Read Through: Green Devil Face & More

September 15, 2009 4 comments

James Raggi is known for being f’n METAL, but he is also (in my opinion) ROLPUNK. He plays what he likes to play and doesn’t really care what you think. He makes things for his favorite game and makes it available both via his blog content at Lamentations of the Flame Princess and for sale. Yeah, he’s also the self-proclaimed Spokesmodel for the Old School Revolution, but he’s passionate, rather than elitist, about it. He like old TSR D&D and that style of play, and supports the retro-clones as vehicles for keeping that style of play alive and viable. When I coined the phrase ROLPUNK, James Raggi was one of the people I had in mind.

DISCLAIMER

Oh, and before I go any further, I’m apparently bound by law or social contract or something to disclose that I’ve only read this stuff, and haven’t played it, so this is an Idiot Review.

GREEN DEVIL FACE

So let’s talk about his print zine, Green Devil Face. James sent me the first three issues to look at, and I dig ‘em. 5-1/2″ by 8-1/2″, folded and stapled with green cardstock covers and public domain/clip art. Who needs fancy? Content is key. The first issue is an adventure module, with a fairly simple yet credible setup: two tribes used to share a temple, one tribe has shut the other tribe out, so the excluded tribe has hired the player characters to go sack the place. It assumes you’re using some version of clone of OD&D, but can be tweaked easily for use with any edition or other system. There’s no indication of what level characters it’s for, which didn’t both me because again, as the gamemaster I’ll tweak the thing when I run it anyway. There’s a map, with 59 numbered rooms, and a numbered description of each room. There’s a random encounter table. Pretty straight-forward Old School dungeon crawl. It’s full of gamer in-jokes, which I enjoyed, and you could either leave them in or just step around them when you ran it without affecting the “plot” or the way the module played. Everything is spelled out pretty clearly in terms of game effects — percentage chance of things happening, how many dice of damage things cause, and so forth. The eponymous Green Devil Face appears in this adventure, but I won’t say what it is even though James spoilers on his site in his solicitation for contributors for future issues. Is it any good? It was a fun read, and I’d run it. It instilled me with a healthy does of nostalgia for the kinds of games I ran back in the day, a good deadly dungeon crawl that requires the players to think.

Issue 2 has a dozen traps and room encounters by various authors, my favorite being the one entitled Yet Another Stupid Giant Chess Board for the name alone. These are Old School traps, not the kind you get around by rolling a skill check but the ones you poke at with 10′ poles and touch things and try things and figure out with your own brain, not die rolls. Issue 3 offers up 11 more clever traps. I don’t run Old School games, but I plan to steal some of these encounters, proving my point that good roleplaying game material transcends system or setting.

James sent me some of this other products, which I want to re-read and write more about later. All are in the same format as Green Devil Face, but with glossy covers. He’s got his own setting, Pembrooktonshire. One of the books is an adventure set there, No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides. With a few changes, it could almost be a Call of Cthulhu adventures. Another of the books is People of Pembrooktonshire, which is “137 weird and distinct NPC ideas”, all of which could be used in any campaign setting. The other item he sent me is an adventure entitled Death Frost Doom, a very Lovecraft-inspired dungeon crawl; The cover on this one isn’t attached, because the inside cover is a dungeon map.

SYNOPSIS

Put your Old School/Edition Wars mentality away and give this stuff a chance. While James Raggi is Old School Revolution, this stuff can be used for any edition. It’s more fluff than crunch (although there’s crunch), it’s all player-skill oriented rather than character-skill oriented, and it’s just fun. I like it, I’ll use it.

All this stuff can be got cheap in PDF form through RPGNow.