Tuesday, March 19, 2019

A Review of 'The Pay What You Want' Black Pudding #5 By James V. West

"Dripping and dolloping into view comes the latest issue of this old school RPG zine chock full of nasty goodies for your classic fantasy games!
In this issue you'll see ipzees and orbii, you'll learn aromatic charms, you'll find weapons of magic, many strange people will offer their services for your adventuring party, and you will absolutely encounter some cackling ice witches."

So I'm finally catching up with the 'pay what you want' James V West OSR  creation fanzine  Black Pudding. This issue caught me by surprised because there's a ton of OSR weirdness in this issue. We start with the random encounter tables in 'the marigold standing stones'. Then we get 'the spell books of the marigolds' which ties into the marigold witch & standing stones that's fresh in this issue plus new monsters in this issue. We next get into a fancy flashy stealth version of James V. West's ninja PC class. Then we get a band new quick & well thought out OSR adventure, 'The Rat Queen Dies Tonight.' This nasty little gem of an adventure.
This adventure takes things & events into consideration as a Basic Dungeons & Dragons adventure. There are some fantastic treasures, NPC's, & solid locations. 
Then we get a solid spell book article in the form of Malyfesto's  Grimoire of Nefarious Incanations. These are some wily little spells & some really nice ones in this one page article. This is followed by 'They Come But What Are They' an article of random tables to generate some very nice random encounters. 
Then we get a new race called The Orbii a PC race class  of ancient protectors & warriors to use with your OSR games. The we get Boola an NPC nature protector & all round nice OSR NPC to use in your old school games. The we've got 'Meat Shields of The Bleeding OX' a fine collection of hireling NPC's for your old school games. 
Then we've got a new micro setting for your old school games called 'Adventures In The North'.This is a Sword & Sorcery micro setting that you can drop anywhere in your old school campaign with a Northern feel about it. We've got ice witches, undead, & some solid additions in the form of a wide variety of monsters about. 
This includes some new weapons & artifacts thrown into the mix.  Finally we round out with a James V. West character sheet done in the old school OSR style. I'd give  Black Pudding #5 By James V. West a solid five out of five for its content. 

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