25 August 2010
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
REVIEW: Weird New World
AUG 23, 2010 09:44P.M.
Weird New World is the second adventure module included in James
Raggi’s Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing.
Intended for characters of levels 4-7, it’s an adventure intended, like
Tower of the Stargazer, to serve as an introduction and model for novice
players and referees, this time not of a dungeon but of a wilderness area.
Consequently, Weird New World is much less straightforward, being
more of a “framework,” to use Raggi’s words, rather than a completely
ready-to-run scenario. It’s in this that I think both the module’s virtues
and vices can be found.
Weird New World is a 28-page staplebound booklet. Thankfully, it
returns to the “classic” Raggi layout: two columns of dense text with
most illustrations filling an entire page. The interior black and white
artwork is by Kevin Mayle and is quite moody and effective. Mayle’s
cover piece is a little less so but I think that has more to do with its being
in color than any technical flaws on the part of the artist. The cover itself
is detachable and unfolds to reveal a large hex map of the northern
region where Weird New World takes place. There are also two smaller
maps of locations keyed on the hex map. All of these maps are clear and
useful, the hex map especially so, as it shows not only terrain features
but also climatic zones. I should also note that I found the module’s title
on the cover a little difficult to read, because of its placement. It’s a small
point, admittedly, but worth mentioning nonetheless.
Because Weird New World is a wilderness module, it lacks even the thin
plot that many such products possess. That’s a perfectly reasonable
approach and certainly a traditional one. I have no complaints about this
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myself, but, as an introductory scenario intended for beginning players
and referees, I’m not sure it was the best one. Consider that The Isle of
Dread, a similarly introductory wilderness adventure module, provided
some structure for its contents. For that matter, so did the recently-
reviewed A Trick on the Tain, which also coincidentally takes places in
the frozen north. As an experienced referee, I don’t need such structure
but I imagine that novices would and it’s for them that Weird New World
was written.
That criticism aside, the module is nevertheless full of cleverness and
imagination. Great emphasis has been placed on the effects of weather,
with simple rules and guidelines for determining weather conditions and
their severity. Similar care is shown to random encounters, which
highlight not only the dangers of the far north but also its oddities, such
as desperate whales trapped in the ice, uncharted islands, shipwrecks,
and even living aurorae. Raggi once again demonstrates his
inventiveness, providing plenty of fuel for exciting events as the
characters explore the boreal wilderness of Weird New World.
The keyed encounter areas of which there are 40 are a mixed bag. Many
of them are well done, providing just enough information and ideas to let
the referee develop them further as he sees fit. Others are fleshed out in
greater detail, right down to maps with individual encounter areas of
their own. Others still consist of just a paragraph or two of suggestive
prose. Taken together, Raggi succeeds in presenting a stark, unforgiving
environment, filled with danger and mystery. However, there are
occasions where I think the weirdness of certain areas, most notably one
of the two fully-detailed ones, is overdone and to no good purpose. Raggi
is justly praised for his ability to conjure up “dread of outer, unknown
forces,” in the phrase of Lovecraft, and Weird New World is full of such
moments. What it lacks, though, is a strong enough counterbalance of
normalcy, places and people where things genuinely are what they seem.
The weirdness in Weird New World is thus overpowering at times and,
while some will no doubt argue, perhaps Raggi himself chief among
them, that that’s the whole point of the module, I’m not convinced that
this had to be so. Indeed, I think the module might have been better if its
weirdness were less extensive and inexorable. As presented here, the
weird is so ubiquitous that it could become tedious — “Ho-hum, another
abandoned shrine/castle/cave/ship that fills our souls with unease and
threatens our bodies with death.” I don’t mean to be flippant; Weird New
World is a good wilderness adventure and one that’s got lots of little
touches of which I approve wholeheartedly, like the ancient dwarven oil
rigs and the frozen stonehenge. Any one of these things things could
easily have served as the basis for an adventure in itself and that speaks
volumes about Raggi’s ability to elicit creativity in others, but, taken
together, I found all the weirdness overwhelming at times, but I admit
that’s a personal criticism and not necessarily a knock against the
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
module itself.
A more damning criticism, I think, is that it fails as an introductory
module. Unlike Tower of the Stargazer, there’s very little in the way of
referee advice or suggestions. Newcomers might therefore be unsure of
what to do with such an open-ended and structureless module as this,
especially when most of the encounter areas demand extensive
elaboration by the referee before they can be easily used in play. Were
Weird New World not written with the novice in mind, I don’t this would
be a problem and I’d probably be cheering at Raggi’s willingness to offer
up such an “unfinished” module for our delectation. So I find myself in
the difficult position of saying that Weird New World is a good, if flawed,
wilderness adventure module that I like a great deal, even as I must also
admit that one of its biggest flaws is that its intended audience will
probably find it difficult to use.
Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10
Buy This If: You’re looking for an unusual wilderness module that
demands you build upon the author’s own work in order to use it fully.
Don’t Buy This If: You don’t like wilderness modules and/or prefer that
your modules be more “ready to run.”
ROGUE FEED
Pulp Fantasy Library: A
Rendezvous in Averoigne
AUG 23, 2010 12:05P.M.
First published in the April/May 1931 issue of Weird Tales, Clark Ashton
Smith’s “A Rendezvous in Averoigne” is probably one of the author’s
most widely reprinted — and thus read — stories. There are likely many
specific reasons why this is so, but I suspect that they all boil down to a
single one: accessibility. Unlike many of Smith’s other efforts, even
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25 August 2010
within the Averoigne cycle, this story of the troubadour Gérard de
l’Automne and his lady-love Fleurette is extremely accessible to the
casual reader. Its fairy tale medieval setting, its cast of characters, its
antagonists, and indeed its general subject matter are all well within the
bounds of mainstream fantasy or historical romance literature.
Consequently, a lot of Smith fans, who are drawn to him for evocations
of the weird and extra-terrene, find “A Rendezvous in Averoigne” boring,
or at least a lesser effort. Personally, I think that’s a mistake as, despite
its conventionality, it’s one of Smith’s best prose works, an opinion CAS
himself shared in a 1930 letter to H.P. Lovecraft. It’s easy to see why;
Smith’s descriptive passages are truly moving, such as this one setting
the scene for the woodland tryst of Gérard and Fleurette:
The grass and tress had assumed the fresh enamel of a
medieval May; the turf was figured with little blossoms of
azure and white and yellow, like an ornate broidery; and
there was a pebbly stream that murmured beside he way, as if
the voices of undines were parleying deliciously beneath its
waters. The sun-lulled air was laden with a wafture of youth
and romance; and the longing the welled from the heart of
Gérard seemed to mingle mystically with the balsams of the
wood.
As you can see, Smith is still very much himself here, crafting passages of
verbal beauty, but he also seems more restrained, toning down his
penchant for archaisms and unduly exotic words without undermining
his literary alchemy.
That aside, this is a Clark Ashton Smith story. The wood where Gérard
and Fleurette agree to meet
possessed an ill-repute among the peasantry. Somewhere in
in this wood, there was the ruinous and haunted Château des
Faussesflammes; and, also, there was a double tomb within
which the Sieur Hugh du Malinbois and his chatelaine, who
were notorious for sorcery in their time, had lain
unconsecrated for more than two hundred years. Of these
and their phantoms, there were grisly tales; and there were
stories of loupgarous and goblins, of fays and devils and
vampires that infested Averoigne. But to these tales Gérard
had given little heed, considering it improbable that such
creatures could fare about in open daylight.
At first, it seems as if Gérard is correct, for, as he travels on his way to
meet Fleurette, he instead finds a mysterious woman accosted by “three
ruffians of exceptionally brutal and evil aspect.” Entering the fray to
defend, he discovers too that the ruffians are in fact an illusion and they,
like the woman they were attacking, disappear as he gets close to them,
leaving Gérard to feel that “there was something after all in the legends
he had heard.”
Confused by this turn of events and worried that he will miss his
rendezvous with Fleurette, Gérard tries to return to his original path, but
instead learns that he is lost in the wood, which was “a maze of
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 25 August 2010

bafflement and eeriness.” Frightened and tired, he finds himself moving

in circles, returning again and again to a tarn on whose shores he finds a
many-turreted castle.

There was no sign of life about the castle; and no banners

flew above its turrets or its donjon. But Gérard knew, as
surely as if a voice had spoken aloud to warn him, that here
was the fountain-head of the sorcery by which he had been
beguiled.

It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that Gérard eventually finds himself

with no choice but to approach the castle and enter it, in the process
learning the truth about his present circumstances and about the fate of
Fleurette. What he finds there and how he deals with it form the bulk of
“A Rendezvous in Averoigne,” which is, I think, both an excellent tale in
its own right but also an excellent reminder that not all weird tales need
be dark or vicious, even if they deal with dark and vicious things.

It’s an important reminder in my opinion, especially given the renewed

interest in pulp fantasies in gaming circles. Much as I think this older
tradition of fantasy has something unique to offer contemporary readers
(and gamers), I think it’d be a mistake to see amoral grimness as that
offering. Just as often there’s happiness, even joy, and that’s as much a
part of the pulp fantasy heritage as anything else. We forget that at our
peril.