Of course as you might guess, the title of this post was supposed to be a pun. It refers to
The Manor Issue #8 and its top notch grappling rules but since the pun sucked I changed it for more clarity.
Let me start out by saying I'm not a huge fanzine guy and to be honest I don't buy that many PDF's and I seldom review them anymore .
Like many people I'll download most anything free and legal but usually Barnes and Noble gets my book money. However once in a long while I do splurge on a PDF.
This time I am quite I did.
Now to be honest I bought this issue of the Manor for one thing, the article Old School Grappling by Doug Cole and Peter Dell'Orto
The other stuff was fine, an article on hirelings, a preview of Strange Stars some and stuff for Torchbearer a game that I don't play but ah the grappling rules . They were worth the price of admission alone.
Simply these are the 1st easy to play, easy to use , universal OSR grappling rules that work fast and efficiently with almost any old school system or retro-clone.
This rules are thought out well enough that they could be used with
Searchers of the Unknown without too much trouble and that game is so minimal basically all you have a stat block!
It would be a bit silly granted since the grappling rules would be 10x longer than the game but it would work pretty much out the box. They use HP for degree of grappling and while I haven't played them yet, no doubt in my mind that they are faster and more thorough and scale better than they current systems.
Heck they probably could be made to work with 5e or Pathfinder just about as well.
That is impressive work.
As such I can recommend highly the issue as for the price of burrito and soda you can get a great rules set and support the OSR.
The gentlemen did great work if and if you are unhappy with the grappling rules in your favorite game as most of us are, than you'd do well to grab a copy.