A batch of NOD magazines came fresh from Lulu.com (praise be the discount code) including the first of the Hell Crawl issues that I have been pondering for a while. In the theme with my looking at various planar supplements, I wanted to see what it was like and I must say I have been pleased.
NOD Magazine is a "gaming magazine for old school games" from John M. Stater over at Land of Nod. The whole series is great, coming in neat blocks addressing different regions of his world which gives a hexes for that region and usually some flavourful classes or mechanics to match that theme. #11 from back in October 2011 is the first of a Hellcrawl series, set up as a dedicated high level crawl.
Stylistically, NOD magazines are dense; the smaller articles have nice illustrations and the intros for the hex crawls tend to have great art set-pieces but once you get into the hex-crawls proper it is idea, idea, idea in double columns down the page. I think these magazines are about the limit of the comfortable uses for this format - where the same style is used in a ~ 300 page hardback you lose the will to live, but when it is in the lighter version that is this magazine I think it is just about right. Just my opinion, your mileage may vary, pinch of salt, etc.
Contents wise we have:
The Demonologist - a new class
108 pages of Infernal Hex Crawl
New Monsters and Spells
Deep denizens - playable demi-humans
Pandaemonium - detailing some of the Dukes of Hell
A Titan generator
The Demonologist is a nice take, interesting in that for the initial levels they are something like a diviner, getting answers to questions from demons as their class ability - until they reach the higher levels when they can hulk out by letting themselves be temporarily possessed
The Hell Crawl section is the first part of five (also in issues #12, #13, #14, #15) and covers the Ante-Hell, Asphodel and Erebus. Flavour wise these are a homebrew version of Hell based on Milton and Dantes works and so quite different from many of the views taken in other products - lots of non-planar creatures labouring under dreadful conditions rather than everything being a devil or demon. I think this is useful in that it gives more flexibility to use these hexes in place or transfer them elsewhere when they can be used as an infernally influenced piece of an otherwise standard location - good for the Planescape Outlands around Ribcage or Plague-Mort or for parts of a realm on the Prime Material that has fallen under the sway of Hell.
The Ante-Hell combines the cavernous Glooms traversed by the dread River Acheron that serves as the moat to Hell, then the gray-green savannah of Asphodel, then the unending rains on the moors of Erebus. Overall what I liked about this portrayal of hell as a place to adventure was that it dials down the immediate environmental hostility compared to many portrayals seen elsewhere. It becomes a place where monsters and settlements cling to a grim existence as opposed to being so instantly hostile it makes no sense for anything to be there at all. This gives greater scope for varying the challenges and placing interesting locations.
One stand out example of this is hex 36.11 Necromanteion - a city state governed by the nymph of the River Acheron - where hypnotic music sounds through glass spires and from where transmogrified fish-man sail black galleons out on the Acheron hunting for souls. This is great stuff, both as a location in itself but also as a local power to drive events in the region.
Thematically the three layers could all be mined for great encounteres in other campaigns, if you do not have a party gutsy (or foolhardy) to attempt to storm hell themselves. Off the top of my head, the hexes of the Glooms could serve in Underdark games or as things to encounter while traipsing across Pandemonium or Acheron. The dread savannah of Asphodel could be easily adapted to Avernus or even the Beastlands. Locations from the misty wastes of Erebus could appear on the Grey Wastes.
In the monsters and spells section there is a compilation of the things mentioned in the hexes before with a similar footprint to the Planescape Monstrous Appendix plus some underdark species. There are some thematic spells like 'vampiric web' - web that also drains your blood and 'eternal death' that is a 9th level spell straight our of prophecies. Nice flavourful things for players to find or have used against them.
Deep Denizens goes into detail on four of the classic demi-humans. Each ties back to a sin as their origin point from when elder races fell into corruption and were cursed by the gods. This gives a driving impetus - Wrathful Hobgoblins, Envious Kobolds, Gluttonous Orcs and Slothful Bugbears. These are all presented as playable with a nice background table for your awful early years. At this point all of these options are available with extensive mechanics in various core rulebooks for most systems but the drivers and background table can still be helpful.
The Pandaemonium, with its handful of Dukes of Hell reflects the true old school 'god is a big enough monster' approach - more on what a given Duke can do but not a great deal on what this Duke is up to, or goals or aims to use them as a driver of action. Haborym, the Duke of Fire, has what I want - patron of plunderers and arsonists and known as the Gossip of Hell - this I can work with. The others have immediate demeanour (great) and an inventory of the legions of horrors they can bring to bear against someone who attacks them. I think there could be great potential for running this all as a hex-level domain war-game, with contesting Dukes going at one another like Solium Infernum.
Last but by no means least is Titanic Trouble which is great, this I loved. With the principle that titans are the children of minor gods and that in Greek myth there were lots of them, there is a table for identifying who a given Titans parents were, clustered by theme, so you can easily convert to wherever else you would like. With this pretty simple innovation, Titans or Titan-like beings could become useable anywhere. Pick any different Pantheon, perhaps filter for those gods that can at least stand one another, and then generate some Titans as major players in the land - whether as Hercules style wandering heroes or Minotaur type monsters at the heart of realms. Great inspiration.
The stats within it are mostly written in Sword and Wizardry format which is ~2 lines compact and easy to use in whatever system you are playing.
I will probably go grab the next Hell-Crawl issues in the new year once I spot another discount on Lulu.
Edited to correct to Hell-crawl is over 5 issues, not 3.
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