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A Red & Pleasant Land
A terrible Red King wars with an awful Queen, and together they battle into being a rigid, wrong world... and this book has everything you need to run it. (And any other place in your first, second, third, fourth or fifth edition game that might require intrigue, hidden gardens, inside-out-rooms, scheming monarchs, puzzles or beasts, liquid floors, labyrinths, growing, shrinking, duelling, broken time, Mome Raths, blasphemy, croquet, explanations for where players who missed sessions were, or the rotting arcades and parlors of a palace that was once the size of a nation.)
Zak S, game master on I Hit It With My Axe and author of the multiaward-winning Vornheim: The Complete City Kit now brings the same do-it-yourself tables-and-toolkits approach and eerie magic to an entire distorted continent.
“It’s inadequate to call A Red & Pleasant Land brilliant. With alchemist swagger, Zak takes the base matter of well-worn fantasy standards and our cheerful nerd hobbies, and makes the strangest gold.”
— China Miéville
“God this is beautiful, I love this.”
— Molly Crabapple
“It should be next to impossible to do anything original with Dracula or Alice, but Zak S demonstrates instead that it’s next to impossible for him to put out a bad game book. He trails his barbed artistic and gaming sensibilities through these two modern myths and emerges with something more than a mashup or a collage: it’s a necromantic restoration of a nightmare that never was.”
— Kenneth Hite, designer of Qelong and Night’s Black Agents
“Zak is not just imaginative, he’s bold. Which means that while he recognizes the value of fantasy traditions, he doesn’t hesitate for a moment to throw out anything that’s become tired or dull.”
— Monte Cook, author of Numenera
Zak S, game master on I Hit It With My Axe and author of the multiaward-winning Vornheim: The Complete City Kit now brings the same do-it-yourself tables-and-toolkits approach and eerie magic to an entire distorted continent.
“It’s inadequate to call A Red & Pleasant Land brilliant. With alchemist swagger, Zak takes the base matter of well-worn fantasy standards and our cheerful nerd hobbies, and makes the strangest gold.”
— China Miéville
“God this is beautiful, I love this.”
— Molly Crabapple
“It should be next to impossible to do anything original with Dracula or Alice, but Zak S demonstrates instead that it’s next to impossible for him to put out a bad game book. He trails his barbed artistic and gaming sensibilities through these two modern myths and emerges with something more than a mashup or a collage: it’s a necromantic restoration of a nightmare that never was.”
— Kenneth Hite, designer of Qelong and Night’s Black Agents
“Zak is not just imaginative, he’s bold. Which means that while he recognizes the value of fantasy traditions, he doesn’t hesitate for a moment to throw out anything that’s become tired or dull.”
— Monte Cook, author of Numenera
192 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2014
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74 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 18, 2023
A Red & Pleasant Land is a strange, beautiful piece of art. Its illustrations are raw and evocative, utilizing rough linework and vivid colors to really impress upon the reader the symbolism of the characters and world they represent; the language, though simple, never fails to bring about a solid mental image that is infinitely fascinating and a true wellspring of ideas from which to create interesting tabletop - or even literary - material.
The reason I refrain from giving this book five stars is more of a practical one than a technical one; it is not a good gaming supplement, full stop. Yes, the ideas herein are great inspiration for writing and worldbuilding, but as a *supplement* designed to be a toolkit for running adventures and campaigns in, it is messy and faulty. It comes with a few good random tables, and some seeds of ideas to integrate into a world, but otherwise lacks... everything. Variety, direction, example adventures, and a solid framework onto which one can build the sinuous and tense surreal vampiric politics the book describes.
As a piece of fiction, I've found that A Red & Pleasant Land is very enjoyable. As a piece of game design, it could do better.
The reason I refrain from giving this book five stars is more of a practical one than a technical one; it is not a good gaming supplement, full stop. Yes, the ideas herein are great inspiration for writing and worldbuilding, but as a *supplement* designed to be a toolkit for running adventures and campaigns in, it is messy and faulty. It comes with a few good random tables, and some seeds of ideas to integrate into a world, but otherwise lacks... everything. Variety, direction, example adventures, and a solid framework onto which one can build the sinuous and tense surreal vampiric politics the book describes.
As a piece of fiction, I've found that A Red & Pleasant Land is very enjoyable. As a piece of game design, it could do better.
September 21, 2017
Simply an amazing idea for an RPG setting, a vampiric 'Alice in Wonderland' which feels just as alien and wondrous as you'd hope, a unique elixir of horror and fantasy, with some entertaining mechanics to implement in a Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign. Those who know me know that I'm not so fond of running pre-published adventures, even though many are well-written, like the Pathfinder paths, and I enjoy reading them or mining them for ideas. This is an exception, just so intriguing regardless of what system you wanna run it with. Will be taking a crack at it this Halloween season.
Beautiful little book, too. The art design, maps, doesn't feel much like anything else out there but still somehow cultivates nostalgia for RPGs in the late 70s/early 80s.
Beautiful little book, too. The art design, maps, doesn't feel much like anything else out there but still somehow cultivates nostalgia for RPGs in the late 70s/early 80s.
July 6, 2025
Another strange and interesting book from this controversial creator. I don't know if I'll ever run a game in this world, but it was still very much worth reading through for inspiration. I do really like the style of this book, a hand drawn adventure manual for a romp in an Alice in Wonderland overrun with aged vampires.
May 7, 2017
Superbly different take on vampires and the Alice in Wonderland mythos with impressive and distinct artwork.
March 23, 2018
While I'll never run it as-is, I will be mining it for ideas for years.
December 15, 2018
Chock full of great ideas, well written and a fun read in its own right. I don't see myself actually running the material here as such, but some great tables and ideas to steal.
July 25, 2022
Vampires and Alices in square Wonderland!
This setting was - and still is - innovative and full of brilliant mad-crazy stuff. Although, this can be quite difficult and challenging setting for a GM to run, but if one doesn’t want to run it as it is, one can always borrow all kinds of stuff from it. (I gave the book “only” four stars, because this was a bit too over the top for my liking.)
…and this book is probably one of the reasons we now have rpgs like “Mörk Borg”.
This setting was - and still is - innovative and full of brilliant mad-crazy stuff. Although, this can be quite difficult and challenging setting for a GM to run, but if one doesn’t want to run it as it is, one can always borrow all kinds of stuff from it. (I gave the book “only” four stars, because this was a bit too over the top for my liking.)
…and this book is probably one of the reasons we now have rpgs like “Mörk Borg”.
March 17, 2016
It's a very arduous task deciding to give this supplement 4 stars and not 5. My reasoning was ultimately based in that this concept has such limitless potential that I cannot bring myself to place the 'best' limiter on it.
Comical, macabre, inspiring and a constant reminder that our childhoods can be so drastically and wonderfully transformed even now. Sometimes I just pick this book up and flip through the pages to take in the gorgeous art.
Comical, macabre, inspiring and a constant reminder that our childhoods can be so drastically and wonderfully transformed even now. Sometimes I just pick this book up and flip through the pages to take in the gorgeous art.
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March 31, 2016Vornheim was a great book; Red & Pleasant Land surpasses it. What do you get when you smoosh Alice in Wonderland together with Dracula? Well, here you go. Zak S's art is as much as draw as the content. Ostensibly OSR, that's close enough to "system neutral" for me; buy it for the ideas, the maps, the illustrations, & don't sweat the Edition Wars. --MK
August 25, 2015
This is a beautiful book, particularly if you get in a physical format. The artwork is great, the setting is bonkers and wonderful in equal measure. My own personal criticism is that I don't know how to use this in a game - I'm not in the right spectrum. But it's given me a ton of ideas.
February 27, 2016
Excellent material, and surprisingly practical. Manages to evoke a setting that is both coherent and unique, both of which are tricky given the well-established tropes of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.
April 18, 2017
Most wondrous and deranged.
May 3, 2017
Top Notch - beautifully written and put together. Full of great art. If you love running RPGs this is a must have.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews