Gretchling Review #1: Vayra of the Mad Queen's Court

 ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. Or perhaps just destroyer of blogs in a very niche area of the internet. Greetings everyone, and welcome to this first of my Gretchling Reviews, a (hopefully) weekly thing I’ll be doing, though I promise nothing on the consistency front. I’ll be taking a different blog each time, looking at their complete body of work and giving my thoughts on them as a creator. Of course, all of my opinions are objectively correct, and if you disagree, well then I can’t help you. Our first lucky contestant: Vayra of the Mad Queen’s Court!

Before I truly begin, I must say that during my gretchling gestation period, Vayra was very much a staple of my reading, especially her post on the GLOG as a whole. She is one of the newer blogs in the GLOGosphere, compared to contemporaries such as Skerples or even the Oblidisideryptch, but there is a reason she features on so many of the other blogs’ list of recommended creators. Now then, let us get started.

Overall Focus

One goes to the Mad Queen’s Court for one thing and one thing only: content, and quite a bit of it. Classes and setting stuff, all of it very workable in a play setting. If there is one thing I can say about her content as a whole, it’s that there is not one thing I would consider unusable (though I would certainly not use all of it). In true GLOG blog fashion, there is a certain air of classic fantasy allergy around the blog, with few exceptions. Every post comes as an avalanche of trope-breaking or avoidance, best seen in the article ‘Mountain: On Fire, The Elements, and Old Gods, Oh My’. Fish, Bones, Ashes and Bones being the Four Elements of the world tells you really all you need to know about what you’re getting yourself into.

The Classes

Vayra has not put out a bad class, that I can easily attest to, though not all are great. The TIME KNIGHT, an adaptation of the Echo Knight from 5e (one of my favourite subclasses in that game), doesn’t really capture the same feeling I get from the Matt Mercer version, probably due to how useless the Echoes feel. They seem like little more than jumped up illusions.

The GLOGSTAR post, however, funnily enough released just before the TIME KNIGHT, shows off everything she can do and far more. A Carrier spaceship as a Wizard equivalent? Pure creative genius, and exactly what I come to the Mad Queen’s Court for. Each class is like sci-fi drugs for my Gundam-addled mind.

The last one I want to touch on, though, another example of Vayra’s glorious mind, is the Witch from the Mountain Player’s Handbook. The Evil Eye being another form of familiar, created from negative emotions, adds some serious flavour to the Pathfinder ability it shares its name with. I always found myself asking whether or not I was just staring at them really scarily, or if there was actual magic going on. This answers that question and adds a whole new dimension to my character. Do Witches internalise their emotions in order to weaponize them later? What kind of effect does that have on them as people? When classes make me ask questions like that, I know they’re a keeper.

That is, of course, without even mentioning the familiars. I think the Gun familiar speaks for itself. Arcane firearms are the best thing ever and I hope to see more of them. I will definitely play a Gun Witch the next time I do anything. Lead Wind is an amazing ability.

The GROG (Goblin Ruins of Gaming)

This is Vayra’s big GLOGhack and… eh. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine system, but when I’m as spoiled for choice as I am in the GLOG, I just don’t think I’d run it over say, Bonepunk or Vain the Sword. The GROG’s saving grace is the Mountain Player’s Handbook, which contains a brilliant setting and some amazing stuff, but even with that I’d just take the Mountain as its own thing and play Many Rats or something. I rate it Eh/10. Play it if you love 3.PF but there’s not much more reason than that.

The Mountain at the End of the World

By far Vayra’s most extensive work to date, the Mountain is a glorious exploratory setting based around a mountain where few dare tread. Strange lands and people abound, and it is great. The Player’s Handbook is worth looking at for one specific concept I will touch on later. The classes (one of which I already spoke about) are all easily takeable, and the Rat Warrens is a brilliantly written dungeon that exemplifies what this setting does best: weird shit though just close enough to normal fantasy to avoid being too gonzo. Rat mutations are brilliant. Why is there a barely functional rat mech? Paladins having to make up saintly days to access their magic is inspired. I will be stealing extensively from this for future campaigns.

Red Air

The very first thing ever posted by our illustrious subject, and what a great start. ‘Communist space fighter jets’ is an amazing pitch for anything, though as a relatively old thing and it doesn’t have the same polish that the rest of her stuff does. I could personally do without the communist bits, as the humour really doesn’t land for me, though that’s definitely chalked up to personal taste. I am captured by the images of fighter jets arcing through the air that the system conjures in my mind, locked in an intense dogfight that spans the entire atmosphere and beyond. That’s what really makes me love this. I’d play it if Vayra ran it, but I don’t think I'd run it myself. 

My Favourite Post: ‘Mountain: Satans at the Crossroads’

Of everything here, this is easily the second best thing Vayra has ever come up with. This is just… ahhhhh. I have no words for how much joy it brings me. Demons and devil deals are my favourite thing in fantasy fiction, and this way of it coming about, by meeting a weird old fucker on a crossroads and then boom! There goes your firstborn. Have fun with your immortality. Read this post. Take it and put it into your games. Challenge a Satan to a game of 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. Profit.

The Worst Post: ‘GLOGtober 1st: Modern Fiddly Firearms’

I could not make it through this one. Fiddly indeed, and flying completely in the face of why I love the OSR: its simplicity. I admit I am not a gun nerd, but if I wanted this level of modifiers I’d go back to playing Pathfinder. ‘You and your players only have to calculate this stuff once per gun’ she says in the post, but fuck me if I’m going to do that even once. Hard pass on this post. Just give me a ‘small gun’ or ‘large gun’.

My Favourite Thing That Vayra Has Made: Swordsong

Music and swords. Both are in my top ten favourite things ever. Also writing, but that one’s obvious. What do you get when you combine them all? Swordsong, the language of the blades in the Mountain at the End of the World. Speaking to swords is already a great thing, but what really makes it is that you can sing swords into existence through ancient magics. ‘In a pinch you can whistle yourself a dagger if you know what you’re doing’ is such an evocative line that I actually cannot control my excitement thinking about this. I imagine great warriors of ages past who would incorporate singing into their fighting styles, conjuring swords as they fought to the beat of their own tune, their combat akin to a dance of whirling steel leaving blades all around them in the wake of their Swordsong. This concept is my favourite thing and I want an entire new class based around it. Goddamnit I’ll write the damn thing myself if I have to. GIVE ME MORE SWORDSONG!

Did I skip anything?

I skipped the post on the Mass Effect rpg entirely. It did not interest me and Vayra herself warned against reading it, so I took her advice and got on with the rest of the blog.

Interview Time!

Yes, I am going to try and include an interview with whoever I am reviewing in each post! Vayra was enthusiastically cooperative in this, and I must thank her again for taking time out of her day to bring you this small insight into her mind. Without further ado, here you go:

A: We're beginning with the obvious stuff. How did you get into RPGs in general?

V: My parents bought me the Red Box basic set when I was 7ish, I believe, would have been my first exposure. Then later in middle school some friends and I played elaborate games without rules, then by high school it was 3.0/3.5e since there were other people around who played that.

A: Was there a specific point that started you GMing and writing your own stuff, or were you the GM from the beginning?

V: Hmmmm, I actually don't remember when the first time I GMed was (my memory is a sieve), but the first campaign of any length that I ran would have been in 3.5e when I was about 14, and it was extensively homebrewed.

A: What then drew you away-ish from 3.5e et al and towards the OSR?

V: As much as I love 3.5e, I've always been of the opinion that it needs hacking to really be great, so past a certain point it just made more sense to write my own thing. As for what pulled me towards the OSR… At some point I came across a particular blog, which was okay, and linked to several other blogs like Goblin Punch, Middenmurk, Straits of Anian, all of which were excellent. This was in... 2013-2014-ish? I just read them for inspiration, mostly, though, and still played mostly my own weird d20 system hack until very recently when I decided I wanted to write a Fantasy Thing again and joined the OSR discord.

A: How did the GLOG then cross your radar?

V: Since Goblin Punch was one of the first blogs I encountered (and easily one of my favorites among all that I ever read - my bookmarks folder is full of that lime green 'G' favicon), I was aware of it just from being a regular reader, and it seemed like a natural choice coming from a sort of 3.5e/d20 system mindset as I was. I feel like GLOG captures all the best parts of that system and none of the bad ones, which makes sense as it was apparently at least somewhat inspired by it.

A: We know what happens if we say that in the server though.

V: It’s correct! I swear!

A: What prompted you to begin your blog?

V: Well, before I had even really started working on my fantasy stuff (the GROG, my GLOGhack; and the Mountain, my setting) I joined the OSR discord - and at some point I mentioned Red Air, the interplanetary communist fighter pilot RPG I had written a few years earlier as an attempt to exorcise the leftbook demons from my head, and someone demanded access, and I realized I didn't have anywhere to post it really, and so the blog was born.

A: That brings me neatly towards the contents of your blog. First of all, the GROG. What about the GLOG at the time prompted you to write it above what was already there?

V: I'm a firm believer that the GLOG exists to be infinitely iterated upon, and part of the attraction to me is writing my own thing. I'd never been a fan of the original GLOG skill mechanic (too complicated! pah!) and at some point someone got me to read about Whitehack sandwich AC resolution and I was set on including that, and by that point it basically made sense to start making my own hack, haha.

A: And where did the idea for the GROG's accompanying setting, the Mountain, come from?

V: So, after playing 3.5e throughout highschool and for a while after I was pretty thoroughly tired of Generic Fantasy, but around 2014 I started gearing up to run an online game and write a big setting document. The game never actually happened, but it serves as the basis for a lot of the Mountain stuff, particularly the background details. Then more recently I remembered I had all these OSR blogs bookmarked and started reading them at work, and that prompted a new wave of inspiration - particularly, to make it weirder.

I guess it was really born from a set of basic assumptions: 

• No humans, every 'human' is a goblin or an orc or something. 

• The thing is going to be set on a single, gigantic Mountain. 

• The four elements of nature, from which everything is created, are Fish, Blood, Ashes, and Bones, and the fifth (opposed to them, and to nature) is Fire.

 And then everything else about it pretty much sprung outward from there.

A: Are there any elements of system/setting design that you absolutely deplore and would throw into the Pits of Tartarus if you could?

V: Oooh, that's an interesting one. Like elements present in works, or elements of the design process itself?

A: Elements present in works first, then the latter.

V: Hmm, okay, let's see. Here's a short list of things I have claimed I 'can't stand' over the past little while: 

1) Fantasy 'races'. I'm sick of 'em. Give me humans and nothing but humans (maybe some monkeys and GIANT SPIDERS AAAAAA as well) or no humans at all. 

2) Magitech/magical renfaire settings. I feel like magic should be weirder and less predictable than that. 

3) Tieflings that are just red people and it's cool and they're a bit edgy and nobody really cares. I think renaming them to HELLBASTARDS is a good start to fixing this. 

4) XP for failures. This is a particular gripe I mostly have with PbtA systems - I find it incredibly 'gamey' and that it encourages 'playing the sheet' and rolling as much as possible, since you're rewarded for doing that in an extremely short-term sort of way. 

5) Ability use limits like "once a day", etc. I don't really mind MD depletion, since that's abstracted a step or two out, but plain "X/day" abilities really grate on me for some reason. 

6) Character sheets, despite knowing that they can be useful for new players to see, basically, what they need to write down.

I could go on... I am a very opinionated goblin.

A: I do find myself agreeing with a lot of those statements more and more as I play. Only a few more questions left, I promise. Is there any place you tend to draw creativity or inspiration from, say a place or a style of music or other blogs etc?

V: I've already mentioned Goblin Punch, Middenmurk, and Straits of Anian as big blog inspirations, to that I'd add Udan-Adan, As They Must, and Coins and Scrolls as more strong influences on me. I read the Belgariad and Malloreon at a formative age and I think they had a strong effect on me as perfectly generic fantasy novels - I think some of their influence is visible in the background details for the world the Mountain is set in. The Mountain's four elements were inspired by the title of a witch house mixtape by ∆AIMON which has, apparently, disappeared from Soundcloud. Ultimately, I steal liberally from anywhere and anything that manages to catch my interest, a process which I highly recommend to anyone.

A: I would have to agree wholeheartedly with that thought. To bring this to a close, I must ask if you have any large projects in the works at the moment.

V: I managed to get about 8 days into the GLOGtober prompts (by SunderedWorldDM of Sundered Shillings), and am determined to finish them by the end of 2020. Besides that, of course, the Mountain is my big personal RPG project - I'm setting up to run a short playtest this month, and intend to eventually publish adventure booklets for each 'zone' present on my map... That, though, is definitely a longer-term goal.

A: And that brings me to my final question. Magical Girl Red Air when?

V: Perhaps for a later GLOGtober prompt, or a future GLOG week. But don't hold your breath.

A: Thank you for your time! It has been a pleasure indeed!

Conclusion

As I have said, there is a reason Vayra features on so many ‘Great Blog’ lists. Her stuff is eclectic yet somehow focused, and her flashes of brilliance are truly glorious. However, some of it can get rather bogged down in the gonzoness of it all, and she sometimes suffers from not going far enough with an idea (TIME KNIGHT). The firearms post marks a blemish for me on an otherwise triumph of a blog, full of workable material. Please go and read all of her stuff, do yourself that favour. Your games will be all the better for it. And if you don’t, at least put Swordsong in everything you do. I rate the Mad Queen's Court an arbitrary Psychopomp/10.

This is Anni, signing off for now! Keep yourself safe, and stay tuned for more RPG content and Gretchling Reviews! Godspeed!