After my somewhat recent reading of Shadowdark and its zine companions, Cursed Scroll 1-3, I wasn’t quite done.  So I snagged the first Letters from the Dark, a “third party” zine publication.  This series seems to be created largely by Chris Powell, with each issue dipping into specific themes.  This first issue is looking at time, dimension, and slightly Lovecraftian vibes.

First up, there’s a new class, the Evoker.  This is sort of a divine caster.  I don’t know 5e enough to know for sure, but I think it may be something like a Warlock or a Druid, where the magic is innate, owing to some sort of connection to the greater universe.  There is then some brief description of several planes of existence, as well as some new PC background options connected to them. 

Next, there’s an adventure intended for level 5 PCs.  This plays on some of the issue’s themes, featuring an island floating in the realm of time, with a mad wizard and some freaky, extra-dimensional critters.  And finally, there are a few new critters, a couple of which are at least loosely connected to the Lovecraftian Circle’s mythos.

This is a zine, thus short.  But contained within its pages are some fun and potentially useful nuggets.  Though the Evoker isn’t a class that I found especially compelling, I could see some fun uses for it from a storytelling point of view.  And I had some issues with the layout of the adventure, which I suspect I’d want to sort of re-write and re-key the map for if I were going to run it.  Though, I think the adventure itself is pretty cool.  I got the POD of this from DriveThruRPG. (Edit: Apparently, they are no longer going to be available in POD from DriveThru for the time being. You can get them in print direct from Chris Powell’s website here.).

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