Knock! blows open the door once again
The old school fantasy magazine returns with another issue and a new editor.
Knock! magazine didn’t check whether the door was locked when it first appeared on the RPG scene in late 2020. The Merry Mushmen, a publishing company based in France, had assembled a 200+ page gaming bric-a-brac, as they called it. The editor, Eric Nieudan, best known for dungeon crawler Macchiato Monsters, had harvested the ripest fruits from the OSR’s bountiful blog-trees. Then, Olivier Revenu, graphic designer and grognard from ye olde days, cracked his knuckles and laid them out in manic, kaleidoscopic spreads. People seemed to like the result.
The creativity of old-school gaming — optional rules, adventures, advice — tends to be freely available but within these pages, it sheds its lo-fi trappings and takes on a commercial polish unimaginable in the time of the comparatively plain Dungeon and the relatively mundane Dragon.
After the first issue, there were three more in as many years — each of them attracting more backers than the last. Then after a lull in 2024, the magazine is back again with Joshua McCrowell, designer of His Majesty The Worm, at the editorial helm.
Rascal emailed the team behind issue #5 of Knock! to learn their secrets.
