Well, what should I do with this one? I am torn a little between two role-playing game items so I think I am going to cop out and mention them both here. Neither is super out there, one was quite prominent in its time but hard to get now. The other was a gift to me that is actually part of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess which is not too obscure…
Obscure – HOL
The first of these is a 199o’s classic for me that I had always wanted to get and play. It is called HOL, short for Human Occupied Landfill. I managed to get a hold of a copy in the past few years and realised that when I first came across this game in the 90’s that it was its design aesthetic that had me interested. The game itself is pretty well a post apocalypse premise with a strong leading corporation overlord. But the inside of the book appears as a handwritten manifest from the perspective of someone with real attitude. The art is evocative, cartoonish and chaotic. That art totally matches the written content. The game itself is largely considered incomplete though. Rules light or rules incomplete depending on what review you read. I read the book and feel like I could make it work.
Obscure – Qelong
The second addition to this list of the obscure is Qelong, a book by Kenneth Hite. The reason behind me owning this book is a completely different one to HOL above. In fact the time this entered my hands I had never heard of it but I had heard of Kenneth Hite. You see, I found an envelope in my mailbox and it had the book in it. Nothing else. No explanation as to what or why I had received this book. I certainly knew that it was not a Kickstarter reward and pondered if it had been sent to me to review. I turned to the people I game with and shared my confusion. It turns out that it was actually Blue Tyson (or Tom, or Richard depending on how you know him) that had sent it to me as a gift. The gamebook is evocative and packed full of adventure that I am biding my time to use. It certainly will not be with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but I will use this one day in one of my games. This booklet is too good to leave gathering dust on the shelf.
So there you have it – two stories of the obscure for the price of one! Hopefully, I will hear some awesome stories about other things in our world that are rarely heard of. Keep rolling…