Adventure Games Journal #1

Ever since Dragon got axed, there’s been a scramble to find decent hardcopy periodicals full of gaming goodness. Last year, I took a punt on a newly announced small press publication from Adventure Games Publishing: ‘Adventure Games Journal’, focusing on the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and Castles & Crusades. C&C is my level gaining, dungeon-crawling system of choice. (I swapped over from v3 D&D when it got too fiddly for me to run.) And I’m familiar with the Wilderlands because I picked up the boxed set and found it a detailed and fun campaign setting.

And just a few days ago, I got my first subscription pack in the mail: behold, Adventure Games Journal #1!

It’s 48 pages, black and white. The paper is decent. The cover is just cardboard and looks a bit dinted from knocking around in my backpack to and from work. And the Invincible Overlord of the City of the Invincible Overlord is on the front cover, but he just looks like some Byronic fop rather than the bad-arse dude the Invincible Overlord (“IO”) is in my head. (He really should have spiked plate armour or something, y’know, because he’s invincible.)

Articles

The World of the Wilderlands. A long article on the cosmology and world where the Wilderlands of High Fantasy (or High Adventure, as AGP calls it) is located. A bit too long, but probably a good scene setter. Each ‘district’ of the world has a paragraph that is crammed full of ancient empires and Interesting Adventuring Stuff.

Hanging Out in the City State. About the IO, his wife, concubines and kids. This is a cool section that highlights how bad-arse the IO is. And there’s lots of cool fodder here for gaming. I love all of the intrigues in the harem. (One random idea while reading this was that it would be cool if a PC was a child of the IO, chucked out into the Wilderlands with 600 GPs and told to run off and make their fortune. Or die.)

Knights of the Realm and FEAR. Dry as toast article about knights, pages and stuff. And a knightly order, Fraternity for the Eradication of Armoured Riff-Raff. “...they have harboured hatred of anyone not cut from chivalric cloth wearing plate armour.” FEAR is interesting, if a bit of a fun/silly encounter for PCs. The short NPC blurbs are pretty good – James Mishler is good at writing interesting, quirky personages.

Maze of the Mad Maze. Aaaargh! A short adventure involving a maze with lots of teleports. My brain hurts form looking at the map. (And a very nice maze map it is too.) I’m sure some people would really enjoy this; not my cup of tea though.

Monsters & Treasure. This issue’s monster is a metallic, floating eyeball thing. They eat metal and stuff. A bit of a change from the old rust monster, but they didn’t get my GM juices flowing with excitement, wanting to sic them on my players. And two magic items aimed at ‘witches’. (Flip, flip – no ‘witch’ class write up, so they must be wizards with a pointy black hat and broom aesthetic.)

Lost Gods of the Wilderlands. Rash’l, God of Tyranny. Interesting read, and it ties into the IO’s backstory..

Lost Lore of the Wilderlands. Escgalbar – Hidden Dwelling of the Elves. This I liked; it’s a sort of secret elven hotel (in a tree), with maps and NPC write-ups. There’s a cave for non-elves to stay at, too, while the elves in the party are living it up at Escgalbar. There’s also some random plot-hooks and encounters. There’s also a zoomed in hex map of the area on the back cover.

Rumours around the Wilderlands This is pretty cool, a short list of rumours/plot hooks happening around the Wilderlands. I got some good ideas from skimming through these.

Shopping List/Adventure Finder Not sure if I needed this – it’s a list of upcoming d20 stuff and a list of 120 adventure modules sorted by level.

So overall, did my punt take off? Yes. It’s fairly crunchy little thing; I found most of the articles enjoyable to read and useable. I found it more useful and fun to read than any of my Crusader magazine issues.

Apparently future issues will cover different roleplaying games (the intro mentions Dungeon Crawl Classics and Palladium Fantasy), but at least the half the content will be about the Wilderlands and C&C. I’d prefer 100% Wilderlands/C&C but I’ll how I go with the mix.

Is it of value to non-C&C people? Yes. The stat blocks are fairly basic and remind me of the truncated stat blocks in the Wilderlands boxed set. (e.g. Brave Thomas, Alryan 2nd Level Fighter, SL General 4, Str 15*, Dex 14, Con 9, Int 4, Wis 13, Cha 10*, weapon specialisation two handed sword). D20 GMs should be able to make use of them (and any 1E/2E/OSRIC folk out there as well.) Probably a bit more work if you’re using a non D&D-derived system, but still enough ‘fluff’ content to be of use. And the magazine wants to target a broad cross-section of gamers, judging by the intent to have articles for different systems in future.

Is it of use to non-Wilderlands people: Hmm, yes, but access to the old boxed set or even the Player’s Guide would assist with translating some of the racial terms used in the magazine. (e.g. Alryan etc. I’d also like to see conversions of these into the C&C system at some point. And again, perhaps the general focus in future may create an interesting, varied reading experience.

Rating

Style. 3. The layout is nothing exciting, but it’s clean and highly readable. There’s lots of Century Gothic font. The artwork is competent, but nothing really sizzling. The maps are highly readable and clean.

Substance. 4. Lots of meaty articles. It’s a solid product; nothing that made me grip me fall of my seat and go ‘wow’ but still fun to read and everything was interesting.

Addendum

I also got a reproduction of an original Judges Guild newsletter and a nice letter from the editor/author of AGP. The letter said that I'd get a campaign guide to go with my colour map in the pack, but I didn't have one in mine. I checked out some forums. Apparently that's coming out next month.

Summary

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