Quentin Bauer
Villager
From the creator of Raiders of R'lyeh.
WELCOME, GOOD TRAVELERS — Fearless Border-Landers & Bringers of the Raven’s Horde — to our sanguine sanctuary, this picaro palace we call: The MADDER HAG. This zine is designed for use with the basic, expert, (& advanced) editions of the original fantasy adventure game, and is therefore compatible with the vast treasure store of old-school rules such as Old School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, original A/D&D, and the like.
IN THIS ISSUE
Town-building resources for plotting out the ‘Cities of Thieves’ or other settlements in your ‘old school’ games.
- Settlement building: Everything the Referee needs for creating & running dynamic gameable villages, towns, & cities (& roads)
- Guilds & factions: Including procedures for downtime actions, emergent play, & dynamic campaign events
- Expanded adventuring equipment: Including transport & trained animals, pricing for trade goods, & more
- Black markets for magic items: With miscellaneous goods found therein (plus magic item production costs, pricing for rare magic components, & merchants of strange goods)
- +1 weapon options: Including tactical options for fighters
- Blackpowder firearms: Including procedures for powder keg storage, explosives, & countermeasures
- Heraldry & fashion: For costuming & identifying your kingdoms, factions, knights, & various NPCs, etc.
Elegantly packaged in a well-designed 35 pages.
PLAYTESTING
The MADDER HAG issues will introduce & explore a new campaign setting: written & run by a designer who started playing the original basic & expert editions (Moldvay/Cook) & advanced first edition (Gygax, et al.) of the Game of Games, back in the early 1980s; & play-tested by a modern generation of adventurers aged 13 to 16 newly introduced to TTRPGs, along with adults aged 40 to 50. More setting material will be revealed in future issues.
FROM the EDITOR: QUESTIONS ANSWERED
1. The MADDER HAG will arrive in print editions (with ISSUE ONE releasing in November). The ISSUE ONE proof copy looks great and it works perfectly at the table as a handout & reference for your thief players.
2. The MADDER HAG is part of an unfolding campaign setting. Each issue will serve as a 'module' fitting together with other issues, or optionally as a stand-alone resource for your own game & setting. The material of each issue is carefully edited to seamlessly integrate with the wording & procedures from the original BX books (assuring compatibility with OSE, Labyrinth Lord, and other old school games).
3. We are figuring out a place to release expanded material, designer notes, & extra resources that don't make it into the 35 pp zines. Most likely a blog; possibly a newsletter. Some of this material will be added as extra material to previously released issues on DriveThruRPG.
4. An example of expanded material for issue one would include a map of the city suggested (but not yet detailed) in issue one's faction table, and a rogue's gallery of different thief archetypes easily configured from the procedures in the issue, including the: guild thief (default), assassin, bounty hunter, cultist, failed wizard's apprentice, merchant-smuggler, mountebank, ninja, spy, thief-acolyte, thief-acrobat, thief-illusionist, troubador (or 'lesser bard'), treasure hunter, or yakuza; and these are not even including the demi-human variations.
5. The MADDER HAG will eventually cover a hex-based explorable world, encounter locations, new monsters, divine agents for clerics, & more. The first issues are laying some foundation for this later material. (The Thief class was a front-loaded difficult class I wanted to tackle right out the gate, given its implications for how 'skills' are adjudicated in the setting).
GET THE ISSUES
Get The Madder Hag Issue Two: Cities of Thieves, Black Markets, & Creeping Chaos
Back Issues
Get The Madder Hag Issue One: A Company of Thieves
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