Dread Laironomicon, Another mighty tome of useful tables from Raging Swan this time covering the lairs of 100 monsters, bandits, buildings, caves, villages, haunts and dens. All detailed in a book with over 210 pages of tables, indexes and illustrations.

Each section is divided into 7 topics: outside the lair; what’s going on; major lair features; minor lair features; appearance of the occupant; treasure; and trinkets & trash. Each of these sections has a numbered list of descriptions that you can roll randomly on or just choose from. Lots of careful thought has gone into these lists as each one contains descriptions that suit the lair inhabitant very well. To a discerning adventurer, these can be very good clues as to what they are about to face as they approach the lair.

Also included is a concordance style index where you pick your lair by creature type and then find beneath it is shown all the pertinent sections that relate to that subject. I find this feature very useful to create a complete picture of what I want to share when using a theme.

I highly recommend this book as it will definitely make your life easier and more fun as a DM when creating your adventure both beforehand and also on the fly. After all, who doesn’t want to give out the randomly rolled clue of ‘the smattering of yellow spikes juts from tree trunks while a few others litter the ground’ as the hapless adventurers approach the manticore’s lair seeking shelter…

The Dread Thingonomicon - where bigger is abundantly better and more fun!

Do you want verisimilitude in your games? I do and I found it in this the latest tome from Raging Swan Press! This mighty tome has an abundance of easy-to-use tables to populate those empty parts of a dungeon or environment description. A room is just a boring room until you start adding the small pieces of description that fill the out mental picture your players are creating in their minds. What are those small pieces of description? Well, that all depends upon the room type! Maybe it’s an alchemists’ lab, or a library or even an underground cavern; the Dread Thingonomicon covers them all and lots of others too.

For example, do you want to be able to tell your players what they have just found and what happens after they stumble into an alchemists’ laboratory looking for a place to buy potions? Then use the tables contained in the book to describe what the players see in the room and what the occupants are doing. To aid this, there are half a dozen NPCs described that can be used for roleplay along with another table to enable further adventuring with possible side-quests. Easy to use and quickly found in the book.

Dragons, everyone’s favourite monster. Need to know the name of the white dragon that has just been discovered in its lair due to a random encounter? Roll for it or choose it from the table and while you are at it, fill out the lair details and then add some distinguishing marks to the beast. All these things are listed on the tables under the section devoted to the white dragon. There are likewise separate sections for black, blue, green and red dragons.

And then there is the section for undead! Who doesn’t enjoy an encounter with undead? Need somewhere for them to found? That could be a necropolis or even in a cultists lair and both of those have their own detailed sections.

This mighty tome covers many many more subjects, not just the three mentioned above, with excellent detailed descriptions that are concise and easy to read. The layout is cleverly done with a precise contents table detailing the book page by page allowing you to quickly find what you want. Also included is a concordance style index where you pick your subject and then find beneath it is shown all the pertinent sections that relate to that subject. I find this feature very useful to create a complete picture of what I want to share.

The book is enhanced with a good number of excellent subject-relevant illustrations and the occasional bonus map.

I highly recommend this book as it will definitely make your life easier as a DM when creating your adventure both beforehand and also on the fly. After all, who doesn’t want to know what is in that pouch the kobold was carrying or what the random passer-by on the road looks like before you start to interact…

Ship wreck ahoy! Watch out....all is not as it seems. A short fun adventure that has its own storyline or it can easily fit into a campaign as a random encounter.

Bought as a print-on-demand as the originals are now commanding ridiculous sums of money. Very good quality paper and images all bound sturdily into a usable book. The only issue is the maps are contained within the bound book so I will reprint them separately myself.

Bought as a print-on-demand as the originals are now commanding ridiculous sums of money. Very good quality paper and images all bound sturdily into a usable book. The only issue is the maps are contained within the bound book so I will reprint them separately myself.

Bought as a print-on-demand as the originals are now commanding ridiculous sums of money. Very good quality paper and images all bound sturdily into a usable book. The only issue is the maps are contained within the bound book so I will reprint them separately myself.

Bought as a print-on-demand as the originals are now commanding ridiculous sums of money. Very good quality paper and images all bound sturdily into a usable book. The only issue is the maps are contained within the bound book so I will reprint them separately myself.

This is a short but fun mystery adventure at sea. Nicely detailed with plenty of scope for tuning to your game or campaign. I enjoyed running it.

This is a brilliantly useful book for fleshing out dungeons, encounters, location settings and more! You can use it on-the-fly by rolling dice or just by selecting through choice. Lots of good ideas to bring your game more to life!

Nicely written short module that easily plugged into an ongoing campaign (D&D v3.5) with typical minor changes to suit. I enjoyed running it and the players enjoyed it too.

Nicely written short module that easily plugged into an ongoing campaign with typical minor changes to suit. I enjoyed running it and the players enjoyed it too.