Hunters in Death, Zine Review

This is my attempt at taking a look and reviewing the Zinequest 2 projects I backed.

Disclaimer

- In the interest of full disclosure I bought this with my own funds.

- I was a backer on their Kickstarter campaign and paid 8 US$ for the print and PDF versions of the product in February 2020 (plus 4$ postage, to a total of 12US$).

- Nobody is paying for this review. All of the opinions you see are my own.
- Nobody is approving or reading this post before it goes up.
- I have no relationship with any of the authors of this product.

 

Overall feel

Hunters in Death is a 34 page-long zine (including front-, back cover, and table of contents), written and mapped by Tim Shorts and illustrated by Jim Magnusson. It details a wilderness location infested with undead and other vermin (in the form of a verbose encounter table), includes a town with factions and personalities (Hounds Head), a barrow mound generator, and three fleshed out adventuring locations. This is written for Old School Essentials (aka B/X), and I like that this is spelled out. No playtesters are credited.

 

Art is black and white, consistent throughout, sets the tone according to the written material, and there is enough of it to keep me engaged. Bringing Jim Magnusson into this project was a great choice.

 

The PDF formatting and layout is well executed, clean, and easy to read, in two-column format. I'm missing the bolding of key words in certain paragraphs, which could aid when running the module to bring the key aspect to the referee's attention. This is a minor criticism, but valid.

 

Production of the printed zine seems to have happened at the author's home printer, which adds to the flavor of an indie low-scale product. The digital version includes (annotated, referee-facing) maps included in the adventure. A nice touch for use in times where VTTs are king, or to print as an additional aid at the analogue table.

Sandboxing through Komor Forest

Hunters in Death is set in the author's home campaign world, the expansive Komor Forest. The meat of the sandbox material is split into three different areas, which I'll touch on in a second. (Un)Death, hunger, and crows dictate this setting's dressing, without falling into the over-saturated edgy grim corner.

I would like to highlight the first pages of the publication, comprising Referee Notes & Organizations/Gods. Notes from the author are important and something I'd like to see more often. Minutae like currency standard, peculiarities for the setting, or factions and organizations are discussed here. Great! Saves me for going fishing into the adventure to reverse-engineer this content.

Next we get the sketch to the hamlet of Hounds Head. The base of operations for the PCs, where they will have most amenities and services needed between adventures (equipment, smithy, sage, etc). Six adventure hooks set the springboard to adventure.

So, back to the sandbox's contents:

First, a 4d6 table of random encounters. That's a steep spread. Some encounters are unique, others generic goblins/bandits/skeletons. Luckily some of these more generic encounters include d4 variations, because nobody want to run into yet another generic goblin patrol... Common monsters, but with enough coherent situations to them.

Second, a random barrow mound generator in the form of random tables to determine number of barrows, monsters (if any), and treasure (both mundane and magical). There is re-usability in mind here, since players are going to fall into several of these mounds as they adventure. Magic items make the most interesting content in this section, since they deviate from the lame +1 weapon into more interesting options for the players.

Third, we get 3 more fleshed out adventure locations. An abandoned hunter's cabin, a temple (crows!), and Hunters Crossing, with a pair of killer foes. From those, the hunter's cabin reads like a creepy little locale that would keep most players biting their nails throughout, and would require critical problem-solving. The other two locations read to be serviceable, and I like that all three are tied to elements of the sandbox's random tables, or Hounds Head.

None of the material above will blow your socks off. Komor Forest is a cohesive region where the expectations from a semi-serious D&D game will be met. Dressing and innovation to be purchased elsewhere.

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This concludes the review.

 

During my first years at uni I ate an embarrassing amount of pasta with pesto. We're talking three to four times per week. It was cheap, easy to prep, filling, and had an ok taste to it. Luckily this habit didn't translate to bloat around my waste line.

Hunters in Death feels like pasta with pesto. Serviceable, filling, fairly priced, no bloat. It won't flex your palate with exotic or refined flavor, for that look elsewhere. But it will do the job as a micro sandbox setting for B/X with a few interesting adventure locales that your players can explore. With this, the OSE SRD, dice, and a bunch of friends I'd have game for days.