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An Endzeitgeist.com review
This installment of the Monstrous Lairs-pdfs clocks in at 8 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, leaving us with 2 pages of content, so let’s take a look!
Sometimes, you just need a bit of dressing for a wayside encounter – or something specific to a monster type. Finding appropriate entries can be rough, and so, this series attempts to remedy this shortcoming on 2 pages, with a total of 7 d10-tables.
In this installment, we take a look at Ogres and their cavernous living spaces: The first table allows us to describe the approach to the lair, which may feature disjointed wood fencing, red paint warning from the ogre (who may not care of be color blind) or makeshift trenches. As for what’s going on? Well the ogre may be cooking a surprisingly delicious-smelling stew, be a female drinking from a barrel used as a tankard, examine an itchy, bloody sore…or stand around with closed eyes…meditating?!? Great selection of diverse and odd things here.
Among the notable features, we have an intact dragon skeleton, pits used as rubbish dumps leading below, fissures in ceiling or floor and the like. Minor features allow for further customization of the cave after determining the key feature, with fleas in abundance or a throne-like rock-outcropping feeling very ogrish. Being intelligent (in a manner of speaking…), ogres do dress, so seeing one in a long, black hood may be intriguing; costume jewelry, a (non-functional) DaVinci-esque bat-wing contraption or an allergic reaction – quite an impressive breadth covered there. As far as treasures are concerned we can find silver-inlaid chess pieces, and expended wand of magic missiles as a back-scratcher and the like – cool! An ogre fascinated with nesting dolls or a curious banner in the cave may also hint at future adventures…
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no serious hiccups. Layout adheres to Raging Swan Press’ elegant two-column b/w-standard, and we get a nice piece of b/w-artwork. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience, in spite of its brevity (kudos!) and is included in two versions – one optimized for screen-use, and one for the printer.
Mike Welham delivers – again. The ogre’s cave is an amazing little dressing file. Inexpensive, inspiring and just plain fun, this is definitely worth getting if you need some dressing for the inevitable ogre encounters that almost every campaign features. 5 Stars + seal of approval.
Endzeitgeist out.
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