Land of Blood & Honey Issue 1 by Will Jarvis is a role playing game supplement published by Inverted Castle Press.
The supplement is available as a 13 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover.
The first page explains that this is the first in a series of zines that develop a new desert setting, one inspired by swords and sandals tales, classic TSR supplements and Arabian Nights. The first issue has three new OSR classes. The system used is a house-ruled B/X system that borrows heavily from Dolmenwood, but everything is being kept generic enough to import into other OSR games.
The three new classes follow, each of which has 15 levels of advancement and various skills. The first is the Alchemist; this class is based around potions and brewing them, as well as animating a golem. Next is the Nomad, a class skilled at desert surviving and guerilla warfare. The final one is the Shaman, a magic using class that invokes the power of the spirit world. This has some sample spells for the class, covering a range of uses, from necromancy to survival to some combat and healing and more. They can also summon djinn.
The Djinni is the final page which has stats for two djinn, the Lesser Djinni and the Efreet.
Land of Blood & Honey Issue 1 in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, though short, has enough sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are some stock colour and black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This is what it sets out to be; a supplement with some new classes suitable in general for OSR style games. They aren’t exactly original in concept, though the execution is decent, and each, in typical OSR fashion, is going to need backup from other classes with skills they lack. Land of Blood & Honey Issue 1 is a decent little supplement and it can be found by clicking here.
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