"I Have No Other Role-Playing Book That Looks Like It"

 

15 minute review of Nebulith by a German dude.

Notes:

-He's very kind. He says it looks like nothing else and smells nice and is a cool setting so that's cool and it is basically a glowing review so I shouldn't complain.

-"It feels like an artifact out of that culture"--Oh good! It took a lot of research, handcrafted trickery and multi-hour phone calls with Molly, the graphic designer, to get us there so I am glad that mission was accomplished.

This is an original, pre-graphic-designed
page from the bestiary

-The monster entries are hard to read. A little. That's kindaaaaa unavoidable in my opinion once I decided to try to make it look like an artifact out of that culture because I had to find a way to write in standard English-language text that didn't look out-of-place using Japanese Edo-period style graphic design. I made funny stick-letters. If anyone finds a better solution to writing modern English while feeling like old Japanese I will happily hand the crown to them. One could argue that I should've prioritized readability over aesthetics but most of the monster entries are not terribly complicated, so I made a choice. A giant bat is a giant bat, most people using this book know what to do with a giant bat and will just look at the book for confirmation.

-"Many of these classes are designed in a way that facilitate teamwork". Again, glad someone noticed.

-Flip through and decent summary if you're looking for that.

-He says the classes are hard to convert if you don't use LotFP. That is weird to me because they are things like "Ninja have shuriken style: The ninja can throw shuriken at up to 4 guys for d4 and, if successful, the next attack (by anybody) on a target hit by these shuriken will get +2 to hit" which converts to basically any D&D-derived system so idk. But what is easy for one person is difficult for another so yeah.

-He points out that if you strip away the superficials that you can use the martial arts abilities for Eurofantasy-style fencing schools. I'd say this is 100% true but also point out that these abilities do make combat take longer--which we considered appropriate to a wuxia-focused setting but piling them onto a slightly more exploration-focused game like you'd expect in a vanilla Western setting might not be everyone's cup of tea if you want fast-and-dirty, Godfather-baptism-scene life-or-death fights. 

-The fact that the introduction pages become 2 pages you never need to read again once you use the book is a weird take since this is a pretty standard thing in an RPG book this thick and a pretty minor inconvenience but being German has a price I guess.

-I do love the efficiency of the review itself. I find most videos like this barely watchable.

-"It comes with its own tone and style I honestly haven't seen anywhere before". Thanks!

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Nebulith and Red & Pleasant Land Are Now Available in the US, Happy Halloween

Here is the Nebulith in the US webstore. 

And Red & Pleasant Land is here.

"The most beautiful game product I've ever seen"

The legendary Tim Kask--first editor of Dragon Magazine, publications editor for TSR back in the day and all-around old school legend did a rare--and pretty gushing?--video review of our lil game book we just released.

“One of the most extraordinary products that I have ever seen in all my years in the game business...It defies just about every precept of good publishing and yet it is probably the prettiest, the most beautiful game product I’ve ever seen”.

One of the guys who invented the hobby just said our take on it was as good as it gets. I don't know what else to say after that? Go buy Nebulith?

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You Can Now Order Nebulith & Red & Pleasant Land

Here's a flip-thru of Nebulith, my new Far Eastern book.

The books are available here. The Nebulith seems to disappear at about a rate of one an hour so at the current rate they'll be gone long before Halloween, much less Christmas, so if you're thinking "I'm eventually gonna get one no matter what" probably sooner's better than later.

Everyone who has seen it (including at least three people who hate nerd stuff and don't know what it is) is like "God damn that's a nice book". Judging from the fate of all my previous RPG books, it would probably win some Ennies if it wasn't now against the rules for me to win one.

Red & Pleasant Land is also being reprinted now, available here, thanks to Molly Scanlon at Fierce Ponies.

Frostbitten & Mutilated, is still available here.

Also, some people do not know Maze of the Blue Medusa is still available here.

And Demon City, the best horror game ever written, is here. Here is a long review of it.

The 500-page Compendium is no longer available and never will be, unless you go to some extraordinary lengths. Email me--zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt clam--if you want to be assigned an epic quest.

Life here still completely sucks as a result of the ongoing smear campaign. The best thing to do to help is, instead of buying any of these books, get on the internet, go places you don't want to go, and fact-check a bunch of shitty people you don't want to talk to. But most people would rather spend money than do that, so ok.

Bye.

Nebulith and the New Red & Pleasant Land Are Now Available

Last week I was talking to James (in a conversation that will soon be available) and I said "Well you can have the conservative argument against free speech or you can have Black Sabbath and the OSR made its choice long ago." 

Today Ozzy's dead. He created some of the only important art that was also actually good in the history of the world. The party in Hell tonight will be the greatest since the Fall of Man.

In other news, kids, there's product.

Here's a video:

Nebulith is a new far-eastern setting, several years in the making, with all the things that implies: martial arts, samurai, ninjas, katanas--but also a lot of twists brought to the table by my collaborator, Alex Hopson, who wanted to make a setting based on his home, in Okinawa--and based on a very cool idea: a miles-high plume of smoke from one of the island's volcanic peaks has been frozen into stone, colonized by creatures, and that's where a massive dungeon is. Alex enlisted native Okinawan friends and his wife's family (locals) to help keep us honest about Okinawan culture.

Personally, I worked hard on two things in particular :

First, to present samurai, ninjas, martial-arts et al with genuine new playable depth but do it in a way that did not complicate the game past what old school players want in an exploration-heavy game where a new PC can fit on a 3x5 card. To this end I made a lot of random level-up tables (like this --and what's in Frostbitten and Mutilated and Red & Pleasant) and designed modular rules which made wu-xia style combat blend into standard old school play.

We playtested the new classes (Samurai, ninja, pirate, karate master, kijimuna hunters--Okinawan elves-- and the local spellcasting women of Okinawa--the Yuta) against western equivalents in a series of extremely fun playtests and it seemed to work out very well.

The second challenge was to make the characters, cities, dungeons, castles and creatures of our little world of Awa-Nikko look as badass to you as it did in our head.

I hope I managed it.

As for Red & Pleasant Land--it's the Alice-In-Wonderland-But-Vampires setting which sold so many copies it was the first product to get Lamentations of the Flame Princess out of debt and won so many awards the people mad about it all decided to lie about rape. I decided to sue some of them and that worked--at which point Molly at Fierce Ponies decided to reprint it.

These are uncompromised works, both made with absolutely no attention to what the market wants or whether it'd please anyone else. We made the books we wanted to for the games we want to play.

If you support them loudly and in public, we can keep doing that.

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The Demon City Hardcover Is Now Available To Everyone

You can get your copy of Demon City, the world's best horror RPG here.

Also there are currently two adventures available for 20$ each on pdf--email zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm for those.

For more info on the game, check out this tag.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Compendium

So lots of people have questions about the Compendium! Here's a newer flip-thru video:

 Here's the details of its contents.

Apparently many people are thrown by the fact this 400+ page book is free! And still available--but only until the end of the year.

Basically all you have to do is join a bunch of social media sites I describe and be active on them. You are under no obligation to talk about me or the book, just be there. (This detail seems often missed.) This helps there be a lower proportion of psychotic trash internet people in RPG spaces. Or, if you don't wanna, pay 1000$. (Some people did that.)

Email me for details: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm

Many people (including some in charge of internet platforms named) had the appropriate response:

Many were shocked and alarmed that people wanted this book.

Adam Muszkiewicz asks:

No, Adam, if you don't wanna get on social media, the Compendium is 1000$, not 100$.

That's my VenMo, Adam

Also Adam, what does "subverting social media" mean? 

Will aka "Rivetgeek" asks:

Uh, Rivetgeek, California--where I live and have successfully sued--is noted for having particularly strong Anti-Slapp laws. It's the first state that comes up when you Google "strong anti-Slapp laws". Anti-Slapps have been brought against me and they lost because I am not Exxon and some gamer who lies about abuse in my field to my potential allies, business contacts and customers is not a random member of the public, they're committing textbook defamaton. Or, as they call it in the UK trade libel.

I've been a defamation plaintiff longer than I went to art school at this point. Don't play internet lawyer with me.

On Something Awful, Malcolm Sheppard asks his fellow goons:

They're....not getting paid Malcolm. And they don't have instructions to post anything other than whatever they want.

I am not sure you understand the concept of "obedience". You're such a rebel.

On the same site, Dwarf74 asks:

It says "I am very sure nobody is going to do Zak's posting obstacle course, because it's a whole lot of work, and it's all stupid".

Actually so far lots of people have. Enough that: 

After
(click to enlarge)

The folks who want The Compendium helped take this blank map and turn it into a crowdsourced dungeon on our discord. 

Before

Email me if you want it: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm. We're working on a hexmap now.

And it's weird you call it an "obstacle course" because we all know guys like you are on this many sites and you post all the time.

Over at RPGGeek John Whyte asks:

He feels it is "highly unlikely 7 people paid 1000$ for a book". You're right, it is highly unlikely because it's now 10 people. Well, one is in the middle of Western Unioning and one is on the fence, so 8 officially.

John: if you want proof--please do ask! I am happy to provide it.

John Whyte also wanted the Case Number of the case where this happened to his fellow New Zealander:

It's Civ-2021-044-169 District Court North Shore Registry, John! Thanks for asking!

The other sleuths over at RPGGeek are also shocked to hear one of my friends who helped me check misinformation on their thread has the same IP address as me. I guess they don't know that in big cities lots of people have the same IP address and also: my players who hang out with me know about your smear campaign. You've been doing this for six years, John. They go to court and talk, under oath, about how you guys lie.  Of course they're gonna defend me online.

Claytonian asks:

Clay, I think you made a mistake, the Terrible Take contest was a contest--contests aren't mandatory! If you thought you had to enter, then I'm super sorry. Please contact the office for a free fruitcake.

As usual, the OSR Discord is an endless source of fascinating questions!

mtb asks:

"I am not sure why if you have non-psychotic trash internet people as fans you need to worry about other communities filled with psychotic trash internet people who are not your fans?"

mtb, the reason is just because you are not in a community doesn't mean they can't... I don't know, say, smear people outside their community on the Internet for example?

I would've thought that would be a pretty obvious reason to worry about said communities.

TDF Asks:

So TDF from the OSR Discord thinks Miss A is fake?

Dear TDF, it's Zak!

Hi! I can see you! You read my blog!

If you think she's fake: email me (zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm) and ask for proof! I can introduce you--I can, in fact, show you all our messages going back for years! I can show you pictures of her!

Please see a therapist.

Carson Asks:

Carson, what are you smoking? Cases? There's only one case where you cold have "read" anything in the public record about my personal life--and I won that one--the other two have no public documentation except:

and (most recently):

Bearer of a Demented Ass Asks:

Click to enlarge--its kinda long

and then asks...

So, this is your theory of what should happen:

1. When someone in your community lies on the internet, we should let that go

2. We keep letting it go so they eventually lie about something real important, like rape

3. You spread that lie all over the internet

4. Their victim loses everything because of the lie

5. The victim meekly accepts this, then begins a new life as a right-wing pundit 

6. If they don’t do that and instead point out that you lied and try to get their life back, you call them a narcissist

Go fuck yourself.

Hey everybody else: get a book.

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