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Dare you awaken the horrors of a mad scramble through the darkness with savage giant spiders absolutely everywhere, all determined to eat you or worse...
Designed for a large group of 2nd level characters, still battling their way through the 'funnel' to emerge as potential heroes, this quest involves a lost bunch of elves and their terrible fate! It's not a dungeon crawl, the adventure involves pushing through grim dark forests festooned with cobwebs, the sort that have giant spiders in them.
And of course, the spiders won't stay there, they'll come out after you.
I hope none of my players are arachnophobic... their characters probably will be when I have finished with them!
As well as the full adventure, the download includes a picture to show your players to set the scene, a map and a systemless version of the adventure should you prefer to run it under a ruleset other than Dungeon Crawl Classics. Rather neatly, this last has been printed in such a way that there's plenty of room for you to add your notes and game mechanics from your chosen ruleset (don't be confused, they forgot to change the footer from an earlier adventure, The Vile Worm - the text is correct for this adventure, though!). As a final bonus, if you want to run the adventure from your e-book reader or tablet, there's an art-free version included as well.
A cracking little adventure, simple yet effective.
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Here's a collection of feats for anyone who is quick on his feet or has good hand-eye coordination, only one or two are limited by their prerequisites to members of the traditionally dextrous character classes... so even more useful.
They all will aid in combat: Backstabber, Improved Mobility, Sneak Attack Sniper (and the Improved version), Tricky Defence (also with an Improved version) and Reflexive Step... oh, and Tumbling Charge if you want to arrive in style!
However, one that strikes me is Aquatic Acrobatics - possibly because I've just run a 'diving session' with one of my Pathfinder groups, who wanted to investigate a sunken ship they thought had brought plague to their hometown. This enhances your underwater combat abilities by enabling to use your Swim skill as you'd use Acrobatics on dry land to move through occupied spaces or in and out of threatened ones without provoking attacks of opportunity.
So if you want to add a bit of acrobatic style, slither through combat and bedazzle your opponents, check out this collection of feats and maybe add one or two to your skillset.
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Quite an interesting short story that begins innocuously as a psychology professor travels out into the mountains to visit a man aquitted some 20 years ago of the murder of his brothers but widely believed to have done it, nonetheless. His angle: what is life like for someone thought guilty even when found innocent in a court of law?
Descriptions are vivid, sometimes erring on the side of profuse, like a student in a creative writing class finding something to say about absolutely everything as he practices his craft, but it settles down once the scene is set.
Verbal sparring twixt prof and hillbilly is realistically portrayed as is the internal feelings of inadequacy felt by the professor...
... then things turn darker, hauntingly so.
For the role-player: If you are playing a contemporary investigative or horror game this could well provide something for the characters to investigate. At times it reads like an early X-Files or Supernatural script, or something that the FBI's behavioural analysis unit might investigate.
It's an atmospheric scary read, with good scenario potential.
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This is 'yet another monster collection' with a few outstanding and unusual features that makes it noteworthy over and above the general usefulness to any GM of having even more monsters to hand...
Conceptually, it's interesting because each beastie has been created in response to a piece of art rather than a load of monsters being dreamed up and then artists commissioned to provide the illustrations. It's an approach which resonates, I once invented a monster when looking at a patch of light on the side of the bath... and it was such a good monster that a whole 3-part adventure grew up around it!
Even better is the way in which they are presented. Along with that inspirational illustration and a standard stat block, the descriptive material - background, behaviour, ecology, etc. - is written up in the style of a 'field report' - not only does this work remarkably well as an in character resource giving verisimiltude to each monster, it suggests the existence in your world of people who go around collecting and describing just like real-world naturalists do. Many suggest adventure ideas even as you read through them. Or perhaps you'll be inspired to play a naturalist character, it's a good role for rangers and certain types of mage for a start, or perhaps a cleric of a nature deity.
The creatures themselves are fascinating, ranging from quite vile (the Arm-Taker) to something that's beautiful (the Diamond Owl) or just plain strange (nearly all of them!). Many will work well in games where barriers between planes or dimensions are weak, you can just imagine them having come from somewhere that is a twisted parody of your own world, having slipped through a crack and possibly being as baffled by this reality as your characters are by them.
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Some superheroes rely on muscle and agility, others on powered suits or the (un)natural abilities conferred by their superpowers... but nearly all of them find that other odds and ends are useful from time to time. Batman, after all, was never without his utility belt - and your 'hero doesn't need to be either.
This product takes the basic utility belt from the core rulebook and expands on it. There's a whole array of useful items that you might think would be useful, neatly arranged as offensive items, defensive items and movement items. For an additional cost (set-up points, I mean) you can have an 'array' feature that makes it easy to use more than one at once, or swap between them... and there is even a facility to be able to just reach in and have that gadget you didn't know you needed until just now! There are certain constraints, of course, but mostly about the size of the item compared to the space in which you keep it.
The range of items is quite impressive. Miniturised grappling hooks and ascenders, of course, gas masks, brass knuckles, mini-grenades, even a glider or a cutting torch... so the well-equipped superhero can never be at a loss, with a device to meet every occasion. Each one comes with description and apposite game mechanics, ready for use at a moment's notice.
This is a very practical expansion of the basic utility belt rules and well worth considering for any 'hero who doesn't mind carrying around a bit of a joke-shop collection of odds and ends... which will come in surprisingly useful in the heat of action. Shark repellant, anyone?
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This atmospheric courtyard has seen better days... and dark use. Or perhaps this is what it looks like AFTER the adventurers have visited!
OK, nice wide-open space with lots of battered masonry and fallen pillars to jump over, a well, steps out, a raised platform at one end with a gibbet (complete with a couple of nooses draped tastefully over it)... plenty of space in which to have a cinematic brawl. The cover picture should give you a good idea, whilst the actual top-down view of the battlemaps themselves make it a little hard to see just how rough the terrain is.
As usual, it's available on multiple sheets with a square grid, a hex grid or no grid at all in almost photo-realistic splendor. It also is provided as a ginormous single sheet JPG for users of virtual table-tops (or people with access to professional poster print facilities).
A delightful place to stage a combat, have fun!
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Back when I was a graduate student, there was one undergraduate DM who gained the nickname 'Neon Bruce' because if you ventured into an area of his dungeon that he didn't want you to visit yet, you encountered a large neon sign that said 'No Entry'!
Perhaps this work would have enabled him to cope with straying characters, as it is intended to empower the GM to create encounters on the fly, selecting and slotting in appropriate monsters as and when you need them. This, the first of (we hope) many products, deals with providing you with stacks of ready-made EL1 encounters worth 400 XP to those who defeat them successfully.
It is based around three big tables, on which you can roll percentage dice (or just pick an encounter if you prefer to do so). One is for dungeon areas, one for cavern areas and one for the classic 'wandering monster.' The dungeon area ones are most suitable if you are delving a constructed dungeon, and the cavern ones for more natural underground places (the two, of course, may intersect). Wandering monsters, by their very nature, can turn up just about anywhere, provided you can reason out a route for them to get there.
Some of the encounters involve regular monsters from the Pathfinder RPG 'Bestiary' books. Some involve variants which have the advanced, giant or young templates applied to them, and some are unique monsters whose details are given here.
So, let's get the bones out and see what's here... OK, an 89 gives me a wererat! But there's more, I'm provided with his name and a bit of background as to why he's here in the dungeon - apparently he's ugly even as wererats go so was happy to accept a job from whoever-it-is that constructed this dungeon to keep this area clear of intruders. By and large he does a good job, but he's not above stopping for a chat! So in a couple of short sentences the encounter is transformed from 'Here is a monster to brawl with' to a whole opportunity to make a true encounter of it. Are the characters perpared to chat or will they just lay into him? What will be the outcome of a conversation? Quite delightful, isn't it. Because this is a named specific wererat, not just any old wererat, he's got a complete stat block provided on the next page so we have all the details necessary to play him - in conversation or in combat, as the need arises.
Even when your roll selects a 'standard' by-the-book monster, there are still additional snippets to make the encounter more interesting. In the caverns table, for example, your roll might result in two mites and a giant cockroach... only the cockroach is the mites' pet and they are trying to teach it to jump through a hoop. Poor 'roach isn't very good at that, but it's a loyal pet and will attack anyone who goes for the mites!
The whole book is full of stuff like this: pure genius. Worth using when planning dungeons, never mind when caught out by pesky players wandering off where you hadn't expected them to go!
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If you like futuristic energy weapons, come on in and take a read of this! It looks at disintegrators, disruptors, ion blasters, microwave emitters and sonic distruptors - all things hovering on the cusp of science-fiction and contemporary 'what-if' military weapons speculation. All are extremely deadly and high powered, and should be introduced to any game only with caution and after careful thought - someone armed with one of these is going to be well-nigh unstoppable, and if both sides have them it is time for mutually-assured destruction!
Each weapon is described clearly and concisely, and there are some good realistic illustractions. Game mechanics are handled well, and whilst they are written for the Mutant Futures ruleset it would not take much effort to translate them for other rulesets with which you are familiar.
The sonic disruptor is particularly interesting, as it can be used both for crowd control (its original design purpose) or in combat. They come in three forms: a grenade-style device you hurl at whoever you wish to be affected, a larger version that is shot out of a crew-served gun and the speaker-based type that has to be set up but is capable of sustained broadcast as it isn't dependent on an internal power supply. The effects are quite interesting, particularly in crowd-control mode, including 'dizzy' characters who move randomly as their balance and directional mobility is affected!
Neat but potentially game-changing... use with caution but have fun! You may want to make them tempremental, given to overheating or massively expensive in terms of energy expenditure, or find some other way of limiting their use as a means of maintaining game balance.
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This is a delightful product, an original inn presented in considerable graphic detail all ready to be dropped in as appropriate to your campaign world. All you need to find is a bridge substatial enough to add the inn as a bridge pier extension.
Travellers can access the inn from off of the bridge or by mooring at a landing stage. Then you have various ways of presenting it to your players. There's a glorious sketch of what it looks like to show them, or you can show plan views - either as a single sheet floorplan or as a miniatures-scale battlemat (should someone order milk...).
The plan views are provided in both GM and 'player-friendly' versions, the latter with anything they have to discover rather than see at a glance removed. A nice touch is that the fall of light from ground floor windows is shown, neat for those who like sneaking around unobserved. There's plenty of space for the GM's own notes about the place, but of the 'print out and write' variety, no facility to make notes electronically.
The drawings are all clear and neat, nicely-coloured and ready to use. The inn comes complete with a cellar, stables, and an upper floor with several bedrooms available for rent. There's also one room which strangely contains only a plant in a pot. There's a good kitchen area and plenty of storage space behind the bar, and plenty of doors - enough to stage a classic farce!
This is the kind of map that cries out for an adventure to be written around the place it portrays. Maybe I will once I've finished the review...
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If you are after a spectacular 3D card model of a traditional blacksmith's forge & ancillary premises, in a scale suitable for your miniatures to stand around, this is worth a look.
The actual model is beautiful to look at and incredibly detailed. Colours are vibrant, yet realistic; and the printing is crisp.
The instructions are excellent and easy to follow with clear stage-by-stage illustrations that make quite a complex build a lot less scary than it otherwise might be - and the results look rather pretty if incongruous sitting on my desk.
That's the only problem, really. What am I going to do with it? A pretty diorama is all well and good - and makes a terrific advertisement for a gaming group if you can persuade the likes of a local library to let you set it up there - but it is not really practical for gaming purposes. Even if you do use miniatures, trying to manoeuvre them around such a structure becomes fiddly and time-consuming and distracts from the fun of the combat or whatever else is going on. As eye-candy: brilliant!
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This product contains a comprehensive review of what breath weapons actually are, how they work in terms of game mechanics and even takes a look at how they might work in terms of the alternate reality of your game... what is actually going on inside that creature just before it breathes its 'whatever' at you. This last is of particular interest to anyone who likes to understand the 'ecology' of the monsters that they use in their games.
At places, particularly in the first few pages, the text reads more like notes jotted down as the author thinks about breath weapons rather than a finished product. By the time we reach the 'in character' descriptions of breath weapons it has settled down to a more polished delivery.
An interesting feature of the 'in character' understanding of how breath weapons work is that it has been written at the level of knowledge appropriate to a quasi-mediaeval fantasy world. So, for example, an electrical attack is not really understood - as a 21st century person with life-sciences training, I'd be thinking in terms of the way in which a creature like the electric eel generates its charge, but here we have thoughts of it being akin to an electrical storm and ending with 'The alchemists are working on an answer to that'!
Then we move on to the process of designing a new breath weapon from the ground up, including calculation of CRs and creating a template for creatures that will use it. This is followed by several new breath weapons that have already been designed for you to use. Many of these are based on spell effects like Fear or Move Earth.
Finally there are some 'breath weapon related feats. These enable the creature wielding the breath weapon to modify or otherwise control it in a similar fashion to a magic-user utilising metamagic feats to alter his spells. At the very end there's an appendix that looks at areas of effect (with neat charts) and ways of calculating the course of a jagged, curved or chaotic breath weapon.
There's a lot of useful stuff here about the art and science of breath weapons, and with a modicum of editing and expansion could be a contender for 'Compleat Book of Breath Weapons'... it just gives out an air of having been a little rushed in the writing, perhaps a deadline caught the author unawares.
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Bridges in dungeons can provide spectacular excitement and moments of extreme nervousness, terror even, as characters inch their way across not quite sure what will happen before - or even if - they reach the other side. For the GM they have their mechanical uses as a means to channel characters, forcing them to take a particular route and even, if you're particularly cruel, to be bunched up somewhere vulnerable.
In standard style for the 'Dungeon Dressing' line, the material herein is presented as a series of tables. If you like randomicity, you can roll away; others may prefer - particularly if using the work when planning rather than running their game - to read through and select the features that they want for the bridge that they are constructing.
The first, fairly obvious, thing to consider is, what is the bridge made of? Common construction materials are wood and stone, with rope for more temporary (or at least temporary-looking) ones, but there are more unusual ones such as glass. A couple of sidebars discuss bridges in literature and the uses for bridges within a dungeon (apart from the obvious of getting over some kind of gap...), which may help you decide when and where a bridge will be appropriate.
There is then a table of 'interesting features' that you can give your bridge. Some of these are purely cosmetic, some might worry the characters, others have an actual game effect. I quite like "This sculpted stone bridge resembles a dragon, arching over the gap; you cross by walking along the dragon’s back." The next table adds futher features, these being more small-scale and descriptive, but still capable of being purely narrative or having an in-game effect.
And then... we reach a further selection of traps and tricks. Five different ones, each with full game mechanical details as well as descriptions to make them vivid to your no-doubt horrified characters!
Bridges are no longer merely for getting to the other side, they can be an integral part of the adventure.
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This is an evil little side adventure to spring on your party when they are asleep!
The backstory that introduces it is compelling and coherent, telling of conflict between two monasteries and a climactic battle in which one enacted a kind of magical 'self-destruct' as a last gasp of defiance... only it didn't quite work as expected, with one monk (who really didn't want to die with his comrades) left sort-of alive and trapped. He of course is now trying to escape, but for that he needs to entrap the living and use their life-energies...
The complex in which the characters find themselves is well-described, and allows for combat and investigation skills to be used as they attempt to figure out what is going on and how they are going to get out of it. They are not the only beings trapped there, and the monastery has its own guardians (mostly mechanical) as well, so there is plenty to fight. Tactics as well as stat blocks are provided just where you need them to facilitate the flow of the adventure.
It's a particularly neat adventure because it doesn't matter where your characters are or what they think they are doing (well, apart from sleeping!) when you hit them with it. It might be particularly effective with a party that has not had much contact with an 'oriental' style region in your campaign world (if you even have such a thing) but could equally well work for a game that's set in an oriental-style world. After all, as it involves other-worldly dimensions, being a demi-plane, it doesn't matter if it's native to your campaign world or not!
An Appendix has a new monk archetype, the tortured spirit monk (they reckon everyone's ki energy is there for them to exploit, so unless your campaign is particularly evil, it will be an NPC archetype), as well as a new monk feat and a couple of templates. Mostly these are used to explain some of the creatures to be found in this adventure, but you may find uses for them elsewhere.
Overall, something nice to have to hand. Perhaps your characters are getting just a little complacent and sure of what they are doing... so give them a little surprise one night!
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Having originally trained as a botanist, plants always feature in my world-building and it can be fun to come up with authentic-sounding herbal remedies to add flavour to any fantasy mediaeval-style setting (or indeed to research genuine herbal remedies, a copy of Culpeper's Herbal can be useful). That's probably going a bit far for most people, so here's a delightful list of an hundred healing herbs to drop into your game.
Many of the 'remedies' listed here were used in mediaeval times, a few even worked. It's up to you to determine how effective they'll be in your campaign - take #95 Potato: a potato carried in the pocket cures toothaches and guards against minor ailments... to the modern mind this is pure superstition, but in your alternate reality, perhaps it really is effective!
Here's another example - #52 Peppermint: rubbed on afflicted areas to relieve aches and pains; when worn or consumed as a tea, mint cures stomach ailments; added to healing potions and mixtures... well, a mint tea can be settling if you've just eaten a rich meal.
As you can see, it's more than a mere list of herbs, the sort of advice that the village wise woman will give as she hands it over is included too, so you can introduce these as appropriate, and deliver suitable in-character patter. Mediaeval apothecaries also practised herbalism and were consulted much as one might have a chat with a pharmacist today, and an apothercary shop can be a flavourful addition to a town or city in your campaign world. At least after reading this you'll have some idea of what might be found on the shelves.
I'm sure I don't need to remind you that if you are poorly in the real world, go see a medic (or a REAL medical herbalist) for your remedies, do-it-yourself herbalism is not a good idea unless you are very certain of what you are about and sure of your plant identification.
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This is a delightfully atmospheric little piece, set in the Tatakama World but with a portal to a shabby backstreet in modern Tokyo. The people and places are well-described and come to life well, a real feeling of an alternate reality that's out there somewhere.
The setting is a township, Niishima, and much of the main street and surroundings are described as well as the Niishima Inn itself. There's a lot going on, many stories being told and waiting to be told. Several key NPCs are given full stat block treatment, and there are four pre-generated characters (all native to the Tatakama world) that you can use. Other useful things include a Samurai template.
Now, whilst there is a lot going on, a lot to explore and discover here, there is no real 'adventure' as one might define it. Perhaps - especially if using the pre-generated characters - the aim is to find the portal. Or you may choose to turn things on their head and have modern characters find (or fall through!) the portal from modern Tokyo and attempt to survive in this strange world in which they find themselves. The Inn has a couple of haunts which may provide a challenge to those interested in finding out why they are there and how they can be laid to rest.
It's also worth a look if you are running or considering a 'fantasy Japan' setting using Dungeons & Dragons 3.X or the Pathfinder RPG.
Illustrations are beautiful, evocative, traditional Japanese in the main, it's a feast for the eyes as well as a good read!
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![[PFRPG] Breath Weapons](images/3475/112071-thumb100.jpg)
