Weekly Book Recommendations (August 23)

The Hidden Halls of Hazakor by Scott Fitzgerald Gray: This is a sizable softcover tome, some 70 pages, full of what can only be described as what The Keep on the Borderlands would be if it were written today, but someone without Gary's prose stylings. I bought the book to read and then pass on to the teen library RPG section, as this is designed for 12+ year olds to read and learn to run their first dungeon. In that it is very well done, providing a fleshed out 'home base' with some internal mysteries for the PCs to work from and the Tomb logically divided up into key-access areas so the PCs don't get in over their heads and the GM knows what's accessible and what to prepare for in any given session, with scattered GM advice on how to handle the sorts of table problems likely to arise in this bit. In general I like it, for all that I'm not a fan of the 5E mechanics its built on: this is an adventure with training wheels on, and we need those. It is fascinating to compare it to the Tomb of the Serpent King, which is the OSR take on the same concept and so much more spare in the verbiage and not looking for teachable moments between players so much as teaching the players how a dungeon works. Now the library has both; it will be interesting to see what the kids do with them.