 | The Return of the Pizza Party |
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| | |  | Magazine Madness Continues |
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In this newsletter | Arcane Sword Press | Get Haunted Industries | Ham & Egg Publishing | Horse Shark Games | Solarian Games |
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The Pizza Party Returns This Week! |
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 | Ciao Paisans! Boy, do I have something cooking up for you! Wednesday, February 18th, 8 pm EST, Joey Royale’s Pizza Party returns with a vengeance! We’re packing the pie with three exquisite toppings:
The elusive Zog brings us information on his new Kickstart RETURN to Crater Valley. His original BLACKOUT in Crater Valley adventure for DCC really inspired me when I was working on Weird Heroes of Public Access.
Then I got another OG banger coming up from the soupy seller: Wolfman Zila’s debut, Dick Wizards, is an amazing game. Sure, the name is hilarious and gets your attention, but I guarantee the inside is pure genius. No holds barred wizardry in one of my favorite cities- Providence!
And last, and definitely not least, our good friend Josh Yoder, the glow in the dark madman behind H2O-pocalypse, drops a new Shadowdark jam: DUNGEON DEATH
Neon Lord on my right, Dr. Metal on my left, with Alana on the ones and twos. Bring some napkins, it’s going to be a mess! | | |
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Ahoy! Hambone here with the first of many creator spotlights in a column I like to call “Hambone’s Fast Five” (I don’t love it either, I’m gonna workshop it). The idea is to give folks a spot to promote their art by answering five quick questions.
While I do have my own books to promote (you can buy them here), it is also important to me to support the hobby by giving other amazing creators a chance to shine. So, without further ado, meet ZOG.
I am thrilled to have you as my first guest for this column, dude. Introduce yourself to our readers and let them know what you do in the hobby.
My name is ZOG, and I am an RPG writer from Canada, among other things. I grew up playing RPGs, starting in the early 90’s. I’d sort of moved on to other things for most of my late teens/early 20’s, but got back into playing them again in my late 20s after I discovered the OSR and, like many others, relied on them heavily to get through the hard times of COVID lockdowns. During that time, I decided to try and create something of my own and published BLACKOUT in Crater Valley via Kickstarter. From there, I spent a few years freelancing for Goodman Games on projects such as Caught in the Mouth of Chaos, Hellpits of Nightfang, The Dark Tower, The Caverns of Thracia, City State of the Invincible Overlord, and Castle Whiterock. I’m currently promoting the sequel to BLACKOUT, Return to Crater Valley: Secrets of the Mask, which is live on Kickstarter now!
You are currently crowdfunding Return to Crater Valley: Secrets of the Mask on Kickstarter. What’s the elevator pitch?
Return to Crater Valley: Secrets of the Mask is a 0-level funnel that will once again pit a group of hapless teenage misfits against cosmic horrors. This time around, the gang will face off with rollerblading thugs, brainwashed roleplaying gamers, homicidal aerobics freaks, rogue assembly line robots, a shuggoth, a shadowy millionaire AND a virtual reality science-fantasy nightmare maze full of digital horrors.
Return is influenced by 80s/90s nostalgia and VHS slashers. What are some of your inspirations from that era/those movies, and how do they tie into the game?
A big influence this time around is my own childhood interest in virtual reality, which, during the 90’s, was depicted as a technology that would inevitably be integrated into our lives in the very near future. Movies like The Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Demolition Man, and others, along with the explosion in digital animation, captured my imagination as a kid, and I wanted to lean into the concept of VR as it was imagined in the 1990’s. Video games were obviously a big part of my childhood, and spending time in arcades was a huge pastime, even though I often had no idea how to play and would usually die pretty quickly. I liked the idea of weaving in the power of video games over young people in the 90’s throughout the game as well. The presence of things like rollerblading and aerobics can likely be traced back to my love of very shitty movies like Last Prayer of the Rollerboys and Gymkata, and the importance of X-treme sports in the 90s.
As a system, Dungeon Crawl Classics is mostly known for Sword and Sorcery fantasy, which makes it an interesting choice for this adventure. Why DCC?
One of the principal draws to DCC for many people is the 0-level funnel, which I felt really lent itself to the slasher-horror genre. The second half of this adventure, which is the Virtual Reality maze, has a more traditional dungeon crawl feel to it, and players will take on the role of characters assuming the role of 1st-level fantasy archetypes such as Warrior, Wizard, Elf, Dwarf, Thief, Halfling, and Cleric, so it’s a bit of a game within a game.
5) Thanks for the chat, ZOG. Where can people find your stuff?
They can follow me on Instagram @hard_elf, but most importantly, they should check out Return to Crater Valley: Secrets of the Mask right now on Kickstarter! | | | | | | |
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Thanks for checking out my column. If you’ve enjoyed this, I have a weekly column on the Ham & Egg Publishing Patreon called Hambone Calling, which runs every Monday.
Each week, I’ll be chatting about what it’s like to be an indie publisher and a writer, as well as whatever else tickles my fancy in the moment.
You can check it out here. |
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What if every day could be a gaming convention? | Gaming conventions are just about my favorite thing in the ding dang world, y’all. Maybe it’s because I like structure, and I like being around good people, and I like fun. When I was a kid, my favorite thing was going to camp. I never went to a summer camp like you see in the teen coming-of-age movies or slasher films, but I went to a lot of other camps. |  | There was computer camp (that’s me in the front row, second from the left, with the ‘80s perm), and French camp (chanton tous la chanson << auberges de jeunesse >>! There was debate camp, Latin camp, and a regular old summer school that was basically a creative camp. As long as there were scheduled activities and nerds, I was happy. So yes, I love conventions.
This week is what we call our “home convention,” aka Total Con in Marlborough, MA. If you’re coming to Total Con, look for the Solarian room (Southborough), our dedicated space where we’ll be running games of Top Secret, Moar Blood, Witchlight, Troy City Mysteries, and others.
Also, be sure to show up in the central bar/restaurant area for the 2nd annual Golden Fez awards on Saturday night. We’re doing these tabletop gaming awards every year in memoriam of James Carpio, and the awards are our way of highlighting and rewarding the kind of tabletop RPGs he loved the most.
On the topic of celebrating the lives of gamers we have lost, as most people know, the gaming world lost Tim Kask this year. He’ll be celebrated at Total Con and many other cons all year long. In a smaller way, some friends and I decided to start a new 1st edition AD&D game in his honor. We don’t live in the same towns, so we picked a location that would be roughly equidistant for all of us and decided to go with The Battle Standard in East Windsor, CT. |  | I’ve been to The Battle Standard once before, to play Kevin Borrup’s Smurfs RPG, and it was pretty good. But I wasn’t prepared for just how good it had gotten since then. One thing I often think at the end of a particularly good gaming convention, and I’ve heard other people say as well, is “wouldn’t it be cool if there were a gaming convention you could just go to any time you wanted to?” Well, that exact thing might not be possible. I mean, you’re not going to get hundreds or thousands of gamers to just stay in the same place all year round (unless someone finally builds that commune in the desert I’ve been imagining). But this place is pretty much the next best thing. I just wanted to share a few photos from our visit this weekend to show how they do it.
First off, there are events going on all the time. They’ve got the “structured activity” thing down pat. |  | But what really makes it feel like a gaming con that you can visit on demand is the space itself. When you walk in, the first thing you see is… a tavern. Yes, you meet in a tavern. All it needs is a mysterious hooded figure in the corner, beckoning you come hither. Actually, scratch that. I think I just described a sentient fedora who says m’lady to strangers. But the tavern. It’s great. Booths to sit in, open gaming tables, beer, and food. The menu includes options like potions of invisibility and healing, “Beholder Bites,” “Khorne Nachos,” and “Salami, Lady of Scrolls.” |
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Then, you get the store itself. All the gaming staples you need, so if you show up for your session missing a battlemat, some dice, minis, or anything else, they have you covered. For the game I was DM’ing, I accidentally forgot to print a few of the character sheets. No problem. They had a printer and printed my sheets out for me. |
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As you go further into the space, you get to the terrain tables, and they are epic (Yes, that’s Han Solo in carbonite in the corner, complete with blinkenlights).
Everything is set up for a variety of miniature games, including fantasy, sci-fi, and even historical miniatures. There were some Star Wars games going on while we were there, and from the shouting and laughter, the games were going very well.
And finally, to the dedicated gaming rooms in the back. We reserved one for the afternoon and had a great time playing through White Plume Mountain. The room was adorned with swords and armor, and we all played on a massive wooden table, with high-backed, cushioned thrones for everyone. |
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Do you have a game store in your area that feels like it could be a miniature gaming convention any day of the week? What’s your favorite FLGS (friendly local gaming store)? Shout them out by emailing hello@analogunion.com so we can showcase some of the best in upcoming newsletters.
-Jayson |
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 | Catch Horse Shark Games at Total Con & Fitchburg State University. |
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Magazine Madness continues with Dungeon Magazine! |
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 | Folks, I have a confession to make – I did not like Dungeon Magazine. Go on, Booooo me because all I’m hearing is Boooo-urns. Let me elaborate on my issues with this magazine:
Layout: The formatting is awful. This started to be produced in the three-column format TSR moved on to that I really don’t like. On top of that, it’s impossible to find specific information in any of the adventures because it’s just dense walls of text, making the magazine pretty difficult to manage at the table mid-session Over-written: each page is just walls of text with too much information. This magazine came out during prime Boxed text, so you better believe some of those overwritten narrative boxed texts take up almost a full column (or one third of a page). Most adventures I attempted to read or comprehend read more like someone attempting to write a fantasy novel with too much world building. Lack of quality: Most adventures I flipped through were generic and dull. None of them has anything cool or novel that stands out from the one before or after it. Of the first year’s worth of issues, only one adventure seemed fun (more on that).
|  | So those are the main issues that made it hard for me to drag through the PDFs. But, there is some stuff I would like to mention!
Reader-Submitted: So the cool thing with this magazine is that many of the adventures are sent in by DMs and aspiring game writers. This is really cool – just imagine having an adventure published by TSR when you’re a teenager! Because that happened (issue 1, The Dark Tower of Calibar), but that also explains some of the quality on display. But still, a fantastic opportunity to be published alongside other game writers! The Artwork: Here’s some insider info I learned at a convention: allegedly, a few of the TSR staff artists did work for Dungeon magazine as freelancers at night. Which means your submitted adventure will have the polish of an official D&D artist, with maps and spot art. Concept: The idea of a bi-monthly publication that is just a few D&D modules delivered to your door is a really cool idea. I absolutely love it, but it is also difficult to maintain a high quality. As a publisher, anything more notable would likely be published as a standalone module for more money. So I like the idea, but I also get the feeling that these adventures just weren’t quality enough for their own release.
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Luckily, other people with more patience and time than myself have read every adventure and ranked them. In the first year, only one adventure in issue 12 stands out, being At The Spottled Parlor. This adventure focuses on the players gambling in a random tavern, with the adventure being the stakes and exchanges that happen between rounds. It’s clever and interesting, plus it gives notes on how to run the game as a standalone tavern game in other campaigns.m This is cool and a breath of fresh air from the more dull and generic adventures I found.
Having said all that, Dungeon Magazine lasted for decades and did produce its fair share of good adventures. One later one I also looked at from the 3.5 era was issue 112: Maure Castle, written by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz, a follow-up to the historic and legendary WG5 Modernkaine’s Fantastic Adventure. So there are some diamonds in the rough! If you’re interested in checking out the hits without needing to dig, this list on Nerdovore is a good resource to start.
In summary: Dungeon Magazine was hard to read and couldn’t hold my attention due to the quality of content. I would say Dungeon magazine is probably more directly useful for DMs than any of the other ones I’ve looked at so far, but only if the adventures in an issue spark imagination for the DM. Which it didn’t for me.
Next Week: I’m taking a break to catch up on reading. I will also be at TotalCon 40 from Thursday to Sunday, so I will be too busy to read and review. Hopefully, I’ll find some used issues of future magazines from one of the vendors. I’m hopeful because I was able to get ten issues of early Dragon magazine for the cover cost of $3 each! So fingers crossed!
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| | | | ModCon 2026 Northampton, MA – May 30th |
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Game submissions are open now, and badges are on sale for the first-ever ModCon.
It’s happening May 30th at the beautiful Smith College Conference Center in Northampton, MA. ModCon is a one-day convention dedicated to the modern-era genre of TTRPGs.
That includes games like…321 RPG • Call of Cthulhu • World of Darkness • Cyberpunk • Shadowrun • Marvel Super Heroes • Mutants & Masterminds • Delta Green • Savage Worlds • Burn 2d6 • Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland • WHPA and more!
It’s going to be a great day of gaming, dedicated to all kinds of settings in the 20th and 21st centuries, in worlds both like our own and very, very different. Sign up below, and we’ll see you there! |
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ArcaneCon Northampton, MA – October 16th & 17th |
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ArcaneCon is returning October 16th & 17th, 2026. Join us in a celebration of indie, old school, and old school-inspired RPGs, miniature games, board games, and more! ArcaneCon is Western Massachusetts’s premiere tabletop hobby convention! Game submissions will go live on March 1st! See more information at Tabletop Events. |
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Your editor this week has been John Hambone McGuire of Ham & Egg Publishing.
Keep on emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to let us know what you’d like to see more of, less of, or just ideas you’ve got. If you like the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com. See you next week! -JHM |
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