Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Yoon-Suin

It took me a while, but I finally picked up Yoon-Suin and the first issue of The Peridot by David McGrogan. I’m sorry I waited so long. This is god damned good stuff.

I won’t go into much detail as Yoon-Suin has been reviewed elsewhere. But what you have here is a toolkit, akin to Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad or Vornheim, that allows you to create your own iteration of the world of Yoon-Suin right at your own table. And its balls out good. From slug men to crab men to opium dens this one has the ring of an ancient, pre-medieval world rife with Biblical vice and sin.

Delicious.

The Peridot is a nice digest zine with some Yoon-Suin material and lots of cool art. And speaking of cool art, Matthew Adams brings the goods with Yoon-Suin. Quirky, blotchy, quick, sketchy… utterly weirdly beautiful stuff.

One of the things I appreciate most about these books is that they are not married to a rules set. There is no logo for a given retroclone on their covers, nor is there any mention of any given game. D&D is mentioned in passing, and the sparse stats that are provided are clearly of the classic D&D variety. There is the OGL printed in the back of the book. But this stands on its own. It's clearly an OSR product, in the sense that it resonates with what the OSR community tends to focus on. But it is not beholden to it or any current game. It speaks to readers as adults who know what the hell they are doing. It explains what needs explaining and doesn't worry about the rest.

And it has sexy little stat lines for monsters that don't strain my aging eyes.

Highly recommended. This is the kind of book that makes me rethink what the hell I'm actually doing with my own work. And I like that feeling.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144820/YoonSuin

http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/david-mcgrogan/yoon-suin/paperback/product-22070778.html

No comments:

Post a Comment