"MR-KR-GR - The Death-Rolled Kingdom - A river kingdom of haunted ruins, ruled by crocodiles." This is a big, strange realm ruled by crocodiles. A port city and a town are given along with encounter tables and hints enough to sketch out a realm fit for a campaigns worth of adventures. For further review goodness, the Gauntlet or Reviews from Ryleh have more.
Through out this and all of the zines there is a beautiful, sparse style - clear text, not a word wasted, lots of negative space that makes it all feel calm and open and easy to read. The art by Mun Kao within is as the covers in the photo above, black and white line drawings perfectly matched to the text throughout.
"Kraching - The Place of the Paw - A valley where cats are holy, and timber haunted." This is a more detailed single site that could easily a base of operations for adventurers, giving time enough to peel back the onion layers of schemes and subtle lore. Many hooks and interests are lying around and I love how they were ordered through the book - first as encounter with fellow outsiders then progressing through to interactions with the hidden hands behind the community that could map to the PCs building reputation within the community.
"Upper Heleng - The Forest Beloved by Time - A forest of wandering nomads and god-guarded borders." A great variation on the forest wilderness with some very interesting wilderness harvest that could justify venturing into its depth. I loved how design matched to theme with a dice drop insert that allows a DM to populate these impenetrable forests indefinitely.
"Andjang - The Queen on Dog Mountain - A highland kingdom ruled by parasitic royalty." Unfolds like a spooky story - with intriguing hooks and signs to let the attentive figure out that something is not well on Dog Mountain. The book is structure as a spiral in towards the palace with plenty of clues to draw the curious onwards or let the cautious nope the hell out and feel well justified in their decision.
"Drawings (Part One) - Pirates, princesses, processions. An art zine, inspired by the SEA." This is purely artwork but a nice bunch of evocative illustrations that I think have not been properly flagged as the 'players handbook' for the setting that can be passed around between players without spoiling anything. I was initially somewhat unsure about this particular zine but time and re-reading has changed my mind. If anything, this may be one of the more critical flavour setting pieces as it can be handed around at campaign pitch or session zero phase to spark player interest and buy-in to the setting.
The web page calls a Thousand Thousand Islands a "porous, patchwork reality — where rice grows in blood-red paddies, where princesses romance their spears, where it is a bad idea to mispronounce a crocodile’s name. [t]his project draws from the overlapping material cultures, lived stories, and mythistories of that region of the world variously called Indochina, Suvarnabhumi, and the Nusantara — Southeast Asia. A THOUSAND THOUSAND ISLANDS isn’t a medieval European fantasy world, superficially re-skinned with brown people, kerises and catamarans." The 'drawings' book is the one I would use get playes aligned on what that looks like in play.
Looking ahead there are two more zines currently blocked by the COVID lockdown impact on international mail but it means that there is more! Available once things start moving again and I intend to snap them up!
I also got Hantu! - Essays and fiction about hantu, the monsters of Malaysian lore. This is more contemporary and ties perhaps to a Call of Cthulu or Conspiracy X game. Here the format is a set of stories that could easily be 'lore as delivered by the NPC speaking' into such a game.
Questing Beast does a review on the full set of six zines. There is also a nice overview on Coins and Scrolls.
Edit: the next batch of zines - #5,6 & 8 are reviewed here.
No comments:
Post a Comment