Monday, December 26, 2016

This Is Some Kind Of Milestone of Something

The mainstreaming of D&D continues: 5th edition is still selling like hotcakes, comedians-playing-D&D shows proliferate, properties like Skyrim and Game of Thrones and the Hobbit movies grab from it openly, and the boardgame explosion is dragging RPG properties behind.

On another front--I know DIY D&D was definitely making things weird and tryhard enough that it was possible to write the words She seems to be able to traverse any kind of theme and terrain and wield them together into an assemblage that dwells in the interstitial state between dreams and our darkest waking places, a kind of laughter derived from shock of the new. For fans of Lars von Trier, Anne Carson, Kobo Abe, and Amy Hempel in one part of an article while mentioning a Dungeons & Dragons book in another part of the same article.

I just didn't know the D&D in question would be ours.

Maze of the Blue Medusa made Vice's top 22 of 2016:


MotBM is a full-color dungeon game book designed to be played as a tabletop RPG. But, to me, it's a kind of encyclopedic novel you could spend forever just flipping open, staring, searching out the impossible combination to its labyrinthine lock.

Read the full piece here. EDIT: Somebody Reddited it here if you do Reddit.

Pretty neat--I always hoped people who knew fuck-all about the game would still be able to see the weird paraliterary part of our RPG books, it's cool to see my guess was right. Merry Christmas to us and hey buy one.

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2 comments:

Jason Knepper said...

I already bought two. One for play and one for preservation. It's become my group's go to for game nights. I couldn't love that book more.

So, what's the timeline look like for your next piece?

Zak Sabbath said...

Sometime in the near future:
The graphic designer gets it

Some massive stretch of time afterward:
The graphic designer finishes it

Shortly thereafter:
It goes to press

Shortly thereafter:
It is printed and mailed