig the crummy April Fool’s Day jokes that package it.
Since overall the sahuagin Monstrous Arcana series underwhelmed, it seemed fitting to pair it with the book from the Sites series that I find least satisfying: Castle Sites (1995). It is really a matter of expectations. Like its predecessor, City Sites, I expected this to be a collection of locations that could be placed in […]
The climactic chapter of the Monstrous Arcana sahuagin trilogy is Sea of Blood (1997). It is better than the previous chapter, but is still marred by questionable design choices. Like the fact that the NPC who guides the party to the sahuagin city betrays the players, leading to their imprisonment. At which point they are […]
After Ragnarok
It’s a bold move for Le Sueur to make a Norse-inspired Souls-like tabletop roleplaying game, and yet he manages to avoid some extremely fraught territory.
I dislike Night of the Shark (1997). It is one of those plot-heavy event crawls where the outcome is pre-ordained in order to set up the third module. Which we should just skip to, then, if it is so important. Basically, the folks at Angler Island realize that one of the artifacts acquired at the […]
Evil Tide (1997) is the first in the trilogy of sahuagin-centric Monstrous Arcana adventures. It builds on material from the Sea Devils sourcebook and also anticipates the Of Ships and the Sea sourcebook (typical 2e sourcebook synergizing). There are even quick rules for underwater adventuring that are condensed to a half page. Its an improvement, […]
So wait, demons are nukes? Apparently! At least as far as Fred Saberhagen is concerned. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out the classic science fantasy trilogy, Empire of the East. The last volume, Changeling Earth, got name-checked in Appendix N, but all three provided plenty of clear inspiration for Dungeons & […]
Generally, I like monster fish people. Deep ones are cool. Creech rules. Mer-man was my favorite Master of the Universe. D&D monster fish people, though? Nope. It isn’t that I don’t like sahuagin. They’re cool! But I really, really don’t like underwater adventures. So that baseline, coupled with the fact that I don’t really think […]