Time for the monsters.  Chris Powell returns with another zine for ShadowDark.  This time, he’s looking at “monstrous” folk, as PCs, NPCs, and just generally. 

I like that Powell starts out looking at the possible meanings and implications of being deemed monstrous, especially when it comes to a history of “coding” real life cultures with fantasy peoples.  Going way back to my early days of playing tabletop RPGs, I was almost immediately put off by monocultural representations of Orcs or Lizardfolk or whatever.  I didn’t have any language to express those feelings.  I was like eleven or something.  Maybe it was my love of Science Fiction, where learning to know the alien was such an important thread.  It was this line of thought that helped birth my own Conquest of the Sphere setting years later.  If it can talk, build things, make art, write, have families, etc., then it can’t simply be “evil” by nature of its birth.  Of course, this also touches on my rejection of the “Good/Evil” alignment concept as a fundamentally flawed idea, so perhaps I’ll just leave it there.  In the first chapter, Powell also gives some alternate talents for ancestries from the core book.  And there’s a cool little section on languages, including some sample written text.  Neat. 

There is then a chapter on new ancestries.  We’ve got Beastmen, Gnoles, Goblinoids, Lizardfolk, Orcs, and Viperians.  Each is pretty unique, and has a lot of potential for play.  I could see each being appropriate for some games and not for others.  And that’s groovy.  With the bit of personalized world-building I’ve been doing for the ShadowDark/DCC game I’m hoping to run, Orcs and Half-Orcs are the same, the latter is a somewhat derogatory name given to Orcs who survived the Age of Horrors hiding inside the Last City with most everyone else.  Orcs who survived on the outside feel somewhat superior about that.  Lizardfolk and Viperians would also make sense.  I’m not sure if I would allow Beastmen.  Although, as I’m planning to keep the DCC levels of strange, even if I run ShadowDark, I’m sure I can find some way of working them in.  Same with Gnoles.  I like that these Gnoles are not any kind of demons or whatever.  I don’t follow D&D lore too closely, but I think that’s the direction they took them in and I don’t really like it.

The volume rounds out with six short adventures, each featuring one of the new ancestries in some way.  I’ve heard good things about “Goblin Games” in particular, a gauntlet/funnel-style adventure about Goblinoid kids running an obstacle course as a sort of coming of age. “Final Delivery” is an intriguing one that I think would be cool to work into an ongoing game, where the late Drevos, catalyst of the adventure, is already a known NPC and friend of the party.  I think that would give it some more emotional weight.  

I definitely like this issue.  Not only does it have some cool new character options that you can either add or not, but the six short adventures should be useful.  I could see them working as convention one-shots, campaign starters, or just a bit of fun.  

Check out the Letters from the Dark webpage here.

Check out my unboxing of Monster Mash here.

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