Review: Threshold #15: Mystaraspace

"The fifteenth issue of the Mystara Magazine, piercing into the black void to explore the planets of Mystaraspace and beyond." Of all the many Threshold magazines to take a deeper look at I figured this space-themed issue would be both topical and interesting. The original flying D&D ship, the Princess Ark, was after all flying about on Mystara. These magazines are the distillation of forum discussions centered around thePiazza.org and its deep well of active old school fans.

Screenshot of Threshold #15 covers with art by I. Calvin & Athenarius

From a layout point of view, the pdf is sized to A4. The fortification headers, footers and overall layout are a deep callback to the old Mystara gazetteers and the design in general takes a lot of guidance from those publications. I compare it to my nearest one (GAZ12 - the Golden Khan) and we have two columns in Threshold compared to three in the TSR publication but otherwise the fonts, the styles, it is all pretty faithful. One thing that amuses me greatly is the abundant footnotes, often with hyperlinks to threads on The Piazza - this really is a "by the locals, for the locals" zine and I heartily approve. This kind of dense footnoting also allows others to catch up on the conversation which becomes invaluable as time passes. Formatwise, I believe they are set up as POD files that one can get hardcopies of via Lulu, I have not tried this myself but certainly they look like they would be a pretty addition to ones shelves.

So what do you get in here?
Editorial (1 page)
This Issue s Contributors (2 pages)
Call for Contributors (1 page)
Sharon Dornhoff Interview (3 pages)
A Guide to Mystaraspace (27 pages)
A Training Day for the Thyphatia’s First Wing (42 pages)
A Tale of two Ancient Anomalies in Mystaraspace (8 pages)
The Pachydermions (7 pages)
The World of Ishtar (15 pages)
Damocles - Mystaraspace's Fourth Planet (19 pages)
Hollow Moon - A Quick Reference Guide (4 pages)
Once in a Blue Moon - Nations of the Midlands (20 pages)
Threshold Coloring Contest (1 page)
Shikugawa (15 pages)
Flight of the Nachtklaue (21 pages)
The Exiles Campaign Setting (31 pages)
Threshold Q&A (1 page)
The Unknown World Trail map - part III (28 pages)
Koskatep Level 13: Ixashira , The Dream of Fire (21 pages)
Artwork Sources and Credits (10 pages)
Next Issue (1 page)

Of all this content ~ 70% of it is dedicated to the theme of the issue, the rest are 'magazine business' like the call for contributors, editorial, artwork source or are longer running series like the Unknown world trail map or Koskatep Level 13. I set aside these 'regulars' - the elements that are more tied to the magazine than the topic of the issue - Editorial, This Issue's Contributors, Call for Contributors, Threshold Coloring Contest, Threshold Q&A and Next Issue. Instead we will focus on the thematic content for the issue, the articles discussing Mystaraspace.

So what is in here chunk by chunk?

A Guide to Mystaraspace - history of fan work including cross links to various forums - a cool piece to have to show where the conversations were happening even without the interesting content.

A Training Day for the Thyphatia’s First Wing - annotated fiction - the interesting sidebars, ship stats and navigation tools appendix elevate this from just flavour-fiction to me.

A Tale of two Ancient Anomalies in Mystaraspace - a pair of sites - the Obsidian Observatory and the Gray Pyramid that are relics of the ancient past with secrets of the things that built them.

The Pachydermions - Elephant-people from the Land of a Thousand Pagodas - with eight different bloodlines there is a good variety of options in here. I am not super clear if this is a specific 'space' element but as something unusual to make newly arrived voyagers feel they have come somewhere different, I would lean towards counting this in.

The World of Ishtar - a venus-inspired campaign setting that the collates the authors notes from their own long-running campaign. We get geographical detail including a hex-map, history and its shapers and monsters and races. Some great weird terrain like glass deserts, tree-fern forests and acidic water make this a stand-out.

Damocles - Mystaraspace's Fourth Planet - details the planet prior to its in-game destruction and is used as a vehicle to introduce elements of AD&D not typically present in Mystara like tieflings. We get a hex-map, a high level (paragraph per nation) atlas, a timeline and denizens. Solid stuff, lots of inspiration.

Hollow Moon - A Quick Reference Guide that walks through the geology, directions, light, and time of this odd feature of Mystaraspace

Once in a Blue Moon - Nations of the Midlands of the Hollow Moon - continues a series of articles on the interior from earlier Threshold Magazines. We get magic, region/nation descriptions, a big hex-map, and adventure seeds - very good stuff for spacefarers dropping in.

Shikugawa - drawn from sources on Mystara but framed using GUMSHOE, this is not specifically a space-faring adventure but a nice investigative piece nonetheless.

Flight of the Nachtklaue - introduces the flagship of the Heldannic Knights space exploration program - starting with quite a bit of history then giving us ship stats for this custom Warbird, crew and officers, , locations they often visit and missions they can be found pursuing. A good NPC foil or adversary to use.

The Exiles Campaign Setting - a Spelljammer Campaign in Mystara - keying off the idea that of the many ancient lost civilizations that have risen and fallen, they have left groups of exiles out in the greater wildspace who have been unable to find their way home as Mystaraspace moved. A neat idea, a great take on the space/time link where by going out from a world you can also go back through its history and run into those groups that were heroes and horrors of old still alive and kicking. A good block of local stellar geography is incorporate in this article, this is your core inter-sphere scale view of Mystara and the surrounds.

Lastly, The Unknown World Trail map - part III and Koskatep Level 13: Ixashira, The Dream of Fire are continuations of serials from previous editions - a gazetteer in the first case and a dungeon in the second.

Wrap up - this is a great system gazetteer - tons of content specific to the theme with a bunch of the regular long running article series on top. From a crunch point of view, we get a new race, in the Pachydermions, but otherwise this is a strongly focused gazetteer issue. Even if you had no interest in Mystara, you get a bunch of cool ideas to play with in the Exiles campaign concept and locations you could drop anywhere in the other planets. Well worth the look on its own and a fascinating view in the deep lore of one of the oldest settings.