Lowlife

Back in the far-off days of the early Old School Renaissance, when Labyrinth Lord was everyone's go-to B/X Dungeons & Dragons retro-clone, Goblinoid Games published two supplements to it that I really liked: the Advanced Edition Companion and Realms of Crawling Chaos. Among the many admirable qualities they shared were illustrations by Sean Äaberg. As I say in my linked reviews, it took me a little while to warm up to Sean's punk, underground comix-inflected artwork – I am, after all, a stodgy traditionalist about many things – but its anarchic energy eventually won me over. His illustrations remind me a bit of Erol Otus's early work mixed with some of the stuff I saw in White Dwarf and other British fantasy from the '80s but with its own unique sensibility. I love it and think it's a great evocation of the DIY spirit of the early hobby.

That's why, when I found out a couple of weeks ago, that Sean has been working on a tabletop RPG called Lowlife based on his previously published co-op boardgame of "swords, sausages, and sorcery," Dungeon Degenerates, it caught my attention. Though I'd never played the boardgame, I knew of it and liked its garish colors and funky artwork. Likewise, the reviews of the game I found online were all very positive, praising both its mechanics and the world if presented, which piqued my interest. Plus, as I mentioned, Sean has a long history of involvement in the OSR, so I knew I wanted to give his new project a shout-out.

If you follow the link above, you can find out more about Lowlife and Sean's plans for it. There's even a preview primer of it that'll give you a bit more information, along with sample layouts of the rulebook. Elsewhere, Sean talks about the game and its inspirations – a blend of "classic fantasy tropes, the scenes you’d find airbrushed on the sides of vans, the scenes of metal record sleeves, black light posters, the grit of Oldhammer with the fun & unexpected twists of the classic Japanese Role-Playing Video Games." It's precisely the kind of gleeful goulash of elements and influences that have always characterized the best old school RPGs and I look forward to see what comes of it.