OSR: A Thousand Thousand Islands Review

Four small zines, written by Zedeck Siew and illustrated by Munkao. Read other reviews and get them here (maybe) or, more importantly, support the idea on patreon.

Munkao

1. Mr-kr-gr: the Deathrolled Kingdom
It feels like I link to Joseph Manola's article on conceptual density in every second post. Does this book offer more than, "a kingdom ruled by crocodiles"?

Yes. Oh hell yes. And that's a good enough reason to buy it. See, I can riff on the idea of a crocodile kingdom until the cows come home but Zedeck does it better in every way. I can visualize such a kingdom but Mun illustrates it better.

There's no real organization to the book. No index, just a very subtle sense of flow. No ideas are repeated to make them stick in your brain, but the ideas are good enough that they will stick. The book itself is an encounter table; flip it open and run a session wherever your finger lands. 

2. Kraching
Does this book offer more than, "a kingdom ruled by cats"?

Yes. Again. See above.

3. Drawings, Part 1
It's a book of drawings. No text, no explanations, just beautiful little black-and-white pieces.

4. Hantu!
It's a book of ghost stories, sort of. Some cultural essays.

I like it when authors think very carefully about one particular moment or object or event. Zedeck does this extremely well.

Munkao

General Notes
The print quality is excellent. Some of the illustrations would look better if the books were larger, I feel, but there's no loss of detail or significant blurring.

Would I be happy to own A Thousand Thousand Islands 1-50 one day, forming a nice prismatic shelf of mini-settings and useful notes? Yes.

Can I use these as RPG tools? Aside from being excellent brain-fuel, are they useful "at the table"?

Sort of.

With a bit of prep, I'd say both Mr-kr-gr and Kraching could be used. I'd add sticky notes to pages so I can find bits easily (they don't have page numbers!). I'm not sure I could run either one and do them justice. They're windows into a world I don't really understand. Can I run them without it just being "exotic" D&D? A culture used as a seasoning?

Maybe?

The Thousands Thousands Islands pateron is full of useful information. But, assuming I've done my due diligence, can I get my players into the same mindset? It's like a tragic game of telephone - the culture to the author to me to my players. The art book will help.

Anyway, I'm going to plonk them next to Yoon-Suin on the Piratical Wavecrawl map and see how that works out. I'm also finally getting around to reading and making notes on The Art of Not Being Governed. We'll see how it shakes out.