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CQB is an action packed modern day skirmish game that plays like your favourite action movie or Don Pendleton book.
The game pits a small team of operatives against gangs of criminals and drug lords in fast-flowing, fluid action. High volumes of automatic weapons fire are resolved by lesser soldiers attempting to pin down heroes and elite troopers with supressing fire, while those same heroes and elite troppers return fire with precise lethal shots. The shooting mechanics do a great job of capturing the action-movie feel of main characters versus mook #3.
The game's strategic and tactical depth come from the operative player's choices in how to go about achieving objectives in varied missions where both sides need to constantly recalculate risk vs reward and decide how many (or how few) victory points are worth exposing your operatives to a greater chance of failure.
CQB comes packed with missions that capture the feeling of your favourite action movies while also guiding you through different settings and environments that provide a cool gaming challenge that is simultaneously an interesting new take on modern military skirmish action while also showing some RPG roots in it's DNA.
Once I'm done playing through the scenarios contained in the book I'm looking forward to painting up my GI Joe miniatures and recreating some of my favourite Saturday morning memories on the tabletop.
I highly recommend CQB and can guarantee hours of fun.
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This adventure packs a surprising amount of action, exploration, and variety into a very short page count.
The adventure is well populated by thematically appropriate baddies for a Barovia game. My one criticism would be that if the dice fall your way it feels like not only for a low-level adventure, but especially for a low-level adventure set in Ravenloft a lot of minor magical items can fall into a character's hands relatively easily.
Putting that (minor) issue aside I enjoyed playing through Escape From Barovia.
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Cult of the Red Ooze is a very short solo adventure that can make for an interesting diversion but suffers from the same problem as a lot of D&D adventures that are listed as playable for 1st (admittedly to 3rd) level characters; a small number of failed die rolls can instantly end the whole thing.
I really liked the random timing mechanism, in my opinion it could have been made slightly more engaging by having a roll each round to see if the cultists return as opposed to to making one 2d6 roll which telegraphs the amount of time the player has.
I appreciated that the mix of cultists and oozes was logical and gives some variety within the bounds of a limited number of encounters. To reiterate these encounters can instantly go wrong if 1 round of combat goes against a lone 1st level character. There are a couple of options to talk you way through parts of encounters, and couple options to sneak your way either past an encounter or atleast to an advantage, but once more if you fail those rolls things can go very badly very quickly.
Overall I enjoyed Cult Of The Red Ooze, but I suspect it plays MUCH better with a 2nd or 3rd level character.
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I recently ran Inn Of Lost Hope for my group and they absolutely loved it.
It's a short adventure set in a small sandbox so it's definitely playable as a single session one-shot, we finished it in about 3.5 hours. The titular Inn is a great haunted house style setting with a lot of description and some guidelines from the author of how to frame the whole thing. The narrative itself is simple and well laid out with enough early information and clues so as to let the players in on the story without clubbing them over the head with it.
In the case of the group I ran this the adventure worked simultaneously well for 2 of the players as bridge from one-adventure to the next while also being a great straight forward introduction to the game for our 3rd player.
My one criticism of the adventure is that for a group of 3 characters the combat encounters were a bit too easy. I would definitely recommend increasing the Skill or Stamina of some of the encounters to increase the challenge level (except the final boss, he was a tough nut to crack).
Overall my players and I had a terrific time and I know almost immediately after running this one of my players got his own copy and ran t for another group.
Definitely 5 stars, would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a fun Fighting Fantasy adventure.
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I'm a big van of investiagtive adevntures for D&D but I genuinely haven't found a ton of great ones out there, this is one of those rare great ones!
Murder At The Old Wolf Inn combines the great tradition of Agatha Christie mysteries (fixed location, cast of dubious characters, red herrings that feel established and not bolted on) with the style and backdrop of a classic fantasy setting.
It's difficult to get into reviewing a mystery adventure without spoilers so I'll call out the adveture's strongest elements:
- Cast of characters. The NPCs in this adventure are really well fleshed out and have motivations and back stories both sinister and banal. In short EVERY character in the adventure feels like they live in the grey like a real person rather than being a good or evil trope.
- The environment. The Inn itself is very well detailed and defined with every room having lots of details and full dscriptions. This avoids one of the classic problems in published D&D adventures of overdescribing key areas and underdescribing unimportant areas such that players can use that meta to decide where to focus their attention.
- The physical layout. I found the way the adventure separated; characters, events, and locations made it extremely easy to read and follow as well as making it easy to find what you were looking for as a DM during actual gameplay.
- The flexibility. The adventure is formatted to be a bridge between two other Midnight Tower adventures but could easily fit into any existing campaign or setting, could work as a one-off, or could be the starting point for a new campaign (after all we all meet in a tavern anyway).
I shouldn't be surprised at this point how much I liked this, I've bought most of what Midnight Tower has produced and my groups have really enjoyed all of their adventures that we have played.
I would highly recommend this to every DM. It's a perfect drop in while travelling from one location to another, it makes a great one-shot if your whole group can't attend a session, and also gives you a great fleshed out inn to populate your own campaign with.
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Being a long-time D&D player who is also a huge Agatha Christie fan I was super excited about Murder On The Eberron Express. The adventure was extremely well structured and written but honestly didn't actually play the way I hoped it would.
Let me frame my thoughts by stating what I think the adventure is, and what I think it isn't. In my opinion this is not a D&D or RPG adventure at all, but is in fact a 'How To Host A Murder' game using Eberron as it's setting and D&D as it's mechanical rules. So having said that, if that idea appeals to you then by all means ignore my criticisms as from that point of view I think it's extremely well written and structured.
What I had hoped for when I bought this adventure was an investigative mystery written for a reasonably traditional D&D playstyle. When I think of tradional D&D playstyle I always think of players creating and developing their own characters while the DM crafts the story around fixed events and the player's actions and choices within the context of those settings and events. Eberron Express starts off by laying out ALL of every character's defining traits, back story, motivations, and relationships while leaving the player to simply determine the mechanics of the character. This is further compounded by one of the PCs potentially being randomly determined to be the murderer, if you didn't want to be the murderer? Too bad, the die roll says you're it. Removing this many player choices and a lot of player agency in the process (the murderer has a key piece of evidence they're stuck with) feels very much not in keeping with how I or my group really want to play D&D. The more I think about it the less this feels like a game the players are playing, and it begins to feel more like a play they are staging for their DM. I'm also a huge fan of one-shot adventures but this adventure really forces itself into that position by defining so much of the characters such that it would be difficult to introduce an existing character while working the required narrative elements in, and at least one of the characters is likely to be ruined for potential future use by the end of the adventure.
As I mentioned at the start for groups looking for a certain type of experience this adventure will be highly satisfying, but if that isn't specifically what you had in mind it will probably be an underwhelming experience.
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The Tome Of Debasement is a rules supplement for DCC that ads an evil diety with some corruption based mechanics. I have played a number of Clerics in DCC and have always found the rules worked well and have never suffered for a lack of options or colour but it definitely feels like one of those areas of the game where an opportunity for more depth and customization exists.
The Tome Of Debasement lays out expanded rules for a specific evil corruption themed diety named Herlezzect and really makes being a cleric of Herlezzect feel distincly different than being a follower of any other Chaotic diety from the core rules. The intention is also that most of thes spells could also be used by other evil characters but by presenting them alongside the rules for the Clerics of Herlezzect it creates a more well developed feeling for Herlezzect's followers.
Tome Of Debassement is a great expansion adding both NPC and PC options for your DCC games. I've gotten quite a bit of use out of my copy and I'm personally hoping for more supplements like this in the future.
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Wide-eyed Terror is a super handy 'zine that can be used as either supplementary material for The Precipice Of Corruption or as a short one-shot for Dungeon Crawl Classics or other D20 based games.
Once more this 'zine leans heavily into the grimdark flavour.
mild SPOILERS BELOW
Wide-eyed Terror is structured around the party discovering a small farming property sacked and ruined by one of Breaker Press' new monsters the Nolids. The property is effectively a series of small encounters spread throughout the barn, farmhouse, and outbuildings. The descriptions of the areas, scenes, and monsters present the adventure as both a traditional horror adventure as well as harkening back to early Warhammer Roleplay adventures where the theme is growing corruption.
mild SPOILERS END
Wide-eyed Terror continues to build on Breaker Press' pattern of both establishing and building on a micro-setting. What makes that great is that this can be either a starting point for adventure in the Stennard area or a continuation of an adventure began in one of their other introductory level Stennard located adventures. The location and rumours can also provide a DM with seeds to continue and create their own adventures.
I highly recommend Wide-eyed Terror to anyone looking for a low-level DCC adventure and for anyone who has left planning a session (especially a Halloween session) to the last minute the adventure can be fully read and planned out in under 30 minutes and run on the fly.
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For players and DMs looking for a DCC funnel that captures both the core flavour of DCC as well as the grimdark tone popularized by british RPGs in the 80s this adventure is a must buy!
I've not gotten to play this adventure twice with two different groups and have to say it felt like a distinctly different experience each time. The adventure has a ton of replay value, and does a great job of laying the foundation for a micro-setting filled with possibilities going forward. Well worth the price and has a deceptively large amount of content based on page count.
mild SPOILERS BELOW
In The Prcipice Of Corruption your group is charged with journeying into the wild corrupted lands beyond the small town of Stennard to find and hopefully bring back a lost hunting party that travelled from the stricken town looking for a new food source. The adventure establishes its dark tone early on, the FIRST potential combat encounter is the scene depicted on the cover of the adventure; a scene of grim horror on a covered bridge The Headless Horseman would shy away from. Once the party (or whats left of them) overcome the bridge they journey through an evil overgrown hybrid of swamp and forest experiencing some slightly less horrific challenges which will none the less continue the funnel by thinning the party. Once the group arrives at the hideout of the forces of evil they encounter a number of disturbing and gruesome foes and obstacles that finally leads to a climactic battle that can be won if the dice are on your side and the party is still of a decent size but it truly feels like an epic 'Final Boss' type of encounter.
mild SPOILERS END
The Precipice Of Corruption pulls off the rare trick of being suitable for low level starting characters while still making the threats faced feel grand and potentially world changing. In addition to being an enjoyable experience on its own both my playthroughs left me wanting to continue my adventures in the setting to uncover the mysteries of the area.
I HIGHLY recommend this as a purchase for anyone wanting an engaging DCC funnel as well as anyone looking for an adventure easily adaptable to any D20 based system.
And if you'd like to hear how my last group of advnturers fared please check out my blog at http://worlds-in-conflict.blogspot.com/2022/04/i-just-got-funneled-in-stennard.html
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The Stennard Courier is a 'zine that continues to flesh out Breaker Press' grim and grimy fantasy setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The 'zine describes the town of Stennard one of the principal early locations of a current ongoing series of adventures and campaign materials in what feels like a very old-school fantasy setting. For adventurers playing in Breaker Press' game world Stennard is likely to be their first base of operations, and a likely starting location with all the features a low-level party will need between adventures.
The Stennard Courier itself is a 40 page 'zine that is absolutely PACKED with; NPCs, rumours, adventure hooks, world building, and commerce. It's the exact kind of campaign starting point that every RPG box set or GM guide should include to give players and game masters the kind of world that feels full and lived-in to establish the tone of the game. Within it's 40 pages the Stennard Courier gives 11 detailed locations (with additional allusions to other areas), 11 detailed NPCs (again with more from other Breaker Press products alluded to), as well as 12 separate lists of rumours (enough for an entire campaign), and price lists for 3 local businesses. As I mentioned before this is the exact kind of supplement that a GM needs to make their game world feel more 'real' and less like a series of disconnected quests or missions. The overall quality of the writing is outstanding with rich full descriptions of NPCs and their locations laid out in a clear easy to understand format that will make the material extremely easy for a GM to integrate into their own campaign. The artwork has an old-school aesthetic to it that immediately puts me in the mind of the original Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Overall the Stennard Courier is a must-have for anyone looking for a starting/home location for a low-level fantasy RPG, as well as being an excellent reference for anyone looking to create their own small town in terms of what both completeness and utility should look like.
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For those who aren't familiar with the first volume the Questionable Confectionaries series is a collection of food-themed magic items that would occupy a similar place in a treasure assortment to a potion or scroll. What's nice about the food/treat theme of most of the items is that they inherently give the items themselves a more whimsical nature and may fit particularly well into certain themed games, for example if you're already tapping into some fairy tale mythologies, or possibly even an Alice In Wonderland type feel.
The overall tone and feel of the items themselves hits the perfect balance for me in my games of being very tongue-in-cheek without descending into cartoonish levels of silliness. This time out the collection is broken up into sections based on overall rarity (which I find extremely helpful).
I have to say upon my initial read-through of the second volume I was immediately struck by one significant improvement over the first volume, as well as one unfortunate step back. The big improvement for me was the sheer quantity of content. In addition to simply having a higher page count (by a significant margin) the layout is a bit changed and updated with a lot more text on every page. This is a big improvement because if you liked the first volume, there is simply way more of it to like here. The step back is that all this increased material seems to have come at the cost of a dramatic reduction in the ratio of art to items. For some purchasers this simply won't be an issue but for me art really makes an RPG product pop, and I not only enjoyed the art in the first volume, but what art there was in the second volume was again very well done (special shout-out to the Draconian Fruit Cake) and I certainly would have liked to have more of it.
One of the areas of expansion covered by this volume is the addition of The Gourmand which is an appropriately foody version of the Artificer along with some new abilities. This gives both DMs and players more opportunity to work with the Questionable Confectionaries material in-game.
Overall I think Questionable Confectionaries Volume 2 is a worthwhile addition to any DMs toolbox, especially those looking for treat-themed items to add to their games!
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Although the DMsGuild has no shortage of collections of new and wonderous magical items for players to add to their games Niter's is the first collection I've come across with such a clear, coherent and well executed theme. As is no doubt obvious from the title the theme is candy!
First up the layout and presentation of this volume is terrific. Each candy receives a full description, clearly laid out game effects, flavour text in the form of an anecdote from Niter, as well as an image for every entry. This layout both makes the collection easy and engaging to read as well as giving a certain sense of immersion.
Two of the features I'd also like to call out are a brief section on accessibility at the beginning on the book reframing some of D&Ds conditions and separating them from disabilities of the same names. In addition when purchasing a copy of Niter's you will receive both the standard copy of the document, as well as a dyslexia-friendly version which is a rare and valuable accessibility option.
From a game mechanics point of view the impact that the individual candies would have on a game is quite wide-ranging and seems well defined by and connected to the rarity level of each individual confection. What I personally found really appealing about the game effects were that they were well anchored and described in the context and sensibilities of D&D 5e, but had very much the gonzo old-school feeling of something that a player might have found in an old fun-house style adventure like Tegal Manor or Castle Amber.
The only real downside I can see in Niter's Ye Old Candy Shoppe is that for groups who like their adventuring style more 'grimdark' the general fun and whimsical tone might not align with their view of what they want in their game.
Overall I think adding bits and pieces from Niter's Ye Olde Candy Shoppe to existing adventures or using some of the options as seeds for adventures on their own can add a lot of fun and wonder to a D&D campaign and I'm personally looking forward to adding some traveling sales reps from Niter's to my own games in the coming months.
Overall I highly recommend Niter's Ye Olde Candy Shoppe to anyone running a 5e game.
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Back in the day I was a huge fan of the Gazetteer series but lost most of mine in a move. I was super happy to see these books offered through OneBookShelf and immediately pounced on my two favourites in the series Gaz 1 (Karameikos) and Gaz 3 (Glantri).
The Grand Duchy Of Karameikos is a tremendous introduction to the Known World of D&D. The art is amazingly evocative and the layout is extremely user friendly and visually appealing. I purchased the POD version of the book and my copy is crisp and clear.
I highy recommend this book to any fans of the BECMI era of D&D and/or anyone looking for a campaign world that is deep and developed without feeling inherently tied to a lot of named characters in branded fiction.
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If the goal of a free set of quickstart rules is to get you to purchase the full edition than this set is Mission Accomplished!
Basically as soon as I was done reading this I purchased the full rulebook and Feral Hogs scenario and my group was off to the races.
The Modern AGE rules themselves are fairly simple and straightforward and my group was able to pick them up immediately with very little learning curve. I've only run one adventure using these rules so far but my whole group's immediate response was "when can we play again?" so that's the most reliable metric I have to indicate a gme is good.
For $0 if you're interested in a modern RPG that anyone can play and learn you can't afford not to get this.
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Fantastic adventure! If you want a fun post-apocalyptic advnture that doesn't take itself too seriously this is just perfect.
Just ran it for my group and pitched it as Idiocracy meets Mad Max, played it as such and everybody had a blast!
The adventure is a great intro to the Age system as there is; social interactions, combat, breeching challenges, and a chase.
Highly recommend!
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