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The year is 1998 -- Furbies were flying off of the shelves, and the RPG world was abuzz about the revised and expanded editions of the Nether Regionz Sword & Planet Roleplaying Game's core books. The official Nether Regionz Magazine was the number one source of information on the game updates, and wouldn't you know it, we found a few cases of Issue #158 from March of 1998 in the back of the warehouse!
The heavily illustrated issue includes an introduction to the campaign world, detailed maps, COMICS, tons of illustrations, articles on the history of fantasy RPGs, guest artists, parody ads, letters, maps, puzzles and HAIKUS!
Game content includes Nether Regionz unique take on playable slimepeople with the ability to increase their size by absorbing more slime, harpies with questionable flying abilities, rock-hurling cyclops PCs with poor depth perception, plantperson brutes with grappling tendrils and plant speech. There are also rules for energy weapons, an alignment-based background generation system, a deep dive into some of the more unique Nether Regionz locales to inspire your games. There are parody letters from readers, parody ads, real ads, reviews and previews of other games and media seemingly from the late 90s, and by some miracle of time dilation, all the material is 5E compatible!
Guest contributors include Bill Ward (Black Gate Magazine, Tales From the Magician's Skull Online) writing about the influence of genre fiction like Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure and Michael Moorcock's Elric series on tabletop roleplaying games. Illustrations and comics from Tom O'Halloren (Shark McGill, Sugarplum Chronicles), Melvin Jarvis (Dungeon Crawlers), Michael Bracco (The Creators, Adam Wreck), and Kata Kane (Altar Girl, Ana and the Cosmic Race). There is an excerpt from Neon Barbarian, a comic by David Crispino (Ancient Noise, Taft Sturgeon) and Tony Gregori (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rick & Morty), cartoons by Jonny Wags (You Are Now Encumbered, Be Gentle I'm Stupid), and me (I Taste Sound, Irregulordz).
The Nether Regionz campaign setting is an homage to early 80s sword and planet franchises such as ThunderCats, Thundarr the Barbarian, and especially Filmation's Masters of the Universe. The rules contained in the magazine are 5E compatible with modifications inspired by earlier editions of D&D as well as 80s systems, such as Palladium Book's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness.
