Super useful set of maps if you are running the Spelljammer adventure.

Just played this. It was a fun adventure with a cool western theme. It was a great Eberron one shot.

The expanded monster manuals are all so great for giving you leveled up versions of monsters you can drop into your campaigns. I use them constantly to make it easier to build out encounters, especially at higher levels. All three are absolutely worth the money, and are the most used products I own from the guild.

The expanded monster manuals are all so great for giving you leveled up versions of monsters you can drop into your campaigns. I use them constantly to make it easier to build out encounters, especially at higher levels. All three are absolutely worth the money, and are the most used products I own from the guild.

The expanded monster manuals are all so great for giving you leveled up versions of monsters you can drop into your campaigns. I use them constantly to make it easier to build out encounters, especially at higher levels. All three are absolutely worth the money, and are the most used products I own from the guild.

I love Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord, so I thought I would love this book, going so far as to buy a fairly expensive physical copy. Unfortunately, I was dissappointed in it.

The Good: I love the system of signs it introduces. I plan on copying it and using it in my next game where I know upfront who the big bad will be. Its a great idea and system to foreshadow the big bad and build tension.

The write ups for Atropus, Sertrous, and Zardon were decent adventure templates, though all require a lot of fleshing out by the DM. I am most tempted to use Zardon, but I would honestly throw out most of what is provided in the book if I did (I just like the art, the look, and the concept of the ruler of the nine hells before Asmodeus).

Its worth 7 bucks just for the good parts though.

The Bad: Most of the other elder evils ranged from boring to uninspiring. I expected to want to use all of them, but really am only tempted by a few.

The Kyuss write up was especially dissappointing because I think its such a cool villian, and the book even says "Hey go check out the Age of Worms adventure path in Dragon", which is a much better use of Kyuss than this book.

The template of providing NPCs who worshiped each elder evil seems like a good idea, but all of the NPCs were pretty uninspiring.

The Ugly:

How much I paid for an original physcial copy!

Why is Zargon only a CR 16??? Every other big bad is such high CR, yet the original ruler of the hells is less than all ancient dragons?

I am reviewing Dead Gods with an eye towards converting it into a high level 5E adventure. This review has spoilers for the adventure. I read an original print of the adventure. After reading the prior reviews, I spot checked the PDF from DMs Guild and it looks fine to me.

The adventure consists of two separate plot lines, Out of the Darkness and Into the Light. Out of the Darkness is the main story, with Into the Light serving as an interesting palate cleanser between chunks of the main campaign. Both have very good stories, centered around how gods die and possibly come back. Most of the adventure focuses on Orcus attempting to fully restore himself from a shadow of his former self known as Tenebrous. The adventures start with hints of what is going on and follows the characters as they encounter Tenebrous’ minions (reality warping demons called visages) and eventually learn they need to track down a pair of drow that know the location of the Wand of Orcus to prevent Tenebrous’ resurrection as Orcus.

The Good: The story is good. It builds over time and should be an interesting mystery for the players. It’s an engaging adventure to read, especially if you like the planes. It uses some interesting mechanics to put the characters in unusual situations, especially in the Into the Light portion of the adventure. There is a very useful flowchart for mapping the adventure.

The Meh: The art can be up and down. Some of the illustrations are awesome, but others don’t make sense with the adventure.

The Bad: Outside of the flowchart, there isn’t a lot to help the DM run the game. There are a ton of NPCs to track in each section, plus planar locations, and huge shifts from adventure to adventure. It’s a lot to keep track of. It leans on the role play pillar over combat, but it feels like most parties will tend toward combat given the way the scenarios are presented. It will take a lot of work to make it work mechanically as a 5E adventure.

Overall, I think the story is good enough that I am willing to put in the work to convert if to 5E. I plan on using it at high level (15-20) so I expect it to be even more challenging to convert. But the core story seems worth it.

I purchased this because I am beginning to plan a pirate campaign (and eventual DM's Guild products) set in the Sea of Fallen Stars. To that end, this book would be 5 stars and is perfect. But as a stand alone product set outside of the Sea of Fallen Stars, I think its a bit less useful, thus the 4 star rating.

The first couple chapters have some useful history and lore, and a bunch of edition specific rules around profieciency I didn't find that useful. The new spells do not seem worth converting to 5th edition.

Chapter 3 on Nations of the Inner Sea is very useful if you want to run a pirate campaign there, and gives an overview of every nation's relationship to piracy. Similarly, Chapter 4 on the Pirate Isles gives plenty of details and ideas to help build interesting adventures. Chapter 5 is a Rogue's Gallery, and I expect to use many of the pirates featured there, though many need some tweaking to make really memorable villians I think.

Chapter 6 and 7 are all about ships and nautical mechanics. That already exists in 5e in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and I am not super interested in the mechanics, so I just skimmed these chapters and don't have much of an opinion.

Chapter 8 is an adventure. Its pretty well done in that there is a fair number of choices and branches the party can go down. But it would take a fair amount of work as a DM to actually run since its pretty light on details. But the hook and structure is probably good enough that I will use it as an adventure in my eventual campaign.

Overall, I got what I was looking for out of the book, but I think its pretty specific to "I want to run a pirate campaign/adventure". I dont think its really worth buying and reading on its own for fun compared to other setting books that are out there since it is so specific.

I’ve read about a third of the book so far, and perused it all, so I feel like I know enough to write a quality review that might help others in their purchasing decisions sooner rather than waiting till I finish the whole book (which I definitely will). I purchased the PDF and hardcover edition myself. I have done most of my reading on the PDF version.

Who this book is for: Forgotten Realms fans Fans of 2e regional source books that are much more fluff than crunch Someone who would like to run a self created campaign or mini-campaign set in the Border Kingdoms DMs who like to steal interesting tidbits or ideas and drop them into their game People who enjoy Ed Greenwood’s writing style (lots of specific, sometimes mundane details (LOTS of parenthetical asides))

Who this book is NOT for: Someone looking for lots of class options for their character A DM looking for a campaign setting/adventure they can run with minimal prep Someone looking for a punchy, concise, well structured game aid.

Personally I love this book, but I am a fan of the Realms. It has a ton of ideas in it, many of them completely novel and delightful. I’ve already stolen and used two different ideas in a couple weeks, and found a couple new ones in the last 5 or so pages I read. I get excited and tell folks about the cool ideas and turns of phrases I see at a rate of about one every five pages. If you love old FR regional settings books, it’s a no brainer.

It definitely has flaws though. I find myself re-reading sentences frequently because of awkward sentence construction. The first chapter, which is roughly 75% of the book, is poorly and seemingly inconsistently organized. Am I reading about a city? A realm? A city in a realm? (note I usually read in short 5-10 minute chunks that likely exacerbates this). If there was more consistent organization and subtitles of similar sections it would make it much more consumable. There is also a lot of mundane detail that some DMs may find useful, but I usually do not. There are more exciting ideas than mundane ones to be sure, but I sometimes find myself skimming stuff that is a little too fluffy even for me.

The campaign ideas, backgrounds, and trinkets at the end of the book are fine (and very useful if you are going to run a campaign in the border kingdoms) but nothing to buy the book for by themselves.

The physical book I got was about what I expected - the page quality isn’t up to par with an official dnd product, but it's more than good enough. It will look good with the rest of my dnd books on the shelf.

I’m rating this as 5 stars because that is what it is for me as a fan of the Realms and my style of DMing. If I were a DM that generally just wants to run adventure path type stuff with minimal prep work who wasn’t interested in the lore of the realms I would not recommend this book.

I literally just finished running the "Alterdeep" idea from this. One of the best sessions I have ran in a long time, and I condensed it all down to two hours. I actually mostly just used the idea of stealing it and making it matrix-like and then filling in campaign specific details, but it worked like a charm. the PCs loved it.

I found this useful as I am running this level of DotMM right now. It has given me some good role playing ideas (language for the gith, who largely don't speak common) and helps drive you towards the cool part of the adventure. Really kind of the extra stuff there isn't room for in the book, but can enhance the player's experience, that I as DM would never have time to sit down and think of. It also helps tie this level to the next one. It's not a must have, but its very useful and I would reccomend it to a DM running the Crystal Labyrinth.

I found this guide useful. It made it easier for me to DM SKT. It's not at the level of a necessity, but still very useful.

First, highest praise - I will definately incorporate it into the Curse of Strahd game I am about to run. Its a neat way to use the tarokka deck (and hopefully encourage me to give inspiration more) and most of the beneficial effects don't seem overpowered (I've only read the PDF, not played with it yet).

That said, I dislike the way the despair effect is implemented - it feels like a punishment when another PC does well. I am probably going to toss out the whole despair/morale system and instead give out a despair card when something bad happens to a PC (ie they drop below 0 hit points) and then let them roll a saving throw at the end of each long rest to overcome the despair. That's simpler and it doesn't punish the PCs for using their inspriation rewards.

Once I actually try this out in play I will try to update the review.

Very well written. The strength of the side trek is a good but very concise narritive, with decent options for expansion if you show choose. I would happily run this in my own campaign. As advertised, it is dark, and so might not appeal to some players.

This product is best served as a reference for someone wanting to run a campaign or adventures set in the Impiltur region. It is basically a region specific slice of Grand History of the Realms, with some new lore and vignettes. For that reason, it is best suited as a reference only. The writing in the vignettes is good, but I didn't find them particularly insprising in terms of ideas for a campaign of my own.

George Krashos is a well known and well regarded Realms historian who has written for Dragon several times so this is good, authoritative work. I think the way this work would be better is if it gave a little bit more DM's instruction as to good resources for general Impiltur reading to give better context (beyond what is in the index).

Regardless, for free (I beleuive the work is already avaiblable for free at Candlekeep.com), this is an awesome product.