Review: Tales From The Game Tavern #2

A while back I posted about how we are living in the golden age of the RPG zine, and the passing of time has only reinforced this view. It seems a week doesn't go by without some awesome new zine coming out.

I have been a fan of Grand DM's excellent Ultanya blog for quite some time, and it is great to see that he has thrown his hat into the zine ring. Today I thought I would take a look at issue #2 of Tales From The Game Tavern.

This is a holiday themed issue, but what with all the blizzards and snow going on, it still seems timely. There is a good bit of content for the price, with 28 pages of material (not including the cover). I enjoyed the variety, as you get class material, items, monster stuff, an adventure, as well as a recipe (!) in one issue.

Some of the material focuses around Krampus, which is nice and gameable. Highlights of the issue for me are a very nice hex crawl adventure, and "Krampusnacht Curios", some flavorful items that tykes might find in their shoes. These are minor enchanted items that eventually lose their powers; I like introducing things like that into my games, as they encourage use and do not affect long-term game balance.

An example of the high quality of the layout 

There is a "roast beast" soup recipe, the term taken from The Grinch that Stole Christmas, which I found a nice touch. It calls for a "turkey carcass". Yum...carcass!

This is a very creative and welcome addition to the burgeoning OSR zine scene. The stats provided are loose and generic, and thus fitting for any OSR game. Pick up one yourself and check back frequently at Ultanya to grab past and future issues.