Every few days in June I’m picking a TTRPG book that’s been languishing on my shelf or hard drive, reading it, and writing a review. I don’t believe in attempting a full critique of game content I haven’t run or played, so my focus will be on discussing the work’s best ideas and keeping criticisms to text-level quibbles.
A short one today, to ease back after reading WTF.
I looked through Monster Knight Cult Wizard, a 15 page zine or artbook by Perplexing Ruins. I follow Perplexing Ruins for their RPG fantasy art on Patreon.
The work in this resource ranges from ‘outsider art’ feeling to professional work that could appear as a full-page image in a major gamebook. Most or all of the art is in physical media as far as I can tell. But I’m far from an art expert, so I’m going to keep it short and sweet!
The inkiness of the artwork, for lack of knowing the right phrase, plus the aesthetics of gothic ruin, sets the tone somewhere between fantasy, horror, and the surreal. In Monster Knight Cult Wizard this creates an interesting juxtaposition with the gritty, distressed, uncapitalised ‘typewriter’ text, the use of block colour, and the lack of overarching structure, which all together give it a punk feel. My punchy one-sentence summary would be: It’s like if a zine was a coffee table book.
The gameable content is, I think, secondary. The potion-crafting and ingredient rules on page 7 are evocative, but pretty basic. Mostly this just reminded me of the ton of great art that Perplexing Ruins has put out and that I should use some in my next project.
Minor text quibbles:
I understand that the text was formatted so as to impart a specific aesthetic. Regardless, not putting spaces between the numbers and the entries in a numbered list is a venial sin.
My favourite bit:
‘Tale of a castle’, on page 4, is probably my favourite artwork in the book.
 |
| An extract. Artist: Perplexing Ruins |
No comments:
Post a Comment