KNOCK is one of those publications that really is beyond great. It raises the bar considerably in terms of style and fuckin cool factor (not just for indie games, just the hobby as a whole). Be proud of this work man, its a work of art.
It always surprises me how good these publications can look. Not shocked because i dont think its possible, but because its always just so creative, cool and beautiful in the indy space. You GOT to get Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, its got the folding four-panel screen n everything! I love that.
Hello Professor DM! Since i have started following you not only have i improved my ability as a DM, but also have discovered a lot of independent content like Knave, ShadowDark and your ownd DeathBringer, from wich i have taken inspiration for my own homebrew system, but also have found about excellente adventure modules like the Keep on the Borderlands to fuel my own grimdark stories. Finding out about your chanel marked a turning point on my experience as a RPG player and DM, thank you very much for all your advices and for sharing with us all the excellent content that you share.
Excellent stuff. Future episodes of Zines! could cover Through Ultan's Door, The Phylactery, Nod, Echoes from Fomalhaut, Wormskin, Vaults of Vaarn and/or Gary's Appendix. There is so much good material out there! (Strike Wormskin from that list - I'd forgotten it had been retired pending the launch of the Dolmenwood RPG)
Great review! I've loved KNOCK! since the beginning and have all three issues (and reviewed it on my channel), but I was unfamiliar with the other two. Going to check them out now - Delver in particular looks right up my alley. Thanks for featuring these!
I was a contributor to Lloyd Metcalf's Maximum HP zine for a few issues. I don't know if he's still making it though. Wow, Knock! is impressive!! Thanks for this one!
Thanks for getting the word out there! I adore Cursed Scroll and recently picked up a few issues of Delver. I’m definitely itching to get my hands on Knock!
Glad to see the independent OSR style games getting additional info out to the masses regularly through zines. I'm subscribed to Cursed Scrolls but the others look great too and it's all applicable.
I wish every month was indie rpg month! As a backer of Shadowdark, I have the Cursed Scroll zines in pdf. And as a backer of Knock!, I have the first three issues. Totally agree with your take on them here. SO MUCH great, useful stuff! Out of curiosity, are you familiar with The Dread Thingomonicon by Raging Swan, or any of their other similar supplements? Next to the Knock! zines, they are my favorite books for random tables of playable material.
Great Work Professor DM! Have you considered doing a video about the GLOG (goblin laws of gaming) he has an OSR blog where he discusses his gaming philosophies and homebrew rules. I think you would love some of his stuff like his magic dice system, underclock random encounters, mutations and more! His stuff is seldom talked about and heavily underrated.
I'm not running any fantasy RPGs at the moment (and probably won't be for the foreseeable future) but I'd buy Knock and Delver just to read the zines. The articles just seem so interesting. Especially Knock. They both remind me of a combination of the old Dragon and Dungeon magazines from the 80s and 90s. Love all the free maps in Knock.
Thanks for this video! It is great to see old school 'zines being produced. The tone, content, and production value for all three publications seem pretty nigh perfect, at least for me. With fewer opportunities to go to a brick and mortar hobby/game store that carries an abundance of materials targeted toward the more specialized audience of content producers, there are concomitantly fewer opportunities to encounter these kinds of resources. Each of those periodicals was clearly packed with articles and other content that one will actually use (and, also, likely to use most or all of the included content), as opposed to just some general content that only points back at the big advertisers for the publisher. I noticed that both Knock and Cursed Scroll provided some sample pages for each issue; and, the Delver gave a good text account of exactly what content was in the issue. The sheer amount of useful materials included in each issue make them all seem like they provide a good value.
The way the dungeons are written in these just makes me happy. I don't want huge blocks of flavour text to sift through when I'm running the game, give me a few key points. If you really want to have long descriptions, put it either before or after the section I'll reference during play.
Bullet points and terse descriptive text. How adventures should be presented. It saves time, declutters it from useless fluff, and makes it easier for seasoned and especially new DMs' The knock format is a little odd to read but great stuff. Have not got the Delver stuff ..yet.
I love zines, my only problem with them is that so much of the material is so hyperspecific. I simply can't have all of the zines and small sourcebooks and such on-hand whenever I'm DMing on the off-chance that I'll need an article, and I play a freeform/sandbox style of game that makes it difficult to predict what I'm gonna need. Even if I could predict it, the articles are hidden somewhere in a magazine, and I don't necessarily know off the top what magazine I need to look through. They're great reading material, I love getting ideas from them, but I rarely actually use them at the table.
Some are sort of designed for exactly the kind of "gettings ideas" aspect you mention, with the system crunch (if any) being downplayed. For example, "5 Minutes Into the Future (5MF)" for SF RPGers has that as a kind of mission statement. Can be especially useful for sandboxers IMO.
I'm definitely a Delver backer already, going to look into these others (if I don't already back them . . . ). Oh ShadowDark, yeah I guess I have that somewhere in pdf.
Would love to hear what zines people recommend for other genres like sci-fi and horror. I get a lot of use from Mongoose’s Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society.
Regarding that menu postcard: Bob Worldbuilder has a really interesting recent video on how to make the physical fake parchment version with relative ease. Not 0 work and you'll want to choose one of 100s of cursive fonts to start (no one can read my writing, sometimes not even me, let alone "cursive", what is this the 1800s or 1980s?), but still seems pretty straightforward. Bob does it for maps (or map shards), but still.
We must have similar tastes as I have Knock 1-3, Delver 1-9, and Curse Scrolls 1-3 (physical whenever KS fulfills). Some other good ones I have and enjoy are MACE, Back to BasiX, Black Pudding, Gary's Appendix, and Old School & Cool.
Can't wait for my hardcopy of shadowdark and I went all out so cursed scroll will be part of my bundle! Backed curse of ragged hallow so August is going to be indie ttrgp Christmas for me! What could make it better than that....dolmenwood is coming to kickstarter in August 😊
Knock looks pretty cool. When I saw the €19 for a pdf only purchase for a single zine... Wow. That is rather pricey for just a pdf. If it was half that price I'd be all getting all of them. At €19 I get none. Too bad really. I like what I see. I realize it's 200+ pages, but a no print digital should have more savings IMO.
Could you please do a vid on storage and organization of all your terrain/battle map builds? How do you get them from the book shlevels to the game table during game play? Or do you select all the ones you guess you will need and keep them in a staging location near your game table?
This video needs more love. Though the cost and shipping for a print of Knock! seems at first glance to be a little exorbitant, consider the value of the exquisite art and design added with the page count of content ...it puts most official D&D offerings to shame. All these zines are unique and inject a degree of creativity into the ttrpg world that is sorely missing from the homogenized filler from WotC. Thanks for a new rabbit-hole PDM.
I wouldn't even call "Knock" a zine. It's pro quality work, from the design to the writing to the editorial oversight to the physical production. Definitely not amateur publishing. It's my favorite independently published work being produced in this space these days.
I love zines. Bitd, I was addicted to Dragon and Dungeon, but I bought many others, including indies when I could. They were our only source of non-rulebook content, and lots of good reading (but filled with deadly traps for grammar cops and spell checkers). Didn't matter if you didn't play that game, there was always something you could adapt to your system of choice. I love this sh-- um stuff.
What!!?? My zine isn't in this list!!?? 😄 Just kidding, this is an awesome list, but if you want to check out d12 Monthly, I would love to get your opinion. Issue 26 is due out soon. :)
I purchased Knock! #1 for $60 CDN and was a bit (bit) disappointed to discover it was mostly harvested from blogs (complete with original grammatical and spelling mistakes) and stylized. It's good material, but I expected more originality and attention to detail for the money. This isn't a 'zine of old done on a typewriter and ballpoint pen and photocopied as we used to have back in the day.
Oh my word. I've never wanted anything so bad in my whole life. Thanks Professor Dungeon Master for critting my wallet into oblivion... or rather, my players thank you.
I bought the first issue of Delver and I don’t get the love for it. Its content is only fair. Worse, it is visually boring and poorly laid out. My graphic design professors back in college would have given it a ‘C’ at best. KNOCK, on the other hand, is supreme. At the time I bought the first issue, I was a 5e player tired of the sterile art in 5e books. Longing for the weirder fantasy art of TSR and the 80s in general, I bought KNOCK and Mörk Borg solely as art books, never intending to use them as game materials. And, as art books, they did not disappoint. But, further -after reading KNOCK’s content- I discovered the Old School Renaissance, dropped corporate D&D altogether, and switched (back) to vintage 80s D&D. (In my case, I went with KNOCK’s endorsement and bought Old School Essentials.) KNOCK is my absolute favorite TTRPG publication bar none and I haven’t been disappointed by it yet.
I can only answer for myself, of course; but it is exactly that it doesn't look like something a graphic design professor overproduced that appeals to me. So, as a related example, when I look at a rule book or supplement that is jam packed with full color, edge-to-edge, high-intensity artwork, I am likely to dismiss it without really studying the material itself. In part, because I'm put off by how busy it seems; but, also, because I don't want to have to pay for pointless artwork. I mean, i just need the text; I'm not going to be passing around the booklet so everyone can ooh and aww at the interior art.
“Pointless” artwork? Graphic design professors who “overproduce” despite having the education to know better? Thinking art is just pretty pictures to be “oohed” and “ahhed ?” No. No. And no. It’s been my experience that those who belittle art and artists like this do so because they don’t have sufficient education in art to make a truly informed opinion about it and must denigrate the whole process just so that their opinions are seen as having equal weight. The problem with this approach is that it’s a straw man logical fallacy.
@@baronvonswankenstein What would constitute having a "sufficient education in art"? I mean, my education was in anthropology, but I'm a practicing archaeologist; so, by training and due to the necessity of dealing primarily with the remains of past non-literate cultures, interpreting meaning from graphic depictions imbued with socio-cultural meanings cross-culturally and throughout the span of human history was part of that training. Now, I did say "pointless artwork." And, yes, I do mean that if the illustration doesn't support something specifically referenced in the text, then it's just frippery. Of course, I'm a writer, not a graphic artist; so, yeah, most of the poetry and fiction prose that I've published over the years has been paired with graphics that I didn't want there where it was potentially distracting the reader. Yes, I have learned to accept that artwork, especially in TTRPG materials, is much more important to other consumers; but, to me, it frustratingly creates very set images in players minds, which often results in me having to explain that artwork was just someone's interpretation of that monster, location, object, etc. Anyway, should you want to get an idea of how I actually incorporate illustrations when it is my editorial prerogative, then you could always evaluate the Volume 59, Issue 1 of the West Virginia Archaeologist, for which I was the managing editor. Or, you could read my MA thesis, which does rely on illustrations to support the text; it is downloadable from my old university's electronic thesis and dissertation site, under the title "Nearer, My Farm, to Thee: A Spatial Analysis of African American Settlement Patterns in Hillsborough County, Florida." If you'd prefer something more along the lines of a local history, then you can find a copy of "East Lake Weir, 1875-2015" available for download from the Wikimedia Commons. Those are all publications where I had editorial control, as opposed to things like my short fiction story "Chasing Cassidy's Ghost," which was published in Volume 8 of a small regional journal called Imprints. So, yes, someone else may have more education and experience is graphic arts is probably more likely to think that it is vitally important to have that artwork in a product. I saw an interview with Steve Jackson where he said that if he could go back in time, he would have paid more attention to the artwork in the games they were selling. For that matter, from the time I got into the TTRPG hobby I had many friends for whom the artwork was interested them in buying a product, especially the ones that were graphic artists themselves. However, all that said, no, I was not creating a straw man to attack; it really is often an unwanted distraction that diminishes my interest in purchasing a product, particularly when it seems superfluous because it doesn't relate to the text. I cannot speak to your previous experiences; but, I promise you, I'm not a great candidate for ad hominem attacks on the rather subjective matter of whether or not excessive art sells copy. However, I would be more than happy to discuss the substantive issues at greater length.
@@baronvonswankenstein Incidentally, I am not generally opposed to the visual arts. I'm a big fan of the Flemish painters, particularly Jan Van Eyck. My favorite artist is Albrecht Durer. I generally do not care for the artists from the early Italian Renaissance, even though Durer was informed by both Titian and Tintoretto. however, I do have a particular affection for Giotto. I, also, really love Ukiyo-e. Moreover, while no one would ever think I was trained artist, and have no talent for drawing, painting, etc.; I have received praise for artwork that I've produced electronically with tools like Inkscape, GIMP, and MyPaint (which works brilliantly with a tablet and stylus). I wanted to point out, again, that I was only speaking for myself. And, add that I really did mean it with a fair amount of specificity toward TTRPG/wargaming products where I do very much feel like the "experts" believe too much in the importance of stuffing in as many graphics as possible.
I know that July is independent games month next month could you touch on the rules Cycopedia . I got a reprint recently and wow its a DMG , players handbook and monster manual all in one
As your fan from Indonesia. Professor Dungeon Craft, please review Goblin Slayer TRPG and Konosuba TRPG. This are Japanese Tabletop Roleplaying Game that based on Anime (Japanese Animation). I hope you can make a video about this game. I already bought the Goblin Slayer and for honest review, this book is interesting for me. Also, have a nice day.
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Many, many thanks for featuring KNOCK!, professor! Thrilled you like our work =)
Knock is top shelf!
Concur - great stuff
The work you do is top notch. KNOCK! Should be on every shelf
KNOCK is one of those publications that really is beyond great. It raises the bar considerably in terms of style and fuckin cool factor (not just for indie games, just the hobby as a whole). Be proud of this work man, its a work of art.
I have seen recommendations for knock before, but bounced off the 30 euro price...
"Listen, You Smell Something?" might be the deepest cut ghostbusters reference I've ever run across
"That guy's a drunk" - had me laughing out loud!
Nice.
Yes, but he's a lovable drunk.
Loving how you're really full on with the Indie support now, professor. Top stuff!
I wrote the “Help Wanted” feature in Knock #3! You made my day!
I'm interested in publishing a zine on Myconids with 3 adventures, so this ought to be really interesting
Cool!
It always surprises me how good these publications can look. Not shocked because i dont think its possible, but because its always just so creative, cool and beautiful in the indy space.
You GOT to get Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, its got the folding four-panel screen n everything! I love that.
Hello Professor DM! Since i have started following you not only have i improved my ability as a DM, but also have discovered a lot of independent content like Knave, ShadowDark and your ownd DeathBringer, from wich i have taken inspiration for my own homebrew system, but also have found about excellente adventure modules like the Keep on the Borderlands to fuel my own grimdark stories.
Finding out about your chanel marked a turning point on my experience as a RPG player and DM, thank you very much for all your advices and for sharing with us all the excellent content that you share.
Awesome! Thanks for the kind words!
Carcass Crawler is one i love in particular. really nice extra classes and other material for B/X in that really crisp and readable OSE house style.
Excellent stuff. Future episodes of Zines! could cover Through Ultan's Door, The Phylactery, Nod, Echoes from Fomalhaut, Wormskin, Vaults of Vaarn and/or Gary's Appendix. There is so much good material out there!
(Strike Wormskin from that list - I'd forgotten it had been retired pending the launch of the Dolmenwood RPG)
Knock was so fun to read, I’d recommend it to anyone interested
I wish it wasn't so daunting to try and get physical copies of all four.
Cursed Scroll and Knock look great!! Very excited to check them out.
I got those two and they are fantastic resources. Great video
"Some guy name Professor Dungeon Master... That guy's a drunk, but the article is great!" Gold!
Saw it already on Patreon. Rewatching it for the algorithm 🤘
Thank you! It's so important for getting more viewers to see this video.
Great review! I've loved KNOCK! since the beginning and have all three issues (and reviewed it on my channel), but I was unfamiliar with the other two. Going to check them out now - Delver in particular looks right up my alley. Thanks for featuring these!
Judges Guild, Yo! .. when we had no where else to look, JG had answers and taught us how to make our own.
I was a contributor to Lloyd Metcalf's Maximum HP zine for a few issues. I don't know if he's still making it though. Wow, Knock! is impressive!! Thanks for this one!
This new direction for Dungeon Craft is great. I'm learning so much about the RPG world beyond DND. Keep up the great work! 👍
Thank you for the power you bring to the independent RPG scene!
There's only a single issue of the Chaos Crier out as of now, but it has great potential.
Thanks for getting the word out there! I adore Cursed Scroll and recently picked up a few issues of Delver. I’m definitely itching to get my hands on Knock!
Glad to see the independent OSR style games getting additional info out to the masses regularly through zines. I'm subscribed to Cursed Scrolls but the others look great too and it's all applicable.
Wow. There is so much in those zones you presented. I can see a DM inspired for tons of time.
I wish every month was indie rpg month! As a backer of Shadowdark, I have the Cursed Scroll zines in pdf. And as a backer of Knock!, I have the first three issues. Totally agree with your take on them here. SO MUCH great, useful stuff!
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with The Dread Thingomonicon by Raging Swan, or any of their other similar supplements? Next to the Knock! zines, they are my favorite books for random tables of playable material.
I'm a big fan of Delver and have used a lot of the random tables to add some great flavor to my games.
Great Work Professor DM! Have you considered doing a video about the GLOG (goblin laws of gaming) he has an OSR blog where he discusses his gaming philosophies and homebrew rules. I think you would love some of his stuff like his magic dice system, underclock random encounters, mutations and more! His stuff is seldom talked about and heavily underrated.
Thank you and much appreciated for mentioning these and bringing them to my attention. My orders have now been placed.
I'm not running any fantasy RPGs at the moment (and probably won't be for the foreseeable future) but I'd buy Knock and Delver just to read the zines. The articles just seem so interesting. Especially Knock. They both remind me of a combination of the old Dragon and Dungeon magazines from the 80s and 90s. Love all the free maps in Knock.
"That guy's a drunk, but the article is great!" Thanks Professor, great review. 😄
Thanks for this video! It is great to see old school 'zines being produced. The tone, content, and production value for all three publications seem pretty nigh perfect, at least for me.
With fewer opportunities to go to a brick and mortar hobby/game store that carries an abundance of materials targeted toward the more specialized audience of content producers, there are concomitantly fewer opportunities to encounter these kinds of resources. Each of those periodicals was clearly packed with articles and other content that one will actually use (and, also, likely to use most or all of the included content), as opposed to just some general content that only points back at the big advertisers for the publisher. I noticed that both Knock and Cursed Scroll provided some sample pages for each issue; and, the Delver gave a good text account of exactly what content was in the issue. The sheer amount of useful materials included in each issue make them all seem like they provide a good value.
The way the dungeons are written in these just makes me happy. I don't want huge blocks of flavour text to sift through when I'm running the game, give me a few key points. If you really want to have long descriptions, put it either before or after the section I'll reference during play.
These are cool, I had no idea there were so many great tools, articles, random tables, and adventures in zones. I’ve never read one.
OSR crowd: "Rulings not rules"
Also OSR crowd: "Anyhow here's a zine full of house rules I made for the game"
😂
Lol have you even watched the video or read an osr zine before
@@trollge3712 No, and no.
Your channel is getting better and better.
I love your channel! Your independent coverage of TTRPRs is second to none.
I'm sold. I'm getting knock! Looks amazing. Thanks Professor
Woo knock! Loved being part of issue #2
Wow those knock zines are amazing. Like an actual collaboration between gamers.
That is fantastic I need to get me all of these! I love the bite size dungeons for my withering attention span!
Good recommendations Professor DM! I will definitely look into trying both Delver and Knock!😀
Wow! So much great content in those books! Mind blowing! Thank you professor for showing these!
Solid sell, thank you for bringing attention to these gems.
I’ve been running a west march game using cursed scroll 1, for the past few months and have really enjoyed it!
Cursed Scroll is great!
❤ the dust cover adventures on KNOCK! issues.
Bullet points and terse descriptive text. How adventures should be presented.
It saves time, declutters it from useless fluff, and makes it easier for seasoned and especially new DMs'
The knock format is a little odd to read but great stuff. Have not got the Delver stuff ..yet.
I love zines, my only problem with them is that so much of the material is so hyperspecific. I simply can't have all of the zines and small sourcebooks and such on-hand whenever I'm DMing on the off-chance that I'll need an article, and I play a freeform/sandbox style of game that makes it difficult to predict what I'm gonna need. Even if I could predict it, the articles are hidden somewhere in a magazine, and I don't necessarily know off the top what magazine I need to look through. They're great reading material, I love getting ideas from them, but I rarely actually use them at the table.
Some are sort of designed for exactly the kind of "gettings ideas" aspect you mention, with the system crunch (if any) being downplayed.
For example, "5 Minutes Into the Future (5MF)" for SF RPGers has that as a kind of mission statement. Can be especially useful for sandboxers IMO.
I'm definitely a Delver backer already, going to look into these others (if I don't already back them . . . ). Oh ShadowDark, yeah I guess I have that somewhere in pdf.
Certainly using the 6:15 section as inspiration when coming up with simplified character features
Would love to hear what zines people recommend for other genres like sci-fi and horror. I get a lot of use from Mongoose’s Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society.
"That guy's a drunk, but the article is great." Lol
Regarding that menu postcard:
Bob Worldbuilder has a really interesting recent video on how to make the physical fake parchment version with relative ease. Not 0 work and you'll want to choose one of 100s of cursive fonts to start (no one can read my writing, sometimes not even me, let alone "cursive", what is this the 1800s or 1980s?), but still seems pretty straightforward. Bob does it for maps (or map shards), but still.
Can't wait to get those physical copies of Cursed Scroll into my dirty, grubby GM hands!!...I've already read the PDF's!...
I hadn’t heard of Delver! I also love Carcass Crawler for OSE.
We must have similar tastes as I have Knock 1-3, Delver 1-9, and Curse Scrolls 1-3 (physical whenever KS fulfills). Some other good ones I have and enjoy are MACE, Back to BasiX, Black Pudding, Gary's Appendix, and Old School & Cool.
Fantastic stuff! Thank you for sharing this information.
Thanks for the detailed review. These zines look great.
Knock series is hands down the top 3 best rpg books i have, will have to check out the other two
Can't wait for my hardcopy of shadowdark and I went all out so cursed scroll will be part of my bundle! Backed curse of ragged hallow so August is going to be indie ttrgp Christmas for me! What could make it better than that....dolmenwood is coming to kickstarter in August 😊
Knock looks pretty cool.
When I saw the €19 for a pdf only purchase for a single zine... Wow. That is rather pricey for just a pdf.
If it was half that price I'd be all getting all of them. At €19 I get none. Too bad really. I like what I see. I realize it's 200+ pages, but a no print digital should have more savings IMO.
Sold! Iam checking them out now.
Thank you for sharing these resources!
Thank YOU for watching my humble channel.
Idea: talk about you favorite OSR actual plays? Some are criminally underwatched like @3D6DTL (3d6 down the line). Thanks for you great work!
Could you please do a vid on storage and organization of all your terrain/battle map builds? How do you get them from the book shlevels to the game table during game play? Or do you select all the ones you guess you will need and keep them in a staging location near your game table?
This video needs more love. Though the cost and shipping for a print of Knock! seems at first glance to be a little exorbitant, consider the value of the exquisite art and design added with the page count of content ...it puts most official D&D offerings to shame. All these zines are unique and inject a degree of creativity into the ttrpg world that is sorely missing from the homogenized filler from WotC. Thanks for a new rabbit-hole PDM.
How many likes do you get before a steam starts. Yeah, I’m a fanboy too.
Cool! Thanks for your support!
I wouldn't even call "Knock" a zine. It's pro quality work, from the design to the writing to the editorial oversight to the physical production. Definitely not amateur publishing. It's my favorite independently published work being produced in this space these days.
I love zines. Bitd, I was addicted to Dragon and Dungeon, but I bought many others, including indies when I could. They were our only source of non-rulebook content, and lots of good reading (but filled with deadly traps for grammar cops and spell checkers). Didn't matter if you didn't play that game, there was always something you could adapt to your system of choice. I love this sh-- um stuff.
LOL, "...that guy is a drunk".
Oddly that's what one of my players said when I suggested no Initiative... (just kidding).
Professor, have you read the zine Nightcrawlers? Its like a World of Darkness lite rules set using Black Hack's rules.
Knock is the TRUTH!
Great stuff!
Knock! is sublime!
do you have a discount/coupon code? asking because that would really encourage more sales
Everything looks great! But I'm a real sucker for the style used in Knock / Mork Borg.
DeathBringer is my ex-Wife. I do Sir, understand why you would employ her as your Hench-Men Leader. Well played, Sir. Well Played.
What!!?? My zine isn't in this list!!?? 😄 Just kidding, this is an awesome list, but if you want to check out d12 Monthly, I would love to get your opinion. Issue 26 is due out soon. :)
Another awesome one!
Thank you for your information video
All these videos on TTRPGs and we've yet to hear about Palladium Fantasy.
we should play one of those caves of chaos variants
Thanks
I have Delver issue 2 and I love it.
You should take a look at Echoes from Fomalhaut.
Hey this was interesting. More zine episodes please.
Glad you enjoyed it. I'lll probably take a look a the new Knock (I wrote one of the articles!)
Ok so I need to get those now
Ya gotta love a good zine!
Awesome!
What if WOTC started releasing also small modules like TSR used to?
I purchased Knock! #1 for $60 CDN and was a bit (bit) disappointed to discover it was mostly harvested from blogs (complete with original grammatical and spelling mistakes) and stylized. It's good material, but I expected more originality and attention to detail for the money. This isn't a 'zine of old done on a typewriter and ballpoint pen and photocopied as we used to have back in the day.
Oh my word. I've never wanted anything so bad in my whole life. Thanks Professor Dungeon Master for critting my wallet into oblivion... or rather, my players thank you.
The Merry Mushmen are based in France? You mean I can purchase OSR products without paying 40€+ in shipping? What sorcery is this?
That guy Professor Dungeon Master may be a drunk, but his content is fairly good. You should look him up - you might learn a thing or two.
Those look really good
Good stuff!!!
I'd love to pickup knock, but checkout is crashing with PayPal :(
I bought the first issue of Delver and I don’t get the love for it. Its content is only fair. Worse, it is visually boring and poorly laid out. My graphic design professors back in college would have given it a ‘C’ at best.
KNOCK, on the other hand, is supreme. At the time I bought the first issue, I was a 5e player tired of the sterile art in 5e books. Longing for the weirder fantasy art of TSR and the 80s in general, I bought KNOCK and Mörk Borg solely as art books, never intending to use them as game materials. And, as art books, they did not disappoint.
But, further -after reading KNOCK’s content- I discovered the Old School Renaissance, dropped corporate D&D altogether, and switched (back) to vintage 80s D&D. (In my case, I went with KNOCK’s endorsement and bought Old School Essentials.) KNOCK is my absolute favorite TTRPG publication bar none and I haven’t been disappointed by it yet.
I can only answer for myself, of course; but it is exactly that it doesn't look like something a graphic design professor overproduced that appeals to me. So, as a related example, when I look at a rule book or supplement that is jam packed with full color, edge-to-edge, high-intensity artwork, I am likely to dismiss it without really studying the material itself. In part, because I'm put off by how busy it seems; but, also, because I don't want to have to pay for pointless artwork. I mean, i just need the text; I'm not going to be passing around the booklet so everyone can ooh and aww at the interior art.
“Pointless” artwork? Graphic design professors who “overproduce” despite having the education to know better? Thinking art is just pretty pictures to be “oohed” and “ahhed ?” No. No. And no.
It’s been my experience that those who belittle art and artists like this do so because they don’t have sufficient education in art to make a truly informed opinion about it and must denigrate the whole process just so that their opinions are seen as having equal weight.
The problem with this approach is that it’s a straw man logical fallacy.
@@baronvonswankenstein What would constitute having a "sufficient education in art"? I mean, my education was in anthropology, but I'm a practicing archaeologist; so, by training and due to the necessity of dealing primarily with the remains of past non-literate cultures, interpreting meaning from graphic depictions imbued with socio-cultural meanings cross-culturally and throughout the span of human history was part of that training.
Now, I did say "pointless artwork." And, yes, I do mean that if the illustration doesn't support something specifically referenced in the text, then it's just frippery. Of course, I'm a writer, not a graphic artist; so, yeah, most of the poetry and fiction prose that I've published over the years has been paired with graphics that I didn't want there where it was potentially distracting the reader.
Yes, I have learned to accept that artwork, especially in TTRPG materials, is much more important to other consumers; but, to me, it frustratingly creates very set images in players minds, which often results in me having to explain that artwork was just someone's interpretation of that monster, location, object, etc.
Anyway, should you want to get an idea of how I actually incorporate illustrations when it is my editorial prerogative, then you could always evaluate the Volume 59, Issue 1 of the West Virginia Archaeologist, for which I was the managing editor. Or, you could read my MA thesis, which does rely on illustrations to support the text; it is downloadable from my old university's electronic thesis and dissertation site, under the title "Nearer, My Farm, to Thee: A Spatial Analysis of African American Settlement Patterns in Hillsborough County, Florida." If you'd prefer something more along the lines of a local history, then you can find a copy of "East Lake Weir, 1875-2015" available for download from the Wikimedia Commons. Those are all publications where I had editorial control, as opposed to things like my short fiction story "Chasing Cassidy's Ghost," which was published in Volume 8 of a small regional journal called Imprints.
So, yes, someone else may have more education and experience is graphic arts is probably more likely to think that it is vitally important to have that artwork in a product. I saw an interview with Steve Jackson where he said that if he could go back in time, he would have paid more attention to the artwork in the games they were selling. For that matter, from the time I got into the TTRPG hobby I had many friends for whom the artwork was interested them in buying a product, especially the ones that were graphic artists themselves.
However, all that said, no, I was not creating a straw man to attack; it really is often an unwanted distraction that diminishes my interest in purchasing a product, particularly when it seems superfluous because it doesn't relate to the text. I cannot speak to your previous experiences; but, I promise you, I'm not a great candidate for ad hominem attacks on the rather subjective matter of whether or not excessive art sells copy. However, I would be more than happy to discuss the substantive issues at greater length.
@@baronvonswankenstein Incidentally, I am not generally opposed to the visual arts. I'm a big fan of the Flemish painters, particularly Jan Van Eyck. My favorite artist is Albrecht Durer. I generally do not care for the artists from the early Italian Renaissance, even though Durer was informed by both Titian and Tintoretto. however, I do have a particular affection for Giotto. I, also, really love Ukiyo-e. Moreover, while no one would ever think I was trained artist, and have no talent for drawing, painting, etc.; I have received praise for artwork that I've produced electronically with tools like Inkscape, GIMP, and MyPaint (which works brilliantly with a tablet and stylus).
I wanted to point out, again, that I was only speaking for myself. And, add that I really did mean it with a fair amount of specificity toward TTRPG/wargaming products where I do very much feel like the "experts" believe too much in the importance of stuffing in as many graphics as possible.
Please I'm begging you, ask a swede how to pronounce "Mörk Borg"!
+1 for Drunk Dungeon Masters
Just bought knock and deliver! Awesome!
I know that July is independent games month next month could you touch on the rules Cycopedia . I got a reprint recently and wow its a DMG , players handbook and monster manual all in one
As your fan from Indonesia. Professor Dungeon Craft, please review Goblin Slayer TRPG and Konosuba TRPG. This are Japanese Tabletop Roleplaying Game that based on Anime (Japanese Animation). I hope you can make a video about this game. I already bought the Goblin Slayer and for honest review, this book is interesting for me. Also, have a nice day.
Thanks