This adventure module is 19 pages long and is one of the latest of works by Venger Satanis for the Crimson Dragon Slayer RPG.

My review was a read through of the PDF (not a play-through, sadly).

Layout and readability

The cover and interior page backgrounds (watermarks) are in full colour. All of the illustrations are in black and white or grey-scale. The print friendly version has no watermarks and is clean, crisp and crystal clear.

Kudos once again to Glynn Seal of MonkeyBlood Design. The text is nicely readable, the headings clear and obvious, the stat blocks distinct. The watermarked backgrounds did not interfere with the text too much: occasionally the blood stains made me squint at the tables. However, Glynn and Venger have supplied a print-friendly version without any watermarks which is wonderful (for both actual printing or better readability at the table). Then again, the eerie blood vessels are gore stains on every page part of the experience.

A nice looking product that balances style with readability.

Artwork

All good stuff by familiar artists. Most of the subject matter is disturbing tentacled horrors or fantasy/post-apocalyptic scenes evocative of Heavy Metal magazine.

There is one image with some cheesecake (a masked goon with a trio of chained female prisoners) but they’re looking bored or tired rather than distressed.

The adventure

The whole thing gives me vibes of the original Star Trek series. The environmental colour scheme and the situations make me envision typical planets seen on that 60s TV show. It helps that there are a more than a few references to Star Trek as well.

The adventure kicks off with the PCs needing to seek out shelter immediately from some lethal effect of the DM’s choosing. It’s hilariously straightforward. Practically speaking, it could be used in the middle of any campaign in just about any environment.

Shortly after, the PCs voluntarily (or involuntarily) choose to enter a portal that leads to the realm of the titular V’dreen.

V’dreen is a fantasy world that is vanishing; its borders are literally fading away to a void resembling graph paper!

There are some rules using random tables to set up the setting of V’dreen, including:

• strange voices on the “wind”, some of which kind of break the 4th wall. Very funny.
• a table to generate beings for random encounters. As usual, they’re a mix of gonzo weirdness and generic, so you’ll have some contrast. Example: sure you could end up with a zombie or skeleton, but they could be made of pizza or be a Ghost-Dinosaur.
• A few random NPCs. After reading the rest of the module, I saw several opportunities to use them for unnamed extras features in a few encounters.

There are a few hooks, but this module is very loose with only a few clear goals. Not a bad thing, just that I would need to fill many gaps myself (which I don’t mind doing, personally).

There is a fiendishly powerful monster called the Arachnosaur (such an awesome name) that the party might encounter, a Demon that wants to barter with the party to help him get free (who the hell ever falls for that) and a town populated by V’Dreen’s three factions: insect people, Klingon elves and amorphous blob creatures. Good on Venger for going beyond Tolkienisms or Barsoom… uh… isms.

Overall impressions

This module is surreal, schlock and gonzo. I actually see myself using this product (and perhaps a few other of Venger’s works) to fill out the many gaps in Carcosa (from Lamentations of the Flame Princess). Perhaps replacing some of the more horrific and disturbing elements of that setting with the more light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek material by Venger.

While I like shorter modules, I tend to prefer a more narrow focus and smaller setting. In such a small page count, I would rather use it as a one-shot. There are a lot of characters and encounters here that are open-ended and without player buy-in to be creative, goofy and fun, they could turn out a little stale. I think that a DM should heavily use the random tables in this module to add some unpredictability to every encounter.

Finally, I wish that there was a map of some kind. The module is meant to be loose, but I think that it would have benefited greatly by having some cartography. Not necessarily full-on hexes; even a simple point crawl or sketch would have been appreciated. I’d probably draw one up myself during prep. Venger’s maps are always great.

Conclusion

I’d recommend this to anyone who’s already a fan of Venger’s “Mythos”. It contains lots of tie-ins into his other products, especially the Islands of Purple Putrescence (review here). On it’s own, it has some fun ideas but I think that it is dependant on the core game (and other books by Venger for thematic random tables that really make his works sing).

Venger Satanis’ latest foray into Lovecraftian territory is a compact, pick up and play game of investigative horror. It features an abbreviated (or streamlined) version of the Crimson Dragon Slayer rule set. It also includes a scenario, so it’s a bit of a double feature, which is appropriate considering the gritty Grindhouse style of the adventure itself.

It is 45 pages with a colour cover and black and white interior. This is a review of the PDF version.

As usual, the look of the product is great! The black and white artwork is decent and the layout, typography and editing gets more polished with each new release. Seriously, Venger’s layout person, Glynn Seal (MonkeyBlood Design) is getting better and better at this. The text flows well, the headings are stylized but clearly readable and the watermarks are not obtrusive in the least. It was a pleasure to read. Fantastic maps in the adventure by Glynn Seal as well.

A new feature in this book are little side notes or boxes with added Game Master tips and advice. This was a nice addition and I would like to see Venger do more of this. There were other bits here and there that I felt should have been highlighted in this way.

My only gripe, and this criticism applies to many, many other publishers, not just with Korthalis, are the extra empty pages of padding that are included for print reasons but serve absolutely no purpose for digital consumption. It’s tedious and annoying to flip through several blank pages on my tablet. To be clear, just about everyone does this, except for a very few, and I think that it is just the growing pains of the new digital era. I wish desktop publishers would make at least two versions of their PDFs: one for print and one for digital-only consumption. Anyway, moving on…

Quick and Dirty Rules for an Investigative Horror RPG

The first half of the book (pages 4 to 12) covers the game system itself, beginning with character creation. This is fast and loose: you pick or randomly determine a career for your investigator and this determines where and when they get an advantage or disadvantage on dice rolls, depending on context.

Next is a bit of a nice way to add background depth to your character. You pick or randomly determine which secret society or organization that you character has ties to and what sort of relationship that you have. We’ve seen this before in Crimson Dragon Slayer, but there’s a bit more depth to it here. I was very pleased with this.

Lastly you get to determine your character’s Drive to investigate and what sort of Weakness that they have. For the latter, the author explains how this concept is integral to horror narratives and I agree with him wholeheartedly. The brief Game Mastering advice here on how to channel these character flaws is also good and reasonable.

Here’s a sample character that I just rolled up:

Profession: Gangster (or Con Man)

Organization: Former member of a Scientific Team

Drive: Cold, hard cash

Weakness: Will do anything for power

The Rules

The dice system is elegantly simple: everyone is considered to be average at everything unless consequences, or background career, would affect the chances of success or failure. Just like Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, multiple “advantages” and “disadvantages” to a roll just cancel each other out and the character rolls with an average difficulty. Effective and straightforward, but depending on Game Master ruling, which I know doesn’t suit every play style out there. Then again, I only play RPGs with people whom I know and like so this is not an issue for me whatsoever.

Combat, just like regular checks, works in very much the same way. It’s also very simple, with varying degrees of effect. At worst your enemy gets a free hit on you, at best your foe is insta-killed. However, that’s also context-heavy: it all depends on the weapons used, the people (or creatures) involved and other factors. Some big monsters, such as Lovecraftian demigods and what have you, never die: they can only be subdued temporarily… which fits perfectly with the Mythos. Sometimes dynamite and big guns only buy you extra time to run away! It should be noted that there are no hit points to speak of in this game. There are basically two hurt conditions prior to death: wounded and incapacitated. Your character can theoretically get killed by a single monster attack or gun shot. Again, this lethality is fitting for the premise: getting into fights is typically not a good idea at all unless you’ve got the stakes highly in your favour.

There’s also simple Insanity rules and a reward system of Bonus Dice, which characters accumulate and can spend at any time to give them better chances of success. Considering that all dice rolls are constrained to 1, 2 or 3 dice at most, these Bonus Dice are a Big Deal.

The Insanity check rule is good but the table of results is… okay. Basically nothing very good can come from making an Insanity check unless the character rolls the best possible result. While I understand the need for streamlined simplicity, I’ve never been a fan of insanity or fear checks that can result in a player basically stepping away from the action for a while. If I ever run this, I think that I’ll tweak these a bit so that the effects are more insidious for a nice build up of tension or at least fun for the player to role play out the madness effect so that they’re still in the game. Then again I know some Call of Cthulhu purists who’d love the way that this table works as it is. Note: upon fully reading the adventure itself, it appears that the Insanity table is only triggered if the player rolls a single die and gets a pre-determined result (usually a 1 or 2, depending on the severity of the horror that they witness.

Overall a nice, tidy system for quick n’ dirty horror gaming. High lethality, a bit abstract and very dependant on GM rulings but very easy to learn and play.

The Outer Presence

The titular adventure of this book (fills out the remaining pages). The genre is horror and thus involves a few disturbing themes. Reader beware.

To give you a clear idea of what’s to come, the author cites his inspiration:

…such great films as Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, and Jungle Holocaust, as well as, the 1960’s Jonny Quest television show….

Interestingly enough, we get a bit of a twist on a somewhat racist trope: the tribal people within this story have become degenerate crazed cannibals because they’ve been corrupted by an evil, twisted, western scholar in anthropology. The evil comes from outside the jungle, both figuratively and literally. In other words, the “aliens” are a tentacled horror in a pit and a white man.

To explain further, the villain is a cruel and sadistic expedition leader who is manipulating an isolated tribe into serving his needs. The people themselves are represented as victims of this creep’s abuse of their superstitions. He’s up to no good and has done bad things to a lot of people. These acts, combined with a few other factors, have led the characters to travel to this remote place in the jungle to investigate.

The adventure is well structured: the author gives suggestions on how to streamline events and encounters for a one-shot game versus a long-term campaign. There are a lot of options, even though the basic structure is pretty standard horror RPG fare. The author even gives a proposed timeline of events.

There’s some good advice on starting the adventure with some humour, in the form of a random table of “what was your character doing right before this adventure?”. All of which could potentially lead to some funny character and relationship building at the table. I think that this is a good idea because what follows is rather grim and the contrast helps.

Venger also suggests not being too harsh on the characters until the climax: as mentioned earlier, the results of a dice throw depend quite a bit on Game Master ruling and creativity. The best part is at the ending and everyone should get there mostly intact, after all! Again, very good advice that I agree with.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about the adventure itself, but overall I liked it. There are a lot of knobs and dials that a Game Master can tweak to suit the themes and events to taste. I’m not very fond of the treatment of the sole named female character and I think that I would change her situation a bit (spoiler: when she gets thrown into the pit with the titular tentacled cosmic horror, I’d have her become a vessel for it and evolve into a devious villain at odds with her desire to free her new master but also to have revenge on her traitorous ex-lover, possibly becoming the True Priestess instead of him as a twist ending).

Because it is rather system-agnostic, a group could use this adventure with any other Investigative Lovecraftian RPG, such as Silent Legions (Sine Nomine), Tremulus (Reality Blurs), Trail of Cthulhu (Pelgrane) or, of course, Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium). In fact, I think that a group could pick up any scenario written for any of those games and run it with Venger’s system.

Summary

Get this book for any of the following reasons:

If you’re a fan of Venger’s other works, especially Crimson Dragon Slayer for its simplicity If you are a Lovecraft nut and love collecting RPGs in his style If you like the style of 70s Italian Horror films If you prefer rules-light systems that rely a lot on GM ruling

Descent into the Candy Crypts is a dungeon module for the Crimson Dragon Slayer (CDS) roleplaying game. It is written by the game's creator, Venger As'Nas Satanis.

This is a review of the PDF version, which is 14-page book with a color cover and black & white interior. My group were only able to play this up to about halfway before we ran out of time. It was very entertaining, though.

The overall tone is quite funny and reminded me of an R-rated version of quirky cartoons full of non-sequitirs, such as Adventure Time.

Overall, the art and layout were quite good. I've reviewed nearly all of Venger's works and I feel that the layout and typography improves each time. The cover painting is by Venger himself and the interior illustrations (mostly full-page) are by Joshua Barnett, whose works (which I've seen in the core rulebook for CDS) have a fitting cartoony style for this dungeon.

The first three pages introduce the adventure setting, giving a bit of history, a table to give motivation to the players ("Why you hate candies!"), three new player races (all of them fruit-based, with poorer stats than the ones in the core CDS rulebook, but each with a cool ability or attack that is usable once per day) and finally a table to create memorable encounters to emphasize a gonzo feel and encourage replayability ("Let's make this interesting"). All of this was easy to take in and full of humor.

Playtest notes: all three of my players chose to be fruit for some reason. As the <del>Game Master</del> Dragon Master, I was very pleased. I nudged each of them to choose a different kind of fruit-folk, so we ended up with a Strawberry, a Banana and a Grape. All of them vicious, sadistic warriors despite their cute, delicious appearances. Much chuckling around the table. I won't spoil the motivation table for why these characters hated candies so much, but all that I can say is that the tone would have made Robert E. Howard or a Black Metal band very content. The juxtaposition was great.

The adventure itself all takes place in the Candy Crypts. There are 2 1/4 pages of numbered room encounters. Each is brief, simple and hilarious. Some are just window-dressing: comedic or eerie visuals. All-in-all I was pleased: not every encounter was just straight up combat. There were plenty of opportunities for role playing and exploring.

Playtest Notes: I can't think of any past adventures that began with a visit to a dentist. "Well, adventurer, you have a cavity. Sit down." There were no stats listed for encountered friendly NPCs (of which there were several) so I just hand-waved it that the PCs with the highest Charisma scores could ask them to do things. Each one would essentially take out or weaken a single monster but get destroyed in the process. I described their gory deaths with delicious-sounding terms. Again, lots of laughs. Things got crazy nuts with the discovery of a huge generator that was about to blow up. I had fun watching the party scrambling to flee in time to avoid the blast. The worst of the damage was absorbed by any hapless prisoners that they had rescued. That was, sadly our final encounter for the night, but it was a good enough place to end it.

The dungeon, as a whole, is two floors: the above-ground ruin and the maze of rooms below. One section is a crypt (obviously) and the other a sort of subterranean candy "red-light" district full of sleazy non-combat encounters and locations. Again, most of these encounters have brief descriptions and leave a lot up to the Dragon Master (and players) to make things interesting. With the right people, this dungeon could really sing.

The dungeon map is nicely drawn and laid out. Easily printed onto a single 8.5x11 sheet of paper for reference (which I did).

Most of these encounters are quite silly, some shamelessly juvenile, all full of pop-culture references which is kind of a trademark of CDS. This is the kind of game that encourages players to make geeky pop-culture references all of the time because it doesn't detract from the session.

Playtest Notes: sadly, the party never made it into the "deeper" parts of the dungeon as we had to cut the session short. But I might transplant these locations into another CDS game some times (or just play this module again with fresh players). The lethality is high, in a typical old-school way, and one of the PCs got completely splattered by some kind of tentacled horror with winged monkey traits (I pantomimed the screeching, ape-shit pummeling from the creature, which was fun). Luckily, the party still had a surviving prisoner that we quickly statted-up as a replacement.

On the last page are a few new <strong>Magic Items</strong>, which were surprisingly less funny and witty than I expected (other than their titles, such as "Amethyst Ring of WTF").

Summary: this is a fun, light-hearted, silly, brief and simple dungeon module. Not a lot of depth but lots of opportunity for comedy. My group got about halfway through it in one short session of about 3 hours, so a group with more time might get through the entire thing in one. I think that the most enjoyment can be had by using this as a one-shot with new characters, but it would be interesting to hear another group's playtest report if they used this in their ongoing CDS campaign.

If you're a fan of Crimson Dragon Slayer, and of Venger's works in general, then get this, you'll have a blast.

Crimson Dragon Slayer is a homage to geeky pop culture of the 1980s and early 90s. It’s core ingredients are:

• Classic Dungeons and Dragons
• 8-bit Arcade games
• Fantasy films ranging in quality (and ratings) from well-known and beloved works such as the Never-ending Story and Conan to sleazy B movies like the Sword and the Sorcerer and Deathstalker.
• Media about mundane, real-world people being inexplicably transported into another world, such as Tron and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. The book itself is an entertaining read, full of humour and clever references.

The Facts

Crimson Dragon Slayer is a 42 page book that can be mostly used as a stand-alone game system. It contains many greyscale images, several of them full page. Pages 5-16 cover character creation, 16-25 are the basic rules and equipment tables, 26-28 are magic rules, 29-31 are magic items and 31 has some high level info about factions and monsters. The last pages are devoted to a dungeon that can be used right after character creation.

An Anecdotal Aside Or Preface:

(please skip if you don’t care and just want to know about this game without sentimentality)

I grew up in the 1980s and was just the right age for all manner of media and marketing. When I was a child, video games were primitive and clunky, tv cartoons were poorly animated and lousy, there was no internet and mobile phones were used exclusively as phones by the super rich and famous.

Like others of my generation, I’ve witnessed the gradual evolution of technology and entertainment (at least in terms of technical quality). Things have been getting progressively better and better. However there’s a huge pop culture revival of this primitive age of awkward electronics. Even people born in the 2000s have jumped onto this bandwagon. Everyone is cashing in on this nostalgic wave, producing works that have the veneer of the 80s but are far, far superior in quality and style. Modern indie game developers are creating “old school” video games that aren’t at all: to be old school you’d need an extremely limited colour palate, awkward, clunky controls hampered by cheap, stiff controllers and an insane difficulty setting that was implemented to separate children from their quarters, not out of some noble ideology to teach people to earn their victories.

In a way, this is very similar to the Victorian revival of the medieval “dark” ages. Those people heavily and inaccurately romanticized a time period that really wasn’t all that great. But the artists, writers and musicians produced wonderful works from this nostalgic devotion to a time period that never existed.

All that being said, I sincerely love this hype infecting everything from fashion, music, film and video games. It’s like being a child again, only everything is BETTER now, despite the frequent superficiality and cynicism.

So when I came across a role playing game that revels in this nostalgia, my interest is piqued, to say the least. Especially when your character is a regular Joe or Jane who gets an avatar in a digital fantasy world where the ultimate goal is to slay the Crimson Dragon and then marry (or become) the Queen of the world. All to the tune of wailing keytars and airbrushed laser fire.

Writing

As usual, Venger’s writing is clear and easy to understand. While he does inject humour and hyperbole it never detracts from the meaning or overall point. No problems here.

Art And Layout

In terms of layout and typesetting, this is probably my favourite of Venger’s works. His usual watermark is no longer centered and distracting to me: it is pushed off into the margins, which is both elegant and more readable. A very good choice, in my opinion.

I find that a couple of the tables or lists could have been laid out differently, such as kept to a single page or a few merged to make them easier to use. I’ll get into more detail about this below. The content of these tables and lists never disappointed, though. To be clear, it was all useful stuff; just a bit unpolished in terms of organization.

The artwork is fantastic: very well drawn and all of it helps to set the quirky mood of the game. Very tongue-in-cheek with crazy action, monstrous creatures, video game and movie references and, of course, some cheesecake.

The full-page illustrations by Benito Gallego in particular stand out. They’re incredible!

The book suffers from a lack of an index or table of contents. While the page count isn’t huge, I had to flip through all over the place to find answers to find things.

Character Creation

Character creation is fun: you create a person from the real world, determining the basics like their career and starting money (“cyber crowns”, which are directly transformed from the cash that each one has in their wallet or purse).

When the game begins, your character gets sucked into an arcade game (digitized as in Tron) and appears in a strange, weird world. If (when?) they die, they appear back in the real world, in front of the same arcade game staring at the next quarter lined up on the counter.

You generate ability scores by 3d6, in order, in the usual D&D abilities (except that Wisdom is Willpower). The resulting stats get categorized into groups instead of flat modifiers, each affecting game mechanics in unique ways. For example, a poor strength (or, “Pathetic” strength) reduces your melee damage and you cannot wield two-handed or large weapons. A below average strength just applies a small penalty to all melee damage, average gets a small bonus and extraordinary (18 or higher) gets a larger bonus.

The other ability scores behave similarly: Dexterity affects armor class, Constitution affects Hit Points etc… There’s some very interesting stuff in here that goes beyond the usual generic bonuses or penalties seen in other d20 games.

You then determine or choose your previous (mundane, real-world) career and your new name. This is done by rolling on two separate name tables which you are encouraged to mix and match into something cool. To give you an idea, I rolled three times (twice on the first and once on the second) and ended up with Fire, God and Scream, which I ended up combining into Scream Godfire, which sounds super awesome. Another attempt came up with Jackson Cybershield. To be blunt: this is an awesome name generating system.

To be super nit-picky, I think that these two d100 tables could have been combined somehow or laid out differently. Right now they trail across three pages but could have been confined into two, with each list occupying a single, full page instead of starting on one and finishing on another.

Cash is determined randomly for each character with the exact same number of dice and then you’re encouraged, rather briefly, to create “Something Interesting” about your character. This feature should be unique and set them apart from others. This has no direct mechanical benefit, but I suppose that it could be used, in conjunction with your background career, to provide bonuses to dice rolls depending on the context. They could work like Aspects in Fate, in other words.

Next you choose a race, which includes the standard fantasy tropes (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, etc…) but also some cool, different ones, such as Robot, Reptilian and “Pixie Fairy Princess”. The choice of race affects your ability scores, your starting Hit Points and perhaps provides a special racial trait. Cool stuff, so far everything is simple and fun.

Lastly you choose one of the four classes: Warrior, Wizard, Thief and Ranger. Each provides its own hit dice which are rolled when levelling up.

• The Fighter is simple straightforward: can use all weapons and armor and is a veritable monster in combat. They never change or get better at what they do (which is very effective from the start), other than getting more hit points.

• The wizard can cast spells. The system is rather simple and easy to work with (see Magic, below). Starting at a certain level they can create a signature magic item or spell for 1,000 cyber crowns (anything that they want, once per level).

• The Thief has the usual collection of thief-y proficiencies and can do sneak attacks way. At a certain level they can specialise as either a spellcasting rogue or an assassin.

• The Ranger has several very interesting abilities (probably the most out of any class) and a choice of eventually specializing as either a shape-changing Shaman or as a stout Defender.

The classes are rather traditional, without any big surprises, but I rather liked their simplicity and the range of special abilities. Nicely done, although other critics more concerned with mechanical balance might view them differently. I “felt” no issues, personally, other than the fact that the Warrior doesn’t really get to affect the world substantially outside of combat. To be fair that’s an issue that I have with just about every fantasy game out there. Poor fighter: you’re always a little dull outside of actual fights, aren’t you?

The game is missing a character sheet. While everything could fit onto a single 3×5 cue card, I think that a full character sheet with some handy spots for reference would have been a nice addition.

Rules

CDS uses Venger’s elegantly simple d6 system. You roll a number of dice depending on the difficulty of the task at hand (fewer dice for more challenging things, more for better circumstances or context). The average difficulty is 2 or 3 dice. You only count the highest die result. 1 is a terrible failure, 2 is a straight up regular fail, 3 and 4 are successes at some cost (or partial success), 5 is a pass, 6 provides a special, extra benefit. This mechanic is consistently and universally applied to every kind of task. I’m a fan of universal dice mechanics, so this is right up my alley.

This mechanic also applies to things like Saving Throws. I could not find any mention of how to handle these in the book (but a Dexterity-based saving throw is mentioned in the dungeon at the end). I asked the author, whose answer made sense: just make a ruling on how hard the saving throw should be based on the character’s stat versus any relevant circumstances. The standard d6 mechanic still applies. That’s cool with me!

I really like this system and it’s almost deceptive simplicity. It’s all too easy to overthink the rules and search through the book for a specific answer on how to handle a specific task, but it is all pretty much covered by the basic mechanic.

Each player gets a finite source of bonus dice which can be used to boost rolls. These only recharge after a long rest but only if they get sexual gratification with another individual. This harkens back to Apocalypse World, with it’s trademark “Sex Moves”, so it will be familiar to some readers. In either game, this can be tweaked if the players aren’t comfortable with that sort of thing. One could allow a re-charge of these points for any kind of activity that fits a character’s race and class. The Barbarian-type might be fine with a riotous night of binge drinking, for example.

Armor class reduces damage, which again simplifies the system by avoiding any extra complications to the core dice mechanic. I like this as it eliminates the often-debated nature of combat in roleplaying games (as in, how armor makes you harder to hit).

Death is handled this way: if you get to zero hit points, you’re unconscious but stable. If you get into negative values, you have to make a Death Saving throw. The difficulty is directly based on your Constitution score (in retrospect, I would have liked this mentioned back in the section about Ability Scores, even just in passing). If you fail, you’re done for and you re-appear in the real world, in front of the arcade machine, ready to play again. Remarkable success means coming back to life with some or even all of your lost hit points.

Because of the slightly “video-gamey” nature that is hinted at and the implied high lethality (which is confirmed in the sample dungeon at the end), once could be merciful as a Game Master and offer the players “extra lives”, either at the very start and/or as in-game rewards. WARNING: house rules: Any penalties for this could be based on a variety of video games. Perhaps a Game Master could offer a choice upon character death:

• a loss of money, gear or even levels to let the character instantly reappear wherever they died,

• re-start at the “beginning” of the dungeon with a milder penalty

• reappear at another “save” point, such as the last Inn or tavern where they had rested: sure you’re potentially far away, but without any penalty (loss of gear or levels)

To be clear, this is my interpretation and other gamers who prefer brutal, unforgiving lethality will be happy with the default settings.

Once again, I’m expressing how much fun a group could have with this game with their own personalization. The game runs smoothly as-is, of course, but I like to contemplate these things.

Levelling Up is really, really cool. Gone are the expansive tables full of numbers: heroes and heroines go up a level once they’ve accomplished a major milestone. The ones in the book are fun enough, but therein lies the high value of this game: this chart can be modified to suit any kind of campaign or story. The Game Master could set his or her own milestones to gauge when the party members level up. One could even go a step further: each character could have their own level-up conditions, based on a mix of their race and class. The point is that this is really flexible and full of potential.

Magic

The system is also very simple: spells consume Willpower on a point-per-point basis depending on level (ex: a level 3 spell consumes 3 Willpower). It’s simple and keeps the spell-casters from spamming too much magic all of the time. It’s also flexible in that a Wizard can cast spells outside of his or her level at extra cost.

It isn’t explicitly spelled out (pun not intended), but it appears that casting magic requires a standard dice roll based on your Willpower stat, modified by the target’s Willpower. So a Wizard will have an easier time using magic on the weak willed and a duel between spell casters will be tense.

The spells are fairly standard but some are more memorable than others because of their humorous names, such as “Taste the Rainbow” and “Face Melt”.

Magic items

Just like the Spells, the magic items provided are usable enough if not unremarkable, except for their often (very) humorous names and effects.

Factions

Each player randomly determines some relationship, good, ill or just awkward, to one of six big league players of the setting. What’s fun about this is how they’re just names: freely interpreted by each Game Master (and even by the players). There’s an opportunity for some collaborative, world building here, if your group likes that sort of thing. Or, a Game Master could simply nab ideas that the players come up with, making one’s job easier and strengthening the players’ interest in the setting. All around a great idea, but I don’t understand why this bit wasn’t included in the character creation section…

Monsters

The monster section could have used a bit more detail. It is very short (two small paragraphs). It also outlines how to convert monsters from other OSR systems. It looks like it works just fine, though.

The premise is simple: it has an attack dice pool equal to half of its HD. Very simple, straightforward and minimalistic. In this game, the Game Master makes a ruling on monster stats based on the situation at hand: no need of a monster manual here. The stat blocks from Dungeon World would probably work very well in this game because they focus less on stats and more on what the creature does or how it attacks.

The only sample monsters are in the dungeon.

Dungeon

CDS includes a short dungeon delve called the Cavern of Carnage. It is chock-full of funny references and interesting encounters. Some are very deadly, others plain weird. I won’t spoil anything, but all that I can say is that there’s a good, solid evening of gonzo adventuring here, even if it makes no sense at all.

Conclusion

Crimson Dragon Slayer is a very neat, rules-light and light-hearted gonzo roleplaying game. It is well written, nicely laid-out, beautifully illustrated and it looks like it’s a blast to play. It suffers from disorganization, no index and is often deceptively simple. By that I mean that you’ll be scratching your head about what appears to be a huge gap in the rules only to realize later that it’s covered by the core dice mechanic. Pretty much everything can be summed up in the Ability Score section, really.

The game makes me think of Dungeon World and World of Dungeons: extremely simple to play, open to interpretation, Game Master Ruling and even collaborative world-building. The core concept of real-world people sucked into a crazy world of video game references and 80s sci-fi/fantasy films is super fun and full of potential.

The author states that some of the subject matter isn’t to be taken too seriously and I hope that other critics won’t immediately assume bad faith when they come across references to the retro sexism prevalent in grindhouse and b-movie fantasy, sci-fi and horror films.

All in all, I recommend this game as a worthy addition to your library because it offers lots of cool, fun ideas that are compatible with just about any edition of D&D, OSR systems and even Dungeon World and its cousins.

This is my review of Venger Satanis' book on Game Mastering tips, tricks and guidelines. The original version of this review included some play reports but things got very long. I'll post those seperately.

How to Game Master like a F***ing Boss was an entertaining and easy read. It is well written; using a light, conversational tone that is heavy with self-aware humor and light in pretentiousness.

While there are plenty of sources of Game Mastering tips out there, in published works and blogs, I found several fresh, unique ideas. Here are three that stood out to me:

-Deeds of Might: giving each player a finite source of bonus dice each session that can be spent to perform potentially extraordinary feats. These dice may be spent sparsely or a bunch at a time. While this concept is nothing new, I rather liked the implementation.

-Handing out a brain teaser to occupy the players while taking a break. I can't believe that I never thought of this before (or simply taking a break after leaving a cliffhanger at the table).

-Improvisation via Covert Solicitation: using player ideas and expectations to create encounters and events (covertly "passing the joint" around the table and gathering ideas for your use). I was a fan of this concept when I played Dungeon World, but this method is more casual and less formal.

I appreciate Venger's goal to bridge "old-school" with the new. He uses the term "O5R" in reference to the OSR movement (Old School Revival) and the latest (fifth) edition of Dungeons and Dragons. This strikes a chord with me because I'm doing exactly that: using OSR and DIY (Do-it-Yourself) material in my modern edition campaign.

The quality of the artwork is really decent (Venger never disappoints in this dept.). There are lots of evocative, full page illustrations. Some are rather campy and kind of sleazy (in the tongue-in-cheek manner of Heavy Metal magazine). Luckily, they're always interesting. Three of my favorites:

-An homage to the first monolith scene in 2001: a Space Odyssey, but with dinosaurs instead of apes.

-A page and a half spread of a classic dungeon party with traits that made me think of Elfquest, Erol Otus and Ralph Bakshi.

-A mage and a dwarf warrior battling it out on top of a freakin' speeding monorail! Also, winged horrors approaching to eventually join the fray.

While I really liked the art (I feel that this book has the most impressive collection of any of Venger's books to date), I wasn't a fan of the iconic watermark on each and every page. I felt that it was distracting and would have preferred a lighter version or if it had been placed off in the side margin (as is seen in Venger's other recent publication, Crimson Dragon Slayer). I also felt a bit jarred while reading half of a sentence at the bottom of one page and being interrupted by a full page illustration while flipping to read the rest of it later on (to be fair, this isn't likely to be an issue in the printed version).

The font and the 2-column text layout are fine and easy on the eye (except for the before mentioned watermark). My only criticism relates to the center margin: at times it felt a bit narrow, especially when two headings ended up side-by-side in each column. I usually read these as a single heading. I also would have liked a bit more space above the footer: the text at the bottom of each column came a bit close at times. Take these criticisms with a grain of salt: I'm no desktop publisher or typographer. This is all personal taste.

The headings were nice and clear, and often sardonic or clever. Whenever they were a bit vague, they were thought-provoking or attention grabbing. Some of my favorites:

-When Metallica forgot how to be Metallica

-The Waiter Analogy

-Flatlining the Burning Chrome of Chiba City

The Game Mastering advice includes all manner of topics that you'd expect: handling different kinds of players, campaign management, finding inspiration, pre-game prep, improvisation, balancing encounters and pace. What made this book feel a bit more unique were the tips on lifestyle and handling stress. Sure, some books out there offer advice on managing a campaign, few offered advice like Venger's that bordered on self-help or mental health (in a good way). I appreciated these sections a great deal because of my own life experiences and current family life.

There's lots of great stuff in here: I guarantee that every Game Master will find something inspiring and useful.

A few sections, however, will probably draw ire from some critics. While I "get" Venger's attitude, I still cringed slightly at a few things that I know could draw negative attention. While I refuse to be a moral judge about authors and artists, others out there might not. All that I'll say is that this work, like all of Venger's products, isn't for absolutely everyone.

Here are a few tips that I liked:

-A pre-game mantra-like poem: it clears your mind and, if you speak it out loud in a few different voices, gives you a bit of practice playing out different NPC personalities.

-Tips on improving your presentation and style (comfy and nice attire, boosting self-confidence, getting into a good state of mind, being a good "waiter" and ensuring that you use a complete set of same-colored dice: all of which may seem trivial or shallow, but I find that there's value in this advice).

-Building encounters with Three Aspects. Just like with the Fate fractal, give each encounter three aspects for added detail, interest and context for the players. You can drill down and give three aspects to NPCs, objects and even the environment. A nice, concise idea. As you might have noticed, I'm quite a fan of the Rule of Three.

I won't go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil anything: part of the enjoyment of this book (and conversely, a bit of an annoyance, see below) is discovering something new as you flow from section to section.

While the journey is entertaining, I still would have liked a bit more structure. These tips could have easily been grouped into sections or chapters (Game Master Lifestyle, Your Players, Campaign Management etc...). While these topics do flow somewhat naturally, I had trouble going back to reference some things later on (I couldn't remember under which heading some things appeared). Because of this lack of structure, the Index is just a huge list of titles sorted by order of appearance. A Table of Contents would have been a nice addition, but there is none.

I'd also add that while it was a nice surprise to discover a whole section of tables, languages and even maps (which are all really, really well done), there was no indication of this in the Index. I know that some people decide on whether or not to buy a book based on the index; it is unfortunate that many may not realize how much they're missing. A few uses of index headings like "Tables", 'Tools", "Languages" and "Maps" would be a great and useful addition. To be fair, these are mentioned on the cover, though.

Loosely, I'd break this product down into these sections (in pages):

-4-70: Game Master Advice

-70-97: Tables

-98-116: Language reference (Viridian to English and then English to Viridian

-119-121: Dungeon Maps

The Tables are a great addition, useful in any Game Master's kit. They're system-agnostic; more like idea generators. Some are great for character creation (backgrounds and the like), NPC motivations/goals, cult generators and a vaguely Lovecraftian monster builder. In particular, I liked these ones:

-Magic Item Mutations: mutation tables are a dime a dozen... for player characters. How about for equipment and magic items? Gnarly...

-Stupid Gnome Hat: I'll let you discover this yourself.

-Reaction Table: some nice ways to alter typical encounters. Sure there are others, but I liked this one and the way that it works.

The Viridian section, by the way, is a made-up language that sounds suitably sinister and otherworldly for a variety of campaign styles: evil cults, demons, aliens or Mythos Monsters. It's split into two parts: Viridian-English and then vice-versa. A nice reference if you quickly need eerie-sounding words.

Yes, they're duelling on a monorail and yes, it's awesome.

I'd say that How to Game Master like a Fucking Boss is a worthy book for any Game Master out there. It is chock-full of great advice and tools. Despite a few issues with layout and structure, it is a very good read. As usual the cheesecake nudity and occasionally the subject matter will not be appreciated by all. After having read a few of Venger's works, I know what to expect but it might not appeal to everyone. Be warned, but give this book a chance: it's worth your time.

Death Frost Doom is a newly revised edition of a horror adventure. The title very accurately sets the prevailing mood, that's for sure. While written for OSR games such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess, it could easily be used with Dungeons & Dragons (any edition, really) or with your prefered d20/OSR game. With a bit of homework, it could be used with other games as well by tweaking the stat blocks and any of the prompts for saving throws.

It is a 66-page adventure written by James Raggi IV and Zak S. The cover art (in color) was done by Yannick Bouchard and the black and white interior illustrations, cartography and design were done by Jez Gordon. This is a review of the PDF edition.

The writing is conversational and clear. The layout, editing and typography are top-notch, making the text easy on the eyes despite the density of the content. The illustrations are wonderful and eerie: absolutely pitch-perfect for this module. Some of the full-page images slam you like sudden jump cuts in a horror film (the Referee gets an early preview of some of the terror that the players will encounter during the game). The maps are easy to understand and use. Overall an impressively well designed product.

The book begins with two maps: one for an exterior (and a small floorplan) and an interior dungeon map The former is keyed with letter, the latter with numbers (which was a nice idea for added clarity). As already mentioned, these are very well designed and easy to use.

There's a concise table of contents with obvious section headers. While some have titles that are more flavorful than practical, their meaning is clear (eg: "Hell vomits its filth", one of the last chapters before an Appendix of sorts, clearly implies a very messy, grim climax). The headers are each clickable and link to each section. Very nicely done.

We’re given a page of notes about this new edition by the two authors which includes some history of the adventure and insight into minds of its creators. Interesting stuff.

Then there's a page on how the Referee can use this module ("The Approach") which includes a few different possible options on how to get things started. After that, it jumps right into the first encounter with a very memorable NPC.

What I really liked about the structure of this first NPC encounter is that the author gives several options on how to use him (or her). There are roleplaying tips, a random table to dictate what he's doing when the PCs arrive at his home and a full page of "ifs" to cover just about any possible interaction. This approach of handling an NPC is really, really fun and memorable besides being a great method to bring in some ominous foreboding. I'm a huge fan of modules taking a "do-it-yourself" approach. With this sort of tool, one can determine all of the details before or during the game, either randomly or by choice. I like this a lot and I'm very inspired already.

As an aside, the cool thing about this module is the author's inclusion of suggested musical cues. That's a nice touch; I appreciate putting effort into preparing good music for a game session. When I run this, I'll follow this advice as closely as possible.

The first major location is the Graveyard. It is an open-ended and creepy place with all kinds of things that can happen to unsuspecting adventurers. There's a strong hint that bad things once happened there (and are about to happen again). There's lots to find or experience in this awful place: it is a great prelude to what comes next. The Cabin, which is totally an homage to a particular horror movie (three guesses which one), adds even further to the creepiness. There is a lot to find and interact with inside that weird place: players who like to tinker and prod at everything will be rewarded (and/or punished, depending on how you look at it). Really weird and neat encounters here: I would be sad if my players missed some of them. I'd probably include a hapless NPC ally or two as insurance (ie- to trigger some of these cool events if no one else takes the bait). These discoveries are not all negative: there are some beneficial things there too (or at the very worst: benignly WEIRD).

Next we get to the main dungeon, the Shrine, where the proverbial "shit" gets real. This is a very unique dungeon and it's a delight to read, so I'll omit any spoilers.

There are about thirty encounters in the Shrine (but more rooms than that number).

To start off, there's some clear advice on how to run this location: it is not a typical dungeon crawl. First of all, there's a time limit (that is measured in a really awesome and memorable way). A Referee really needs to keep track of this for maximum effectiveness. More on that later.

There are many things to explore and scrutinize here without referring to a character's skills or abilities (except if something triggers a nasty trap or evil supernatural forces). Being careless or reckless will likely spell doom for a PC; being clever and methodical is by far the safer and more interesting way to go about it.

My favorite example of this sort of thing is the Organ. I won't spoil it, but there are some really neat things built into this object. It ties into a feature of many of the other locations to a clever degree; the PCs will have reasons to return to it several times throughout the course of the dungeon. I'll absolutely delight in presenting this device to the players and getting excited trying to anticipate what they'll do. To me, that's a trait of a well-written adventure, right there.

There are so many things to do and objects to experiment with that my mind reels with the possibilities. Admittedly there are a few "gotcha!" moments but they are never dull or straightforward and they always add to the weird horror mood.

Many of the rooms have ominous triggers such as "If the dead have risen" which modify the encounters quite a bit. In essence, the party could go through most of the dungeon, trigger this conditional event and then work their way back through the same rooms very differently. It's a really effective technique.

Some of the key monsters provide fun possibilities for social interaction. None of them, as far as I can tell, are just there only to fight and kill. While interactions with the PCs may indeed lead to battle, this is not a certainty. Again, what a great idea: many undead monsters are not just mindless automatons, after all, but personalities with motivations (usually twisted). Several of these NPCs have had relationships, good or bad, with others of their kind, and if the conditions are right, encounters with them will be greatly affected by the PCs actions.

At last, near the end is the main event: what happens if certain conditions are met and how quickly (depending on that timer mentioned earlier). This is a BIG DEAL, tapping into the third word of the adventure's title (Doom). Potentially, this event could have a huge impact on your campaign whether or not it completely wipes out the party.

There is no happy ending for characters involved with this adventure, really. Even if they do survive, their world will be quite affected. With a bit of tweaking, the Referee could build a really cool post-apocalyptic setting on top of the previous one, though. If I run this with well-liked pre-established character, I may indeed go that route. I'd run it as-is with newly created PCs, though, as a one-shot.

At the end of the book there's a nice retrospective in which the original author (Raggi) talks about the first edition of Death Frost Doom and even includes some of the original artwork and maps. That was a nice thing to include.

Lastly there are a few player handouts, which are always nice to include.

Summary

This is an extremely well-written and fascinating adventure, even though it is quite grim and dangerous. Say what you will about the potentially lethal ending or the horrific themes: Death Frost Doom is the antithesis of boring or mundane. This is a very memorable adventure that oozes atmosphere.

I definitely recommend this adventure: even if you never run it (which would be a shame), you will be greatly inspired by the style and game-writing techniques. It is also a really fun read and the artwork is incredible.

Revelry in Torth (by Venger Satanis) is a location-based sandbox adventure inspired by pulp Sword and Sorcery and Lovecraft. It is 39 page book with a color cover and grayscale interior artwork. This is a review of the PDF version. Sadly I have not had an opportunity to playtest it yet.

Background and Setting Information

The book begins with a couple of pages of fiction: two moody short tales and a bit of background info about the setting. All of this content sets the tone: good stuff so far. Everything is easy to read (except for a few exotic alien or demonic names) and contains many familiar tropes found in the author’s works (for example, those accursed snake-men are always up to no good).

There are two new classes: the Shadow Priest and the Wandering Minstrel. Both gain a new spell-like ability at each level, each of which are usable once per day.

The Shadow Priest doesn’t specify any level progression or saving throws, but since it lists some prerequisites I’m assuming that it is a template that is added top of another class (similar to the Compendium Classes in Dungeon World). All of the abilities relate to shadowy effects. There is one power at level 5 that is a save or “die” (which is reversible under specific circumstances). This seems a bit overpowered to me but I’m not familiar with many OSR specialty classes with which to compare: I’m only familiar with the core classes presented in Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

The Wandering Minstrel is a slightly different take on the Bard, and it uses the level progression of a Thief or Rogue class. Each of its abilities consistently relate to music or social charms that manipulate the emotions and minds of others. As an aside, when I first read the name of this class I was expecting a take on the “Wandering Jew” figure: a character who is cursed with endlessly wandering the land until something very important and earth-shattering happens. I might use that idea some day.

As a quick aside, this entire book is inspirational that way. Either because it taps into familiar media (such as Frank Herbert’s Dune or even the Bible) or simply due to the author’s creativity. I frequently stared off into space thinking of evocative desert landscapes with eerie constellations forming in the sky, foretelling doom and terror.

Next is some information about the setting, grouped under a few different headers: what a native PC of Torth would know (including what they’d know of history and of some grim portents), an overview of the five historical “ages”, and a rundown of the four most prominent tribal groups, which are kind of like this setting’s races (but without that sort of mechanical distinction). Each of these tribes have their own core beliefs, favored factions or cults, typical behaviors or philosophies and even colour schemes (a nice little way to help the players recognize each one during encounters). Most of them seem to favour occult study: a nice surprise, as I was expecting warrior-centric tribes.

After there’s information on three secret societies or cults: each of them are appropriately ominous and worship sinister figures. A GM could mix and match these tribes and cults to create a great variety of NPC allies or antagonists. It would be cool to give each of them some defining physical characteristics in order to further differentiate them, such as vibrant color skin tones as on Barsoom or animal traits from those of frogs, insects or, very fittingly, serpents.

Magic Use in Torth has its own unique twists as well. The biggest irony of the setting is that magic and sorcery are taboo and distrusted. Which is interesting considering that three out of the four most prominent tribes appear to value study of the occult, demonology and sorcery. This may be one of the reasons for so much inter-tribal strife, for each tribe, and faction, has their own ideas on how magic works and who’s most worthy to use it. I like this idea very much.

There’s mention of a magic-enhancing drug that feels like an homage to the Spice in Frank Herbert’s Dune. I felt that this was appropriate, considering that both Dune and Torth seem to draw some inspiration from middle-eastern folklore and terminology. Sadly I could not find any descriptions of these drugs other than very brief, yey interesting, flavor text. There is, however, a specified mechanic for nasty side-effects for them. I admit that I was a little confused by this, but then again, most OSR games are gleefully cruel this way.

The Main Location: Aryd’s End

The main location for this adventure, Aryd’s End, gets its own section. There’s some history, which has nods to Lovecraft, and what I think is another nod to Dune: a secret twist about the city’s established defences. I may have read this last part incorrectly, but my interpretation of it sure felt exciting. I began to hope that this great story hook gets used in the adventure itself (sadly, it doesn’t, but it might in the sequel).

There are descriptions of a quirky cultural habit, as well as some sayings: most of which are ominous, of course, but one or two made me chuckle. I rather enjoyed the small section on cuisine: there are some neat things in there, as well as a possible adventure hook (hint: the town’s precious honey comes from bees… giant bees who live in a mountain!).

There’s a quick rundown of a few interesting locations within town. It is implied that these buildings will all be featured in the adventure later on.

Lastly we get introduced to some important NPCs. These include the rulers of Aryd’s End and their closest associates. There are some neat possibilities here, in terms of motivations, but I wonder how these characters will ever be used in the adventure itself, or how any of their secrets will come to light (regardless, it was entertaining to read this part). These characters are all kind of scummy and would fit in well in the lecherous and “backstabby” courts of Westeros.

The last page before the adventure is a table of Rumors. Each player character will know one of these, determined randomly, and it is recommended that the GM decides on their accuracy or whether to use them as supplementary encounters or hooks. These rumors are mixed in terms of practicality : some are about vague and high-level background material, others could be used directly in social or combat encounters. In addition to this table is a sidebar that presents an Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. This can be used to simplify circumstantial dice modifiers. Those familiar with the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons will know what this means, although the actual rule is handled a bit differently.

The Adventure

The Adventure takes place within and around the city of Aryd’s End. The author recommends that the party begins about a day’s journey away. There is a table of random encounters (usually monsters); there are some interesting beasties here (the Giant Oozing Slug Brain with Spider Legs stands out) but I don’t find much use for random monster tables in general. After that, there are a few encounters and a mini-dungeon, all of which, I feel, were included to set the mood, if nothing else.

Once the party reaches Aryd’s End they are beset by a variety of encounters, most of which seem to to involve one or more NPCs approaching them and pulling them deeper into the meta-plot or into the general mood of crazed revelry. There are a handful of encounters that, if ignored, can cause huge catastrophes or otherwise greatly affect the setting.

There is one crucial event at the very start which affects the players regardless of how they deal with it or not. What I like about this is that it isn’t railroading – per se. The players don’t have to do anything specific or aren’t expected to react in a scripted way. Nevertheless, this one encounter triggers the main “plot”, if you will, and sets things in motion. I like these kinds of encounters because they give a goal to an otherwise aimless sandbox. Along these lines are one or two encounters that reveal a timeline, of sorts, which will come to pass. This also, theoretically, focuses the players into doing something proactive.

There are a handful of locations for the players to explore with some NPCs to interact with, including a curiosity shop and a bordello. Sadly, neither location has much detail other than basic descriptions and a key NPC or two for the players to socialize with.

There is one encounter which does feel railroad-y: the party is summoned to audience with the King, which cannot be refused. If the party isn’t interested, they will be forced into doing so; if they fight, they will be hunted and killed. I’m not crazy about such encounters, and would rather handle this sort of thing differently (example: I’d have one of the king’s aides personally invite them as guests for a big party, which would feel more subtle and yet allow for more frenzied decadence).

The rest of the encounters follow the same formulae: an NPC approaches the party and gives them an ominous bit of advice or warning; an event occurs which moves the story forward, whether or not the party decide to get involved; an NPC encounter which may or may not be hostile (depending on the party’s reputation, current condition or behavior) or a micro-dungeon to explore and loot.

While all of this felt a bit simplistic and straightforward, it all felt very atmospheric and ripe with chances for interesting roleplaying. Despite one or two encounters that kind of forcefully involve the characters, this adventure is rather open-ended. Because of this, I would have liked a few more locations to explore or things to encounter if the party goes off randomly. If I ever run this, I’ll bring out Vornheim to fill in the gaps, for sure.

The last two pages cover some magic items and spells. A few of the magic items have cool background stories and at least one nifty power that goes beyond the “mundane” +1 bonus. They’re all suitably thematic. The spells are interesting, if not disturbing.

The Afterword illustrates the author’s design goals and plans. He mentions that this is the first part in a trilogy and so I’m eager for more. I admit that after The Islands of Purple-Hearted Putrescence, I’m a bit spoiled: I was expecting a few more random tables of unique encounters and setting-building material.

Summary

Cons:

• a lack of a table of contents; the content felt a bit disorganized
• the headings were sometimes unclear about what each block of content was about
• the runic glyph watermark on every page was a bit distracting (note that this is a pet-peeve of mine: many RPG publishers do this)
• I would have liked a few more locations or random tables of encounters (not strictly combat ones)
• as with other works by the same author, some features contain subject matter unsuitable to all tastes

Pros:

• lots of rich flavour, colour and mood: it would be easy to create your own material or to hand-pick suitable stuff from other works to add to the setting -very memorable encounters: this book can be mined for ideas and inspiration
• really nice artwork and maps
• easy to read text and layout: friendly conversational tone

Overall I liked this work, although not as much as the Islands of Purple-Heated Putrescence. The setting, while open-ended, felt a bit “smaller” than I expected. I’d like to see more information about the key location, Aryd’s End. Regardless, I found a lot of the material very inspirational: whether I end up running this or not, I can mine this for ideas. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

This is an RPG campaign setting of about 110 pages with lots black and white illustrations (nearly one illustration per page, some full-page) and has roughly 20 lists and tables of various types used for character building, encounters, rumors and other rich setting material. There are 2 maps: a full color one and a black and white, numbered hex version for the GM. Also there are nearly 30 magic items, over a dozen new spells and about 120 different map encounters.

This book is, in essence, a sandbox setting, but there is much more to it. About half of the book is composed of notes, tips and additional rules to make the whole experience more immersive and unique for both the GM and for players.

There’s simply lots of material in this product:

Game master notes and advice

The Foreword paints a sympathetic portrait of the author’s mindset, expressing a view of the RPG hobby as a form of escapism from the traditional expectations of storytelling as well as from daily monotony. The tone starts off as light-hearted and conversational; the author sounds friendly and considerate.

The Introduction includes some short but good advice on how to manage the players’ expectations. There is a suggestion for GMs wanting to maintain the decent level of strangeness of the setting by striving to keep some baseline of realism. I believe that this is good advice in any campaign: if everything is always weird, fantastic, horrific or grim all of the time, then none of it is. An occasional dose of “mundane” reality in a game world helps to contrast other extremes. Good advice so far.

After there are descriptions of positive gaming techniques that can be used by both GMs and players. I’ve encountered similar advice in other books and gaming blogs under the moniker of “Yes, and…”. The author also emphasizes collaborative exchanges between GMs and players. I was pleasantly surprised to find this in an OSR product.

Altogether I was pleased by the author’s tips and tricks to bridge the gap between perceived new and old school gaming styles. This was pretty refreshing to me because I feel that gaming styles don’t have to be broken up into walled up factions or schools: there’s more overlap than we’d like to believe and that gamers are much more complex than we give them credit for. But I digress…

Alternate Rules

Within the campaign notes is a very nifty d6-based task resolution system called VSD6. This system could be applied to many different games (especially OSR ones without formal skill lists). I found it familiar with Apocalypse World-based systems: it includes the possibility of varying degrees of success and failure (of which I’m a fan of). The basic version is tidy and simple: if you’re familiar with similar concepts, like the ones in games like Dungeon World, then you’ll get it right away. Then the author provides an advanced version of the rules if the GM wishes to fully embrace it. Good stuff in here and very modular: however, be warned that I’m not very good at math, so I may have missed any issues with probability. I “feels” like a good and workable system and that is good enough for me.

Also included are some extra rules for things like combat and travel to better reinforce some of the core thematic elements of the setting.

Playtest Notes

Since this book claims that it is compatible “with virtually every fantasy paper & pencil tabletop roleplaying game”, I decided to use the latest (5th) edition of Dungeons and Dragons. There were two reasons for this: I find that it is just enough of a rules-light system that grants enough freedom to make rulings on the fly (which is suitable to OSR style games) and because it is the latest game that I had sold onto my players.

The drawback was that we’d miss out on a few features, such as the VSD6 system mentioned earlier, but I fully integrated the varying degrees of success of this mechanic into D&D’s Ability Checks. Since the many tools for character building and for generating encounters are rather system-agnostic, we didn’t have any issues. So I agree with the claim that this is a very system-agnostic or at least flexible module: your group could easily use this with your preferred OSR, D&D or D20 game of choice.

IPP_image

Character Building and Hooks

This book contains several lists of character-defining hooks and traits that can help to integrate player characters into the setting. I believe that this type of extra detail is hugely beneficial as it gets players more invested or interested in the game’s mood. Most of these list items consistently promote the weird, the mysterious, the fantastic and the horrifying. One could end up with a really twisted PC with a troubled past and/or very dark alterior motives.

The Darker Secrets section has a list that is meant to be used during character creation: specifically while rolling attribute scores. Basically, if a player requests a re-roll they roll on this list to gain a dark secret or character flaw. If you’re doing it the old fashioned way (3d6, in order), odds are that you’ll roll at least once or twice. These interesting traits are almost all sinister, horrifying or twisted background elements that could completely define a character. Some of them remind me of the weird, crazy stuff found in modules for Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

In the wrong person’s hands, these traits could be extremely disruptive without GM supervision or group buy-in. I know my players’ tastes and limits very well, but if I was playing with strangers, I might omit one or two of these items as they could rub some people the wrong way.

There are also some cool background flashbacks and a list of possible rumors that each character can know about the Islands (some false, some true). I felt that these were thoughtful and considerate additions. I appreciated all of this extra character-driven fluff: it’s one thing to present a hexcrawl, but to go an extra mile to provide motivations and goals to interact with the sandbox is very good design.

There’s a new Monk class included as a character option. I first I assumed that this was another version of the D&D trope of the Kung-Fu warrior (I first encountered the “Monk” with 3rd edition), but I was mistaken. This is an intriguing take on the concept of a sort-of Cleric mixed with traits of a cultist. Again, very appropriate to the setting.

Playtest Notes

When we did this section, I allowed players to re-roll their background traits and flashbacks if they were not happy or seemed uncomfortable with their results. Surprisingly, nearly all of my friends were cool with their results, although afterward I read out a few of the more disturbing ones to hear what they thought: some agreed that they didn’t really feel like dealing with the subject matter of one or two of the darker options. My instincts were correct upon initial review: if you don’t know your players, you may want to spend a bit of time reviewing these lists before using them. But otherwise they liked what they came up with: it all really helped to set the tone and they liked the pre-game character hooks. Some players really got into it, adding more fluff to the setting. It was rather awesome.

Most of my players were already familiar with the concept of setting tie-in hooks during character creation. They bought into it very positively. I had introduced it back in the day with Dungeon World and have been using that feature ever since. I still appreciated the fact that this module had these traits included because it saved me some work. It was a welcome feature and I wish that more pre-written adventures did the same.

Setting Features

This book also contains plenty of material to emphasize the setting’s mood and lore. These options are consistently imaginative, horrifying, disturbing and weird. A word of warning: some of these events could end the game rather quickly, so the GM better be familiar with these lists before the campaign starts.

There’s a brief, high-level chronological history of the Islands as well as ways to generate their “wants”: it appears that the Islands themselves have some kind of sentience. Players can be rewarded for behaving in certain ways if they match up with the “personality” of the setting itself. Really cool and creepy: it reminds me of Ravenloft.

There’s a random list/table that makes spell-casting crazy and unpredictable, reminding me of the Wild Magic table for the Sorcerer in D&D 5e and of the Psychic Backlash tables in Dark Heresy (which were always good for a chuckle and/or a groan).

The rest of this section covers more atmospheric and thematic elements of the Islands. There are expanded rules for making Magical Swords unique and cool (definitely a re-usable resource for a GM), as well as a short table reminiscent of the critical injury charts from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. There’s also lists of stuff that happens while the characters sleep, different and occasionally disturbing forms of island currency, dangerous alien weather and a few different explanations for the titular Purple Putrescence, one of which is a huge twist that was quite the surprise to me. The author suggests that this one in particular is purely optional, but I’m very much eager to use it. I’m very certain that it is an homage to something from film or t.v.,, but I can’t quite place it…

There’s some stuff about various Crystals that may be found: each type (or color) has various features and utilities. Many of them have weird or nasty side-effects such as attribute draining. I thought that these were neat but I can see some players not wanting to use them after their stats start dropping. The author includes some brief advice on how to incorporate these items to better suit the style of your campaign. Good stuff.

There’s a section covering the main factions of people living on the island, as well as tables to randomly generate NPC encounters. What I liked about this section is how each group of villagers that the characters encounter can differ greatly from each other depending on recent events, their relationship with other settlements and even their attitudes toward the PCs. So while each faction may have universal traits they are not monolithic in their behaviors and values (a trope that I’m bored to death with in traditional fantasy and sci-fi media). Kudos to the author for this. Those of my readers who are familiar with the books by Sine Nomine (ex Stars Without Number) will feel a familiarity with this section as a useful, quick tool to create NPCs and settlements.

Each faction (race) is pretty unique and interesting in terms of goals and motivations, although superficially most of them could appear as robed cultists to the players (with two obvious exceptions). But I’m always glad to get away from the usual token Tolkien-isms, though.

Finally there’s a Wandering Monster table full of surprises and unconventional beasties. There are some brief stat-blocks, but the main descriptors were sufficiently imaginative and useful. This table looks very easy to use with any d20 or OSR system.

The author notes that all of this material is optional. One could pick and choose which parts to use to better suit their own gaming style. While I’ve seen some of these ideas here and there in other RPGs, it is very handy to have them all in one place along with the campaign.

Regardless of how much you’d use I believe that all of these colorful options will make any campaign set on the Islands feel unique and memorable. This isn’t just a sandbox setting with things to find, fight and loot, it’s an experience. All of it embraces the weird and fantastic.

Playtest Notes

When I informed my players of the existence of the critical hit charts, the ones who’d played WFRP cheered and grimaced at the same time, which was awesome. We only had one magic backlash occur and it was just bizarre and kind of hilarious (my players were also kind of relieved: in other games that sort of thing usually meant that someone’s face melted off or that a demon popped into reality).

I included a few crystals, but the players became hesitant to use them after they started to lose Constitution and another one got a gruesome skin fungus. I was a bit saddened by that turn of events because I love the crazy devil’s bargain that these items offer.

I decided to have fun with the party and had them encounter a settlement of Snake-men but gave them a troubled condition that made them almost sympathetic. All of that got derailed when the players started telling “snake-talk” jokes (how many s-words can you string together at once for laughs?). They got so carried away with this that I asked them if one of their characters actually said those things. The player nodded with a smirk and so the Snake-men instantly became indignant and tried to capture them as slaves. I was hoping that they’d make unconventional allies but oh well; better luck next time with the ape-men (or not…).

As for the other factions, the players were just skeptical of all these “cultists”, never sure if their intentions were good or ill. Using the faction tables really shuffled my expectations on how the players perceived most NPCs. The weirdness of the setting put everyone on edge a little. After all, a robed cultist usually means “bad things will happen”. One player decided to feign devotion to whichever cause the NPC followed- one time to awkward results when the seemingly benign, white robed missionaries turned out to be planning a genocide of their neighbours. The character’s attempts to graciously back down from participating were pretty hilarious. The last game ended with some tension between the party and those people.

Combined with everything else in the setting, the Wandering Monster table was fun and easy to use with D&D 5e. I had no trouble incorporating whatever the dice created, although it helps that the mood and theme of the Islands is pretty wacky and bizarre. Just about anything goes, to be honest and nothing felt out of place.

Hex map encounters

Things get very interesting in this setting. Up to this point, I was expecting standard weird fantasy but I forgot that this often includes a heavy dose of science fiction. There are encounters with advanced technology, space ships and beings from other worlds or dimensions (unrelated to magical planes). Again, this makes sense because Lovecraftian tropes often include alien futurism intermixed with the arcane. Still, I wasn’t expecting that at all prior to reading the hex descriptions.

There are lots of interesting encounters here. Not all trigger combat: there are lots of things to explore and discover that don’t include any immediate peril or conflict. There are also lots of NPCs and creatures that aren’t hostile by default, but may be depending on the party’s motives and behavior. Some locations have more than one encounter in them, depending on distance, population density or if the party decides to explore some mini-dungeons.

There are plenty of pop culture and cult film references, sometimes quite anachronistic or bizarre. Some are really obvious, others clever enough to be missed by more casual fans of certain media. Possibly my favorite was [SPOILER] Amazing Larry, a nod to one of my favorite Tim Burton movies, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. If you’re a person who can catch this reference, I consider you to be a soul mate.

The monster stats were usable right out of the book with the game system we were using (D&D 5th edition), and seemed to be easily compatible with typical OSR games (Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess). The stat blocks are brief and self-contained unless they’re magic users in which case the GM will have to reference their spell list of choice. It’s all easily adaptable.

That all said, there are some nasty, deadly encounters too. Some of which are Save or Die with very little advanced warning. Old School GMs will probably like these “Gotcha!” traps. They’re not my style, but again, the exact mechanics were easily altered without changing the encounter too much (I used D&D 5e’s Death Save mechanics which at least give the party a chance).

A couple of the encounters had subject matter that might not be a good fit with certain groups of players. Frazetta-inspired damsels in distress, plenty of slave girls and scenes out of horror/sci-fi movies and comics with sexualized peril. Luckily none of those details are hugely integral to each encounter and a GM could easily change or omit them. Basically, even if a reader actively dislikes to include those things, they could remove them without too much effort and still get a lot out of this material.

Strangely, some of the most interesting entries are the briefest and most vague. There are several hex locations which are basically just “water” or “crashed spaceship”. I felt that it was a bit of wasted opportunity: the book could’ve included a handful of encounter and location generators for these places. I may write up some and share them on my blog at some point.

While not as chaotic and disjointed as other sandbox offerings I’ve read, I did feel that some of these encounters were a little too “random”. While they were all consistent in terms of mood, the overall setting became almost surrealist. It was like feverish crazy dream world. While that is fine in itself, I strongly recommend using all of the setting material and character hooks in the rest of the book (especially the “Fun things to do” Scenario Seeds table) to give some structure or “meaning” to everything.

Playtest Notes

Knowing my players, I changed a few NPCs by simply using the books’ NPC Faction generating lists and tables. So instead of a “voluptuous, red-haired maiden” for one encounter, I rolled up an ape-like Koshi, one of the natives. The tables dictated that he was an escaped prisoner from his tribe (and I grabbed the option that he was royalty). Instantly, I had created a really cool and interesting NPC ally for the party. The players gave him a name and everything: one wanted to call him George and the other Jenkins. It was pretty awesome.

Notes on the art and Design

The Artwork is pretty good but varies in technical skill. Overall the art matches the established themes of the product: weird fantasy horror with touches of sword and sorcery and Lovecraftian overtones. The quality seems to be standard with other OSR materials that I’ve encountered: the best work is on the cover and on the occasional full-page illustration, while the rest is decent and only occasionally kind of amateurish. I liked it, having a fondness for hand-drawn black and white artwork lately, which may be partially due to nostalgia. While digital art can be beautiful I feel that it lacks a certain warmth, so I appreciated the art style of this book.

I can see that some readers would find some of the illustrations problematic. The cover is obvious cheesecake, as are some of the other works by the same artist (Faustie). The vast majority of the artwork inside doesn’t share that tone. However I’m guessing that a person who doesn’t like that style of art in their RPG products won’t likely look into this book after seeing the cover.

Playtest Notes

I showed my players the cover image. The reactions: laughter, a few eye rolls and a few acknowledgments of Heavy Metal magazine. I communicated to them what the campaign style was (I believe my exact terms included “kind of old school gonzo fantasy horror”), so they were not wholly surprised. Still, two of my friends were not crazy about it, but that didn’t stop them from giving the campaign a try.

Other Notes

The Fiction is well written and relevant, adding some context, mystique and lore to the setting. Typically my eyes glaze over when I encounter fiction in RPG books and so I usually skip it all. However my intrigue about this weird setting, and my enthusiasm from what I’d read so far, got me invested in reading it.

The first entry that I read began as standard fantasy fare, name-dropping a lot of familiar tropes but gradually becoming a bit more interesting. At one point it tapped right into good old sword and sorcery style, harkening to Howard and Burroughs and so my attention was kept. There’s some neat stuff going on in the Islands… The Fiction drops a few hints at what is to come.

One complaint that I have is that the first half (the non-hex descriptions) felt a bit disorganized. I would have liked some traditional section headings or chapters to group similar material together. For example, the section on the crystals is separated from a very useful bit on how to adapt their use in different campaign types. I’m not sure why these sections were separated. Similarly, all of the background info and character hooks are here and there: I would’ve liked them all in one chapter, in one place. As one reads this material, though, it all made “sense” because each topic flowed into the next. But during character creation I had to do some page flipping back and forth and I don’t like to do that.

Summary

I was very impressed by this product: it was far more than I originally envisioned. There’s plenty of material in this campaign that can make each visit to the Islands very different and unique. A GM can get a lot of re-use of this material. There’s lots of good advice and optional rules that can be used outside of this specific campaign, so that’s a big bonus.

That being said, the “weird fantasy” genre isn’t for everyone. While there’s plenty of comedic and tongue-in-cheek humor, there are some darker elements and some cheesecake that might not be appropriate for some. The cover art might be some hint to this to any potential buyers. But if one can look past that, there’s plenty of cool material in there that I could see as being useful even if you never run the campaign as-is and just use the goldmine of idea generators.

The first thing that I noticed about this book was that the author’s name (Rafael Chandler) was written in that typically awesome yet hilariously illegible Black Metal font. I chuckled at this because it was pitch-perfect. From this part of the product’s description: "Inspired by the sound of black metal", I knew that I was in for a treat.

Like many of its kind, this supplement is deeply seeped in the weird, the grotesque and the sinister. It is definitely not a product for everyone, just like how Hellraiser and the Holy Mountain aren’t for everyone (in that they’re well made and well written but they’re very disturbing and challenging).

There’s a lot of whimsy in this product, despite the somewhat sinister subject matter. Lots of little jokes for the reader. The artwork is nice, although a few pieces were clearly better than others – while they all used appropriate subjects, some felt a bit amateurish. But that’s also kind of appropriate for OSR games, if you know what I mean.

The main function of this product is to create a Snake Cult. This is particularly useful for many different settings—and it helps that most of the tables are more about cool descriptors rather than mechanics—so I could see using this for fantasy, Lovecraftian Horror or even for stuff like Dark Heresy or any other darker Sci-fi, modern or fantasy offerings.

This book helps you determine such things as:

-the Cult’s “Way“, which is sort of their core ideologies. Even though this can be determined randomly, I’d personally apply all of them.

-the Cult’s Goddess, which draws from various worldly mythologies and superstitions. Very cool stuff here.

-Tenets, which are the main goals of the Cult (eg.: kill all Ophiophages – look it up)

There’s a ton of flavor in these sections. Even though everything is Snake-centered, you could use this book for inspiration for any kind of cult activities. There’s just so much useful stuff here that can generate mysteries or conspiracies. The one section on “Quests” that enable members to rise in rank could be used alone to create conflicts for characters to investigate. Warning: some of these are very grim and disturbing.

The rest has very interesting subjects like Sacred Sites and Powers to make the cult more menacing. The last part has useful rules for quickly generating NPC cult members and story hooks to get things going.

SUMMARY

I found this to be a very useful supplement that will go into my folder of inspirational generators and tables. There’s a lot of good, if sometimes disturbing, material in this product that can be re-used many, many times. The writing is easy to read (once again, very conversational) and it hits all the right notes for this kind of horror.

I recommend it for GMs who like to run games that involve sinister cults, whether they be modern Call of Cthulhu games or Sword and Sorcery. Frankly, you could use this product with any game system you wanted!

No Salvation for Witches (or 'NSfW', which is appropriate) is a new adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) role playing game, written by Rafael Chandler. It is a full color, hardcover book of 68 pages. My review is of the PDF version.

LotFP prides itself on being "Weird Fantasy" and that is very true of all of the adventures that I've read so far. I'd actually also add "Horror" into that description, because they are full of uncomfortable, troubling and often grotesque concepts and imagery.

Overall Impression

This is a nice looking product. The text is well formatted and conversational in tone, the illustrations are beautiful (even if they are often disturbing) and the layout is easy to read. The only exception to this rule is that occasionally, for no discernable reason, the book switches from a 2-column layout to a single one. In a printed form, this isn't a big deal, but on a tablet or smartphone, it interrupts the flow a little. That's just a minor quibble, though.

I like this kind of adventure: it is more of a sandbox / event, with plenty of detailed locations, events and NPCs which are all moving and advancing despite the player characters' involvement.

One warning, though: there are plenty of old-school "GOTCHA!" moments that can completely change, maim, deform or destroy the player characters. If I ever get a chance to run this, and I hope that I will, I'll probably change those events a little bit, or make some of them reversible at least.

Sections

The Table of Contents is well laid-out, and each chapter is a clickable shortcut (surprisingly, I've encountered many PDFs that don't include this very basic functionality). Like the rest of the book, it is very easy to scan and read.

There's a Preface, which outlines the author's goals and the adventure's style. He states quite clearly that this isn't "grimdark" it's "glibdark". I found that amusing. There definitely is a crazy, death-metal feel to this one. I also like how the author explains the core idea behind this campaign and the importance of an established time-limit.

The Setting explains things quite well and succinctly. There's some history, but not too much, as well as a brief description of the main location and its surroundings. Like many of the LofFP adventures, this one also takes place in 17th century Europe, which I like a lot! This section is only a single page and so it isn't overwhelming: it's easy for the Game Master to grasp and absorb.

The Backstory is similarly short and sweet, confined to a single page. It explains why things are the way that they are without overdoing it. If I ever finish any of my own written adventures, I'll take a lesson from Rafael Chandler and use this method.

The next chapter focuses on the leading characters: the main "antagonist", the alien thing that is behind everything and the main cronies. I probably liked this chapter the most: just enough information about each character (history, description and motivations), short stat-blocks and some illustrations. My only complaint is that there isn't an image of the main villain (yes, she's on the cover, and I suppose that's enough...) Her cronies, while they get a gorgeous full page group portrait, do not get individual images next to their descriptions. Again, not really necessary, but a few of them were not easy to spot in the group "photo" (others were easy, like the one with facial scars and the one in full armor).

There's just enough information about these characters (her 5 assistants) to make them interesting without going too far. My main gripe is that nothing is done with them at all in the adventure itself. We know where they are, but not what they're up to. All this effort went into making each of them have unique and rich backgrounds and I doubt that any of that will ever come up. So, my assumption is that all of the background detail or fluff in this chapter is just for the GM's amusement. I was amused and entertained, I admit.

The next chapter is about the mysterious Spheres that appear in the land. They're pretty interesting, I must admit (and WEIRD). Their presence is a bit of a puzzle and there are some key clues for the heroes to find that will help them figure them out (and what they do).

Again, they are another element of GM "Gotcha!". Without any clues, some of them will really mess around with the player characters. Brutally, even.

Locations is the next section of the book. There are a handful of interesting places to encounter and explore. What I like about them is that they all have events that are drawn towards the climax. There's a good dose of horror and strangeness at each.

Reading the PDF, it was a bit clumsy to flip back and forth to the map to find out where everything was in relation to each other. I'm a bit of a simpleton in this: I need to constantly check a map to grasp everything. I think that I would have like to have a small visual or map in each location chapter for reference.

Next is the big chapter on the main location of this adventure: The Priory. This is where everything happens of great importance. Lots of weird and horrific stuff to discover and interact with. Great stuff! Even if I never get a chance to run this adventure, I'd want to use this location in some other campaign.

Lastly is the creepy Tract of Teratology, a demon summoning tool kit (a collection of tables that you can roll on or just choose from). The most horrific part of this section are the Ritual types, each involving gruesome human sacrifice. Really grotesque: I was actually relieved to get to the parts that generate the summoned monster. Tentacled horrors with human faces and a crab's body I can handle: sawing people in half while they're alive is much harder for me, I admit.

There's a lot here to work with: you can create literally THOUSANDS of different kinds of creatures: their appearance, powers, their scent, their personalities and their compulsions. Really cool stuff. I'm adding this to my library of random tables, for sure.

The last two pages are maps and floorplans of the various locations. Very nice illustrations. Everything in this book has top-notch production values.

Conclusion

This is a well produced and well written module. Even if you don't run the adventure as-is, you'll get a lot of great material (locations, monsters, events etc...) that you can transplant into your other campaigns. The Demon Ritual Summoning section (Tract of Teratology) is also a really cool and useful tool.

A warning, though: there's a lot of gruesome material in here. This book, like most of the LofFP library, is not for the faint of heart or easily upset by occult and body horror. For all its strangeness, this is horror first, pure and simple. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing: it's just something to consider.

I find this to be an extremely useful tool for GMs. Rather than just being tables of random items or encounters, they're collections of IDEAS that can be easily incorporated into any game setting or system. This book has broad categories (Fantasy, Horror etc..) which is an added bonus. I heartily recommend it to any storyteller who'd like to have some handy, quick reference and inspiration material.