I debated writing a review for this for a couple reasons, but finally figured I might as well.  Someone out there might look for the info at some point.  There, a Red Door is a zine in a series called Synthetic Dream Machine, for use with the Ultraviolet Grasslands tabletop RPG.  If you are familiar with Ultraviolet Grasslands, you will likely be prepared for some strange, vague, inspirational material with no hand holding or real direction about how you might use it in your game.  I’m reminded of Casablanca, when Rick is asked what kind of a man Renault is and Rick says he’s “like any man, only more so.”  Well, this book is everything you’d expect from Luka Rejec, only more so.

On the back of the book, there’s an explanation that once a decade a gate opens up and intrepid explorers might go through it and discover what waits beyond.  That sounds like the kind of thing you can plug into your UVG game.  Cool.  Plop this gate down, and maybe your players stumble across it.  Great.

That’s not quite what you get, however.  Instead, it’s a lot of very vague entries, some of which are attached to maps on the inside front and back cover, that I suppose give you a dash of some inspiration.  But there’s not a ton to hang your hat on.  And reading through it, it feels almost like reading someone’s random collection of poetry.  There are locations, spells, and artifacts, but what you might do with them or how they might work is all up to you.  I was extra lost when I was first reading through, because I didn’t realize any of the entries were supposed to link to the locations on the map.  I honestly thought it was just some nice design to put on the inside covers.

How useful you find this is going to depend on you and how well you handle Rejec’s style of “here’s some hints and cryptic lines; what are you going to do with ‘em?” style of game design.  I’m torn.  I like not having everything spelled out for me, but in this zine even more than in the UVG core book, it feels like not only is it not spelled out for you, but a third of the alphabet is missing. 

It’s thirty two pages long, with plenty of illustrations and lots of white space on pages.  It looks nice. Again, reminding me of someone’s book of poetry.  But there’s not a lot of content.  I was thinking some pages might be cool to photocopy and age, or whatever, and use as handouts for players.

I believe I have a PDF of another issue of Synthetic Dream Machine.  I’ll try to track that down and read it, and see if it’s different, or more of the same.  I think I was generally disappointed in this, in part because it doesn’t really feel like the zine’s content reflects the description on the back.  If that description had just said something like, “Want some random stuff to use how you will in your UVG game? Look inside.”  I might have felt better about it.

You can take a look at my unboxing video here.

If you like what I do, you can buy me a coffee. Check out my Facebook, YouTube, or Goodreads.  And take a look at my Patreon page, where I’m working on a novel and developing a tabletop RPG setting. I’m proud to be an affiliate of DriveThru RPG. I’m an independent author. You can also read my fiction over on Amazon. A rating & review would make a world of difference. I now have an Amazon Wishlist.