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This is a rather beautiful and evocative drawing, in a 1920s style, of a young lady in a very strappy almost topless dress, hair up and with a flower...
It's a shame that she doesn't look as if she is enjoying the party much.
The drawing, however, is lovely and the story behind her glum expression may be what drives your next adventure.
That, or there's a Cthulhoid monster sitting behind me that she's just noticed... :)
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Fancy providing security at a royal wedding?
That's the crux of the task that faces your characters in this adventure, but it is so well done that it's a real treat. The whole thing is full of neat suggestions from the outset - like not telling your players the name of the adventure so that they don't figure out that it's based on fairytales and folk legend until it's far too late... not to mention a series of traps so well described and presented that it takes dealing with them to a whole new level: a real part of the game, not just something to be dealt with so you can go do whatever it was you were here for in the first place. It's all too easy for traps to be viewed as a nuisance for the party rogue to go do his thing, couple of die rolls and move on (healing the rogue if necessary): here they are an integral part of the adventure.
There are also numerous hints and suggestions to enable you to enjoy watching the party cope with high society. Consider that they are an ordinary bunch of adventurers, and are now being thrust headlong into a full-blown royal court with all the attitudes and customs and ceremonial that that entails. Will they conduct themselves in a fitting manner, or make fools of themselves?
There is, as you'd expect, quite a lot of interaction and scope for role-play here. But never fear, there are plenty opportunities for more robust activity, a good chase or two as well as several combats. It's challenging, but never boring... and certainly no easy duty.
Events pile up quick and fast, but you are provided with resources to cope with whatever the characters choose to do about them, the notes are full of options 'If the party chooses to...' which will help you present it seamlessly giving a real feeling of freedom of action. As ever, full game mechanical details for both Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and the Pathfinder RPG are provided, clearly differentiated so that you can pick out the ones you need.
I'm already looking forwards to Part 2. In the meantime, where are some players....?
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I opened this with a sense of puzzlement: just what is a doom painting anyway?
All was soon revealed. A doom painting is a mediaeval depiction of the Last Judgement, as taught by Christianity, that was a popular adornment of churches in England... and the reason why so many old English churches have white-washed walls these days, a relic of Puritain distain of such art in the 17th century! Whilst a lot of the iconography of a traditional doom painting would be inappropriate in most fantasy worlds - as they don't tend to practise Christianity there - the base concept is ripe with possibilities, from depicting the tenets of whatever deities are revered there to enabling the GM to weave subtle forshadowings of his plots into artwork which the characters may or may not notice. You could even provide hints about an impending trap... or the painting itself could be a part of that trap!
The first table provides suggestions for the overall appearance of the painting. One interesting feature is the two-sided nature of each work: this is completely traditional and harks back to the Last Judgement theme of real-world doom paintings. One side would depict what happened to good folks (welcomed into heaven) and the other side showed the evil people being consigned to the fiery pits of hell! So here you might see something like "A king and queen are seated in this painting. All those who have approached the king have been decapitated, while those who have approached the queen are showered with fine gifts." (#84-86). You can be as cryptic or as blatent as you like: the images are best presented without commentary to let the characters make of them what they will.
The next table is entitled Dressings and Features, and offers various additional features that might add interest. Perhaps the doom painting is upside down, or has been defaced or partly covered over... or maybe it has an ornate frame. You will have to decide if the feature has any significance, or if it's just something done by a previous party of adventurers...
Finally comes a selection of traps and tricks that can be incorporated into your doom paintings. Now, there were some in the first table, but here five new paintings are described in detail along with the awful things that might befall anyone who stops to take a look.
Now, I'd suggest that you use doom paintings sparingly - unless there's a very good reason, like whoever constructed the dungeon being an art collector - but a well considered one could provide a potent and memorable dungeon feature. If you visit one of my dungeons in the future, watch the walls...
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It's called swords AND sorcery after all, so why should you have to choose between chucking spells and swinging a sword when creating your character? If a mix of both takes your fancy, this product holds some interesting suggestions.
First up is the Dimensional Knight base class, fully developed up to 20th level. His aim is to be omnipresent on the battlefield, using mastery of spatial manipulation to dart around, open portals and the like to mount attacks in the most unexpected places. Spell-casting is sorcerer-style, without need for preparing the day's spells in advance, but subject to the usual level-based limits as to the number and level of spells that can be cast. The range of spells available is quite specialised and limited, but caters to the particular needs of the class well.
Next a prestige class, the Spellslinger. This is appropriate for games in which firearms are permitted, and caters for both magic-using characters who want to carry a gun for protection or a gunman who wants to harness arcane power: for the spellslinger uses a handgun to launch his spells and can even develop the ability to spit arcane energies rather than bullets from its muzzle!
This is followed by another new base class, the Thunder Chief who is a front-line fighter capable of calling down weather, specifically storms, to aid him on the battlefield. He is gifted in manipulating the weather and in particular harnessing the power of lightning, and is also capable of limited divine casting using a special spell list, which is provided, and also creates and wields a special 'stormblade' weapon embued with mystical power.
You may find these all fairly niche classes, and it is probably wise to consider the campaign style carefully before choosing any of them. If, however, epic largescale battles feature, both the Dimensional Knight and the Thunder Chief could be quite potent on the battlefield, although it's hard to imagine a Thunder Chief being very happy with extended dungeon delving. Innovative players will soon develop ways of using their powers off the battlefield as well.
The product rounds off with a good range of new feats, spells and magic items. Most are aimed at the new classes, but at least some might find favour with other characters as well. An interesting and thought-provoking work.
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Worth it for the backstory alone, this product opens with a dire tale of how a greedy and intolerant emperor who confused dire poverty caused by crop failure with a mere unwillingness to pay taxes was eventually deposed... but not before he'd both devastated the township that was the centre of what he perceived as rebellion and had built a gaol there. That emperor's long gone, but the gaol remains...
There is a description and a rough sketch map of this dire establishment, a strange place indeed that's built on a towering column and hangs out high above the surrounding wasteland (a cell with a view, perhaps?). If you indend much running around therein, you may need to come up with more detailed maps, especially if you use miniatures for combat, but the sketch and description are enough to give a feel for the place.
Several people are then introduced: the warden, a guard,and a couple of prisoners; each with a whole backstory of their own. Then comes several plot outlines involving the gaol. Perhaps the party is hired to get someone out of there, whether wrongfully imprisoned or in need of incarceration but with friends wealthy enough to hire folks to break them out. Or the characters might even have fallen foul of someone and been imprisoned. Or... there is plenty of food for thought here with twists and turns aplenty to make a full-blown adventure.
A couple of interesting items, a few rumours and some encounters wind this up. Perhaps worth tucking aside for when your characters annoy you so much that they need banging up... but certainly an interesting location to place in some out-of-the-way part of your campaign world just ready for when you need it.
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Whatever reason you might have for romping over a lunar landscape, here are two giant areas in almost photo-realistic detail all ready for you to leave your footprints on.
Both feature a mix of large and small craters and some rough terrain - and if you find depth perception difficult in a top-down view, try the old astronaut trick of visualising the sun and what direction it is shining from, and you will find that the shadows all begin to make sense and you can see the depth after all. (This is, if you're interested, what Apollo astronauts were trained to do when looking at lunar photographs.)
Single page versions of both maps and instructions for printing and organising them are tucked away at the back of the PDF. Both maps have a hex overlay, and you can determine an appropriate scale given the size of whatever miniatures you intend to use.
There are no structures anywhere, so those wishing to brawl can do so without worrying about collateral damage, and those wishing to explore can enjoy what might easily be virgin territory. So, be this Earth's Moon or some other airless cratered world that you have encountered in your travels, enjoy....
... and remember, in space nobody can hear you scream!
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This is a fine and imposing - and perhaps scary! - tribal mask, in possibly African style but perhaps mid/south American, that might hang on an explorer's study wall... or suddenly appear in front of you during a jungle stroll.
It's clear and crisp, angular, and looks good, whether you choose the colour version or the greyscale one that is included in the download. A striking image, use it to effect in the course of a game, or to illustrate your latest pulp or cod-archaeology epic!
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The sheer importance of religion within day-to-day life in a fantasy world is often underestimated. Just think how central religion is to many folk in the real world - and our gods don't tend to indulge in the flash-bang obvious nature of your average fantasy deity... few fantasy characters would deny the existance of their world's deities, even if they are not interested in worshipping them!
So, temples. Most deities expect worship, and regular organised worship needs a place in which the faithful can hold services, listen to sermons and get religious help and advice. In fantasy worlds, the temple can be a source of healing, perhaps a school, and certainly a place to get help if you need to deal with supernatural problems like the undead. But just as a mosque, a synagogue, a wat, a cathedral and a Mormon meeting house are quite different structures in the real world, so will each deity in your campaign world be venerated in quite different buildings. Here's a useful tool to aid you in designing some distinctive temples in which your deities can be worshipped.
The first table lets you roll for (or choose) the basic structural design - and there's a full hundred options. Well, 99 - the last suggests you roll twice more and combine the results. You may want to make a choice based on the nature of the deity in question, but perhaps not - the organisation and priesthood that has developed around a given faith may have travelled a fair way from its origins. So you may have #80 - A majestic stone building with subtle gold engravings and purple wall hangings - despite the god worshipped there being a humble and caring weather-deity with no such pretensions! Once you have derived one temple for a given deity, you can also decide if this is the standard pattern for places of worship dedicated to that god - just as you'd never confuse a mosque with a Christian church, there may be some identifying characteristics if not a cookie-cutter similarity between temples of a certain god.
Next, there is an intriguing list - I'm not calling this one a table because you'll want to choose not roll - of features you can add to your temple based on the domains appropriate to the deity in question. So in a temple of a Good god you might find a basket of provisions resting in the foyer, free for the taking while in a space dedicated to a deity of Wind upper windows are left open to provide a breeze for hanging chimes. It's a neat way to invoke the core beliefs in the very architecture of your temple.
The next section is quite interesting too, looking at donations, tithings and sacrifices. Rather than the physical structure, here are suggestions about the services and offerings that a deity might demand of devotees, based on that deity's nature. They are grouped on an alignments basis, so a Good deity might call for you to say a prayer for the soul of an enemy, a Neutral one might want you to share a tale of wonder whilst an Evil one might only be satisfied with the blood of your parents! You can use these to begin to build up a picture not only of the temple you go to when you wish to worship whichever god you wrote down on your character sheet, but what you are going to do when you get there.
This theme is continued in the next section, which looks at events, festivals and rites. This is a collection of ideas for activities, along with suggestions for areas within a temple and the sort of knick-knacks you might find there. Some events are based on the time of year or happenings in the community, others are more personal, the marking of milestones in an individual devotee's life.
Finally, the last section is 'Clergy in a Hurry' - and rather than priests scurrying about robes flapping, this is designed to help you populate your temple ready for the characters' visit. There are tables for gender, race, name and position (along with a handy list of religious titles), and then you can also come up with what they are wearing, mannerisms, accessories and even the rumours about them. So, meet Umrbrige Yensel, a centaur bishop wearing silk vestments with jewels, with facial tattoos and a tendency to lay his hands on others' shoulders... and who is said to use old bath water when he cannot be bothered to consecrate holy water for the temple!
All in all, this is a magnificent resource to make temples come to life in your campaign world.
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A rather charming line-art sketch of a young lady - timeless enough for her to feature in fantasy or far future games... perhaps a character portrait, or someone the characters chance to meet.
The terms of the enclosed licence permit private or commercial use provided that the artist is credited and that it's not used in any art collection or in a work in which it forms more than 25% of the whole: quite fair but, and this is a big but, these terms should be displayed in advertising material not only after you have decided to purchase the picture. OK, so you are only $4 out of pocket if you wanted to do something different and now on reading the terms decide that you cannot. UK law - it's where I live and under which I operate - has in the past come down heavily on licence terms only made available after purchase. Just as well these are fair terms and unlikely to be challenged!
Oh, and it's a nice picture. I did say that, didn't I? Being an old female I don't often play young ones these days, but I do have fun with female NPCs and she'll come in handy when I need to illustrate one.
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This is a selection of stylish 'flat' 2-sided paper miniatures of Elf Adventurers. They have an assortment of weapons, some armour and some flowing robes. They are labelled Warrior, Cleric, Archer, Rogue, Wizard... etc. but these are not hard and fast designations: you may decide that the 'paladin' is a fighter with decent armour, sword and shield; or that a 'Wizard' is actually a druid or a cleric.
What is quite fun is that the layers tool of PDF technology has been used to allow you to play around with the colour-schemes. It's a bit hit-and-miss, but if you play around long enough you will find out which settings suit your needs.
Detailed and clear instructions are given on assembling the figures and their bases (again, you can change what those look like by fiddling with the layers). It might have helped if the English language instructions were printed in a colour that gave more contrast with the background, but the Spanish and pictures enabled me to figure it out all right!
If you have an elf character and want a paper mini for him or her, this is worth a look...
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You can never have too many monsters! But it's a real treat when you get thoughtful well-designed ones that can really establish themselves as living (usually) creatures within your world rather than mere cannon-fodder to wheel out when it's time for a brawl.
Each of the twelve comes with a wealth of background detail about how they fit in to wherever it is you'll find them, as well as an illustration and full stat-block. All the entries lack is a pronunciation guide, a few are tongue-twisters.
Perhaps you would like a dragonleaf tree in your garden. I can see some puzzled mail carriers when they see a 'Beware of the tree' sign... just before an oculo swarm happens by. Maybe you'd like a salt golem for a butler, or a pet star drake. And there are several others, some capable of interaction, others mindless marauders with whom you'll have to do combat as soon as they come into view.
Just reading through the descriptions sets ideas into motion, how they might be woven into existing plots and locations or even spawning ideas for side-adventures or whole plotlines of their own. This is what monster books ought to be like!
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An orc is an orc is an orc, surely, and good for nothing more than target practice, right?
Well, even if your only use for an orc is as a sparring partner, here are a full 34 orc personalities to make that brawl a little more interesting... and if you put that sword away and maybe try having a chat over an ale or three, you might discover that orcs are people too. However if you hold - as do many adventurers - that the only good orc is a dead one, these 34 are all combat-ready and come in a range of CRs from orc young at one-quarter of a CR to an assassin or spear master who both weigh in at CR 7.
Starting with a page on how to read stat blocks (most of us have grasped this by now but handy if you are starting out in the game) next there is a page about orcs in general. Apparently an adult male orc is roughly 6 feet tall and 210 pounds, and quick to anger (sounds remarkably like my husband, but I don't think orcs cook as well as he does!), and should you wish to play one there are some notes on orc characters.
Then, on with the stat blocks. Each comes with a brief description as well as all the stats you need to use that orc (in combat or otherwise) along with the weapons, armour and other notable possessions he might have with him. As you might suspect, many are barbarians and so have the altered stats for raging included as well as their regular ones. Most are fairly scruffy and unpleasant-looking, and if you do fancy getting to know them over some ales you may have difficulty finding a tavern which will let you in!
Still, if you want some variety rather than wave upon wave of indentikit orcs to fight, this is an easy way to have some distinctive combat-ready orcs at your fingertips.
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There's plenty of scope here. Basically it's a workshop/hideout that could be a base for just about any modern, near-future or superhero character, particularly one of a technical bent. It could serve as a hangout for a group of characters or even as someone's home if they don't mind roughing it a bit. Naturally, you can choose whether it is the player-characters or NPCs who occupy the place.
Drawn to a near photo-realistic standard, you get 3 multi-page versions (plain, hex grid or square grid) as well as a giant single JPEG image suitable for virtual tabletops or if you have access to a commercial poster printing facility, and a neat 360° view option that's excellent if you want to give your players a good look at the place through their characters' eyes.
Games that could easily find a use for this range from Spycraft and Leverage through Night's Black Agents, any number of superhero games or anything from a thriller genre. It may not be stylish enough for a vampire, but at least there are no windows!
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There's a lot packed into this little work - a whole collection of Asian weapons as well as that staple of adventure, ninja weapons and devices!
It starts off with a note on concealment and on the frequent use of Asian weapons in pairs, and continues by describing a whole range of blades, budgeoning weapons, polearms, entangling weapons and ranged weapons - including a whole array of different arrows. If you do like Asian weapons, you'll probably find your favourites here (my particular love, the kukri, is there... so I now know the M&M stats for the one lurking under my desk!) Most weapons are Japanese or Chinese in origin, but the Indonesian kris makes an appearance, as well as famous items like nunchaku, the chakram and the war fan.
Next comes the ninja section (although for some reason shuriken appear under ranged weapons). This includes notes on the way they are good at concealing and improvising weapons as well as some of the gadgets for which they are renowned. There are also notes on weapons shaped like animals and the use of animals as weapons (with the common mistake of referring to POISONOUS snakes... hitting someone with one of the very few poisonous snakes would have little effect, use a VENOMOUS one if you want to annoy the poor serpent into biting your target with dire effects!) .
Now, whilst there's a brief mention in the section on weapons shaped like animals, the main focus here is real-world mundane weapons. If you want ones that are themselves superpowered, or which accentuate superpowers, you won't find much here. But the wise superhero remembers that there are times when cold steel will be more effective than any weird ability!
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Do you ever find that your mind goes totally blank when the characters roll into town and strike up conversations with the locals to find out what's going on? Or worse, all you can think about is the next adventure you intend to run so that every rumour is about that adventure - the only variety being that some are true and others are not!
Help is at hand, in the shape of some ready-crafted gossip and rumours that you can sprinkle around with gay abandon without running the risk of derailing your plot... and into which you can weave the pointers to said plot without giving them undue emphasis. So if you have characters in your game who are assiduous at gathering local information whenever they get the chance (unlike one party I had many years ago who'd walk up to the first person they saw and asked directions to the roughest part of town, went there and started a brawl!) you will now have something to serve up to them.
It's designed to be used with random die rolls, but you could of course bypass that and have your locals talk about whichever rumours interest you... but here I think the random approach is best, even if you roll ahead of time and know what will be talked about when the characters strike up a conversation.
To start with, there are a host of modifiers to apply to the characters' Diplomany checks to work out how many rumours there are to unearth, and further rolls to decide what type of rumours are to be had. To add life to it all, a few local gossips are provided, complete with statblocks and notes on playing them.
Then comes a whole bunch of tables based on what type of rumour you are looking for: rumours about other adventurers, about local events and festivals, about local legends, about local nobility and so on. Each is replete with quite detailed tales that the local gossips will fall over themselves to share. Now, are they true? That's for you to decide and the characters to figure out for themselves. Many could spawn adventures of their own, and it will be a trivial task to weave similar tales regarding adventure seeds or other information that your plot requires the characters to discover and insert them seamlessly into the flow of gossip their inquiries will generate.
Like all true gossip, much has a harsh edge to it. The characters will have to decide if the harshness is justified. You could have fun making up a few rumours in similar vein about the characters, especially if they are known in the area. Twist it just enough that they will wonder if it is about them or someone else...
As a bonus, there are a couple of new spells as well... along with the rumours that will lead curious mages to discover them! An interesting addition to the well-prepared GM's bookshelf.
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![Wounded Warrior Charity Bundle [BUNDLE]](images/2995/114680-thumb80.gif)
