OSR - Black Pudding #7

 I love the OSR!

The sheer creativity of so many contributors, and the depth of talent in producing ingenious content and eye catching art just tickles my fancy in a very satisfying manner. What's more, the producers are all independents as opposed to big publishing corporations.

I've been a tad naughty in recent months, stealing food from my bairns' mouths by spending money on various OSR Kickstarters. To be fair, I'm over indulgent on my bairns and so treating myself now and again is A-okay in my book.

Yesterday evening I returned home from a TTRPG day at my mate Ian's, and I was pleasantly surprised to see my purchase of Black Pudding #7 laying on the kitchen table waiting for me.

Just look at this gorgeous front cover...

The Black Pudding zines are the work of American artist, James V. West. I've only just recently discovered him and already I drool over his black and white comic art style. Black Pudding #7 is my first foray into his work and I'm really impressed.

The Zine is A5 portrait and consists of heavy card end covers enfolding 24 pages of superb black and white hand drawn content that are professionally folded, trimmed and stapled.

Pages 1 - 4 contain four new player classes. Each Class's art work, font and page layout are entirely unique and impart the flavour or ethos of that particular class. The information is descriptively punchy and yet economic. Everything you need to play the class to a high level is there on one page. There is no unnecessary bloat.

My favourite is Rat Bastard, and I definitely want to play it at some point, or introduce the class to my players. Check it out below...

The other three classes are Iggy, Flamer, and Eyeball. Yes, that's right folks - you can play a walking, talking, sentient eyeball (pending Game Master/Referee approval, of course). 😲

Pages 5 - 7 have Monstrous stats for creatures such as Rocky, Grave Crusader, Dracowisp, Tyrano-X, and Queen of the Dark Light.

Page 8 has what looks like a pencil and ink drawn map of the continent of Yria. The remainder of the zine is given over entirely to a Gazetteer of said map.

In an area roughly one ninth of the page J.V. West outlines the premise of his continent:-

"In the beginning, or some such time, Pan-Gea was everything. Formless, shifting, weird. Civilisations emerged, lived, died and rotted. Over time, the dream-time world faded into the background and left the 'real' world behind. Here is a brief sketch of one iteration of one moment of that world - Yria."

The following double page spread provides brief descriptions of locations marked on the map. I'll give you one example:

"26. Lightning Spires: Mountains of high, rocky peaks. No ice caps. Constant storms. War of giants. Home to dwarves (not dwarfs)."

I particularly like this. The descriptions are short and to the point, but descriptive. In five very short sentences, containing only eighteen words, J. V. West imparts a physical description of the region with an idea of who lives there and what occurs on any given day or night. It is a broad brush stroke that gives the Referee the greatest freedom in fleshing it out for their players and making it their own.

Pages 12 - 16 contain one page introductions to the five main cities. Each city page has five to seven D6 tables that provide flavour about occupants, sights and sounds, architecture, the weather and things seen or encountered. There are small columns of writing that impart history and information about culture and the city ruler(s).

Pages 17 - 24 provide information and detail on the mythos of Yria and its gods. Each god has half a page to itself with an illustration, and information about itself, its clerics, how folk worship it, and portents and physical descriptions.

Throughout the zine there are references to creatures or character classes that have been published in previous issues of Black Pudding, with handy signposts to the issue in which it can be found.

The Zine's internal end cover provides a handy table of common names for folk from each of the five cities.

I think that my favourite addition is the external face of the end cover. It has a very simple and cleanly hand drawn character sheet that can be scanned or photocopied for use. It has all the essential information you need for a character in the OSR.

This is a really nice feature and easily portable. It can be photocopied/scanned with ease and can be added to any journal, folder or arch file.

Overall I am really impressed with the creative imagination of the content, and the beautiful hand drawn artwork of the author, James V. West. I am very keen to get my hands on earlier issues, preferably in hard copy.

Overall I paid £13.00 for this kickstarter. For that paltry sum I received an amazing and beautifully produced zine with some zany classes and a whole new world and mythos to explore. I also received a double sided A6 hand drawn poster with a comic strip on the reverse side (not shown here), and an Adventure journal for recording whatever shenanigans my characters of choice get up to.

As James V. West puts it, the contents of Black Pudding is compatible with most clunky old adventure games or revised versions such as Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials.

You can discover more of James V. West's work at https://www.jvwest.art/, and his gaming blog is at http://doomslakers.blogspot.com/

Pdfs of Black Pudding can be purchased from DriveThruRPG