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One Night Stand - Curse of Shadowhold is a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 10th level characters. In this adventure the PCs are requested to assist an elven village in breaking an ancient curse that holds sway in the forest surrounding their village. In doing so, the PCs get to uncover an even more sinister secret, that will change the lives of the elves forever. This very neatly presented adventure is set in a generic frontier wilderness, and should be adaptable to any campaign setting.
Frog God Games have long been one of my favourite adventure publishers, and the reasons are quite simple - they present professional products, with excellent attention to detail, and good background stories with solid adventure material. If there's a sidetrek that the PCs can go on, it's mentioned, for example, or if there is a contingency in the adventure that can come about, they provide advice on how to deal with it. Sometimes this comes across as forcing the PCs on a given path, but the illusion of flexibility can be quite powerful for the players.
Curse of the Shadowhold is a good, strong adventure. The players get involved in danger and terror right from the start, and get a good opportunity to explore wondrous locations in the Haunted Forest, even so much as to cross the veils between planes. There is quite a haunting element to the game, and GMs can easily turn this into quite a terrifying affair that's not for the faint hearted; wandering through a haunted forest, fighting shadow creatures from other planes, and being witness to secrets unfolding that are quite terrifying.
The adventure is quite a challenge, both from a combat perspective and a roleplaying one, where NPCs have their own agendas and plans on how to deal with matters. PCs will need to keep their wits about them, as they uncover secrets only to find the unexpected. It's not the most dynamic adventure in the world, with a rather stationary dungeon crawl, but the terror elements can liven that up if PCs don't know what to expect.
Overall, this is as good an adventure as one would expect from Frog God Games. Solid story, elements of terror, good dungeon crawl, strong combat encounters, and realistic NPCs. Throw in a few secrets to uncover, and you have one good night's game play.
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For under the price of a large latte you can get the Pathfinder version of the monsters from Rappan Athuk. There are some overlap here with other Fog God Games books, but this is still a solid collection of monsters.
26+ monsters ready to use in any Pathfinder game.
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For under the price of a large latte you can get the S&W version of the monsters from Rappan Athuk. There are some overlap here with other Fog God Games books, but this is still a solid collection of monsters.
26 monsters ready to use in any S&W game.
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This module is 28 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of SRD, 2 pages of advertisement, leaving us with 21 pages of content, so let's take a look!
This being an adventure-module, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.
All right, still here?
This module, as the introduction tells us, is loosely based on Gen Con IX Dungeons by Bob Blake and thus can be considered a blast from the past - story-wise, the PCs are coerced into venturing into the eponymous dungeon by an old grumpy wizard named Framnagle to retrieve a family heirloom staff stolen from him by a former apprentice whom the wizard transformed into a dragon in a night of drunken escapades, only to have the apprentice turn to his arch-nemesis, Grwn Gruenwald.
The first two levels of the dungeon are not detailed in the module and it kicks off in the third and relevant level of the dungeon of Castle Baldemar after a short basic glossary on the town of Corvusrook. The dungeon per se is a relatively straight-forward dungeon-crawl, opening with minotaurs and going on to feature multiple undead, an enslaved stone giant, a rakshasa etc. The strength of the dungeon, though, would be its design-philosophy and emphasis on deadly traps which often require more than just a simple roll to get the gist of and which oftentimes feature a way to bypass them altogether.
That being said, e.g. a tiled room would require that the two pages of maps be printed out to the players - problematic since the maps come only with all DM-info included - no player-friendly maps here.
When run for people familiar with the original module, the overall complex will have some nice variation and include, among others, classic tropes like demonic urgings to sacrifice comrades. That being said, the climax versus the final boss, the apprentice turned dragon, allows for smart PCs to bluff the menace, which is a nice touch and an interesting end to a straight-forward crawl.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are not bad per se, but have some mayor issues - there e.g. is a room that lacks a means of ingress on the map and try as I might with my none too bad command of the English language, I honestly didn't get, either from map or text, how a particular room's trap is supposed to work, which I ascribe to simply bad writing - A trap's description shouldn't be more obscure than the references in a Joyce-novel. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly two-column standard, the pdf comes fully bookmarked and the b/w-artworks are nice, though nothing to write home about.
Which is exactly what sums up my thoughts about this dungeon. It has nothing truly going for it beyond nostalgia. The rooms are disjointed and make not that much sense in their array. The inhabitants are mostly not that smart and the fact that a CL 20 alarm-style spell makes stealth not an option when dealing with the final adversary feels like an attempt of shoehorning the party into a particular way of dealing with the module's challenges. The fact that XP are awarded for not exploring rooms can be considered either positive or negative, but personally, I'm not keen on them. And then there are the issues with the map, the lack of player-friendly maps and one fact:
This module, to me, might be nostalgic. But not only in a good way. Whereas Rappan Athuk, the Hollow Mountain or many other Frog God/Necro-products scratch that old-school itch, this module feels like an uninspired pandering that does not update a classic, but just modifies it without adjusting its content and providing a face-lift.
In this day and age, where we have modules like Rappan Athuk, it should be clear that atmosphere and tension are not anathema to old-school-style crawls.
This dungeon, in contrast, feels woefully sterile, generic and jumbled together - uninspired even, for there was not a single idea in here that I haven't see done better somewhere else. Unless you specifically want to play this as an homage to its inspiration, I wouldn't recommend you checking it out and even then, it falls a bit on the short side and could have used at least a slight narrative face-lift and a more unified and concise dungeon. For me, this module represents 5 bucks burnt, spent on a module that panders in an uncomfortable degree to my nostalgia and makes me recall what, pardon my words, sucked in the good ol' days of modules, hence deconstructing the one component it has going for itself. I can't for the life of me recommend this and instead urge you to get any other offering by FGG (or 4 Dollar Dungeon) instead.
Failing on a content-level, at least for me, harder than any other module I've read in quite a while combined with the map-glitch and writing-issues, I will make a controversial decision here that some of you are bound to not share- in this day and age, even with nostalgia-goggles, this, to me, is a 1.5 star-module, rounded down to 1 for the purpose of this platform.
Endzeitgeist out.
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Absolutely marvelous adventure. I liked the adventures whole setup and folktale logic of talking seals and magical fish. There is interesting situations and new monsters. Maps are top notch and informative.
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An Endzeitgeist.com review
This pdf is 48 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 3 pages of advertisements and 1 page SRD, leaving 41 pages of content for this adventure, so let’s check it out!
This being an adventure review, the following contains SPOILERS. Players might want to jump to the conclusion.
Still here? All right!
The Elves around the Hollow Mountain just aren’t what they used to be – in more than one sense. The once peaceful nomadic wood elves have started raiding and killing humans and other humanoid creatures to convert them to the true nature – something that should give druids nightmares indeed: The elves have resurrected a strange cult that has them growing plant-like mutations like deadly spores and briars. It is these strange elves that now inhabit a forest of petrified mushrooms inside a hollow mountain and that make up the major opposition of the PCs.
Their fortress is inside one gigantic petrified mushroom and thus makes for a rather creepy backdrop for the dungeon crawl. The fortress of the elves is well-defended by their tainted nature, their massive capabilities and rather deadly allies (which includes a dragon as well as an awakened tiger who thinks he is a dragon). Have I mentioned the deadly war flowers?
Hopefully, the PCs manage to free the erstwhile druid of the tribe (now utterly mad) and finally reach the hidden temple of the dread cult to reach a highly mutable plane where a deadly, aberrant nature provides terrible hindrances in the PCs final fight: The end the threat of the constant corruption of the nature, they will have to destroy a thing left behind from an aborted version of creation, an utterly disturbing tree-like monstrosity whose mere proximity mutates his foes.
The pdf closes by providing the complex reborn-template as well as a player handout.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, however, I noticed a major formatting glitch on the first map, starting room 20 to 26 there seems to be a discrepancy between the map numbers and room numbers, which is a bummer. Layout adheres to the b/w-2-column standard and the pdf is extensively bookmarked. We get 3 maps and the original b/w-artworks belong to the best you can imagine – especially the one-page picture of the final adversary is just plain awesome in its creepiness.
Indeed, an almost cthulhoid sense of wrongness pervades the whole module – author Uri Kurlianchik did an awesome job creating a truly disturbing dungeon crawl with interesting locations, smart foes, social interaction thrown in and an overall feeling of being unwelcome in this dark new world order. In fact, I consider this adventure to be quite deeply-entrenched in the horror-genre – if not for its narrative structure, then for the increasingly disturbing foes the PCs face and the furios final fight that truly deserves the name. However, a warning to players participating in this adventure – you probably will come out of this…changed. And some changes are hard to reverse… My final verdict will be 4 stars, as the map/room-discrepancy makes running a section of this adventure slightly more complicated than necessary.
Check this neat module out here!
Endzeitgeist out.
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An Endzeitgeist.com review
This pdf from Frog God Games is 89 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 83 pages of content, so let's check this one out!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion!
All right, still here? Then let's check this one out! What is the "Black Monastery"? Mechanically, it's an old-school, sandbox style dungeon/haunted house-crawl. Where enemy placement does not have to make sense etc. - you know, primal, creepy and deadly with CRs far below and also potentially quite above the PC's capabilities. But that's not the true appeal, at least for me. What made me interested in this module is its story: While the slow ascend to wealth and power of a monastic order and its subsequent descent into evil and debauchery has been done before, the consequence of the tale is what matters: When their evil became to apparent, to blatant, the king attacked and it turned out that the Hill of Mornay, where their monastery stood, wasn't chosen by chance - enveloped in green flames, the monastery vanished before it could be taken. Ever since, when the stars are right, the complex seems to return with its riches, but only for a limited time. Like an architectonic old one, its arrival is accompanied by madness, disease, lycanthropy and similar apocalyptic events. The dark edifice to corruption has once again entered our world, from gods-beware it has been. Evil looms, madness stirs and treasure waits and the PCs will enter a place that may well take them to another plane or world. If you want to change setting, the Black Monastery is definitely an awesome way to do so. As you can probably glean from this story, inserting it into a setting is also rather simple.
Of course, an old-school module like this would not be complete without random monster tables and this is among the first things you'll get to see. More importantly, we also get a d20-table for strange noises and hauntings as well as discussions on the special magical effects in the monastery - you can't e.g. buff yourself before entering, since it exists in multiple places at once. "Multiple" is a good cue - 10 sample entrances into the compound are presented.
If the PCs e.g. enter the garden first, they'll have fun with 7 (!!!) Mohrgs and the "Gate of Fear" that provide access to the place make it immediately clear that the enemies are not playing softball - in the center of the monastery-yard is for example a huge stone golem that reacts differently depending on the moon's phase. They can also e.g. be caught by a mural, battle painted duelists. Mind you, not all adversaries are that powerful - there of course also are stranded orcs, goblins etc. and that's one of things I really like about this module: While the 1st edition feeling of the module is intact, the world/plane-switching elements to the monastery's background let these jumbled together humanoids actually make sense.
What truly makes the Black Monastery shine, though, at least for me, is its gothic convolutedness and its attention to detail: The crazed cook, and inscriptions upon inscriptions that hide hints and grant insight into the demented logic of the madmen and otherworldly forces that call this place home. Cursed nobles, mutated fighters, flesh-eating treants, ghoulish alchemists, Troblins (troll-goblin hybrids) and the unholy echoes of the brotherhood, the cimota roam these halls alongside other strange creatures - and indeed, none of the beings herein feel like filler, as they all make some kind of internal sense or feature a peculiarity in their encounter/ descriptions that in the end serves to take away any sense of familiarity and further enhance the horror of the place.
And then, there are the monastery's two towers: Kran, Dungeon master of the compound, guarded by iron golems and a greater shadow in his own right and Sacavious, mad and deranged failed lich make for two of the possible "bosses" of the module. Of course, the monastery also hides the piece of rock that transports it and in the depths of its dungeon, not only do terrible creatures roam, an evil artifact also awaits discovery. While 3 purple worms await adventurers to fill their gluttonous maws.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good: I only noticed some very minor inconsistencies with the otherwise neat maps. A pity, though, that no player-friendly maps are provided as well. Layout adheres to FGG's 2-column standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked. Oh boy, the artworks. This pdf features some of the coolest, most disturbing, gothic-horror-style artworks I've seen in a long, long while - absolute awesomeness! With one exception: A demon's crotch is marred by a censor-bar and ruins the artwork for me. I'm an opponent of censorship in any form, so that somewhat jarred me. Oh well. The pdf comes with extensive, nested bookmarks. A quick glance at the price tag shows that this one belongs to the rather expensive category of modules and that's also the reason this review took me so long. I fought rather hard with myself whether I should give it a try.
Reviewing this module feels rather strange to me - almost as if it wants to defy being reviewed: Much like reading e.g. Poe, Howard or Lovecraft, reading this module shows you a lot of things that have, by now, become a staple of adventuring. But much like these classics, the Black Monastery has an eerie appeal of originality evoked by a combination of details, clever wordings and mysticism. Much like in the beginning, one's first campaign for example, the foes and things that happen herein defy our expectations in subtle ways that remove the players from their comfort zone and recapture the dread of not knowing what to expect from foes, how to handle situations and what might happen. By depicting this whole complex as a gothic mansion that is almost anthropomorphized by its vileness and ancient dread, its derivations from standard-expectations adding rather than detracting from the appeal of the module and its believability.
While the dungeon below the monastery can't completely hold up to the quality of the rest of the place, the love and passion that went into the crafting of this place in all its disturbing details are readily apparent- this module can easily be seen in a tradition with the two classic original Ravenloft modules and in fact make me wish Frog God Games had more of these (rather) horror-themed adventures. Mechanically, there was one thing I was missing (probably omitted due to being declared "old-school"): Haunts. Haunts rock and make places like this one even creepier. On the other hand, this module is not perfect: There are minor map inconsistencies, the dungeon doesn't live completely up to the level of awesomeness of the monastery itself and I would have loved to see some complex puzzles or more little storylines taking place in the monastery as well as more passages on the outside - perhaps a park, a glass-house, a chapel. And player-friendly maps. Seriously, these should be standard by now. That being said, my first impulse was to give this one a four stars, but frankly, it's better than that. The unity of descriptions, attention to detail and awesome artworks serve to evoke something scarcely seen in nowadays modules: Dread. If foreshadowed correctly, the players will be jumping like crazy all the time and I am absolutely positive that you'll have a great time running this. And I actually regret that this is not a 300+page monster with even larger grounds and aforementioned additions like a chapel etc. The potential is vast and I really hope to see a sequel to this one, in one form or another. Thus, in spite of the points of criticism I have, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars, but no seal of approval, though I so want to award one. If you want to scare your players with a haunted house, there's no way around this one. (And if you're like me and want haunts, but Rite's #30-haunt-pdfs and cackle with glee...)
Endzeitgeist out.
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An Endzeitgeist.com review
This pdf from Frog God Games is 89 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 83 pages of content, so let's check this one out!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion!
All right, still here? Then let's check this one out! What is the "Black Monastery"? Mechanically, it's an old-school, sandbox style dungeon/haunted house-crawl. Where enemy placement does not have to make sense etc. - you know, primal, creepy and deadly with CRs far below and also potentially quite above the PC's capabilities. But that's not the true appeal, at least for me. What made me interested in this module is its story: While the slow ascend to wealth and power of a monastic order and its subsequent descent into evil and debauchery has been done before, the consequence of the tale is what matters: When their evil became to apparent, to blatant, the king attacked and it turned out that the Hill of Mornay, where their monastery stood, wasn't chosen by chance - enveloped in green flames, the monastery vanished before it could be taken. Ever since, when the stars are right, the complex seems to return with its riches, but only for a limited time. Like an architectonic old one, its arrival is accompanied by madness, disease, lycanthropy and similar apocalyptic events. The dark edifice to corruption has once again entered our world, from gods-beware it has been. Evil looms, madness stirs and treasure waits and the PCs will enter a place that may well take them to another plane or world. If you want to change setting, the Black Monastery is definitely an awesome way to do so. As you can probably glean from this story, inserting it into a setting is also rather simple.
Of course, an old-school module like this would not be complete without random monster tables and this is among the first things you'll get to see. More importantly, we also get a d20-table for strange noises and hauntings as well as discussions on the special magical effects in the monastery - you can't e.g. buff yourself before entering, since it exists in multiple places at once. "Multiple" is a good cue - 10 sample entrances into the compound are presented.
If the PCs e.g. enter the garden first, they'll have fun with 7 (!!!) Mohrgs and the "Gate of Fear" that provide access to the place make it immediately clear that the enemies are not playing softball - in the center of the monastery-yard is for example a huge stone golem that reacts differently depending on the moon's phase. They can also e.g. be caught by a mural, battle painted duelists. Mind you, not all adversaries are that powerful - there of course also are stranded orcs, goblins etc. and that's one of things I really like about this module: While the 1st edition feeling of the module is intact, the world/plane-switching elements to the monastery's background let these jumbled together humanoids actually make sense.
What truly makes the Black Monastery shine, though, at least for me, is its gothic convolutedness and its attention to detail: The crazed cook, and inscriptions upon inscriptions that hide hints and grant insight into the demented logic of the madmen and otherworldly forces that call this place home. Cursed nobles, mutated fighters, flesh-eating treants, ghoulish alchemists, Troblins (troll-goblin hybrids) and the unholy echoes of the brotherhood, the cimota roam these halls alongside other strange creatures - and indeed, none of the beings herein feel like filler, as they all make some kind of internal sense or feature a peculiarity in their encounter/ descriptions that in the end serves to take away any sense of familiarity and further enhance the horror of the place.
And then, there are the monastery's two towers: Kran, Dungeon master of the compound, guarded by iron golems and a greater shadow in his own right and Sacavious, mad and deranged failed lich make for two of the possible "bosses" of the module. Of course, the monastery also hides the piece of rock that transports it and in the depths of its dungeon, not only do terrible creatures roam, an evil artifact also awaits discovery. While 3 purple worms await adventurers to fill their gluttonous maws.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good: I only noticed some very minor inconsistencies with the otherwise neat maps. A pity, though, that no player-friendly maps are provided as well. Layout adheres to FGG's 2-column standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked. Oh boy, the artworks. This pdf features some of the coolest, most disturbing, gothic-horror-style artworks I've seen in a long, long while - absolute awesomeness! With one exception: A demon's crotch is marred by a censor-bar and ruins the artwork for me. I'm an opponent of censorship in any form, so that somewhat jarred me. Oh well. The pdf comes with extensive, nested bookmarks. A quick glance at the price tag shows that this one belongs to the rather expensive category of modules and that's also the reason this review took me so long. I fought rather hard with myself whether I should give it a try.
Reviewing this module feels rather strange to me - almost as if it wants to defy being reviewed: Much like reading e.g. Poe, Howard or Lovecraft, reading this module shows you a lot of things that have, by now, become a staple of adventuring. But much like these classics, the Black Monastery has an eerie appeal of originality evoked by a combination of details, clever wordings and mysticism. Much like in the beginning, one's first campaign for example, the foes and things that happen herein defy our expectations in subtle ways that remove the players from their comfort zone and recapture the dread of not knowing what to expect from foes, how to handle situations and what might happen. By depicting this whole complex as a gothic mansion that is almost anthropomorphized by its vileness and ancient dread, its derivations from standard-expectations adding rather than detracting from the appeal of the module and its believability.
While the dungeon below the monastery can't completely hold up to the quality of the rest of the place, the love and passion that went into the crafting of this place in all its disturbing details are readily apparent- this module can easily be seen in a tradition with the two classic original Ravenloft modules and in fact make me wish Frog God Games had more of these (rather) horror-themed adventures. Mechanically, there was one thing I was missing (probably omitted due to being declared "old-school"): Haunts. Haunts rock and make places like this one even creepier. On the other hand, this module is not perfect: There are minor map inconsistencies, the dungeon doesn't live completely up to the level of awesomeness of the monastery itself and I would have loved to see some complex puzzles or more little storylines taking place in the monastery as well as more passages on the outside - perhaps a park, a glass-house, a chapel. And player-friendly maps. Seriously, these should be standard by now. That being said, my first impulse was to give this one a four stars, but frankly, it's better than that. The unity of descriptions, attention to detail and awesome artworks serve to evoke something scarcely seen in nowadays modules: Dread. If foreshadowed correctly, the players will be jumping like crazy all the time and I am absolutely positive that you'll have a great time running this. And I actually regret that this is not a 300+page monster with even larger grounds and aforementioned additions like a chapel etc. The potential is vast and I really hope to see a sequel to this one, in one form or another. Thus, in spite of the points of criticism I have, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars, but no seal of approval, though I so want to award one. If you want to scare your players with a haunted house, there's no way around this one. (And if you're like me and want haunts, but Rite's #30-haunt-pdfs and cackle with glee...)
Endzeitgeist out.
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Each player can lavish care and attention on their character, making him a rounded and believeable individual within the context of the shared alternate reality the whole group inhabits during game sessions... the poor GM has to cope with what can be a 'cast of thousands' and however much time he has to devote to the game, he's never going to have time to develop all the NPCs to the same level. So, here's something to help!
A full EIGHTY characters, all with name, stat block, backstory, description, tactics if involved in (or instigating) a brawl, notes on using the character and a neat sketch... all conveniently filling a page apiece (or on 2 pages but kept separate from other characters) so that you can print individuals out as needed to tuck in your game-night file.
They come in three sections: town, travel and tunnel. The Town ones are of various levels and occupations, all people you might encounter in a built-up area, or folks you might seek out if you have a specific need for a service, an item or some information. The Travel section consists of people you might encounter on the road. Other travellers, people whose occupation or location means that they'll meet travellers and so on. Again, they come in an assortment of levels.
Finally, the Tunnel section is a little different. Some are the sort of folks you might encounter by chance during a delve - the fellow who's farming mushrooms perhaps, or a big lad who offers his services as 'pack mule' for a party - but others are designed as 'Boss' characters, the ones who might be the whole reason (whether or not the party knows it!) that you're going delving at all.
A fabulous resource that any GM should find useful whether they need a chance one-off encounter or a recurring NPC but want a character as developed as any player-character. And just reading through, many of them are replete with ideas that could spawn side-adventures or whole scenarios of their own. Recommended.
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Hauled screaming and kicking out of the depths of Rappan Athuk to infest a campaign world somewhere near you, here is a fine selection of monsters collected from the 'new monsters' section of the Rappan Athuk adventures and kitted out with full descriptions, complete Pathfinder RPG statblocks and even complete lairs all ready to raid.
The collection includes some 28 monsters, ranging in CR from a lowly one-half to a mighty 20, and presented in alphabetical order so watch out that you select ones appropriate to your party (or you may discover how good they are at running away, a sadly neglected skill amongst modern adventurers in these days of well-balanced adventures!).
So out they come, gibbering and oozing, ranging from tiny albino cave spiders to zombie hordes, devouring mists and river trolls. Perhaps your luckless characters will run into a stirge swarm (sorry, the stirge was the very first monster I ever encountered, the first time I played D&D in 1977!). Or some witch lights and water weirds will lead them astray.
They are a fine collection of monsters and the added bonus of detailed lairs ready for them to inhabit and your characters to raid make this an excellent addition to your monster collection. You can never have too many monsters, after all!
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This is an intriguing take on a wilderness adventure, based around some hills known for the number and variety of trolls living there. Based on large hex-gridded maps, the GM's notes consist primarily of information about the occupants of each hex... but it is far, far more than a random wander around hitting whatever you find!
For a start, there's a whole lot more than trolls in them thar hills. There are ruins to explore, people to talk to and plenty more things to do, find, hunt, fight or marvel at. The whole gives the clear impression that it's a living community that will carry on whether or not any player-characters ever go there, bringing an excellent air of reality to this area within your game world.
There are rumours too, and wandering monsters, and tribes of humanoids wandering around. There are whole adventures to be had, and other things that the characters might want to follow up... even space for you to drop in other material, home-brew or published, that seems appropriate.
If you find it difficult to persuade your players that they want to go troll-hunting, why not send them on an errand that requires them to cross the Troll Hills to get there? Depending on the route they choose, run the appropriate encounters and make the journey as much an adventure as whatever they are going to do when they arrive where they are going.
Anyone fancy a spot of hill-walking?
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Swords and Wizardry Monstrosities is a new monster book. New in that is newly published, but some of the monsters we have before either in the SRD or other books. That though does not detract from it's value as this is a 560+ page book since in addition to that there are some new monsters. The cover is very evocative of the old-school (pre 1980) covers. I love this cover.
There is much in common between this book and The Tome of Horrors. Each monster is given a page of stats, description and a plot hook. While ToH used some recycled art, this all seems to be new art. Even Orcus (which we now have 3 listings for) is new. Actually the art is pretty darn good and I don't mind the occasional repeat of a monster to see some new art.
Honestly there is so much great stuff in this book that even with the occasional repeat monster this is still a top notch collection. If you play S&W then this is a great monster book to have. I am even going as far as to say it is a must have for any serious S&W GM.
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At just under 24 pages (minus cover and ogl) this is designed to be something akin to Keep on the Borderlands for S&W, only not as big. The adventure is small, but in old school terms it is good sized really. There is less in terms of pages of descriptions than modern day modules. It leaves far more to the imagination of the players and GM. If there was a Frog God Games S&W box set then this would be included.
Great little adventure that really helps set the tone of the S&W game.
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After many Swords and Wizardry games, your PCs will slay every single monster in the rulebook eventually. If you don't want to bore your players with the same creatures again and again, you'll need Monstrosities. But if you think this book is just about 500+ monsters, you are wrong. Yes it's about monsters with details and good art but what makes this book great is every monster comes with a single pharagraph of short adventure or adventure hook. It's a great book for Swords and Wizardry GMs.
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So you bought Swords and Wizardry, you like it and want to be a GM but not sure how to run your first game? Look no further, this is the book you need. It's not just an adventure module, it's more than that. The book starts with great advices about how to run Swords and Wizardry and OSR games in general. After that comes the adventure which is a great exampe of OSR gaming. It's got encounters, wilderness, dungeon etc. everyting you and your players expecting from a game of fantasy. After finishing this adventure you can run any other Swords and Wizardry module and even write your own adventures.
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