I spotted CRAWL! in an ad in the back of the
DCC RPG book. Since I like to support projects like this, I signed on right away.
http://crawlfanzine.blogspot.com/A six month subscription is $21.
Issue #1 starts with a hilarious twist: Black ink printed on a black cover. I don't know if this is intentional or not. A gold sticker reading "CRAWL! #1" might be a way of fixing the black on black decision. This is just the sort of gaming quirk that makes collector history. "Does anyone have a gold label copy of CRAWL! #1?"
The writers are Reverend Dak and Brett Miller. Reverend Dak is the guy who did the design and publishing. Brett Miller did part of the halfway decent art, along with a guy named Count Spatula. (Which makes me wonder how many spatulas he has and if he has...you know...counted them.)
At this point in the fanzine's history, most of the issue is dedicated to rules variants (and fixes) for the
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. One concept I found intriguing was how to run a campaign without clerics. Some gamers apparently think spell-casting clerics do not fit in the sword and sorcery genre. There are alternative rules for how to survive (literally) without them.
* It strikes me that simply adding the cleric spell list to the wizard spell list and booting the rest of the cleric class would solve the problem nicely.*There is a feature about a "patron" named Van den Danderclanden that looks like it might be interesting....if I could make any sense of what Van den Danderclanden is supposed to do or be. (This would probably make more sense to me if I'd actually read the rules through. I probably ought to do that.) There's a chart for various "invoke patron" check results. There's also another chart for determining a "patron taint" for calling on Van den Danderclanden..."when a patron taint is indicated."
There are also various articles on alternative spell result variants and critical hits, passive skill checks and OSR conversion rules.
CRAWL! #1 is a saddle-stitched, digest publication with 20 interior pages. The cover is very heavy cardstock...printed black on black, so you need a shiny light to read it.
I would advise collectors to jump on the publication's relatively low price and likely high collectibility.
I would like to see more adventure and less rules variants in future issues.
CRAWL! #1 and LOVIATAR #10 arrived from California addresses on the same day....but I think it's just coincidence.
