#ben laurence

[yoursghouly]

𝔱𝔦𝔱𝔩𝔢: “Dark forest, glow of the lake, an eternal dance of death” 𝔟𝓎 Ben Laurence

[vintagerpg]

The third issue of Through Ultan’s Door (2021) was issued as two volumes. This is the first. Rather than focusing on a single adventure site, as was the case with the first two issues, this one shifts gears to describe the Sewer River, a method of traversal through a larger world. Both the Inquisitor’s Theater and the Fleischguild are on the river. This zine gives an overview for traveling the river and blocks out the many encounters that are possible. A number of smaller adventure sites get profiled, as do some unpleasant artifacts that can be found along the way. It kind of reminds me of a smaller scale Death on the Reik.

My favorite bit, again, is the new rules for dreamers, this time for opium fiends who access the dream city through the use of the drug rather than Ultan’s door (a convenient way to account for folks who can’t make a given session). Laurence fashions a whole class out of it, a variant for spellcasters, with a range of small customizations dependent on the character’s drug of choice.

Laurence couldn’t entirely leave elaborate adventure sites alone for this volume. The Knowing Bee Sweet Forge is presented as a fold-out insert. It is a terrible place, full of bees, honey ghouls and narcotic honey. I love it.

Huargo continues to define this corner of dreams. David Hoskins joins the fun as well. The two work well in tandem.

[vintagerpg]

Like A Thousand Thousand Islands, much of the appeal of Through Ultan’s Door (this is issue one, 2019) comes from the act of reading it. Where ATTI often feels like poetry, TUD reminds me of the prose-poems of Clark Ashton Smith. They share a similar narcotic quality. That makes it a bit difficult to write about though — anything I say isn’t going to convey the actual experience.

Still, I’ve got to give it a shot, because I love these things and y’all need to check them out. TUD is an OSR zine series by Ben Laurence, illustrated by a number of different artists. His art direction is spot on — the art is varied but hits the dreamy vibe every time. The artist Huargo is the real stand-out here for me.

The idea here is that a door appeared in Ultan’s basement and it leads to the sewers of the dream/nightmare city of Zyan. Specifically, you come out in the ruins of a place called the Inquisitor’s Theater. Everything about is compelling and repellent in equal parts. There are lots of paths through the complex, lots to explore, lots of factions to interact with. Again, hard to do it justice, though the oneiric pudding is maybe a perfect example of what TUD offers. Like the classic puddings of D&D, this is a sort of hungry blob, but it is made of the run-off of dreams. It uses powerful dream imagery to bait its pray, creating phantasmal tableau that lure sentients in range of attack. When killed, it dissolves into a stream of symbolic imagery.

As delightfully strange as all this is, it is really only prologue to the rest of the series.

[vintagerpg]

The focus of Issue 3, Part 2, of Through Ultan’s Door (2021) is a site of interest, but not one where adventure will find the players. Rather, it is a sanctuary, where they can rest and recuperate from their sewer journey. That isn’t set in stone of course. There are factions in the Sanitarium of the Benefactors and, players being players, there are plenty of opportunities to overturn the status quo, for better or worse. Some such disruptions can be deadly, or have the potential to seriously change the direction of the campaign.

Or, it can remain a sanctuary. Much of this issue is filled with maladies (including a second pamphlet) which may trouble your players. Judging from what they’ve already seen of the city of dreams, an oasis like this might be worth keeping intact.

There is an adventure site as well — the dam of the lurid toads. They’re suitably awful and their demesne leads to points that will be detailed in future volumes. Short notes on a couple additional points of interest round things out.

Taken together, the two parts provide much scaffolding for Laurence to block out a larger world in the next installments. We’ve covered a lot of ground already, with a good variety of vibes, so I am keen to see what comes next and if we ever get out of these subterranean tunnels into the city proper.

This issue is ruled by Daria Khlebnikova. David Hoskins has a nice piece as well.

[vintagerpg]

Issue 2 of Through Ultan’s Door (2020) is my favorite. Is it because it has a Russ Nicholson cover? It certainly helps, yes. Nicholson’s ornate style is perfect for this  dream/nightmare.

It is a tricky thing to present something that is beautifully fascinating while also being horrifically dangerous. Such is the case with the catacombs of the fleischguild, an organization that seems to have an enthusiasm for Clive Barker’s cenobites. It strikes me as a gorgeous place to die, or a place to die gorgeously. I am not sure which. Stuff like this usually leaves me a bit cold or a bit squeamish, but Laurence imbues it all with the distance of a dream — the terrors are there but not there. You experience an echo of them but you don’t feel them in the same way you might in cruder matter.

Most of the zine is dedicated to the catacombs. Again, there are factions, this time their shared existence is more strained. There are new spells, some strange items. My favorite bit is the new rules for dreamers, which present a selection of strange rewards for leveling up in the land of slumber. Some are gifts, some are not.

[technoskald]

Random Tables in RPGs

Random Tables in RPGs: riffing on a post @benlaurence1 wrote last year that's been on my mind. #ttrpg #osr

Musing this afternoon on @benlaurence1’s older blog post “Pleasures of the OSR: Secrecy and Discovery“. The thing I like about this play style (and I like many!) is precisely the surprise of what happens when random tables drive play.

Making sense of these seemingly unrelated bits of ephemera (random encounters, generated NPCs, found objects) means I’m discovering the world along with my…

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[nerdtrekdotcom]

From the Vats (OSR)

From the Vats (OSR)

From the Vats (OSR) This FREE pdf (the print copy costs a measly $3.00 for at-cost printing!) clocks in at 54 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC/foreword, 2 pages of SRD, leaving us with 49 pages of content – though, as most of the time for OSR-supplements, the file is formatted for a 6’’ by 9’’-standard, which means you can try to fit up to 4 pages of content on a sheet of…

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