I will make a couple of clarifications, just to avoid confusion. Some confusion is undoubtedly caused by my lack of explaining myself in the zine so the blog author is not to be slighted here for it.
Black Bestiary: This title for the monster section only appears in issue #1 because after including it I did a Google search and realized that Black Bestiary was a name already in use by multiple entities. I normally Google stuff like that first, but in this case I didn't. So I decided to drop the name and just not worry about it. Now I am free to sprinkle monsters through the zine wherever I want, which is better for the chaotic nature of the venture.
OSR Playbook: The article says this was hand-lettered, but it is not. I use a couple of fonts. I did combine the use of Elsene with hand-drawn flair for the character class headers. The rest is not hand lettered. Also, the article states that there are 4 classes but there is no Cleric in the mix, so there are really only 3.
Thanks again to Jeff George for the very kind review!
Hey, James! Thanks for pointing out my review to your readers! I apologize for the inaccuracies, as well. I'll definitely fix the one about the number of classes, because it makes me look especially dim. ("1...2...4!" "Three, sir!" "Right, 3!") In any case, love your work and your take on OSR in general. Looking forward to Black Pudding 5!
ReplyDeleteNo problem! Thanks again.
DeleteI love the Black Pudding and use it at my game table! I do have one request though and it's about the demihuman class's.
ReplyDeleteI would love to see your take on the demihuman class's as well as some special race/class variants with your style and taste.
Thank you for making my game better and more fun!
I did love the Demihumans in the Black Pudding 4 I just wish you had done some others like the witch/Barbarian ect..Non-standard.
DeleteMost of the stuff in BP is based on Labyrinth Lord, so there are a lot of race-classes. The OSR Playbook in #4 was not based on exclusively on that. Instead, it's more Swords & Wizardry. The idea was to create a basic game that was a bit more sword and sorcery, so I limited it at first to thief, fighter, and wizard and gave PCs lots of options for customizing. I felt like that would get you a nice robust basic game. I added in the standard demihumans as a nod to the roots of the game, really.
DeleteFuture stuff is likely to be more in line with LL, so you'll see a lot of weird classes and race-classes moving forward, just as always.
I love the Black Pudding magazines also!
ReplyDeleteOne question, in earlier issues in the Meat Shields section you have Ranger class npcs. Where are those classes from? AEC for Labrynth Lord? Swords & Wizardry? I suppose they are all close enough to fit in, but I was curious.
Thanks for taking the time & effort to put out these magazines.
My default is LL+AEC, or just B/X+1e. That's how I played the game back in the day and it's how I think of the game today. So you could use the ranger from 1e or AEC since they are virtually identical. Thanks!
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