Hands-down the best rules for lava in any edition in D&D. Comprehensive, simple, easy to grok.
I use these rules all the time when the party encounters lava. A+, and the price is perfect!

I bought this having watch 3d6DTL play it on youtube and thought it would be a fun adventure for my players to try out a more OSR type experience having played a lot of 5e over the past years. We play on a virtual tabletop (Roll20) and are using the Shadowdark RPG rules set and are about 6 sessions in at the time of writing this. Despite me mapping the first 2 levels most of the time has been spent in the ruined city as this seems to have caught the playerss interest.

The good/great

1. The maps are all detailed, none of the old TSR style "empty so the DM can fill it"
2. The world feels organic, stuff seems to have a good reason to be there and does not necessarily fill a particular level need
3. NPCs have sufficient detail and character to be interesting to the party
4. Summaries of the monsters and loot at the end of each map key description

For the bad

1. It is a little tedious to set up the dynamic lighting for these enormous maps, however the sense of exploration is amazing.
2. The scope is so large it can sometimes be hard to find stuff, I cannot imagine trying to do it in a non-digital format

Respectfully, these maps are extremely difficult to use in an actual VTT environment, and I'd like to know if it's possible to have the cartographer or publisher recreate them.

As a result of an unknown process during their making, each map has a different scale! That is to say, a 10' square on the map grid might be 65 pixels on one map, but as high 97 pixels or as low as 58 pixels on a different map. Every single map has a different scale of pixels per square. These scales are not listed anywhere in the files offered.

Worse, several maps I directly measured (Level 3 and Level 4) have a different value of pixels per 10' square on different parts of the same map. It is not possible to merely change the size or pixel density of the maps in Photoshop to correct this problem.

This means that if a regular grid is applied to the maps in a VTT program, player tokens will not move at a regular pace across the map--each individual movement will slightly and additively misalign the token with the map grid. Additionally, no token will appear to be the same size relative to the map if it moves between maps. If your 5' square character token is 34 pixels to a side, it will appear to take up ~1/4th of a grid square on a map where a 10' square is 65 pixels to a side. If that same token moves to a map where a 10' square is now 97 pixels to a side, it will appear to be ~30% smaller. This also applies to every single monster token used.

While you could turn off the VTT-level grid and exclusively rely on the visible grid within the map itself, that's kind of a crap solution for files meant specifically to be used with VTT software. It is extremely frustrating to discover that the technical quality of these assets are so poor.

Finally, the GM-facing maps are of a lower resolution than the player-facing maps, and so cannot be overlaid in a VTT as a low-opacity mask to give the GM information directly on the screen while players only see the player-facing version. My attempt to solve this problem required that I use the files from VTT_Arden_Vul_Black_Maps.zip (which are player-facing) as a player-visible layer, and then copy and save the blue-color, full-size GM-facing map images directly out of The_Maps_of_Arden_Vul.pdf (from https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/307323/The-Maps-of-Arden-Vul) using SumatraPDF (free, lightweight, PDF reader) and use those as a hidden tile overlay in Foundry. It was a pain in the XXX, and revealed the pixel scaling issues I've written about here, so godspeed.

The maps are quite good in terms of cartography--I have no issues with them in that regard. However, fixing the technical issues I've described would require many hours of non-automated labor for any user. Given the high investment cost of time and money required to run Arden Vul, I sincerely hope that whoever is responsible for the quality of these maps will consider correcting these problems and republishing them.

To my mind, the James Bond rpg is the best high-action, pure espionage ruleset there is, and Classified would be the best way to play it in the 2020s even if the original were somehow still in print. It is to JB 007 what Old School Essentials is to Moldvay D&D (cleaned up, more concise, more neatly organized) but also more than that because it subtlly streamlines a number of rules and tackles the not-insignificant task of updating the original's large catalogue of 1980s tech to the present day (or at least the 2010s), all while maintaining complete backwards compatibility. Also, the author's not-SPECTRE antagonist org and villains are pitch-perfect and show real creativity and love of the source material. The author clearly "gets" the tone and details of Bond media and espionage fiction in general in a way that frankly makes most other contemporary spy-themed rpgs look kind of half-assed by comparison (Night's Black Agents and Delta Green excepted, naturally). While the chart-hunting and numerous special procedures might be a turn-off for some, I find said procedures are well worth the trouble for the spot-on genre emulation they provide (and can be modfied or skipped over easily enough as the GM prefers), modifiers and difficulty ratings can be eyeballed, and the main resolution table can be easily internalized once you spot the formula it's derived from. In other words, it plays fast and seamlessly once you get the basics down. TLDR: This game rips, and it's a shame it doesn't get more attention.

Overpriced for what's present. Also, many of the adventures are are remarkably specific (i.e., tied to a PC of a particular class and level). Not nearly enough generally applicable material to justify the price.

Overpriced for what's present. Also, many of the adventures are are remarkably specific (i.e., tied to a PC of a particular class and level). Not nearly enough generally applicable material to justify the price.

This is an outstanding book. It contained much more than I expected. I am worldbuilding a campaign setting with a human centered kingdom and this answers questions I haven't yet tackled.

Thanks a bunch.

I just received the 5 books. These will take a while to digest, but after paging through them for the last hour or so I am very impressed. well worth the investment.

Amazing!

I purchased The Halls of Arden Vul Complete. I usually don't spend this kind of money on a single module but the material intrigued me. I can say without a doubt that the Campaign is huge! Very thorough, unique, ecologically sound, and well thought out. It is over 1000 pages long with clever traps, magic, monsters and the setting itself is engrossing. There is a reason for almost everything in this campaign and your players will spend a very long time (dare I say years) in this campaign. I hesitate to call it a module since it is so large.

This is truly a labor of love and well worth the money I spent on it. I am simply in awe of the amount of effort it took to write this.

Keep up the great work!

A third-party collection of monsters for the Pathfinder RPG, clearly inspired by the AD&D 1st Edition Fiend Folio - its title is even taken from the Fiend Folio's subtitle. This is actually a conversion of another third-party product, designed for AD&D 1E, and that origin is reflected in the distinctly old-school writing style. Like the Fiend Folio, this book is full of strange and unusual monsters. There aren't any truly bad monsters in this book, although some feel less inspired (mainly the subtle variations on existing monsters) while others feel like a few random traits smashed together. (Also, for some reason, they included the wood giant from the Wizards-approved third-party Tome of Horrors.) One disappointing aspect of the book is that only half or so of the creatures are illustrated, but fortunately they all include the Pathfinder-standard text descriptions.

Some highlights from the book include:

• Arcanoplasm: An amorphous creature that absorbs and replicates spells.
• Blessed Ring: A ring of mushrooms that protects the good and devours the evil.
• Bone Sovereign: A skeletal creature that absorbs other skeletons to increase its power, and can command other undead.
• Brine Crust: An ooze-like creature composed of animated salt that can drain moisture from victims.
• Dark Woodsman: A wood-based humanoid that animates trees to fight in its other-planar wars.
• Goldencrest: An ooze infused with positive energy that targets undead.
• Ioun Golem: A construct that can compel others to gather ioun stones to reactivate it, after which it's basically a gem beholder.
• Haemovorid: A self-hating, bloodthirsty fusion of pixie and stirge.
• Inscriber: An undead creature that craves written knowledge and pulls it from writing around them; they can also steal or impart knowledge to others.
• Lostling: A spirit that died lost and alone in the wilderness, and tries to make others share its fate by getting them lost as well.
• Molt Naga: A naga that can teleport out of its shed skin, which fights on while the naga escapes.
• Rope Horror: Basically a rope golem, which can unwind itself to pass through small gaps.
• Skyshark: Part shark, part bat, all murder.
• Time Spider: A spider that builds its webs in four dimensions; adventurers may suddenly find themselves surrounded by its webs.
• Tulgorth: Plant-mold creatures that drain the life force from nearby plants, and can infect humanoids with spores to create more tulgorths.
• Vorpa: A giant wasp-scorpion hybrid. 'Nuff said. (Originally posted on Goodreads)

Definitely in my personal Appendix "N". Great resource for World Builders. Another great product from the team at Expeditious Retreat Press!!!

This World Building Resource would go on my Appendix N. Aspiring World Builders will get a decent amount of mileage out this resource.

Good, solid adventure. A dark tower, crazy wizard, tales of strange deadly creatures... what's not to like? This fit seamlessly into my existing campaign. The new monsters are creative and tough for the unwary. There's some fun, new magic to be found as well. I highly recommend this one.

Quite frankly this book is amazing. I have recently read half-a-dozen or so books on everyday life in Europe during the middle ages and I don't think that I have learned anything that isn't already written in this book. Even if you're just a history buff that doesn't play RPGs you could get a ton of value out of this book. The amount of research that has gone into this work is phenomenal. If you want to run a campaign with a strong foundation in historical accuracy there is nothing written that comes even remotely close to being as helpful as this. There are newer editions available but I purchased the first edition several years ago and conitunue to use it so I am placing my review here for that reason.

Really enjoyable AD&D style adventure. They do a great job of continuing the tradition of old school modules.