[Fanzine Focus XL] Pamphlet of Pantheons

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Pamphlet of Pantheons: Guide to Creating Fantasy Myths and Religions is a systemless sourcebook designed for fantasy games in general, rather than a specific roleplaying game. Which means that it will work with many Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games. It would also work with Science Fiction settings too if there are cultures with polytheistic faiths. Released following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is designed and published by Gonzo History Project, better known as James Holloway, the host of the Monster Man podcast, who also published The Magonium Mine Murders.

The aim of the Pamphlet of Pantheons is to make the creation of a fantasy pantheon relatively simple and easy, whilst avoiding two pitfalls. One is avoid making them boring or irrelevant to either the setting or the Player Characters. In other words, they should not be boring and they should matter to the players and their characters. The other is to avoid unnecessary complexity. A richness of detail can be off-putting, Greg Stafford’s Glorantha of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and M.A.R. Barker’s Tékumel of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne being quoted as examples. Both are rich and complex, but requirement commitment to get the most out of them. What the fanzine offers to avoid both is a set of twenty-five tables which a Game Master can roll on and using the prompts provided build a relatively complete pantheon.

The first sixteen tables provide the divine archetypes that are the core of the pantheon. These include ‘Bestower of Plenty’, ‘Celestial Sovereign’, ‘Fruitful Earth’, ‘Hierarch of Hell’, ‘Laughing Rogue’, and more. As archetypes, it is easy to recognise gods from various real world (and even fantasy) pantheons, but the aim is for the Game Master to create her own rather than simulate another. The author admits that the archetypes do have a European (though he does reference middle eastern gods too) feel because that is where his influences come from, but that should not limit the imagination of the Game Master. Further tables define the look and feel of the gods, whether they look human or have fantastic features or are disembodied cosmic forces, what their signs of divinity are, which one is the head of the pantheon, what titles they bear, and what do the religions devoted to them look like? Every table has six entries and most also have little asides and thoughts that serve as further prompts for the Game Master to ponder.

The process of pantheon building involves rolling some dice and making a few choices. First is to decide on what archetypes will be in the pantheon, not all sixteen are needed, with eight being suggested as a good number. Having selected the gods for the pantheon, the Game Master rolls a complication for each, the pantheon’s aesthetic, adds a duplicate god or two (or combines them), adds secondary attributes and complications to the gods in the pantheon, and then rolls for minor gods, if needed, to cover very specific aspects of the setting. The pantheon is ready at this point, but to it, further rolls for temples, rituals, servitors, and treasures will define how the pantheon is perceived by its worshipers and how the religion is practised. All the results are noted down on the Pantheon Sheet included in the fanzine. With this done, what the Game Master does next is flesh out the details of her pantheon, making connections between its deities and so creating elements of its mythology. The prompts beneath many of the tables will help with this.

The process is simple and quick. Perhaps the most difficult part of the process is actually thinking up names for the goods themselves (though that can be eased with an online name generator). It helps that the author includes a fully worked out example, based on a livestream he hosted as part of the Kickstarter, with a filled in Pantheon Sheet. The simplicity of tables means that Pamphlet of Pantheons could be created as an online pantheon generator, but arguably that would be too easy and it would not avoid the first pitfall that the fanzine warns against, that is, making the religion and its gods boring, since what it avoids is the process itself which gives time for the Game Master to think about the pantheon and the relationships of the gods within it, building connections, areas of conflict (such as when there two or more gods with the purview for the same thing), and so on.

Physically, Pamphlet of Pantheons is clean and tidy, and lightly illustrated with public domain artwork, most of it small and all appropriately placed.

Pamphlet of Pantheons is an engaging little supplement, a simple set of prompts that direct a Game Master, with a few rolls, to not only create a complete pantheon, but to think how the pantheon works and is worshipped by a particular culture. In the process, she will create background to part of her campaign world and a religion that she understands and can impart to her players, and so bring her campaign world to life.

Friday Fantasy: The Magonium Mine Murders

‘Trouble down mine’ is the least of the problems facing the Player Characters in The Magonium Mine Murders, a scenario which details the many plots and mysteries that have beset the settlements of the Halbeck Valley. The kingdom in which the Halbeck Valley sits is moderately wealthy with an awareness of magic that sees it put to war in the long running conflict with the neighbouring barbarian tribes. The government is notoriously corrupt, its nobles and politicians accepting bribes and when not corrupt, likely incompetent. The war is unpopular, more so since conscript was instituted. Those workers dubbed essential are not subject to the draft and wear a magical token to indicate their exemption. This includes the workers at the mine in the Halbeck Valley where magonium ore, a rare mineral with magical properties important to the war, is dug out of the ground. Prisoners captured from the barbarian tribes are also made to work in the mines. There are reports of deaths in the mines, but the money that the actual miners are making from the extra demand for magonium has made them relatively wealthy and they are spending it in the taverns and brothel that have sprung to cater for them in a nearby village, turning it into a ‘new’ town, much to the annoyance of the villagers. There are rumours too, of bandits attacking travellers in the valley, and there is very much likely to be more than this going on, but now, there is news that Reith Alba, boss of the mine, has been found dead with a crossbow bolt in her back!

The Magonium Mine Murders is a scenario published by Gonzo History Project, better known as James Holloway, the host of the Monster Man podcast. It written for use with Old School Essentials, Necrotic Gnome’s interpretation and redesign of the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Stephen M. Marsh. Designed to be played by a party of Second to Third Level Player Characters—up to Fourth Level—it is what the author calls a ‘Cluebox’. What this really means is that it combines elements of a murder mystery with a sandbox, so a “sandbox-style murder-mystery scenario” according to the author. The scenario requires some set-up in terms of the setting, primarily the two warring kingdoms and the importance of a magical ore and its associated industrialisation. Beyond that, the plots—of which the scenario has a total of seven—are easily adaptable. For example, The Magonium Mine Murders could be run in a Science Fiction or a Wild West setting with some retheming and some renaming, or the scenario could just simply be adapted to the fantasy roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice.

Part of that is due to the easy presentation of the content. Two pages labelled ‘What’s Going on’ sum up the scenario’s many, varied, and highly interconnected plots, followed by pages that provide detailed summaries of the Halbeck Valley, the two towns—the old and the new, the mining camp, the mine itself, and more. The information is really very well organised and accessible for the Game Master. The starting point for the scenario is the page actually called ‘Getting Started’, which offers several hooks to pull the Player Characters into its plots. These include investigating Magonium poisoning in the river, infiltrating a gambling ring, delving into the mine to determine the cause of a recent spate of accidents, and even do some debt collection! Any one of these can be used as the initial hook and then the others introduced as necessary when the Player Characters interact with the associated NPCs. Alternatively, the hooks could be tailored to specific character types. For example, a Druid Player Character could be asked to investigate the Magonium polluting the river, a Thief Player Character instructed to collect the debt, a Dwarf Fighter hired to investigate the mine, and so on. This would provide the players and their characters with more individual hooks and motivations. Of course, the main hook for the scenario is the murder of the head of the mine.

The murder site is the office of the head of the mine and is one of the few detailed locations in the scenario. The others include the ruined temple where the bandits stash their loot and some caverns under the under the mine, though the former is not as pertinent to the scenario’s plots as the latter is. The investigation is supported by a series of events that occur over the course of the investigation and by details of some fifteen NPCs. Their descriptions are thumbnail in nature and include details of what they know and any activities or reasons that the Player Characters might become suspicious of them. Each is also accompanied by a portrait. These vary in quality and style, but in general suggest that the scenario is set during the Industrial Revolution. This is followed by rules for Magonium poisoning, handling the prize fights being run in the New Town, a bestiary with full stats for the NPCs, and the various items, magical and otherwise, to be found in the scenario. The rules for handling prize fights do not add anything mechanical, even though Old School Essentials and similar retroclones are poor at handling unarmed combat. (As an option, the Game Master might want to look at Brancalonia – SpaghettiFantasy Setting Book for its non-lethal combat rules.) Rather, they add narrative detail and track the course of the prize fights—which are, of course, rigged.

Rounding out The Magonium Mine Murders is advice on running the scenario, necessary, as the author points out, since the scenario is not a natural fit to Dungeons & Dragons-style adventures with its heavy emphasis on investigation. The advice primarily consists of letting the players drive the investigation, relying upon their descriptions of what their characters are doing rather than on dice rolls and being generous with the clues to keep the story and their investigation going. This even extends to possible solutions to the various situations in the Halbeck Valley. Although there is a solution as to who committed the murder of the mine chief, how the other plotlines in the scenario are concluded is really up to the Player Characters and that is even if they engage with a particular plotline. With so many, the Player Characters may not encounter all of them and even if they do, not always follow up on them.

Overall, what The Magonium Mine Murders presents is a set of plots, places, and NPCs that the Game Master can present to her players and their characters and have them pull and push on them as they like. In places though, the Game Master is likely going to wish that there were more detail. The towns in particular are underwritten and feel as if they are in need of colour, especially New Town, which has the rough and tumble feel of a frontier town that has struck it rich. The Game Master is going to want to add some incidental NPCs and events to add colour and flavour and so enforce a sense of place. This is less of an issue in the Old Town. Similarly, the NPC descriptions are a bit tight and with so many of them, the Game Master, will need to work hard to make them stand out from each other. What this means is that the Game Master will need to do development work in addition to the usual preparation effort.

Physically, The Magonium Mine Murders is decently presented and organised. Both artwork and cartography are serviceable, and the writing is decent, if terse in places. The format of the adventure is fanzine style, but is not fanzine in the traditional sense.

The Magonium Mine Murders is an interesting attempt to combine a sandbox with a murder mystery—and it is an attempt that does work. The Game Master is certainly given enough information to run it and its numerous plots from the page, but the scenario is underwritten and lacks colour in places. What this means is that the Game Master is probably going to want to develop and flesh out some aspects of the scenario to enhance its roleplaying aspects and make it come alive, at the very least. Despite possessing a tendency toward succinctness, The Magonium Mine Murders packs a lot of play into its pages and is likely to be a decent, player-driven investigation.