An Illustrated Compendium of Weird Ass Magical Items
From the introduction:
In the late 80s - early 90s, my best friend and I were a couple of long-haired, young metalheads living in small town Arkansas. Our primary outlets were heavy metal and playing Dungeons and Dragons when and wherever we could. The evangelical south was not a fertile ground for either of those pursuits but we were not to be deterred.
We were disciples at the altar of legendary cover artists like Doug Johnson, Derek Riggs, Pushead, Joe Petagno, Vincent Locke and Ed Repka. Eddie (waving that tattered flag), Snaggletooth and Vic Rattlehead were our co-pilots. Our tape decks were full of Sabbath, Metallica, Maiden and Priest. We couldn’t get enough.
We had an ongoing joke about looting the evil wizard’s “magic and shit”... your basic sweep the dungeon, waste the monsters and take all their sweet magic crap kind of scenario. The joke even spilled over into other things and it’s been one of those nostalgic inside jokes that we’ve inadvertently kept going for 30+ years.
Now, all these years later we had a chance to actually make it and get it illustrated by some of our favorite artists. My best friend banged out this killer cover art that homages some of our favorite bands. This is exactly the sort of homegrown, DIY sort of thing I signed up for back when I first started Planet X Games and knowing that it’s going to be a thing played at other gaming tables is a pretty rad feeling.
My best friend summed up why we did this zine in the first place, and what it means to us with this text he sent me earlier:
“I think of how there will be two teenage best friend nerds who are gonna see this and it’ll be a thing for them. They’ll laugh and have inside jokes about it. And they’ll look back years later and say “Hey, you remember that one game we played that summer? That shit was fun.”
Horns up for lifelong friendship and making cool shit!