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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Mini Review - Loviatar #6

Picture "Borrowed" From Christian's Blog
One of the things that I want to kick myself for is not having a full collection of Christian's past zines.  I should, as I have his first zine, and I at one point had each and every one, but I never realized how much I missed his older stuff until Loviatar came along.  Loviatar hits the same buttons that the best of his past stuff hit for me.  It's just that good.

Now, I'm going to start out I love the Hex 00X series he started in issue #6,  By itself it is worth the price of admission (and as the price is 3 bucks an issue, mailed to you house, how can you go wrong?).   I don't recall what the scale of each hex is, but what he has given us in the last two issues is a growing sandbox to explore.  It should work with any of the OSR games that draw on D&D for inspiration, but could even work with Tunnels and Trolls with very little work.

Thursday Night Fight Club is Christian's first dabbling into Basic Roleplaying.  While I own the latest rules (and even the Fantasy Grounds 2 mod) I haven't played with the system or any of it's close cousins in years.  Still, Christian is always top notch with character descriptions - they are never just a bunch of stats - that knowing the system doesn't matter all that much.  A perfect NPC for any modern RPG system.

The last article details 2 NPCs for Vampire: The Requiem.  I owned the whole first generation of the World of Darkness Core books and never ran the system.  Could never get my group into it.  Maybe I didn't understand the whole setting behind the closed doors and I couldn't sell it to my friends.  Christian understands it.  Well done as always.

So, simply put, an excellent source for any game master to find inspiration.

Time to pour myself of free tap beer from my Beertender and toast Christian.  Heineken Light lad, but the wife is returning with a mini keg of Newcastle Brown Ale for when this run out ;)
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6 comments:

  1. GeorgeJanuary 10, 2012 at 7:49 PM

    You've really got me thinking about getting these 'zines. The hex crawl sounds very cool.

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  2. Erik TenkarJanuary 10, 2012 at 8:03 PM

    Christian works from inside out. Or small, then large. Or character description then stats. It shows in his body of work.

    6 issues for 14 bucks, free shipping. Home run if you ask me.

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  3. christianJanuary 10, 2012 at 9:52 PM

    I am so glad that you liked the issue. One thing I have noticed about the rag is that the readers who identify themselves as "old school" are the most open-minded when it comes to content that's not strictly D&D.

    The hex crawl continues in the next issue. It got a bit out of hand and has consumed the entire contents. The scale of the hex crawl is like so: Each hex on the map is 1,000 meters. The large hex is ten small hexes across, so we're looking at a 10km size. Like you said, I like to start small, then go big. :)

    Talk to you soon,
    Christian

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  4. Erik TenkarJanuary 10, 2012 at 9:54 PM

    Keep doing what you are doing, as it is working very well.

    A whole issue for HEX 003? Woot!

    heh

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  5. matt jacksonJanuary 10, 2012 at 9:56 PM

    I think perhaps it is time again for a contest to hand out another subscription to Loviatar. Drum up more business for Christian. :)

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  6. christianJanuary 10, 2012 at 9:59 PM

    I'm going to post some sketches Jay has done for the issue. He went OFF. He wanted to do up to eight interior illos, but I begged him to not spend too much time.

    I am really hoping that 5e is an OGL/STL game. I'd love to see him pick up a ton of commissions from publishers. It was a freelance free for all during the d20 era, so I'd like to see guys like him get some run.

    Matt: I like the way you think! :)

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