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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral) $12.95
Average Rating:5.0 / 5
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GM\'s Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Brad F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/02/2021 10:55:37

Oh my, it has ALL THE THINGS! Whether you need a description for a magical mace you want your PCs to find or something in a creepy graveyard, this book has you covered. This system neutral resource gets used at my table all the time. I fully recommend getting this book and its sequel The Thingonomicon II.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you, Brad. Keep smashing out the verisimilitude! Game on! (And thank you for the kind words).
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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Andrea M. M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/27/2021 05:32:15

Having discovered Raging Swan many years ago - can't remember since when - and finding their products more than a bit useful and especially matching my style and helpful in my worldbuilding with The Thingonimcon you get it all in one piece. A big bag full of more than thousand ideas which will spark your ideas - garantied. If you don't know Raging Swan yet, THIS is the product to get to give you an idea what they are doing and how good their are doing. I didn't regret a second to having bought it.

Let me know if you are the same opinion and if not - I am curious what didn't suit you.

Cheers Andrea



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you, Andrea, for your review. I'm delighted you've found this book so useful. I hope you get tons of use out of it and its brethren!
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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Lorenzo C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/11/2021 05:52:17

After considering a number of books on world building I have recently purchased the following volumes from Raging Swan Press:

  • Urban Dressing Vol I
  • Urban Dressing Vol II
  • Dungeon Dressing
  • Wilderness Dressing
  • The Thingonomicon

For each of the above I purchased both the PDF and the softcover versions. Quality and breadth of content is top notch. No excuses now not to provide more context in my fantasy world. Even just one or two dressing/events for every locale/NPC will dramatically increase players’ involvement and it will contribute to generating a more credible setting. I also find the content great to use as a starting point upon which you can develop more or less elaborate plots/hooks. PDFs are provided in two formats. One for normal visualisation on electronic devices, one optimised for print. They come with a handy and precise table of content. The printed volumes are solid and very high standard. Especially for the price. I have used many systems in the last 30 years. I now use official WOTC books for monsters, objects and rules, whereas Raging Swan products can cover every other aspect of the world building process. I will definitely keep an eye out for further books from this great publisher. Well done!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you, Lorenzo for the purchase and reviews. I much appreciate both and I'm delighted you've got so much great use out of our books.
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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by pat e. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/04/2019 20:25:43

I use charts from this all the time to help fill in the cracks in my game world and it doesn't disappoint. I often print a couple of tables that I think might fit in with the adventure that I'm running and keep them close at hand.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for these words, Pat. I'm glad you find the Thingonomicon so useful!
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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Thilo G. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 01/07/2019 11:01:34

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive compilation clocks in at 188 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of ToC, 1 page foreword, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 179 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested as a prioritized review by my patreon supporters and moved up in my reviewing queue accordingly

First of all, this supplement has got to have one of the coolest names ever – kudos there! In case you did not notice, this one represents a compilation of Raging Swan Press’ first 25 installments of the #20 Things-series of dressing files.

This means it covers ancient necropolises, bustling marketplaces, creepy graveyards, cultist lairs, curio shops &pawnbrokers, dark caverns, fallen dwarven holds, forts in borderlands, goblin lairs, haunted houses, hill giant steadings, kobold warrens, looting bodies of various professions, necromancers lairs, noisome sewers, ocean voyages, seedy taverns, slaver compounds, smuggler lairs, subterranean mines, sun-scorched deserts, townfolk and villagers, troublesome treasures, war-ravaged lands, wilderness camping and wizard towers. Coincidentally, I have reviewed all of these individual dressing files, which means that, should you require a detailed breakdown of the files, you can just click on the “#20-things-series”-tag on my homepage and have the reviews listed in a convenient manner.

I’m not particularly fond of repeating myself, so I will refrain from discussing all of these aspects in detail once more, instead focusing on how this works as a compilation.

Well, the first thing you’ll notice would pertain organization of the material – the respective entries have been organized alphabetically, which is one way to do it. We thus begin with “Ancient Necropolises” and move through the list above in the sequence I presented it.

This means that you won’t e.g. have one section for dungeons, one for urban environments. One for NPCs/corpses, instead, focusing, well, on an alphabetic presentation. While usually, I’d consider that to be a detriment on a comfort level, closer examination of the book led me to a different conclusion: Since the topics covered are rather diverse and disparate, there is not a single properly suitable organization paradigm I could come up with that would have been more efficient that a simple alphabetical presentation. If one would have e.g. grouped necropolis and crypts together, what’d one do with necromancer stuff? Put it there, or adjacent to the wizard’s tower? Closer examination of the book yielded a lot of these conundrums – so yeah, organization in an alphabetical sequence is pretty much the one feasible way to go here, and it makes sense that the book went that route.

Slightly less amusing – there is some overlap among a few of the respective #20 Things-entries. This, for example, affects the entries for the necromancer’s lair and wizard’s towers. Both of these have a duplicate of the same “20 Things to find in a Necromancer’s Sanctum” page, including the same 6 pickled and preserved things. It’s certainly nothing that sinks the supplement, and considering the quality, this duplicate doesn’t hurt the book in the slightest, but it still remains a minor blemish in my book. Then again, it thus is a faithful compilation of the material. Heck, you know me by now – I always have to find something to complain about. ;)

Kidding aside, the Thingonomicon’s dressing, as a whole, is ridiculously useful, and having the book in proper print is a huge boon – much like the phenomenal Dungeon/Wilderness-dressing books (still among my most-used books EVER), this is used much more when you just have it lying there, within reach, at the table. Flip it open, and viola! Need a blasphemous tome? The Rat’s Nest was written into the very fabric of the world, and cannot be unwritten, showing up as glyphs and symbols in filth, mold and rat’s nests. Now that is one damn amazing angle, right? What about a tome that may only ever be tattooed, vanishing if written otherwise? Got a kobold warren? 10 trap suggestions, right there. PCs wandered into a seedy tavern? 10 strange things behind the bar will certainly piqued their curiosity. This is one of those books that are just…useful, that allow you to focus more on things that matter.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting re very good on a formal level, and being system neutral, rules-wise, tehre’s nothing to complain about either. Layout adheres to Raging Swan Press’ elegant two-column b/w-standard, and the pdf sports nice b/w-artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks, though, oddly, the Wizard’s Tower-section does not list its bookmarks as nested. They’re still here, but yeah. One of the bookmarks has a superfluous “s”, and I noticed a few not linking to the correct page: Dead adventurer bookmark links to the subchapter header, while dead bard erroneously links to dead adventurer. These only ever are a single page off, and if you display two pages at a time on your reader, this is a non-issue. The pdf comes in two different versions, one optimized for screen-use and one optimized for the printer. Kudos!

Alexander Augunas, Aaron Bailey, John Bennett, Creighton Broadhurst, Ronald Calbick, Seamus Conneely, Kalyna Conrad, Jeff Gomez, Eric Hindley, Cole Kronewitter, Jacob W. Michaels, David Posener, Paul Quarles, Alex Riggs, David N. Ross, Liz Smith, Amber Underwood, Mike Welham – if you know anything about the authors currently working in the 3pp-circuit for Pathfinder, you’ll be familiar with most, if not all of them – the cadre of talented authors has crafted a wide array of useful dressing articles, which are enhanced even more by being compiled in a concise tome. Much like Dungeon Dressing back in the day, I wholly expect this book to be significantly more useful in print that in its electronic iteration, and indeed, I plan on purchasing the hardcover at my earliest convenience. While I can’t comment on the merits of the print version of this book, I do own plenty of Raging Swan Press print books – many of which are crucial tools in my game prepping and running. This book, while system-immanently less focused than previous Dressing compilations, nonetheless serves an important role, in that it really helps you bring to life complexes and adventuring locations, particularly those that are depicted in a more sketch-like manner – a perfect example of a book that can really use the details provided here will hit sites next week. For books like that, spontaneous adventures, mini-dungeons and locales, etc. in particular, this must be considered to be an all but invaluable resource, and as such, in spite of its minor flaws, which pale in view of what it brings to the table, this book gets 5 stars + seal of approval, as well as a nomination for my Top Ten of 2018.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! Thank you so much for this review! Epic!
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GM's Miscellany: The Thingonomicon (System Neutral)
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/30/2018 09:34:11

You know all those little "environmental" things that dungeons are littered with that may not always be foremost in the minds of adventurers or dungeon masters? Things like "a cool mist that hugs the floor" or "this goblin has infected pustules covering his face." Little things that add something to a game session, or send a gamer's mind off in the direction of a new adventure? This book has those.

Yes, it's a compilation of previous work, but that work was awesome, so it's nice to have a collection. It's especially nice that a hard-cover option is available, because this is the sort of book that gets opened to various pages, and isn't read from cover-to-cover.

Things you'd see in the various environments, little random treasures you'd find, different traps, random (interesting) NPCs to encounter . . . this is a list that allows a GM to add little bits and pieces to his game.

Raging Swan excels at this type of product, and it's system-neutral, so it's not specific to a particular game. Geared towards the fantasy-genre, there's still plenty of information that could be used in a 20's Lovecraftian game, a modern game, or if stretched, a sci-fi setting. Example, "20 things to find in an abaondoned camp site" has lots of things that could be used for an abandoned moonshiner's shack. Naturally, the Necromancer's Sanctum is pretty obvious. The entries for a war-ravaged land can be modified to show the aftermath of a planetary invasion by Colonial Marines.

Again, this has lots of ideas, and add those little details that may be considered throw-away lines. Of course, players will grab onto these throw-away lines and head down the rabbit hole ("Why does this goblin have lesions on his face? What's the purpose of that lock of blonde hair we found in the chieftains' pocket? Why were there lumps of coal in this skeleton's eyes?"), but that's half the fun, isn't it?



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for this review. I'm delighted you enjoyed the book!
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