Lestrades_Game

  Vaults of Vaarn – Leo Hunt ~2022   The following table tells you most of what you need to know about Vaults of Vaarn, an indie TTRPG released in limited edition hard back in 2022-23. The underlying chassis of the game is Ben Milton's  Knave rule set, a riff on D&D basic and modern gutted down to 7 pages of tables and a core system. My general view with short page count games is you get what you include pages for. You can strip down the rules but situations that occur regularly in game will need to be bridged by the GM and players. In short I think the modern trend of ultra-light games is with a few exceptions ill judged. Vaults of Vaarn is an exception for two reasons.   First it is loaded with great tables. Tables that bring its dying earth Vancian, Wolfe-ian setting to life more than any pages of background or lore could (why do people like lore so much?). Long-time RPG fans might say this looks like Gamma World, or even Metamorphosis Alpha, and the...

  Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Eidolon-Other-Fantasies/dp/0143107380   For my money Clark Ashton Smith is the best of the 30s and onward pulp writers. He has more variety than his two big Weird Tales contemporaries, Howard and Lovecraft and was more prolific than C.L. Moore. In a world where good fantasy is rare he is well worth your time. Ashton Smith didn’t want to be a story writer as he preferred poetry, but was driven to weird tales to earn a living and we are fortunate that he was. Dark Eidolon is easily available, being published by Penguin, and across 18 stories gives a good cross section of his works. Unlike the more famous Lovecraft, and to some extent Howard Ashton Smith was not tied to one or two genres or settings but his writing does have certain commonalities. He wrote occult horror, weird fantasy, historical fantasy, lost world fiction, science fantasy, ghost stories and psychological stories. The prose is often poetic wi...