Review Of Black Box Books -- Tome One: Astronauts And Ancients From Ivanhoe Unbound For Your Old School Campaigns

Black Box Books has produced some very interesting pdfs for old school style retroclones and now we've got another offering from them. This one is Tome One Astronauts and Ancients. This covers the Greys and Reptile men of UFO lore as well as using them both as PC races for the  Swords & Wizardry retroclone rpg system. This little product packs a ton of material into its nine pages of material. The ideas here are clever and very original. Damn it I wanted to avoid using these guys in an upcoming campaign but this is a really nice little product and Ivanhoe games has even incorporated in a pocket version for print out and booklet folding for a product that looks like it was dropped right out of the Seventies or early 80's.

GRAB IT RIGHT

HERE

Kirt A. Dankmyer is a clever author and knows how to put out an original and weirdly entertaining product. Do I want to used these guys? Well that is my bench mark test for a gaming product and the answer is yes I'm definitely using these guys coming up. With a cost of only .98 cents this is a no brainer for download. This booklet simply presents the basics for these races and with games like Carcosa and other science fantasy retroclones adventures this is one piece of  gaming goodness that goes a long way. 

According to the Drivethru rpg blurb : 

BOTH the GREYS and the SERPENT FOLK are magic-oriented, with SPELLBOOKS BURNED ON THEIR BRAINS!

IVANHOE UNBOUND is PROUD to present these TWO NEW RACES for SWORDS AND WIZARDRY WHITEBOX or ANY OTHER OLD SCHOOL GAME based on the 1974 three booklet version of the WORLD-FAMOUS RPG whose name rhymes with "TRUNCHEONS AND FLAGONS!"

AND SPEAKING OF BOOKLETS, this supplement comes in POCKETMOD FORMAT. Print out a SINGLE PIECE OF PAPER which can be TRANSFORMED with FOLDS and a single cut into a TINY EIGHT PAGE BOOKLET with EVERYTHING YOU NEED to use these two races in your OSR game!

And this product really does meet the criteria that it sets forth in the blurb. The work here is clever, condensed, and very interesting as well as entertaining. Can I see that the author knows what makes some clever bits and pieces that can easily be used with any number of retroclone systems. All in all this has been a really nice little download to grab and it actually does live up to it's hype in the rpg site descriptions. Grab this one and add a bit more science fantasy strangeness to your dungeons and adventure locations. Highly recommended!