Lowborn

Lowborn is a slim fanzine for Zweihander that looks for all the world like Warpstone. The major similarity though is in the excellent black and white artwork provided by Dejan Mandic. The content is something quite different.

There are quite a few pieces of crunch, a scenario and two general pieces on NPC building. I don’t play Zweihander (although I’m happy to play the system if the facilitator is happy to guide me on the rules) so I’m not able to comment on most of the crunchy elements and they weren’t particular evocative for me.

There are two articles on “Cosmic” energies, a class that takes advantage of it in a martial arts sense and some associated spells and powers. The Cosmic idea doesn’t feel part of a dark gothic take on the 17th Century that the general background implies.

Similarly the scenario in the issue “The Eternal Maze of the Minotaur” is a fun idea with the characters trying to escape a randomly generated and changing dungeon while pursued by a minotaur. However it’s more in the OSR style than Gothic fantasy.

The NPC techniques are fine as far as they go, one builds off of Jason Cordova’s 7-3-1 technique so there’s pedigree but there isn’t any sense of how the techniques are being used to drive an aesthetic, mood or theme of the setting.

Lowborn is pretty and tasteful in it’s historical references but it offers little to get excited about.