Friday, July 7, 2017

The Mathom-Making of Calabraxis

Daniel Bishop of the Raven Crowking's Nest, has a great tradition, based on Tolkien's Hobbit practice of Mathom-ing.  A mathom is a gift that the owner doesn't use to the full extent, and is given freely on the owner's Birthday. I forget when Daniel's birthday is, but to get his Mathom this year (as in dusty years gone by) one need only review a DCC thing and link to Daniel's OP

HERE IS MY REVIEW

Hearken, Wayward Traveller!  Have you a need for weird interludes, full of novel critters and strange situations?  Do your adventurers tire of kobolds, dragons, and Standard Template Spells? Well, look no farther - Claytonian's Wizardarium of Calabraxis seems to me to meet your requirements, Mendicant!

It is spilling over from one plane of reality into the next with interesting to fight/roleplay monsters and alien entities, offers strange toys to play with and experiment upon captives with, deadly traps to kill the unwary, and of course an evil and twisted Wizard that is long dead but still haunts the locale...

I admire Claytonian's work, in that the WoC is a thing he made all on his own, including the art.  In addition to writing and layout, he also has contributed artwork to other DCC authors' productions and is a talented visual artist in his own right. In the span of maybe 18 (6x9?) pages, he gives both a bare-framework and rich opportunity of Roleplay and Combat and Explorative play, with a healthy dose of hooks to bring the PCs in.  In addition, it seems to me that no PC that enters will leave the Wizardarium unchanged, and the multiverse itself may open up before them - weird time-travel possibilities and even transmogrification ought to be expected (and to my mind encouraged)

Disclosure: with Claytonian's permission, I incorporated his suggested Psionic power rules into my own solo gamebook as a way to strengthen the network of bonds between DCC authors' individual work, the way that HPL and Smith and Howard did so long ago. Claytonian is an advocate of this position and practice, I think, as all we DIY hobby-publishers ought to be.


NOW, BRING ME THE HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST AND A MATHOM, UNLESS THE HEAD IS THE MATHOM 

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