My Alternate Reality Adventure - Vornheim II: Dungeons

So yesterday I tripped on a stack of Philip K. Dick books in my office and ended up in an alternate reality; the dimensional portal remained above the books so I decided to do a little investigating before returning to this reality.

It didn't take me long to learn something awesome about this reality: PANTERA NEVER EXISTED! I went to a metal show and the crowd was practically gentlemanly, no douches in pot leaf hats backwards moshing into everyone; "metalcore" bands sounded like Rorschach and (oldschool) Corrosion of Conformity instead of Pantera; etc., it was pretty sweet!

But before attending that gig I stopped by a game store. It looks like Hasbro never bought WOTC in this reality, D&D was still third edition and they were actually putting out cool useful products like hexmap sandboxes and packs of standup cardboard miniatures. They had dungeon modules that included the dungeon tiles and cardboard standups for the adventure! I checked online and you could actually buy old OD&D, AD&D, B/X D&D, Gamma World, etc. products via a POD service!

Anyways I see some familiar style artwork on a shelf and it was a book by Zak S., "Vornhein II: Dungeons." My credit card didn't work in this alternate reality, and the store only took american money for some reason, so I wasn't able to buy it and bring it back with me, but it was pretty sweet.

It contained all of the cool dungeon generation shortcut procedures that are on the D&D With Pornstars blog, but there was a butt-load of additional content such as all of the monsters from the Fiend Folio that Zak redid, but now with statistics (including No. Appearing, Morale Scores and Treasure Types). There were more monsters than just the Fiend Folio remakes, and they were generally pretty awesome with the kind of wacked out mechanics that you'd expect. Plus Telecanter had contributed a bunch of content as well! It also contained a bunch of dungeons and lairs; it was significantly bigger than the Vornheim city kit.

Man, I hope Zak produces that book in this reality...

The Vornheim Hardcover is Too Pretty...

..as in, similar to certain records with especial packaging, I'm afraid to handle it with my biological meat-hands, feeling as if I should don nirtile gloves before leafing through the pages (It's a good thing I already have my print shop digest sized "beater copy" from the PDF). It looks especially stark w/o the cover-sheet, like a Man Is The Bastard Record. I dig how the map looks like my imagination pictures a medieval manuscript map.

I mean this in the best possible way, but it does not at all even vaguely look like a RPG book. It also smells "really book-ish", like a new encyclopedia or something; no other OSR product I own is even close as book smelling as it. I guess it's an effect of being printing by Finland's oldest bookbindery; authentic old-tyme book smell?

I dig the small, thin hardcover format, and it makes me thing of the unique intersection of durability and creativity that occurs with many childrens books. I'm even more looking forward to the new edition of Exquisite Corpses after handling Vornheim.

A Quick Vornheim Review

- The layout (and especially the black borders) make me feel like I'm reading a 90s-era newsprint hardcore zine; when I'm flipping the pages I'm half expecting to see ads for Bovine Records and Capitalist Casualties seven-inches or interviews with Rorschach, Dystopia and Assuck.

- The general vibe of the material really makes me think of Fairy Tales; the surreal fucking Fairy Tales that exists in a never-was Victorian-Medieval Dreatime. As Talysman pointed out in a discussion on the Hill Cantons regarding what era D&D is set in, it can be argued that D&D takes place in the anachronistic, iconic world of Fairy Tales. For some reason I imagine the city of Vornheim as a Dreamlands analogue of Prague.

- It's an innovative product, but it shouldn't be; that not an indictment of Vornheim but of what RPG products are generally produced. Vornheim is full of flavorful, useful and inspiring proceedural D&D tools and random tables; and it's a damn shame that more books like this haven't been produced.

- There's less art than I expected.

- It's appropriate that LOTFP is publishing this, as it's definitely a sibling to Carcosa (and the whole Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Kalibrun, Arduin, Cinder, etc. tradition); notes and materials developed in a DMs campaign presented as a palatte of resources (note that to me Carcosa is a kickass campaign setting BUT ALSO an amazing DMs toolkit).

- ...D&D mohawks... *sigh* ...however that's one of the best D&D depictions of a flail I've ever seen.

- I would have likes grid-lines of some kind for the "hand tables," just for the sake of "less visual/mental processing cycles."

Overall it's something I find theoretically useful as well as entertaining and inspiring; I rate Vornheim 1 Slaughter "Strappado."

EDITs:

1 - A reference to Telecanter's Receding Rules! Awesome.
2 - I sure didn't describe what's actually inside the book; good thing the press release covers that.
3 - The Maggot Naga pretty much demands statistics.