An Endzeitgeist.com review

Okay, so, first things first: Since getting The Witcher RPG review done in time for the start of the Netflix show, and since I am pretty OCD, this review was moved up in my reviewing queue as well.

What is this? It is a GM’s screen for The Witcher RPG, with a 4-page pdf that includes the player-facing side, and one 4-page pdf for the GM-facing side. The player-facing side features, unsurprisingly, only artworks. This front is also included as a jpg.

The screen is accompanied by the “Lords & Lands”-booklet – which clocks in at 16 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 12 pages of content.

My review is based on the electronic version of this supplement – I don’t own the physical screen (since it is pretty expensive), and thus can’t comment on durability, material, etc.

All right, so, let’s start with the screen: On the first page, we have a list of actions you can take on the left-hand side; Default DCs and modifiers/light levels are included alongside ranges, damage locations and common cover tables.

The second page has all the information regarding healing, wounds and magical fumbles. The third page contains the rules for fixing broken gear…and also the basic guidelines for monsters per encounter, which struck me as odd. Currency conversion? Makes sense. The table for awarding I.P.? Less so, since it’s ultra generic anyways. The screen has a few peculiarities: For one, it sports several text blocks that are hard to parse in-game, and of dubious value regarding their information:

“By declaring a Fast Draw at the start of the round, you raise your initiative by +3 for that round by taking a -3 to your attack. However, you must make an attack and you cannot benefit from aiming or any other aim-related ability. If your weapon is not drawn, you may draw it as part of this action.”

You can’t tell me that you can’t present this information in a way that is easier to parse. That’s also a lot of real estate for a core rule.

Speaking of real estate: Know what’s not on the screen? A table that tells you what plants/critter parts, etc.contain Fulgur, Queberith, etc. Yes, this’d take up room – and there is none.

Know what we get instead of these actually useful things? An artwork on every page of the inside of the GM-screen.

-.-

…

I like artworks as much as the next guy, but these artworks are USELESS, and GM-screens are all about…UTILITY. Combine all artworks, and we have almost an entire (!!!) page of real estate LOST. That is a most puzzling, and imho rather bass-ackwards design decision.

Speaking of which: Puzzlingly, we begin the booklet with everyman NPC stats BEFORE we get the player-facing material – that makes no sense, and if you’re like me and prefer that players not have this information, it will annoy you to no end.

After this, we get the new halfling race, who receive +1 to Athletics, +2 to Wilderness Survival when calming, taming or controlling animals, and +5 to Resist Magic AND they may check to avoid mental control, even when this would usually not be allowed. Halflings can’t benefit from the positive effects of Witcher potions. They also enjoy near universal equality, and are even tolerated in the xenophobic North. Okay, does this mean halflings can see through e.g. Afan’s Mirror? Does it exclude them from using Vaults of Knowledge? I have no idea. In the absence of a proper descriptor in the base engine, this needs clarification. The write-up does not note how many siblings haflings are supposed to have; I assume human default, but it feels odd to me.

The booklet also features a new profession, the Noble, a profession that REALLY should have been in the core book. The noble’s defining signature skill is Notoriety, which is also added to the Reputation in their own and allied countries, half the value in hostile territories. I assume rounded down here, but the pdf doesn’t state as much. The skill tree includes gaining servants and an estate; really cool: There is a means to dabble in skills: If you invest in Dabble, you get two skill points in skills you have 0 ranks in, making them the jack-of-all-trades, if desired. One of the progressions of the skill tree focuses more on combat utility, on armored mounted combat, to be precise – so if you wanted to make a pompous knight from Toussaint? There you go.

But wait, estate? Yeah, there is a very basic one-page estate-building engine here, with 8 additions provided, ranging from barracks to greenhouse, etc. The estate is weird, in that it’ll be either overpowered, or nigh useless: If the party is moving a lot, it won’t matter as much – or at all, if the war engulfs it. What happens if an estate is lost? Can nobles be excommunicated by e.g. our friends of the flaming rose and lose their estate? Conversely, if nothing goes wrong and you play a gritty witcher game of survival, scrounging stuff together, etc., you get free resources without limits. The estate’s benefits should most assuredly have a cooldown or the like.

On the other hand, there are no costs to maintaining an estate, which make it feel somewhat cosmetic, like it’s generating materials ex nihilo. There are means to enhance locks to DC 18 and 20, but annoyingly, these do not further enhance the security for the torture chamber or secret room, if present – this can result, funnily enough, in the torture chamber having a worse lock than the rest of the estate. The low maximum DC here is also a bit lame. Where is the means to make a dungeon? A dimeritium-based magic-creature/mage-confinement cell? Where is the banquet hall that enhances the Host ability from another part of the skill tree? This is all so half-done, so opaque.

The final section of the book is probably the best – we get stats for flails, lamia, whips, etc, as well as 4 new alchemical items, which include berserker’s brew, celestine, cadaverine solution and summer ointment. From jars of leeches and masquerade masks to false coins, plague masks and vials of gut worms, we also get a couple of cool items regarding other gear – and yes, the weapons come with proper crafting diagram information, including costs for the diagrams.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal level; on a rules-language level, I was less excited by what I found here. Layout adheres to the game’s two-column full-color standard, and the booklet sports two full-page full-color artworks, as well as a couple of smaller ones. The booklet comes fully bookmarked, in spite of its brevity.

Cody Pondsmith’s Witcher GM-screen and its associated booklet leave me in an odd place: I don’t think the GM-screen does a bad job, but neither does it do a good one. The amount of wasted space is strange, and the inclusion of these real-estate consuming textblocks of basic rules feels even stranger. The booklet suffers from the nonsensical decision of front-loading NPC-stats. I was not impressed by the halflings. The noble profession should have been in the core book, and the estate-running rules, sorry to say, are a joke – detailed estate rules could have easily filled a booklet of the entire size of this supplement. Easily.

This leaves me with only the NPCs and items to be excited about, which isn’t exactly a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, The Witcher RPG needed such an expansion – but it needed a proper one. Can you play Thronebreaker-like games with this? NO. Does it have a robust “command your own units”-engine? NO. Does it have proper estate-rules? NO.

This is a flimsy, flimsy and somewhat half-hearted attempt at making estates and Nobles work in the game. If you handwave a lot of things, then this might work for you. It does not work for me. At all.

As a whole, this supplement feels like a patch, like a mini-DLC, and not like one of the CD Projekt RED-variety with tons of content.

This is NOT per se a bad supplement, mind you – but it’s also not even close to being a good one. It doesn’t make me think I need the screen, and the booklet, as noted, failed to impress me.

All in all, my final verdict can’t exceed 2.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review of the revised edition

This supplement clocks in at 45 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page introduction, 2 pages of advertisement, 2 pages of SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 37 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review of the revised edition was moved up in my reviewing queue as a prioritized review at the request of my patreons.

So, if the title wasn’t enough of an indicator, this book provides material for the occult classes, the Ultimate Intrigue & Wilderness books – namely, for the Heroic Races introduced in Jon Brazer Enterprise’s Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Compendium. The races covered herein are androids, changelings, catfolk, dhampir, elan, lizardfolk, merfolk, samsarans, sashahar, skinwalkers, tengus, umbral kobolds, wyrwoods and wyvarans. Each of the entries for the races comes with favored class options for the new classes in the aforementioned Paizo-hardcovers, and we get class options, racial feats and otherwise unique options for each of the races herein.

Androids get two new racial archetypes, the first of which would be the living archive medium, who loses shared séance, haunt channeler and astral journey. This would be a good place to note that I like the formatting here: Each of the archetypes and more complex options note the associated class and race as well as the replaced and modified abilities in the beginning – this makes it easier to determine whether the archetype is for the build you have in mind. So yeah, I like this decision.

Living archives use Charisma as governing spellcasting ability and 2nd level nets the spirit esoteric ability: One spirit is chosen as the specialty spirit, which means that the medium gains the chosen spirit’s spirit bonus even when not channeling it. When channeling another spirit, this bonus may supersede that usually granted by the spirit. 3rd level allows the living archive to perform a séance to channel this chosen spirit in places other than the favored location. 14th level provides SP legend lore, but requires touching the person, place or thing. The verbiage has improved here considerably.

The second archetype would be the splintered mind psychic, who loses detect thoughts, telepathic bond and telepathy. The archetype modifies discipline, and gains both the lore and self-perfection disciplines simultaneously. Whenever the psychic gets a discipline spell or power, she chooses one from these two or a lower-level discipline power or spell chosen from the two. Wisdom remains the phrenic pool-governing ability score. 2nd level allows the splintered mind to use 1 phrenic pool point to use the nanite surge racial ability, even if she has already expended it for the day. 9th level allows the character to use nanite surge after failing a save versus an enchantment spell or effect to attempt a second save on the next round, with a bonus as if she had nanite surge’d it. In the revised iteration, this properly states the activation action. 17th level nets a failsafe spell: Spend 10 minutes of meditation and expend twice the spell’s level in phrenic pool point cost to get a contingency-style spell that is triggered as long as she has at least one nanite surge left. The revised edition now allows for phrenic pool expenditure to power this as well, making it fully operational. Kudos!

The race gets 3 new feats: Nanite Firewall lets you expend a daily use of nanite surge to mitigate influence; Nanite Maintenance lets you expend a daily use of nanite surge to reduce influence by 1d3 (minimum 1). Nanite Stabilization upgrades Logical Spell to not require higher spell slots while you have at least 1 nanite surge remaining. Psychic repair dispels ongoing effects that reduce the mental ability scores (does NOT cure damage, drain or burn!) and with a nanite surge to boost it, it can eliminate a charm or compulsion effect targeting the caster – the spell is personal, fyi. Solid.

The catfolk get the new feline interloper vigilante archetype, which replaces unshakeable. The archetype gets proficiency with simple and martial weapons as well as shuriken, bola and whip and adds Handle Animal and Knowledge (dungeoneering) and (engineering) to the class skills. The archetype is locked into the stalker specialization, but may use the combat skill talent to get catfolkr racial combat feats, and at 3rd level, gets + class level to the DC to be feinted. The archetype gets two social talents, one that acts as wild empathy with 1 + Cha-mod charm animal as a SP on top, which upgrades to charm monster at 7th level. Sounds OP? Well, it can only affect feline/felid creatures, so I’m good with it. The second talent nets better gathering of renown when stealing particularly valuable objects from a target. A new vigilante talent nets Improved Unarmed Strike and flurry of blows at unchained monk -3 levels. The second new vigilante talent allows for limited style strike poaching from the unchained monk. There are new mesmerist tricks here, including one that makes the subject emanate a dazzle-variant based on sound that can hamper spellcasting on the subject. The second trick can deny a target that moves adjacent to the subject their Dex-bonus versus the next attack executed by the subject, which is per se cool. However, the enemy gets an immediate action Sense Motive to negate this, which is interesting. There is a masterful trick upgrade of this one, which now properly states its prerequisite.

Changelings get the malformed eye mesmerist archetype, which loses consummate liar, hypnotic stare and painful stare. Instead, the archetype gets a witch’s patron and the evil eye hex, which allows for the addition of bold stare improvements as if it were hypnotic gaze. The revised iteration has made the rules clearer. The archetype may also use forbid action as a free action, 1/round at-will SP, but the target may still sue the action. When doing so, the target takes scaling, untyped damage. This can only be triggered once per round, though.

The race also gets a new medium spirit, the crone, who applies spirit bonus to concentration, Int-based checks and Will-saves. The séance boon increases the CL of all non-instantaneous spells by 3 for the purpose of determining duration. Influence penalty applies to AC, atk, non-spell damage rolls and Ref-saves. The taboos are interesting. The lesser ability nets you use the mesmerists’s spells per day and expands your spell-list with witch spells. The intermediate power nets a non-stacking CL-increase for a school. The greater ability lets you accept influence to further boost per-round—duration spell durations. The supreme ability lets you 1/day use this in a better manner, and sans influence. The shifter gets the black cat aspect. Minor form nets you a minor luck bonus to AC as well as a penalty to nearby foes at 8th level, with higher levels increasing range of the penalty and the bonus. The major form lets you assume a Tiny black cat shape, including a luck bonus to atk. Higher levels also grant Black Cat and extend the bonus to saves and makes the feat usable 3/day at 15th level. Once more, rules improved here. The favored class options here deserve special mention, as they are pretty complex and interesting.

Dhampirs get two new racial archetypes, the first of which would be the blood scion mesmerist, who loses touch treatment, mental potency and glib lie. Instead, 3rd level allows the dhampir to use a standard action to lock gazes with the subject of a hypnotic stare as a standard action, acting as charm person while under the dhampir’s stare. Interesting – the target loses the memory of being affected thus. Limited and rather potent, but also iconic for the vampire-theme – I can get behind this one particularly since it is balanced by a hex-like caveat, so yeah -I actually really like it! 5th level allows for the summon nature’s ally-based SP of calling children of the night, with 10th, 15th and 20th level improving that. The revised iteration imposes the proper limitation here. 14th level adds the advanced creature template to the creatures called. 11th level allows for a better version of the archetype’s base ability, duplicating dominate person. This is a prime example of a good, flavorful engine-tweak in the revised iteration – big kudos!

The second archetype is the grim warder occultist, who loses magic circles and outside contact. They are locked into adjuration and conjuration as first two implement schools, but casts spells from them at CL+2; however, necromancy implement school spells are cast at -2 CL and similarly, the level to qualify for focus powers of the school is reduced by 2. The archetype is also locked into these favored schools for implement mastery. 8th level nets warding circles, which are undead-only magic circles against evil that may be enhanced with death ward via mental focus expenditure, even suppressing, though not removing, penalties from negative levels incurred by creatures prior to entering it. 12th level provides an undead-only binding circle powered by mental focus and fast circle applies to these specialized circles. As much as I liked the first archetype, this one left me less enthused – a pretty vanilla anti-undead option. The race also gets the Hypnotic Charmer feat, which lets you take 20 or 10 when using Cha-based skills on targets of your hypnotic stare.

Elans are up next, and we get a new medium archetype, the generation channeler, who replaces shared séance. These fellows may spend 2 power points to increase the die-size of the spirit surge die for one surge. (Rules cleaned up – kudos!) Instead of a shared séance’s usual benefits, we get +2 to saves versus enchantment and mind-affecting effects. The archetype may also expend power points to ask additional questions to haunts channeled, with the maximum number of additional questions contingent on Intelligence modifier. The pdf also includes a new aether composite blast, at Burn 2 – the elan force thrust, which adds a bull rush to the blast and causes force damage. There is a new mesmerist trick that nets catapsi when targeted with a psionic power or psi-like ability, though it only affects the subject. There are new phrenic amplifications, the first of which is somewhat problematic: Use 2 power points for one phrenic pool point? OUCH. This really delimits phrenic pool points for primarily psions. Not gonna happen in my game. The second amplification lets you expend power points to cast standard action divinations as swift actions or increase the DC of scrying or mind-affecting divinations. Elan vigilantes can get Cha-mod/day demoralize as a psi-like power plus class level power points; alternatively, another talent makes all vigilante melee attacks ghost touch and, later also adds a bonus of +2 to atk versus incorporeal targets, undead, mediums channeling spirits and spiritualist phantoms. Neat ones!

We also get a new medium spirit, the elan elder, whose spirit bonus applies to concentration checks and Intelligence checks and Int-based skill checks. The séance boon nets +2 to Will saves versus mind-affecting spells and powers. The influence penalty applies to Dex checks and Dex-based skill checks as well as Perception checks, but not on any saves. The taboos make sense. The lesser ability lets you spend power points for capped bonuses when using psychic skill unlocks; the intermediate power lets the medium accept 1 point of influence for +2 DC for a medium spell’s or psionic power’s DC – a very welcome reorientation for the previously problematic ability. The greater ability requires letting the spirit gain 1 point of influence. If you do, you may manifest ANY psion/wilder power as if you were a psion/wilder of the same level. You expend a spell slot of a level to manifest ANY psion/wilder power of the level of the slot you expended. Metapsionics may not be added, but you can augment the power via power points. This is pretty brutal, but kept in check by the medium’s spell levels. The supreme ability lets you 1/day use the greater power sans spell slot requirements or influence gained and takes away the level-limitation. The revised version here is much better than the original.

The lizardfolk race gets a new shifter archetype that loses sharp claws, defensive instinct and trackless step as well as the shifter claw increases. 1st level nets scaling studied target and 2nd level a scaling, Wisdom-governed AC/CMD bonus, which is halved when wearing nonmetal shields/armor instead, otherwise akin to the way in which monk-AC bonuses work. 3rd level nets fast movement and 5th level extra precision damage when moving, which scales. The main meat of class options here would be shifter aspects, 5 of which are provided: Alligator/crocodile, gecko, chameleon, pteranodon and snapping turtle. The first nets better aquatic Stealth and a 1/minute boost to base speed at 8th level while in minor form; Kudos: The major form correctly codifies the natural bite attack granted and the abilities gained make sense. Chameleon also enhances Stealth in minor form, but less so and regardless of environment. It provides standard and move action in surprise rounds at 8th level, and the major form is cool, with high levels netting your sticky tongue bludgeoning damage based on racial claws or shifter’s claws. Gecko enhances climbing and initiative and the major form provides some true climbing superiority and bite enhancers. Pteranodon nets a bonus to AC and initiative in minor form, while major form nets you clumsy fly speed, which improves in speed and maneuverability later and also nets you Flyby Attack et al at 15th level. Snapping turtle is interesting, in that it nets an AC bonus that increases when the character doesn’t move or attack. All in all, I enjoyed these shifter aspects.

Merfolk get two new water blasts: Siren’s song is a burn 0 sonic simple blast at reduced die size of d4 to account for the rare damage type; the composite blast Shrieking Song clocks in at 2 burn and provides composite sonic with the same reduction. There also are two utility wild talents, the first of which is siren’s kiss. For 1 burn, the DC increases by 2 and the talent nets you unnatural lust, save it requires concentration to maintain. Siren’s call duplicates nixie’s lure, requires concentration and has a 100-ft.-range. Not a fan: If you accept 1 burn, you don’t need to maintain concentration and the effect is prolonged until you next recover burn. Merfolk mediums may gain two new legendary spirits – Charybdis and Scylla, based on marshal and trickster, respectively. Charybdis’ séance boon nets you +2 to grapple checks and the influence penalty applies to Int- and Int-based checks as well as CL for the purpose of determining duration and range, which is BRUTAL. You also can’t benefit from CL-enhancing effects, which now explicitly does not include feats. The spirit gets an interesting intermediate ability: When an enemy targets the directly affects the medium or counters or negates a medium’s spell, the medium may, as an immediate action, allow the spirit to gain 1 influence to have the opponent suffer from crushing despair for a number of rounds equal to the medium’s highest spell-level known. Durations stack. This ability has been seriously cleaned up. Like it!

Scylla, based on the trickster, applies the spirit boon to Dexterity checks, Dexterity-based skill checks and Ref-saves. The séance boon nets a +1 bonus on one skill, which is also treated as a class skill. The influence penalty makes you not count as an ally for effects and also makes you not count as a willing recipient of spells. You must even be hit by touch spells, but you’re not forced to save versus beneficial spells. The unique ability here is classified as greater and has been renamed “terror of Numbers.” The ability allows the medium to allow Scylla to gain 1 influence to either reroll a die-roll or force an enemy to reroll; an enemy forced to reroll takes a penalty to the reroll equal to number of opponents within 10 feet, maximum the medium’s Charisma modifier. This formerly broken ability has been properly cleaned up and now is pretty neat!

We also get two mesmerist tricks: The first can be triggered on entering light, granting the target temporary hit points. The second grants darkvision upon entering darkness. Shifters gain a new shark aspect, which focuses on sensory improvements. The major form nets later a better bite. Minor and purely aesthetic wording quibble in the FCOs: “When gaining a taboo, the medium can use spirit surge without incurring influence one additional +1/4 time per day.” The final part of that sentence could be a bit cleaner.

Samsarans get a new occultist implement school, the eternal implements. The resonant power nets +1 competence bonus to Intelligence-based skill and ability-checks for every 2 points of mental focus invested, capping at 1 + 1 for every 4 class levels. The base focus power is touch of antiquity, which allows you to expend 1 point of mental focus to cause an object to age, inflicting 1d4 +1d4 for every 2 occultist levels untyped damage to an object and also cause it to be broken. Constructs may alternatively be targeted with a melee touch attack and a base damage die of 1d6, scaling the same way as the damage to objects. We get a total of 6 focus powers: One grants a combat feat, which must not have feat prerequisites, but otherwise, the target needs not fulfill the prerequisites. The power lasts for 1 minute and another feat is granted every 6 class levels thereafter and the feats may build upon each other, offsetting the no-feat-prerequisite caveat. Now this one is INTERESTING and well-executed, particularly since the revised version got rid of the one hiccup. Collective calm lets you choose multiple skills and take 10 in them, even under duress. Mantle of antiquity nets you a 20% miss chance and the option to gain a massive +10 insight bonus to a save, ending the mantle’s effects. Vast improvement over the original. Reincarnation’s guise is a combo’d disguise self and +4 ability score boost. Restore grandeur is the inverse of the base focus power, restoring items and constructs. Living targets may also be healed thus, but only 1/day. Wisdom of the ages, finally, nets legend lore, and has been properly cleared up as well. The implement school comes with its own spell-list – no complaints there.

Samsarans also get two new racial feats, Empathic Healer, which lets you heal ability score damage via mental focus or phrenic pool points when using Life’s Blood, taking the damage yourself. Reincarnated Hero nets you a bonus on Cha-based checks in vigilante identity and helps renown when you gain it. This is one of my favorite chapters within! (And I don’t even particularly like the samsarans…)

The sashahar get a new legendary spirit with Sessinakka (based on Guardian), complete with taboos and gaining favor covered. The ability gained is intermediate and provides an extended spell-list and the option to use spirit surge to boost concentration and CL-checks when casting these spells. We also get a new implement school here, the sentinel implements. The resonant power here is applied to saves against the extraplanar subtype. The base focus power is a swift action 20 ft.-burst that deals 2 points of untyped damage per class level, no save. Not a fan. We get 6 focus powers and a custom spell-list. Negating flanking benefits for one round per class level, a boost to CMD and saves versus attempts to move you and fighting on when almost killed by an extraplanar subtype creature are three of the benefits. At 11th level, you can get a rather cool summoning-suppression-field, which I really liked; the new version no longer auto-wins against certain builds, so kudos. Planar ward debuffs foreigners to your plane and nets a boost versus their tricks. I also really liked the high-level teleportation scrambler.

We also get a new psychic discipline, the gate guardian, who uses Wisdom as governing attribute. The first discipline power nets you temporary access to defense-themed monster abilities like fast healing, ferocity or light fortification and these improve at higher levels, also adding DR and AC-boosts and resistances to the mix. 5th level nets a scaling save bonus to either Fort- or Ref-saves, your choice. 13th lets you negate 1 critical hit confirmation per day, 2/day at 18th level. Nice one. There is a vigilante talent that nets the planar weapon quality and upgrades to +2 to atk versus creatures with the extraplanar subtype.

Skinwalkers get a pretty nice medium archetype that tweaks all of the standard spirits. The lunar spirits include: Witchbeast (archmage): Reckless and dislikes casting on allies, uses witch spell list. Ruler of Fangs (champion) nets better natural weapon base damage and martial weapon proficiency. Furred Warden (guardian) nets spirit bonus to AC and heavy armor proficiency as a lesser ability. The greater ability has been thoroughly cleaned up and now operates properly, allowing you to step in and grapple foes targeting allies. Moonwatcher (hierophant) has the archmage arcana spirit power, using druid/shaman lists instead as a lesser power. The intermediate ability is pretty specific – it duplicates energy font, but instead causes all skinwalkers to change shape instantaneously. Overflowing moonlight builds on grace and the previous ability, modifying it accordingly. The Grinning Beast (marshal) gets only the basics modified, not the powers, and the same goes for the Sewer Grandmaster (trickster). All of the spirits have séance boons that grant bestial features according to the nature of the spirits. I really liked this one and wished it had more room to shine: The tying of bestial features with séances is smart, the taboos etc. are cool and I like the custom spirit array. This is worth returning to and expanding to full-blown class tweak, imho.

Skinwalkers also get a new vigilante archetype, the moonlight lurker, whose vigilante identity must incorporate the animalistic features of change shape. The archetype can shift identities as a full-round action, as a standard action in moonlight, using the change shape racial ability in conjunction with it. The lurker gets two bestial traits when using change shape, which improves by +1 at 5th and 9th level. 13th level also nets a potent ability like fly, pounce etc. 17th level nets a second one from this list and 20th level provides regeneration 5, suppressed by silver. This does come with a price, though: No social talent at first level and, more painfully, no vigilante specialization. There are two lycanthrope-themed vigilante-talents, one for scaling attribute bonuses and one for scaling DR/silver. The moonshifter loses chimeric aspect and its greater brother as well as final aspect. Shifter claw benefits are applied to two natural weapons gained via change shape and it may be activated as a swift action. 9th level provides a hybrid form when in minor aspect; this improved at 14th level and the capstone nets change shape/wild shape transparency as well as DR 10/silver.

Tengus are up next, beginning with the vinculum corruptor occultist, who loses magic item skill and aura sight. Additionally, he only gets ½ class level + Int-mod mental focus. However, he does get ½ level (I assume minimum 1) of vinculum focus. This behaves as a regular mental focus, but enhances the CL when targeting the owner’s type/subtype. Owner? Yep, for these points may only be invested in implements that rightfully belong to another, which is interesting. 2nd level yields +1/2 class level to Sleight of Hand and 5th level lets the archetype locate creature implement owners. The swaggering avenger vigilante loses the appearance-ability tree and the 2nd level vigilante talent. They are locked into the avenger specialization and gain Dazzling Display, usable sans weapon as a standard action, at 2nd level. +2 to atk versus foes demoralized thus. There is a talent that lets you make a creature hit itself – and in the revised edition, the ability not only works, it makes sense in-game – kudos! 5th level nets Performance Combatant and a performance feat. 11th level nets temporary hit points with successful performance combat checks and 17th level lets you now use a swift action when reducing a foe to negative HP to AoE-demoralize foes.

There is a complex phrenic amplification that allows you to steal mental energy, like focuses, mesmerist tricks etc. via spells, which is interesting and, more importantly, really smoothly designed: It can’t be cheesed with kittens, the save-interaction is tight and neat. The target is also temporarily staggered, and no, no stagger-locking the target. Impressive one! The shifter, finally, gets the crow aspect (doesn’t specify natural attack type, requires defaulting), but otherwise, solid. The favored class options here are interesting, though the occultist bonus requires a legacy weapon, making it only relevant for the transmutation implement school.

The umbral kobolds are up next, starting with the shadowpsychic, who gets more phrenic pool – but whenever he uses 2 or more points, the linked spell becomes a shadow spell. To make up for that, he gets telempathic shadow barrage and shadow targeting. The first lets you add debuffs to the telepathic bond via phrenic pool points. Shadow targeting has been reworked to instead affect range. Nice. The race also gets the aether-based shadow blast simple blast, which adds +2 damage per die and makes damage nonlethal for Burn 1. At 15th level, composite blasts may also be enhanced thus, at the cost of 1 additional Burn. I still think this would have made more sense as a utility wild talent, but it is better balanced now.

We also get a new medium spirit, Kurgog the Guardian. I assume this fellow replaces the regular guardian. The séance boon is applied to CMD and influence penalty nets you -2 to AC. The lesser spirit power nets Dodge, which also encompasses uncanny dodge at 10th level. So far, the pdf has done an excellent job of cleaning up hiccups, but here, a big one is still included: The intermediate ability lets you, as a swift action, “expend 1 point of mental focus…” WAIT. WUT? Yep, we have a glaring cut copy paste error here that also extends to the greater ability. It’s okay to make another class’s ability available for a spirit, but it has to be MODIFIED to reflect the realities of the new class.

The wyrwoods get two new archetypes, the first of which would be the equinox infiltrator vigilante, who loses vigilante specialization, a ton of vigilante talents, dual identity and two social talents. They also share the druid’s prohibition versus wearing metal armor. They have 3 identities and change requires 1 minute of meditation. The archetype has one social and two infiltrator identities. Each of the infiltrator identities is associated with one domain chosen from the 4 base elemental domains and they may only use the domain powers while in the corresponding identity. They gain an additional such identity at 7th and 15th level and they get the hunter’s spellcasting, using druid spell list and domains exclusively. There are two feats to upgrade this fellow: Solstice Identity nets+ 1 identity with an extended domain choice. Specialized Equinox nets subdomain access for the equinox identity and the domain chosen.

The second archetype would be the phantasmagorist spiritualist, who replaces the phantom with a memorandum construct that does not have an emotional focus or ethereal form. Instead of an emotional focus, we get a sorcerer bloodline at 3/4th class level (minimum 1 caveat missing). Each bonus spell granted by this bloodline may be cast 1/day as a SP. While the memorandum is in the spiritualist’s subconscious, the character gains teamwork feats of allies within 30 ft., now with a proper scaling mechanic. 3rd level’s bonded manifestation-tweak instead provides access to the bloodline-related powers and spells as SPs.

The final race would be the wyvarans. Here, we get 6 form infusions that represent cones and line-shaped blasts for any element, in three steps. The wyrmling’s breath now aligns in comparison with the fire form infusion; the mature version has the same burn cost and level requirements and its water specialized spray. The section also has a utility wild talent, the draconic mantle, which nets all creatures within 5 ft. energy damage equal to the number of burn you have. Energy types may be any energy blast you have. Dragonshifters lose the animal aspect gained at 1st level in favor of dragon aspect, and the breath weapon they have has a sensible cooldown now; major form also nets basically dragon boosts.

The second archetype is the treasure hoarder occultist, who loses 14th and 18th level’s implements and outside contact. He suffers from diminished spellcasting and uses Cha as governing attribute for class features and spellcasting. He begins play with 2 implements, +1 at 2nd level and every three level thereafter, capping at 9 at 20th level. Add to that that 7th level makes all implements acts as having +1 focus invested in them, +2 at 20th level. Still strong tweak, but no longer overwhelming. We also get a psychic discipline, the vishapakar, whose phrenic pool is governed by Intelligence. It nets at-will identify and the dowse occult skill unlock for ley lines and magic items even if untrained in Survival. We also get quicker ley line attunement and limited phrenic pool point recovery when doing so. Important here: Spellcasting is governed by Wisdom. The 5th level discipline power isn’t functioning as intended. It sports free, at-will short-range dimension door, with the caveat to break it into shorter ranges making me think that it’s supposed to have either a range-based cap or, you know, that it’s supposed to have a hard cap, like similar discipline powers. Only weak and passive 5th level discipline powers are always on. 13th level provides standard action attunement, provided you can touch a Large or larger carved stone touching a ley line. We also get two racial feats: Hoard Aura makes divinations fail to reveal worn and carried items unless the caster makes a CL-check. Also applies to a living area. Cool feat! Hoard Guard makes you keen eyed regarding items and provides AoOs when a foe attacks or seizes an object from you.

Conclusion: The revised edition seriously cleaned up the rules-language of the book, significantly improving it in the ruled editing and formatting departments. Layout adheres to a 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes with nice full-color artworks that will be familiar to fans of JBE. The pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks, and now also features a printer-friendly iteration.

Quite a few authors worked on this: Joel Flank, Sasha Laranoa Harving, Richard Moore, Kevin Morris, David N. Ross, Rachel Ventura and George “Loki” Williams. The revised edition of this book vastly improves the precision of the material herein, significantly increasing the value of the supplement.

Some of the concepts herein could have used a bit more room to breathe – archetype-wise, we focus on engine-tweaks, but they are complex ones, and often, quite frankly more interesting than many comparable options. The supplemental material, as a whole, sports a couple of interesting components as well.

In short: The book and its material runs now as smoothly as it should, and the publisher deserves serious kudos for finetuning the materials herein! Now, this book may not be perfect, but it is a densely-packed, interesting supplement of options, and for what it offers, I am happy to increase my rating for the revised iteration to 4.5 stars, rounded up.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module clocks in at 40 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 36 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested by my patreon supporters, to be undertaken at my convenience – and I wouldn’t have reviewed this one usually. Why? Because the module is the final part of a series of adventures, which were first published in the criminally-underrated Mountains-sourcebook “Mountains of Madness.” Full disclosure: I was a backer of the KS to fund Mountains of Madness, since I genuinely consider the Perilous Vista books by Frog God Games to be some of their finest work for PFRPG. I briefly talked about the module back then, but my patreon supporters wanted a more detailed analysis of the module in question, so here we go!

Okay, so first things first: “War of Shadows” is the direct sequel to “Between a Rock and a Charred Place” – running it on its own is not the best idea, as the module loses much of its impact. That being said, it’s much easier to set up than the previous one – a call to arms issued by the dwarves is all it takes to kick it off. The module is intended for 8th-level characters, and as always, a well-rounded group is recommended. The module features read-aloud text for key-encounters and dungeons, but not to an excessive degree. Finally, it should be noted that, like its predecessors, it is pretty deeply ingrained in the lore of the Lost lands-setting; while it is very much possible to adapt the module to other campaign settings, it does take a bit of work, as the political situation of the region depicted here does matter.

Okay, as always, the following contains SPOILERS – this time, that’s includes the previous module. You have been warned. Players should jump to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? Great! The masterplan of Grugdour, hobgoblin warlord and secretive devotee of the shadow deity Mirkeer, is in full motion. The clever hobgoblin warlord’s allies may have failed with their coup d’état/assassination attempt in “Between a Rock and a Charred Place”, but that does not put a stop to his plans. His sights on Tyr Whin, he had someone spread a contagion affecting only dwarves in the place, and if things had gone according to plan, no call of aid from Erod Flan would come, which means that his army will have to take Tyr Whin at the place’s full strength. Thankfully for the devious hobgoblin, the disease seems to be working better than expected, and thus he marches his army, cleverly concealed nearby, towards Tyr Whin.

Enter the PCs – who will face a 120 miles trek through mountainous terrain featuring a couple of scripted encounters. Problematic here: The mountainous features of the region? They are referred to as “see A Little Knowledge” and “Between a Rock and a Charred Place” – so no, you don’t get the information to conveniently run the trek! That’s a no-go for a stand-alone module. I indubitably by now sound like a broken record, but I’d very much recommending getting “Mountains of Madness” over this stand-alone version. It also has more detailed mountain hazard rules etc., which seriously add tremendously to the whole sequence of 4 adventures. But I digress.

When the PCs arrive, they’re faced with a siege – the hobgoblin army has encircled the fortress, and it has siege weapons! The PCs can attempt to take these down, if they feel stealthy/clever, and there is a secret entrance to the fortress – provided the PCs beat the aberrant giants lairing there. Once the PCs have made it into the fortress, they’ll have their tasks cut out for them: The mysterious spinning sickness (which causes a sense of vertigo) may not be fatal, but it sure as heck makes fighting very hard. The citadel’s quartermaster, Truvven Blackgranite, wastes no time: The dwarves can’t best or outlast the hobgoblins in their current state, so he asks the PCs to travel to MounT Huumvar atop the Feirgotha plateau to cut off the hobgoblin army’s head. Mount Huumvar is a superb defensive position, but when the Kingdom of Arcady yet flourished, there was a temple created to the foreigner’s strange deities – in this temple of Aten, there is supposed to be a secret entrance to Mount Huumvar, granting a small team a chance to eliminate the hobgoblin high command. Of course, clever PCs may want to first investigate this mysterious disease, and indeed, the investigation that leads to the false dwarf assassin/witch multiclass perpetrator is nice, though it is presented in a pretty swift/efficient manner.

Once that snake has been taken care of, the PCs are off through the mountains, hopefully not running afoul of the hobgoblin warriors. They make their way to the dilapidated temple, and through it, navigating a wikkawak lair (!!) to finally infiltrate Mount Huumvar. These dungeons all have in common that they adhere to an internal logic I very much enjoy: The placement of traps makes them potentially predictable by defensively-minded PCs who think about where they tread, and the new haunt featured also follows this. Funny: There is a white dragon that allows you to get in all those Mr. Freeze puns and dad jokes from the classic Batman & Robin trainwreck of a movie. It’s a nice change of pace for a species of dragon usually relegated to little more than beasts. Another plus here is that monsters and the like don’t behave as mindless beasts; they try to bluff, offer truces and survive. That kind of thing’s too rare in modern RPGs.

Mount Huumvar deserves special mention, as the dungeon level is a pretty tough nut to crack – as the culmination of the “Mountains of Madness”-modules, it very much should be. Careless PCs might quickly face a number of foes, including several unique hobgoblin builds, that can overwhelm them, so careful precision strikes, Stealth, etc. are advised – with them, the complex becomes possible to handle; without them, you should hope that your PCs have learned the values of a tactical retreat. This is per se a great finale.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are per se very good, though the references pertaining rules featured in other adventures should not be here. Layout adheres to Frog God Games’ two-column b/w-standard, and the pdf sports a few b/w-artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Cartography is b/w – and guess what? Yep, of course, the player-friendly versions of the maps, which had been included in Mountains of Madness…are absent from this one.

Tom Knauss’ “War of Shadows” was one of my favorite modules from the Mountains of Madness adventures, as it manages to take leitmotifs from each of its predecessors and weaves them into a satisfying conclusion for the adventure arc. However, much like the other 3 modules in the arc, it deserved better than what it got here. I genuinely LIKE the saga, and it wouldn’t have been that hard to include some of the material that made Mountains of Madness so rewarding throughout these stand-alone renditions of the modules. Here a hazard, there a new creature cough missing boss in God of Ore /cough, and we’d have an impressive array of modules here. Indeed, in an ideal version, there’d have been revisions of the adventures to make them more self-contained; at the very latest with “Between a Rock and a Charred Place”, and here as well, we have modules that really, really are intended to be run in sequence. Either that, or properly designate them as a series that requires the previous modules – “War of Shadows” requiring two adventures for the notes on certain features and environmental rules? That’s not cool.

Beyond being an unfortunate decision, it also further underlines the whole sense of “rushed stand-alone version” that I got from all of the 4 adventures. From the references to other adventures to the horribly-botched God of Ore-version, they have in common that they deserved better. The absence of player-friendly maps that EXIST (they are all in the Mountains of Madness hardcover! I checked!) and these errant cross-references just emphasize this. And that, to me, is a tragedy. I really liked the modules in Mountains of Madness, where they operate as they should. Here? Here, I’m genuinely crestfallen about how this turned out. My final verdict for “War of Shadows”’s stand-alone iteration has to reduce a module I’d have given my highest accolades in its original iteration to 3.5 stars, rounded up. Tom Knauss’ cool 4 modules deserved better than this.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The second Blood Space Gazetteer depicting unique environments in Everybody Games & Rogue Genius Games‘ shared Xa-Osoro campaign setting clocks in at 19 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of SRD, leaving us with 15 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue at the request of my patreon supporters.

After a brief introduction to the Xa-Osoro system’s basics, we begin with Tor. To get into the spirit, I’d recommend putting on Warframe’s “We all lift together” – Tor is known as “The Anvil” in the system; its atmosphere is toxic, and its local year 400 days long; Tor is highly technological planet, dominated by vast machinery for production and the artifice of war, its vast factory cities dotting the land like molochs. When the catastrophe of the Regicide annihilated dozens of worlds and moons, including Azan, the seat of the Radiant Empire. I the aftermath Tor became a rallying point, and thus Metroheim became the Imperium’s new capital.

Tor nowadays is hopelessly overcrowded, with 1 trillion (!!) inhabitants; much like in real life, there is a huge discrepancy between the rich and poor, as trillionaires invest in essentially a cultural renaissance, while the masses exist in abject poverty in a tainted world, social change seemingly a near impossible goal. Oil-slicked equatorial seas divide the planet into two supercontinents, and while there are conservatories, these ultimately feel more like massive zoos, with even farmlands looking somewhat gray from above. A few reclamation efforts have started to be made, but whether they pay off remains to be seen.

The pdf then proceeds to fill us in on the residents: “Where humanity treads, foxes follow” rings true – kitsune and humans are numerous here, andhave been subjected to rather brutal forms of persecution. I mean it. Since the end of the Nova Age, the lot of kitsune has improved, thankfully, and a proper Kitsune Rights Act helped them gain a better footing. Tor also sports a massive amount of dwarves and liberated mechanoi and nuar are also quite numerous here.

The pdf also provides full poison effects for the atmosphere, which is (funnily enough), called Imperial Air, calling back to the old medieval notion of cities stinking. That being said, life on Tor is not exactly simple for most of the inhabitants; beyond pollution and poverty, the Radiant Imperium’s heavily-armed bureaucracy has actually survived the Regicide, with Martial Law the rule, rather than the exception. Local delicacies include the laser-roasted smog-bat, to give you a good idea. Off-worlders should probably refrain from eating those…

Beyond bureaucracy, gang-culture is ever-present, ranging from the street-level to the elite clubs at the apex of the corporate ladders, and a general tendency to settle disputes yourself, on the streets; in many ways, the picture painted here is that of a dystopian place that is closer to the aesthetics of many Cyberpunk games than I expected to find here.

The Mega-city of Hyperborza has developed essentially hyperspace-using Futurama-tubes, which is a pretty damn cool idea. Ivantis is the sole mega-city that was constructed in the middle of the ocean, using powerful force-fields to hold the water at bay; as a result, gravity and geothermic vents generate all electricity, which makes the place not exactly one where you go for a job. Karkaghov has another focus: This city is essentially the planet’s brain, with plentiful universities, academies, etc. – and here, hope is real, as the best minds seek to find ways to deal with Tor’s issues. Mount Lumia, Tor’s northernmost city, is the least tainted one, and focuses on environmental engineering in the more pristine cold. I’ve already mentioned Metroheim, but it gets a write-up here as well. Relatively young would be the mega-city of New Citadel, founded by dwarves, and unsurprisingly, focusing on luxury produces…

Beneath the surface of Tor, primal life slumbers in the Greenscars – and those that disturb it face the wrath of plant creatures, fungi and fey alike, but each also contains massive power – mayhaps enough to return the planet to a less tainted state and exterminate civilization… of course, the Imperial War College is depicted herein as well, and we learn about the Labyrinths, the vast underground urban mazes that form the roots of the mega-cities. Zone ZE-43, an urban wasteland, houses a truly nasty mega-city. Steelglade, which is essentially a ginormous prison city that is somewhat between prison, anarchy and corporate serfdom.

The sole lunar body of Tor, Tenguholme, is a stark contrast to Tor: Lush, lively, and as habitable as Azan once was; it was considered, of course, but a rare compound in the air generates a strange dizziness and nausea that few can stomach. Drops can counteract the reaction causing this, but also has a habit of making the ears kinda…green. And yes, the pdf explains why and how, and we get proper stats for this unique environmental hazard. Anyhow, it’s called “tenguholme” nowadays due to the exodus of Tengu under the lead of legendary Imijol. We here learn of two metropolises, as well as of a massive skeleton unclaimed by the desert sands, a mysterious cathedral that attracts conspiracy theorists…and there is Pezroh’s Peak. The otherwise pretty deadly megafauna of the planet is super-cute here: 1/256 the usual size. Who’s a good mega-raptor? Anyhow, you do not want to stay here too long – it’s 48 hours, and then you’re gone. Where to? Why? Only you can answer…If you really want to see megafauna in proper sizes…go to the Romping lands. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay? Did I mention the ostensibly cursed city at the bottom of the Sea, the one that the former, mysterious inhabitants of the world left behind?

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, with neat full-color artworks included. The pdf comes bookmarked for your convenience, with a bookmark for the start and for the end of the pdf – rudimentary, but okay at this length.

The collaboration of Alexander Augunas and Matt Banach has yielded interesting and very different fruits this time around; whereas the gazetteer on Ulo focused on pure wonder and majesty as leitmotifs, this one has a scifi-super-industrialization-sprawl-angle. Tor is a volatile place, and one that is pretty grim in comparison with the material provided for Ulo; the contrast of such dark corners with the generally optimistic vision of the Xa-Osoro system has always been an interesting factor, though, as a person, I’ll freely admit to me being slightly less enthused about Tor’s dark angle than I was about Ulo. Perhaps that’s me, but Tor struck a bit too close to home for me, with its brutal class-divide and pollution issues. That being said, Tenguholme really inspired me! As a whole, I consider this to be a fun sourcebook, well worth checking out. My final verdict will clock in at 5 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The third episode for Bloodlines & Black Magic clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 25 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The adventure is intended for 3-5 2nd level characters, and is set in NYC; as we’ve come to expect so far from BL & BM, the module features read-aloud text, and also, where appropriate, degrees of success and failure in skill checks etc., making for a rewarding design paradigm. Important dialogues and skill results have text phrased for you, making the running of the module smoother for GMs not as experienced in paraphrasing text spontaneously. As a nice angle, there is a potential connection to Episode 1: The Unloved Ones as one of the optional plot hooks. The module does have support for tables using the Tarot, and additionally, we have, as before, suggestions for songs to be played in the background to enhance the scene. Love that!

All right, as always, this is an adventure review, and as such, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? Great! The phone rings, and tells you to turn on the TV – you see a report on the death of Dutch financier Martin Schuyler, who seems to have burned to death in his 58th floor office. Mysterious enough? Heck yeah! The module proper begins with arriving in NYC, which also includes a meeting the locals table that lists organizations/beings you can meet/gain as connections, or simply interact with. The first scene has the PCs interview Schuyler’s employees, taking a closer look at the outer office as well as the respective people: Secretary, economists, etc. – this scene also has a means to introduce the amazing Lords in Glass’s Shadows, should you choose to do so.

The investigation will yields some rather strange clues – including the fact that there have been other, similar fires before, all across the globe. By the way: Soundtrack for investigating the inner office: (Don’t Fear) The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult. Awesome. This fits perfectly – it’s a per se grim scene, and the macabre lyrics and upbeat song add a surprisingly Twin Peaks-esque touch to everything. The book also retains the in-game logic: With the appropriate lifepath, you can e.g. realize that the fire-extinguisher was tampered with. It’s a small thing, but whenever a module does not explain such things with “Magic did it”, I smile a bit. :)

Indeed, guess what: From all the stuff listed here, the PLAYERS can deduce the password to Schuyler’s blackberry. Yes, the thing can be brute-forced as well – but how this sets up the password puzzle? Pure awesome. It makes sense and makes you feel like a detective. Unbeknown to the PCs, the fully mapped place will soon be assaulted by skulks! So combat is looming as well, meaning there won’t be time to get lost in details. Regarding the map featured here: It’s b/w, pretty detailed, and player-friendly! You can just print it and hand it to your players.

Either way, at the conclusion of this scene, it should be clear that Schuyler’s death was no accident, but rather the result of his involvement with a globally-operating occult organization….and only two members remain. That being said, the module does btw. account for seeking out Schuyler’s corpse! A constant, looming threat is also presented in a rather neat manner here, and allows the GM to spice things up, if required.

But back to the matter at hand: The two survivors are Moira Scot, and Rishi-Akarsh Durvasa, the latter having gone underground – so warning Moira might be wise…and here, we have another cool way to highlight the module’s strength: The villain has not one, but two plans to eliminate here – and they need not be foiled….either way, it’s time to get the hell out and board a flight towards India!

The PCs ultimately have to find the village where Rishi has gone into hiding here, and once they get there…well. India may be rich in magic, but Mayong? It’s steeped in necromancy! Thus, the PCs will have to best Pranav of the Children of Kali-Ma in psychic duel – and in a cool twist, the Kali-Ma worshipers are actually not the enemies of the PCs! The village is hiding Rishi, who proceeds to fill them in on what has gone before: The son of one Helmut Agrippa (yep, that family!) seems to believe that he has found an invocation by deciphering the 58th seal, allowing him to bind and control a daemon. Helmut died soon thereafter. Put 1 and 1 together…ouch. The Esoteric Order of the Sacred Seal has a pact with a daemon called Amy, an entity that has a truce of sorts with the order…and once the last member of the order is killed, the contract is voided. Amy is freed.

Yep, guess who’s the dumb dupe of a very powerful daemonic force? Pieter, the young “master” occultist! (This is a great angle – think about it: How often is not malignant intent, but sheer incompetence, the source of suffering? That paired with hubris? Great villain set-up!) All of this known, the PCs will have to return to NYC, and confront Pieter – preferably without being slaughtered by Amy! And yes, in the aftermath, clever PCs can become scandalously rich – but only in mundane funds…

The pdf also features a write-up of the The 58th Seal as a cult, a handout-style depiction of Schuyler (cool!) that you can give your players, and explanation of Pieter’s psychology, how to handle money, and 5 suggested sample oddities.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good, I noticed no serious snafus on a formal or rules-language level. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column b/w-standard, with neat original b/w-pieces used throughout. The presence of a handout and a map that’s player-friendly is a big plus for me. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Tim Hitchock, with development by Jaye Sonia and additional design by Clinton Boomer, delivers something rather impressive here – in just a few pages, he weaves a compelling and genuinely interesting mystery. While not as straight-forward in its horror angle as the previous episodes, I think that the module is better off for it in this instance, because it thoroughly embraces the mystery/investigation-angle! The scenes are clever and make you feel like you’re, you know, investigating the occult; they reward player-skill over just rolling well, and I really like the villain motivation, the plans, the multiple routes they have to success…in short, this delivers in amazing ways, particularly considering its brevity! This is well-rounded, knows its scope, and just executes! My final verdict will be 5 stars.

(As a final aside: If you’re willing to do some tweaking, statblock-crunching, and working on the plot this imho begs to be fused with the Esoterrorist scenario “For the Love of Money” – FtLoM suffers in the beginning and at some transitional places, and using this module as a guideline there is a neat way to fix this; plus, with that combination, you could expand this to mega-module lengths. Just sayin’…)

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module clocks in at 33 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 27 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested by my patreon supporters, to be undertaken at my convenience – and I wouldn’t have reviewed this one usually. Why? Because the module is the third part of a series of adventures, which were first published in the criminally-underrated Mountains-sourcebook “Mountains of Madness.” Full disclosure: I was a backer of the KS to fund Mountains of Madness, since I genuinely consider the Perilous Vista books by Frog God Games to be some of their finest work for PFRPG. I briefly talked about the module back then, but my patreon supporters wanted a more detailed analysis of the module in question, so here we go!

This adventure is intended for 7th level characters, and, as always for Frog God Games modules, a well-rounded group is recommended. As always, we have read-aloud text for key-scenes and dungeon rooms, but the amount provided is on the low side of things.

The module is steeped, particularly in its background, in the lore of the Lost lands campaign setting, particularly the Stoneheart Valley. Unlike the previous two modules taken from “Mountains of Madness”, this one is harder to implement in another campaign setting – you’d need a mountainous region with a pretty specific political framework here. It’s not impossible to do, but it requires a bit of work. It should also be noted that this adventure has strong ties to the final of the modules taken from “Mountains of Madness”, which would be “War of Shadows.” I strongly encourage running these two back to back. If you’ve run “A Little Knowledge”, you’ll have a good starting point, for the actions of the PCs there should have made for a convenient reason for why the otherwise pretty xenophobic Clan Craenog’s High Thane has invited the PCs to the dwarven city of Erod Flan, we set our play – for this is a somewhat Shakespearean yarn!

All right, this is as far as I can go without diving into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? Great! So, you need a reason why the High Thane would invite the PCs to his city to be honored; as per default, that would be because they saved the beleaguered garrison of Burvaadun from the undead assaults conducted by the an ancient arch-mage. The PCs arrive in Erod Flan, get a tour, chances to pick up rumors, etc., before the PCs get their audience with the High thane. During all of this time, the PCs should well pay attention, for otherwise, the complex background story may become puzzling – the feast, ultimately, is rocked by a massive explosion that had the chance to kill the entire congregation!

While the ancient thane and his associates quickly deduce the dark folk survivors of the battles the dwarves once led as likely culprits, filling the PCs in on this ancient foe, but the matter at hand is more complicated. At this point, the PCs will be asked to dive down into the formerly-sealed quartz-mine. The PCs are accompanied by stout dwarves, at least potentially – and that is where the module becomes interesting.

You see, the dwarves are no chumps – they have secured the entrances to the dark folk regions with really deadly traps, many of which glyph-based – how the GM handles these will greatly influence the difficulty of the module. Warned PCs have obviously an easier time dealing with those; here’s the thing, though: There is a traitor among the dwarves, one carrying a grudge and ambition from long past; I’m consciously omitting the details here to avoid giving away the deal, but said individual has VERY detailed tactics provided to conceal his intentions, and this individual, obviously, also wants to “thin the herd” of people between him and his goal. How this dynamic villain is handled, is very cool.

Indeed, handling of the NPCs is crucial, for the module tends to throw a lot of cross-invisible-line-for-damage traps at the PCs, and the ones on the dwarven side are brutal; the ones in the dark folk complex obviously aren’t telegraphed this manner, but they DO follow an internal logic, so clever and experienced groups may avoid them.

Said traitorous individual, btw., has a conspiracy going on with none other than the leader of the dark folk – and the exceedingly intelligent hobgoblin warlord Grugdour, ultimately with the goal of elevating the traitor to the seat of the High Thane, and a breaking of the stalemate between hobgoblins and dwarves….hence the assassination attempt below. The fate of the traitor can go a lot of ways, by the way – but in the end, the module will have one loose end, namely Grugdour’s and his gambit for supremacy!

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to Frog God Games’ two-column b/w-standard, and the pdf sports two solid b/w-artworks. The pdf-version comes fully bookmarked. The b/w-cartography is nice and detailed, as usual – alas, like the previous two adventures, the stand-alone version is missing the player-friendly maps – particularly grating, since these omitted the tell-tale trap-indicators in the original version of the adventure.

Tom Knauss’ “Between a Rock and a Charred Place” loses some of its impact when considered as a stand-alone venture; “A Little Knowledge” provided a great segue into the module’s scenario, and without that lead-in, it’s somewhat harder to set up. Furthermore, the module essentially requires the sequel for a satisfying resolution. It remains a good module, but it’s one that I strongly suggest playing these modules in sequence. All in all, my final verdict for this stand-alone version clocks in at 4 stars – I recommend getting the Mountains of Madness book over this stand-alone iteration, if you have the option.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Starfaring Species-series clocks in at 8 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 5 pages of content, 2 pages of which are devoted to a huge rendition of the neat cover, so let’s take a look!

So, this pdf introduces the race of the Bastef, who look, behave and operate like housecats, and we get information on their home-world and relations with other races. I am not going to elaborate in detail on this, for the writing is genuinely funny; to give you an example: “Bastef, as a species, get along with everyone. Some species don’t get al0ong with bastef. Bastef don’t seem to notice.” That is perfectly dead-pan and fitting. Minor nitpick: the pdf does nit include “Playing a bastef…” or “If you are a bastef, others….”-sections, which I tend to find useful as roleplaying cues.

Much to my pleasure, the pdf does come with vital statistics (age, height and weight). Racial trait-wise, bastef get 2 HP, +2 Dexterity and Charisma, -2 to Constitution and are Tiny monstrous humanoids. The type might seem odd, but makes sense when seen from a design perspective in Starfinder. Bastef get at-will ghost sounds[sic!] (an “s” too much here) and token spell, as well as 1/day detect thoughts. They get a +10 bonus to Disguise checks to pass as housecats, but that bonus should be typed as “racial” in SFRPG. They get limited telepathy, and they do not have hands – patting at things with their claws is treated as though their Strength score is 6 lower. However, their telekinetic powers allow them to use, carry and manipulate items as though a Medium creature with 2 limbs. They can use Medium equipment and hang it on their field; they need to have line of effect to an object thus manipulated, and their range is similarly that of a Medium creature – unless they choose to have the space and reach of a Tiny creature, with mode-change taking a swift or move action. This otherwise functionally behaves as psychokinetic hand, as a supernatural ability.

The pdf has no supplemental feats, equipment or the like.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good on a formal and rules-language level – the pdf gets the important functionality right, but does sport a few minor, aesthetic hiccups. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the pdf sports a neat full-color artwork. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.

Owen K.C. Stephens delivers a genuinely funny, well-crafted little pdf that makes being a cat a viable build in SFRPG. I love that. I am cat-person, even though my allergies prevent me from having one. My only true gripes with this pdf are that I’d have loved to see supplemental material. Perhaps in an expansion?

If you btw. love goofy Hitchhiker’s Guide scifi and need inspiration for playing a psychic space cat, I’d wholeheartedly recommend Catherynne M. Valente’s HILARIOUS “Space Opera”; the books more raunchy than Douglas Adams’ classic, but I rarely laughed this much while reading a book.

Oh, final verdict? Yeah, well, I while I can’t award this the full 5 stars, I’ll give it 4 stars and, considering the low and fair price of $1.95, I’ll add my seal of approval for it! I mean, come on! Space cats! :D

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This adventure clocks in at 22 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 19 pages, laid out in 6’’ by 9’’ (A5), so let’s take a look!

This module is intended for 4-6 level 1 characters, and it works particularly well if one of the PCs has Sezrekan as a patron, though that is not required. A well-rounded group is suggested, as always, though the difficulty of the module is somewhat contingent on how nice the judge feels – there is one way that can undo death herein, making it a pretty good introduction to non-funnel gameplay for those new to DCC! Note that this only holds true for Lawful heroes. As usual, we get a break-down of the encounter table of the place, and the module comes with properly spelled out and atmospheric read-aloud text. The module also sports two different b/w-handouts of key areas. A brief table of wandering monsters is included.

It should be noted that this module has an alternate ending that can render this one of the most impactful campaign starters I’ve seen. I’ll discuss this in the SPOILER-section. Genre-wise, the module is essentially all about getting a cool treasure out of a dungeon – a classic, honest extract-the-treasure-scenario without bells and whistles.

This being an adventure review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only judges around? Great! So, the module’s premise per se is pretty simple: Once every decade, the Empyrean Ocean’s tides recede far enough to reveal the highest parts of an undersea tower, 5 miles from the ocean; the night this happens is now! If this does not suffice to entice your PCs, well the notorious pirate Savage Quenn might be mugging a magician, who fills them in. Thee pirates of the Black Mariah are also after the legendary Black Pearl.

The tower of the black pearl is guarded by such pirates, but provided the PCs persist here, they gain access to the Hall of Mysteries: Here, a massive register, and plentiful candles burn: The register contains the names of all Lawful heroes of the world, with each candle representing their life-force: Snuffing out a candle kills that hero! Conversely, if a lawful PC dies in the adventure, their candle can be relit! This is a great safety net for clever players. After this, we have a chamber of portals: One portal is intended for further adventures, while another requires a magical key of sorts – leaving only one way to go. Both animated fetishes, crab-rats, and the pirates present further dangers in the complex, and there is a scene with a Charon-like boatman – which thankfully presents swimming, drowning, hypothermia, etc. rules,. All handily summed up. Nice. At one point, the PCs will meet Quenn and his remaining men, who propose an alliance – because they (correctly!) suspect a pretty nasty trap room ahead: Quenn plans on betraying the party, obviously – but anyhow: The trap room is one of the good DCC-traps: The deadly component can be discerned quickly by the players if they roleplay smart, and even if they walk in, there is a means to escape. In short: Good design!

Ultimately, the PCs get to find Sezrekarn’s tomb (when he was still mortal), and take ruby gemstones from it: These are required to enter the place, where the black pearl was sealed: The pearl is firmly held in a dragon statue’s mouth – which itself, is in a HOLE in the water, depicted in one of the handouts. To reach the statue, the PCs have to cross the water – which is full of poisonous snakes. Here, only player skill is required; battling through the poisonous snakes is a bad idea, and the most lethal encounter herein. If the PCs take the pearl, the magic holding the water at bay fades – 13 rounds to escape the tower, as the ice-cold waves are rising!

…and then there is the optional ending. This ending elevated a well-executed, linear dungeon-.crawl, a good module, to what I consider to be awesome. If you don’t share my enthusiasm for it, detract a star. Remember the candles? As a default, the water doesn’t extinguish them. But you could, you know, choose that it does. This would slay all the big heroes of the world, exempting the PCs due to their presence in the tower. If you, for example, have been playing in a world where too many high-level former PCs still roam, if you’re playing in an established world with TMGAM-Syndrome (Too Many Good Archmages), this’ll upend the power-dynamics, big time. A kind of reset-button for the setting, a means to make the PCs go properly into adventuring mode – after all, it is their greed that wrought this new age of darkness...

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to a 1-column b/w-standard, and the pdf sports nice b/w-artworks. As always, the b/w-map is gorgeous, but there is no player-friendly version included, which is a bit of a downer. The module comes fully bookmarked for your convenience, and the inclusion of two neat b/w-handouts is another plus.

Daniel J. Bishop’s conversion of Harley Stroh’s module is a good example of a well-executed little adventure; I am usually not a big fan of linear scenarios, but this is not only a well-designed example of one, it also sports a sufficient variety of challenges posed, and the alternate ending, as noted, is epic and make this module a rather efficient way to reboot a setting in which have run several persistent campaigns. For those looking for exactly such an angle, add a star to the final verdict. All in all, regardless of whether you do or not, this can be considered to be a success. My final verdict will be 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The second adventure for Bloodlines & Black magic clocks in at 33 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 28 pages of content;

The module comes with an additional bonus pdf, which contains 1st-level pregen stats, with special abilities and the like all fully included. This pregen-file is presented in a landscape standard, and includes b/w-artworks for the characters. Each character spans 2 pages, so if you print them, you can have a handout-character on a single sheet of paper, which is indubitably useful for e.g. convention games, one-shots, etc. The characters have properly spelled out connections, arcana and oddities noted, and feature a fey-blooded mesmerist, a spirit-blooded slayer, a seraphic-blooded brawler, a dragon-blooded spiritualist (including stats for the phantom Mr. Hunter), a jinn-blooded psychic, and s spirit-blooded investigator. These pregens are also included in the module itself, and the module has a handy sheet that lists all connections, secrets, etc. ready – I strongly suggest printing that page and having it on you when running the module, as it also spells out which lore the characters know is correct, and which is deliberate misinformation..

These pregens have built-in reasons to investigate the eponymous House of Hollows, but if you need other reasons, a handy table lists objectives by organization, as well as three more distinct hooks. A unique angle, and a good reason to play the pregens, would btw. be that the module has a mechanic that rewards the PCs with a variety of benefits if they come clean regarding a secret they have; if you’re not using the pregens, I strongly suggest that the players come up with an analogue web of intrigue/secrets for their own characters, as the module does benefit from the dramatic tension generated thus. The module includes no less than 5 boons that the PCs can attain, as well as 4 suggested oddities. I have no complaints regarding them per se, but should note that one of them is predicated on using encounter cards – which is odd, since I can’t recall BL&BM suggesting their use.

Speaking of odd things: The pdf has a single red line in the background running down on either the left or right side on each page; this line runs behind some, but not all visual elements (for example, only through the non-white entries of tables) and honestly irritated me. At first, I thought it was a subtle cue, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a layout glitch that should be rectified.

But let us proceed to the eponymous House of Hollows, maybe you’ve heard of it…but shush, if you’re a player, then the following is not for your eyes. Jump ahead to the conclusion to avoid the SPOILERS that will follow now, all right?

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? Great! The House of Hollows can appear, and it is a place of the lost – lost people for many pregens, for others, it may be lost things. The house is travelling, for some 70-odd years it has done that…and when it appears, it stays for 7 days, always a bit odd, always a bit different…but usually on the perimeter of a settlement, in disquieting black and purple. It is an odd house, taking a cue from House of Leaves in that its dimensions can’t be measured accurately. The house sickens all those that can’t Pierce the Veil, spooking off the non-initiated, and it can become invisible. Theoretically, the players can try to burn it (other means of damaging it being not exactly promising), but doing so will doom all inside, so there’s a good reason not to do it. Interacting with the House of Hollows may yield one of 4 types of token: There are element tokens, exit tokens, life tokens and grave tokens. Life tokens can heal; Grave tokens require that you enter e-mail addresses into the computers in the house – when used against other PCs, this’ll net a penalty for them, a bonus for the one who entered them. Exit tokens, obviously, are there to exit in the end…

I really liked a premise of the module: The House enforces an esoteric law above all else: The law of 7 Possessions. You may not enter the house with more than those. The house has additional rules, and those that break these risk the ire of the structure – and the retribution in the guise of its Hollow Ones. These include not losing your tickets (issued upon entering with the 7 possessions), no stealing, a prohibition to harm other visitors, and, well, obviously no open flames or harm to the physical structure.

Furthermore interesting here: The house is perceived at the start of the module, and the first task will be to talk the NPCs gathered here out of trying to get inside/waiting, etc. Not all of these individuals will leave, but the fact that the sudden appearance of the house is not simply glossed over? Like it! Even better: This is an early chance for the PCs to earn exist tokens. Speaking of which: Each encounter area also comes with a map of the room depicted; while no map of the entire house per se is provided, the room-by-room map approach worked well for me in this instance, though I would have loved to get handout-style player-friendly one-page versions of the respective areas. The first of these put a broad smile on my face, as it’s a puzzle steeped in the esoteric lore so crucial to BL&BM, focusing on elemental pillars – and a dark art item (like the Ring of Fenris, or the Amber Amulet of Atu) may be acquired, which is a grand boon during the adventure, but a bane in the final encounter. Or so the module states. De facto, none of these items had any bearing whatsoever on the final encounter regarding additional difficulties. This room btw. also houses a secret room, a cage – here, the PCs can observe some foes to come…nice and creepy foreshadowing

After this brainy encounter, the module switches it up – in the next room, the PCs will witness a man in bondage mask, Mr. Sledge, use a sledgehammer to kill a NPC: The room is well lit, but the light flickers off – 3 rounds later, it turns on, shows Mr. Sledge, and has him kill another NPC! This will induce panic. If the NPCs run out, well, then it’s time for the PCs to meet the blunt edge of his weapon. Escaping through the windows here may btw. help two of the pregens save their daughter in an optional encounter…

Beyond that, we have a feast laced with poison, as well as a rather creepy library that plays some seriously neat mind-games if handled properly by the GM. Speaking of which: The final encounter has the House focus its powers into the Great Mr. Sledge (new stats), which allows the PCs to finally use Pierce the Veil on the house – and this final combat is brutal. It very much is a horror encounter, with a CR 5 monstrosity that is probably pretty far above the PC’s league…but whether they escape will be up to their wits…and potentially, their willingness to screw over their allies…

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are per se good on a formal and rules-language level, expecting aforementioned inconsistencies. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column b/w-standard, and the pdf comes with neat b/w-artworks. The pregens are a nice touch, and I liked the functional b/w-maps, but less so the lack of player-friendly versions. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Gosh darn it. Jaye Sonia and Clinton Boomer have written an adventure that per se is right up my alley. The House of Leaves-ish surreal house angle is great, and the atmosphere evoked is awesome. I liked all of the relatively linear encounters here, as they all contribute something meaningful and surreal, horrifying – this module genuinely managed to give me goosebumps, and its mechanics are suitably relentless and brutal enough to drive home the whole horror aspect, and that the PCs can’t always slay their way to the goal. This has all the markings of an excellent adventure.

However. The red-line glitch bothered me on an aesthetic level, but it’s not a big deal. What is a big deal, though, is that this has all the tell-tale signs of a much larger module cut down to its barest minimum.

We have optional encounters that are pretty much tailor-made to hint at more, and yet they stand alone, their hints petering out; we have, for example, the cellar angle that goes nowhere. This clearly was supposed to have been a whole mansion with more complex mechanics. After all, why introduce not 1, not 2, but 4 (!!) types of token to track, when ultimately one would have sufficed for everything this module offers? Why introduce the dark arts items with their SPs, when they aren’t really relevant to solving the module, and when the announced complications don’t happen?

As a player, you won’t necessarily notice those – but as a GM, they make running the adventure much tougher (and somewhat more confusing) than it should be at this length – this is, when you boil it down, a great, straightforward romp that blusters and professes to have a depth to it that, or so I believe, was left on the cutting floor, or simply not realized due to a lack of budget. And that’s a pity, for all the hallmarks of an outstanding adventure with a ton of narrative depth and twists and diverging plots are here, but all of that is ultimately reduced to smoke and mirrors.

Ironically, like the house it depicts, the module does not like being closely looked at – for then, one cannot help but see its flaws. Then again, perhaps that’s almost an ARG version of BL&BM – don’t try to Pierce the Veil on this, and you’ll probably enjoy it. If you do, you’ll feel like BL&BM characters – you wished you hadn’t, but can’t unsee what you saw. My final verdict can’t exceed 3 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module clocks in at 31 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 25 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested by my patreon supporters, to be undertaken at my convenience – and I wouldn’t have reviewed this one usually. Why? Because the module is the second part of a series of adventures, which were first published in the criminally-underrated Mountains-sourcebook “Mountains of Madness.” Full disclosure: I was a backer of the KS to fund Mountains of Madness, since I genuinely consider the Perilous Vista books by Frog God Games to be some of their finest work for PFRPG. I briefly talked about the module back then, but my patreon supporters wanted a more detailed analysis of the module in question, so here we go!

“A Little Knowledge” is the second of the Mountains of Madness-adventures, and is intended for 5th-level characters; as always for Frog God Games scenarios, it is highly suggested to face these with a well-rounded group. The module comes with read-aloud text for most keyed locales, but not for every encounter featured. The module is set in the Lost lands campaign-setting, and while it can be divorced relatively easily from this backdrop, it does lose some of its cross-referential background appeal – Slumbering Tsar and Sword of Air both tangentially are relevant. The module takes place on the mountainous, fabled Feirgotha Plateau. Theme-wise, this module feels very much like old-school pulp in the best of ways, making me remember some of the rare good tales from Weird Tales.

The module does not really require other adventures from the Mountains of Madness set to work properly, making it a good stand-alone adventure in that regard. Anyhow, the module offers two different primary angles – one that has the PCs travel to the Plateau to search for the fabled Library of Arcady, lost dwarven poetry, and the other about the dwarven keep of Burvaadun, which might well be en route for the PCs.

And this is as far as I can go without diving into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? The module begins with the PCs needing to trek through the somewhat dilapidated dwarven mountain highways. A series of planned/random encounters happen here, and if anything, this is probably the part of the module that suffers most from being taken out of the big book: Mountains of Madness provides quite a lot of cool hazard/environmental rules for mountaineering, and the foreboding plateau and its highways lend themselves to applying those. Without this rules-chassis, the difficulty of the module decreases somewhat, as does its unique draw. That being said, the module does come with proper high altitude options and notes how to make the region environmentally challenging – it’s just that the module originally was pretty much a perfect place to apply all the fun stuff.

Anyhow, once the PCs manage to arrive at Burvaadun, they find the remote garrison under siege by undead, with the trail leading to the fabled remnants of Arcady. Which brings me to the pulp theme and its strength: Arcady was once part of the Khemitian culture; if you’re unfamiliar with it, to my knowledge, it was first featured in Gary Gygax’ Necropolis, and is essentially a quasi-Egyptian culture. Some of their arch-mages basically teleported an entire city atop the plateau, lending the proceedings a rather Shamballah-esque appeal. Suffice to say, the place fell, and dread Thanopsis still rules here – the mad mage has cheated death for millennia by consciousness-transference into younger bodies…but the process is starting to fail and wear on his mind. Worse, he failed to notice how a warm spell a few centuries ago had thawed his frozen body-array. (Yes, he is EVIL.) Worse, the xenophobic dwarves of Clan Craenog kept humans away – and his body is failing.

Hence, the ailing arch-wizard, his powers degrading in the body of a wizened crone, started throwing his undead against the dwarves, hoping to secure at least one human for consciousness-transference. The PCs will have to travel to the frozen ruins of lost Arcady and rid the world of the ailing evil of Thanopsis for once and for all. While I wished we got a bit more than the pyramid-topped fabled library to explore in the frozen city, the dungeon per se is nice: It makes sense regarding its denizens, manages to include a bit of social interaction (with pipefoxes), and generally sports a concise and well-crafted atmosphere that lets its ancient sense of dilapidation properly breathe; it manages to feel like exploring an ancient ruin, unnaturally kept in existence by a presence that should have died ages ago. The atmosphere here is, in short, well-executed., and traps make in-game sense, which is another plus.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column b/w-standard, and the module sports a nice b/w-artwork. The pdf-version comes fully bookmarked, and I can’t comment on the print version, since I only own the Mountains of Madness book in print. Cartography is a bit of a bummer: The key-less, VTT-friendly player-maps from the big book have not been included, not even as an extra pdf or jpgs. BOO!

Tom Knauss’ “A Little Knowledge” is a very atmospheric little adventure. It is a little bit of an odd man out in the Mountains of Madness modules, in that it does not focus on something dwarf-related and uses the garrison as a backdrop; its strong pulp theme is executed well and subdued enough to not hit you over the head with it. If anything, the stand-alone version suffers only from two shortcomings in comparison: The Mountains of Madness rules made it more interesting on an environmental level, and the absence of player-friendly maps is puzzling. If in doubt, get the hardcover instead. That being said, unlike “God of Ore” it at least does reference the proper core rules, so it doesn’t have dead links in the rules. What remains here, is a good adventure that loses a bit of its flavor and appeal, but not much. My final verdict will be 4.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module clocks in at 37 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 31 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested by my patreon supporters, to be undertaken at my convenience – and I wouldn’t have reviewed this one usually. Why? Because the module is the first part of a series of adventures, which were first published in the criminally-underrated Mountains-sourcebook “Mountains of Madness.” Full disclosure: I was a backer of the KS to fund Mountains of Madness, since I genuinely consider the Perilous Vista books by Frog God Games to be some of their finest work for PFRPG. I briefly talked about the module back then, but my patreon supporters wanted a more detailed analysis of the module in question, so here we go!

“God of Ore” is a 3rd-level adventure, and as always, it assumes a well-balanced party; the module can be deadly, but it’s very much a module that can be won without losing PCs. Difficulty-wise, it is situated in the mid tier. The module is deeply steeped in the lore of the Lost lands-setting, and is situated in Stoneheart Valley; however, I found that using it in another setting is pretty simple – you just need a mountainous region that has this borderlands-frontier spirit. And yes, I use the “frontier”-term very consciously, for the adventure does manage to blend some Americana with the traditional fantasy themes.

The module begins in the frontier-town of Miners’ Refuge, and it is unfortunately here that I’ll have to field my first gripe against the adventure – you see, in Mountains of Madness, the village was fully depicted as a sample environment in its separate chapter, providing a sort of prologue environment; this section has been excised from this iteration here. As a consequence, there is less immediate motivation for the PCs. Oh, and as a rather embarrassing snafu, the epilogue does refer to this section – including the chapter header of the original Mountains of Madness-book. The module sports read-aloud text for most scenes. The scripted random encounters, which come with more details than usual, and even with read-aloud text, deserve special mention here.

All right, that being said, in order to go into more details, I’ll have to delve into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? Great! So, the module manages to evoke a kind of Gold Rush-vibe in the beginning, for when the PCs arrive in Miners’ Refuge, they’ll have missed an exodus of sorts. You see, Mithral Mountain is near – and it is notorious, for at one point, there was a dwarven clanshold here. This changed when one Clovis Stonesplitter struck the big one – or so it seemed. From the stone shards emerged what seemed like a vast vein of Mithral, and from the ore, a creature emerged, the Dwer-Bokham, “dwarf of mithral” in the Dwarven Tongue. Clovis irrevocably changed, and began worshiping the strange entity, luring his fellow dwarves to his new deity. A revolution would follow, one only survived by the dwarves that fled, as the fanatics for the new deity took the hold. Multiple attempts to retake the hold failed, and as the corpses piled, the reputation of the place grew, and discouraged those foolish enough to venture there.

All of this changed with a lazy good-for-nothing dwarf named Bargus Farmud. Spoiled and arrogant, he had heard about the legend, but also didn’t want to risk his hide. A devious scheme grew. Bargus claimed that he had met the god of the Mithral Mountain, and that the deity had inscribed the secret to eternal happiness and immortality on a mithral tablet in the mountain, but also that he’d require someone pure and free of corruption to decipher the tablet.

…

Yeah, that got a huge chuckle out of me. the silver-tongued dwarf then proceeded to recruit the good folk of Miners’ refuge, leading them towards their doom. The PCs will follow the trail of the faithful up the mountain’s slopes, seeking to save them from themselves, and hopefully put the darkness to rest. The lower slopes of the mountain don’t speak of success – the PCs pretty much immediately come upon the survivors of a pretty bad ambush that caught the “pilgrims” unaware – and as such, the first section is all about dealing with the hobgoblins that ambushed the pilgrims. Interesting here: The survivors aren’t necessarily good people, nor are they evil clichés; they are more interesting than the usual “people to be saved” trope. Here, the PCs can also find hints that the pilgrimage’s leader managed to escape from the massacre – and that his ostensibly mithral-blessed mien was a hoax, a con.

A plus here would btw. be that the access to the dungeon is not linear – there are multiple ways to get inside, and considering the mithral-skinned infused dwarves waiting here, the PCs may wish to conserve their resources. The exploration of the fallen dwarfhold, now inhabited by the fanatic, mithral-skinned infused dwarves of Dwer-Bokham, si a pretty cool dungeon, particularly considering Bargus, for if the PCs are sloppy, they may actually buy into his at least plausible explanation for what transpired….provided they find him.

Dwer-Bokham is btw. a creature originally introduced in Mountains of Madness, a cobaltog. Guess what is missing, referring to Chapter 6 of Mountains of Madness? Bingo. The stats for the cobaltog. The frickin’ end-boss of the dungeon has no stats in the standalone module. This is just sad.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are PER SE very good – as a part of Mountains of Madness. Unfortunately, the pdf, time and again, references that book, and is missing some information you actually NEED TO RUN THE MODULE. That is a no-go. Layout adheres to Frog God Games’ two-column b/w-standard with nice, original artworks, and the pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. The module features quite a lot of nice b/w-cartography, but, in a seriously puzzling decision, the player-friendly maps included in Mountains of Madness are missing from the pdf! I get that a print module might need to be economical, but there is no reason for why this shouldn’t at least have the player-friendly maps for the pdf-version.

Tom Knauss’ God of Ore deserved so much better.

You see, I really enjoyed the adventure in its first iteration, but this here? This is a sloppy, minimum-effort stand-alone version of the module, a cut-copy-paste mess gone horribly wrong. Beyond having less features than it should, it actually lacks material that exists and has no reason to be absent here… and its BOSS IS MISSING.

The module would have lost some appeal sans the context and prologue sections, but not enough to sink it; God of Ore is, per se, a great little yarn I really enjoyed.

But it deserved better than this rushed stand-alone version, and is unbecoming of the standards we expect from Frog God Games. 2 stars. Get the excellent Mountains of Madness. But steer clear of this mess.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review of the revised edition

Huh, that went fast! Turns out that the publisher had an updated and improved version, and that this version hadn’t been uploaded properly to OBS! So yeah, this is the review of the revised edition, which clocks in at 56 pages, 1 page foreword/ToC, 1 page introduction, 1 page colophon, leaving us with 53 pages of content, laid out in 6’’ by 9’’ (A5); the front cover is included as a jpg, in case you were wondering.

That’s a lot of additional pages, for the booklet now comes with a LOT of original b/w-artwork

In this review, I assume familiarity with Wonder & Wickedness, and will not explain the whole system once more. I strongly suggest reading my review of Wonder & Wickedness before continuing. Why? Well, while I criticize sub-systems on their own merits and in a global context of their systems, it makes less sense to criticize an expansion for a sub-system for duplicating flaws of the base system. I rate expansions within the frame of the system in which they operate.

For Wonder & Wickedness-derived books like this, that means that will not complain about ranges and areas of effect being opaque and not clearly defined.

Okay, that out of the way, let us take a look at the new proposed variant rules/modifications for Wonder & Wickedness. The first being spontaneous sorcery, which posits that a sorcerer has 1 mana per level, optionally with Wisdom or Charisma modifier added to that pool. Mana recovers every day – which could be a bit clearer: At one time during the day, or after a rest? This may sound like nitpicking, but the results are very different in implications. This opacity has not been cleared up in the revised edition. Mana-based spellcasting lets the sorcerer cast a spell by using one mana and one round of casting. Yes, that’s full round here. Personally, I’m somewhat partial to increment-casting, so an alternate rule in that regard would have been cool. Spells requiring a sigil still take a turn. Sigils are still considered to be permanent, but each sorcerer may only have one sigil per spell.

Which brings me to sigils and magic item creation, for the book posits formulae for costs by day, or depending on the enchanter’s stats, as well as ingredients. These suggestions are per se pretty sound, and fit with the general tone Wonder & Wickedness goes for.

The book also presents rules for empowering items, which require the expenditure of a mana point or memorized spell to power. The book also posits the optional rule to allow non-sorcerers to choose one specialty and learn a single spell from it, but casting the spell for them requires an Intelligence roll – obviously, a roll-under is intended here, but spelling that out or getting some alternatives would have been nice.

There is one rule I absolutely adore herein, where the utility is obviously grand for pretty much any implementation of Wodner & Wickedness: Instead of getting directly a spell catastrophe upon overcastting, the book suggests two saving throws: The first lest you cast the spell, with you otherwise suffering your maleficence, the second to avoid a spell catastrophe, or, if playing sans them, to avoid collapsing senseless for 1d6 turns. I LOVE this rule. It’s elegant, keeps magic volatile, but decreases the frequency of the powerful catastrophes without rendering them obsolete. Huge kudos for this one! The book then proceeds to present comprehensive spell-lists, including the specialties from Wonder & Wickedness, and then presents 6 different starting packages per specialty.

What can I say, you can see some of the finest minds of the OSR-scene at work here. As a diabolist, you can start with a disguise-as-acceptable-cleric-type kit, or you could have a black goat that whispers during new moon. Or you could have a plague doctor mask vs. miasma. If you’re an elementalist, you could start off with a functional dowsing rod – or you could have 3 puppies “perfect to please curmudgeon chthonic spirits or at least placate their crotchetiness.” Here, we can see the editing by Fiona Maeve Geist at work – the book has been significantly improved in that department. Psychomancy specialists could start off with Dreamy Blue, a vision-granting cheese (probably from Stilton), or what about spiritualists with a bottle of spirits. You know, spirits. XD What’s in the bottle? Spirits.opens it Ahhhh!!! The spirits are btw. drunken. Obviously. 6 such starter packages are provided for each specialty, including the 5 new ones. A nice touch here: Each of these lists is accompanied by a nice b/w-artwork on one page, and occupies a whole page – 6 starter packages are provided per specialty, and 6 slots are left empty for the GM to fill in. This is a decision I very much welcome in the revised edition, for one must be truly creatively drained if these entries don’t spark some sort of writing impulse. Kudos!

The first of these new specialties would be Apotropaism, which is the grand defensive option: Amulet of the Open Hand lets you give an amulet to a target, who then gets a retroactive bonus to the first failed save vs. magic made. Deliver from Malison lets you break curses via questing/story-means; Heka-Mirror lets you revert maleficences and spells upon the caster, though two facing each other can have catastrophic consequences. With two seal spells allowing for the creation of barriers or entrapment of targets – and there is a Scapegoat spell that does exactly what you’d think it does. That’s not all, but it should be enough to give you an idea of why I consider this specialty to be a resounding success.

The second specialty is more conventional: Arachnomorphism is, unsurprisingly, about spider-themed tricks, which include charming spiders, assuming an Arachnid Aspect, summoning swarms and webs, or getting Venomous Fangs. This specialty is a bit boring, with two winners elevating it: Silky Spinnerets net you essentially Spiderman’s web-flinging/swinging, and Tarantella is the most pun-tastic spell I’ve seen in a why. “The caster dances frantically as though affected by the venom of the Tarantella spider.” XD As noted before, the improved editing of the revised edition really helps make the supplement more captivating.

Physiurgy is the healing specialty, and it’s interesting in several ways: In a level-less spellcasting system, differentiating between spells is hard, and many of the spells of this specialty provide different amounts of healing. Cure, for example, nets you 1d6 + 1 hits per level. Okay, level of caster, or of recipient? I assume the former, but I’m not sure. Cure also cures a diseases, provided the caster succeeds a Save or Healing check. Salvific Apport nets you balsamic, white goo that heals 3d6 hits if spread on wounds, or that can be swallowed to cure a poison. Last Oath provides AoE-healing in a short radius, but makes the caster take temporary damage for each ally affected. There even is a “return the dead to life”-spell with Death Unto Life, which is balanced by requiring two saves: Failing the first nets you 1d6 days of coma; failing the second makes you unable to cast spells for a week. Failing both kills you. Those returned are also bedridden at first, so no in-combat spamming. I like this specialty from a design-perspective – it manages to attain a surprising diversity of options with its simple chassis; differentiating meaningfully a whole slew of healing spells that have the same hierarchical place is not as easy as it sounds!

However, the best, or at least some of the best, come last here: The penultimate specialty would be Cunning Craft, which is inspired by Scottish/Celtic folklore, with Blackstaff weapons, shelters hidden in Bramble Burrows, the Seven Steeped Stones as a means to heal, make magic sling stones, or an extra save versus curses or diseases. I love the latter, but it’s a ritual that takes time, and the healing function, for example, it much worse than the tricks Physiurgy has; this could sue a power-upgrade. Since the author commented on this spell in particular: Yes, I do see the extended flexibility this one offers, and that it is sigil-based; that being said, one of its flexible uses requires a whole day of cooking, and the regular one also requires cooking in abundant milk, something that can be pretty hard to come by. I do still maintain that a slight increase in healing power here would have been salient.

I really liked the idea of the Tune of Yondkind, which detects presences and their origins, but not necessarily positions. Using a severed head of a slain target as a kind of alarm/sentry is nice, and with classics like Geas, Witchmarks securing thresholds and the like, the specialty oozes a cool, folksy old-world magic vibe.

Finally, there would be… Rope Tricks! These allow you to create a Tangle that hampers spellcasting, makes charging impossible, etc., or use Shuffle the Mortal Coil to make ropes behave as constricting serpents. If you’re lucky (5% chance), you may even get a deadly rope that requires a save or die! The spell can also be used to turn serpents into ropes, which can result in permanently-spliced-together abominations. Using a rope as a hand via Rope is Always Handy s also neat, but particularly cool would be the Cat’s Cradle tricks: These require complicated figure work from the caster and thus take time. However, once you have created the Opening form (of which there are 4), you can use the spell to change into various effects, which include opening nearby doors, setting nearby things on fire, causing low-level foes to flee, or making rope animals to ride. I love this.

With baited breath I saw the length of the revised edition, and I hoped fervently– but alas, much to my chagrin, the revised edition unfortunately also does not offer spell catastrophe write-ups for the new specialties. So yeah, if you’re like me and loved Wonder & Wickedness’ volatile shenanigans-inducing spell catastrophes, particularly in conjunction with the variant rule herein, then you’ll have to make those yourself. Which isn’t as simple as it seems at first. SO yeah, that’s the one big strike that remains in the revised edition.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting of the revised edition have improved vastly – on a formal level, this is much more refined. Layout adheres to the same no-frills, but elegant one-column b/w-standard used for Wonder & Wickedness, and the improvements made for e.g. the starter kits help render this a table-useful booklet. If you’re into unique artwork, then there’s great news – none other than Evelyn M. lent her talents to the revised edition, and it is positively decadent regarding the amount of new artworks with their neat, dream-like style. Furthermore, much to my joy, the revised edition actually has bookmarks, making navigation much smoother!

Paolo Greco has a tendency to make unique books that feel special in some way, and the additional content by Lloyd Neill, Luka Rejec and Eric Nieudan fits pretty seamlessly into the book. The revised edition gets rid of all the big formal hiccups – with bookmarks, better editing, etc., it genuinely becomes a supplement I’ll gladly recommend. I genuinely love a LOT about this book, and its rules-lite design is NOT simple.

I consider most specialties herein to be more inspiring than many from Wonder & Wickedness, and I adore their unique takes on magic. While I would have appreciated at least some fuzzy range and Area of Effect guidelines, Wonder & Wickedness lacked those, so not complaining about them here. Beyond a few instances where the rules-language could be a bit clearer, there is but a single complaint I have left as a reviewer against the revised edition: Where are the spell catastrophes? I know, I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I genuinely liked them…

Anyhow, that absence notwithstanding, Marvels & Malisons, to me personally, is actually superior to its predecessor, at least in this revised edition. As such, my final verdict for the revised edition will increase to 4.5 stars, rounded up. It should be noted that the new specialties, except one, are all seal of approval material and as a whole more novel than Wonder & Wickedness’ options, but that the spell catastrophe-lack cancelled the seal of approval this would have otherwise received.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The fourth part of the Future’s Past AP clocks in at 26 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 21 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

As before with the series, please do not be fooled by the page-count – there is more (and better) gaming in Future’s Past installments than in many books of more than thrice that size. Edge station’s map is included in a player-friendly, full-color map. This module needs to be played as a sequel to part III of the AP, due to the unique nature of this series; unlike many APs, this really doesn’t work as a stand-alone module. That being said, no other AP has genuinely made me feel shudders running down my spine from excitement as often as this one has so far, so let’s see if part IV can maintain this ridiculously high standard.

Please do note that, in my review of this adventure, I necessarily have to use SPOILERS, some of which pertain to previous installments of the series. I STRONGLY suggest that, if you’re a Starfinder-player (or one for another rules-system who loves intelligent stories!), you skip ahead to the conclusion.

Again, this is the huge SPOILER-warning. You have been warned!

… .. .

Only GMs around? Great! Central has won. The AI is a deity that transcends timelines, a perfect overlord, a thing that has broken free will and society throughout most of the cosmos. Some survivors and resistances still struggle with the Druune to beat it – but ultimately, it’s not enough. Time and time again, the time-travelers lose to Central in infinite iterations. Throughout infinite timelines, there was but a single instance where the unbeatable machine god lost, was reduced to base improvisation. Edge Station.

The PCs are trapped on Edge Station in a time loop, still occupying the possessed bodies of scientists and soldiers; they know Central comes to destroy them, as it has for countless times; at the end of First Contact, a strange message arrives from Queen Deshekh, a cybernetic formian – a change in the loop.

According to historical records, Edge Station blew up due to a freak malfunction in the fusion reactor; the Druune could not understand Central AI and how important Edge Station was to it – and thus, the 4 time travelers that arrive pursue desperate and wide-ranging plans. All of these plans are doomed to fail without the PCs. They are, though, a perfect example of fantastic NPC-writing. All of the NPCs come btw. with their own original full-color artworks of absolutely superb quality.

So, let’s talk about the NPCs: Queen Deshekh is no queen. To quote her text: “Central considered the elimination of the formian species the model of efficiency.” Central eliminated all queens simultaneously, which pretty much drove the entire species insane; Deshekh then transformed some of her dead hive-brethren into cybernetic zombies, to help keep her sane in the absence of her species’ telepathic chattering. Since then, her ailing body becomes more and more like a cyber-zombie herself. Deshekh is supposed to take control of the security systems and analyze any traps or tricks left by Central – she also is desperate to warn her people, seeking to boost her cybernetics to issue a warning scream. She is not aware of Central’s in-bound fleet, and spread too thin.

Vincent Sharsone was a programming prodigy working on Central – and he realized its danger…but when he did, it was too late. Central wrecked his life, and in the future, none of the nodes can truly be accessed – so it’s here that Vincent acts. He wants to overwrite a node with a copy of his mind, which will destroy his brain, but it might create an AI that can potentially go toe to toe with Central.

Oroseen the changer is a mystic of maraquoi stock, bonded symbiotically with the Druune, made a changer, a being capable of switching between the species’ numerous sexes. Oroseen is torn between the host and Druune personality, and seeks to share knowledge with the Druune by mind linking with the dimensional gates. Sure, this’ll cause worsening rift flares, but well…

Finally, there is Timetech Gamble, the fellow on the cover (and yes: cover-art quality = interior art quality!) – you see, when Central took control it was the space goblins that kept the Federation alive – and who managed to perfect time travel! Gamble is the sole traveler who has no ulterior motive: The space goblin prodigy lady has one task: Build a time-machine. In only a day or two.

This is also a GREAT point to note that the module explains not only the time travel employed by Central, but also this distinctly…goblin-like approach of timetechs to time travel. Okay, so far for the cast of illustrious characters – now, let’s talk about the rules!

You see, the PCs had infinite iterations atop Edge Station – they are adjusted to their bodies, and each PC has a FLAWLESS understanding of every nook and cranny of Edge Station. This includes being able to maneuver through it blindly with only very minor penalties. The PCs also know where to gain equipment. The module takes place, structurally, in 4 steps, and after each step, the PC can gain equipment of an item level of 4 or less; 5 or 6 item level takes 2 such encounters, and item level 7 takes until all are completed. The PCs also know perfectly how the other people aboard Edge Station tick, which gives them a huge edge (haha) in social interactions. From computer familiarity to researched topics, etc. In short: The PCs get to be the blasé loopers that know all the stuff, which can be a fantastic roleplaying experience. Best of all: They will NEED this type edge. None of the time travelers are per se necessarily cooperative, and after encountering one, the timeline progresses in 4 steps – without help, the individuals will greatly worsen the situation: From hostile security systems to failing life support and rift radiation flares, PCs will have a HARD time dealing with these fellows…which is why the extensive troubleshooting provided is super helpful!

Did your PCs manage to eliminate the node? Module accounts for that. Do they split the party? The module actually encourages that, and while tough, it is a valid scenario! Successfully aiding the time travelers will bring serious boons to the PCs, like a functional node, and they’ll need them in the finale!

You see, Central never had to excessively use time travel, as a single projection was already the definition of overkill. Lacking the curiosity of organic life, it never tested time travel’s limitations, and the copying of consciousnesses is not an error-free process – and an AI suffers from such errors compounding…and there is a small, but non-zero chance that projections into this time might cause catastrophic malfunctions. Such a risk is unacceptable; plans would need to be altered, perhaps for the first time. The God-AI is vulnerable – perhaps for the first and last time. All that now remains, is to triumph against impossible odds.

BAM, and that is how you tease an AP-finale! I paraphrased it, but boy, the writing. It’s just so AWESOME.

Conclusion: Editing is very good on a rules-language level; on a formal level, I noticed a few minor typos and a couple of formatting snafus, such as missed italics for spell-references, a “P” missing from[Progression] and the like – but nothing that would have impeded the functionality of the module. Thomas Baumbach’s 2-column layout for the series is perfect and feels appropriate, and makes information easy to parse. The full-color original artworks by Leonard O’Grady are top-tier and frickin’ GORGEOUS – the interior art in on par with the cover! Cartography is full-color as well, and player-friendly maps are included. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. I own the softcover version, because, frankly, if you even remotely like Starfinder or any roleplaying game in space, then you owe to yourself to get this.

Stephen Rowe is ridiculously talented; not just as a designer, but also as a writer. The Future’s Past AP began strong, and has since only ramped up the tension, the stakes. I have never before seen either time travel, or dealing with a godlike adversary, done so intelligently, so well.

After part II, I was waiting with baited breath, hoping that the AP would live up to my, at this point, ridiculously high expectations, that it would manage to retain its internal logic, its persistent class. Well, part III exceeded my expectations, throwing a HUGE curve-ball of jamais-vu and awesomeness at the players and GM, and part IV further builds on this, once more delivering something you haven’t ever played in a module before.

Future’s Past’s fourth installment stands alongside its predecessors as a singularly-compelling, phenomenal achievement of adventure-writing, and if the finale doesn’t drop the ball big time, this will enter my roleplaying game collection as one of the singularly best adventure-series I own. If you have been hesitant so far, stop reading and get this series now. If you wanted your scifi/science-fantasy to be intelligent, high-stakes and awesome, if you want to experience something new at the table – Future’s Past delivers. I consider this series to be good enough to warrant converting to Traveller, Stars Without Numbers, Mothership, or similar games. It’s that good.

The fourth part gets 5 stars + my seal of approval, and, like ALL three installments before it, gets the nomination for my Top Ten, here of 2019. If Part V holds up, this series will be a hot contender for my number 1 spot.

See you at Tomorrow’s End, the furious finale!

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This one-page pdf notes that it helps you simulate the behavior of your worst player by rolling a d20 if the player can’t make it to today’s game.

The table includes entries such as “Lecture another player about how to play their character”, “make sure everyone sees this cool video you’ve found”, “cry and moan about your next failed roll and then threaten to quit.” – you get the idea; from immersion breakers to simply bad and non-constructive behavior, this provides a pretty nice list.

Instead of using it to simulate another player’s behavior in absentia (which I consider to be somewhat craven), the best use here, and certainly the one actually intended, is to print it, let all players read it once, have a chuckle and try to reign in those impulses. We’re all just human beings, and while we all may fall prey to one or more of these behaviors, this is a great check list of things to avoid.

It’s essentially a nice, winking reminder to not be a prick, and we all can use that once in a while. ;)

The pdf is PWYW, and is certainly worth leaving a small donation for. As an unpretentious and somewhat funny little best-practice booklet, this gets 3.5 stars, rounded up. Why not 5? Well, I know of plenty more entries… ;)

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This supplement clocks in at 88 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 83 pages of content. That’s 84 with editorial; these pages are laid out in 6’’ by 9’’ (A5), and my review is primarily based on the perfectbound softcover PoD-version, though I did also consult the pdf-iteration.

Now, in order to talk about this supplement properly, we need to clearly state what this is, and what it isn’t. If you’re looking for a spellcasting engine compatible with a high-complexity system such as 5e or PFRPG, then this won’t do you much good. The spellcasting system herein gets rid of spell levels, which makes all spells suitable for all magic-using characters; for the purpose of this supplement, such beings are referred to as “sorcerers.”

The engine presented herein is not adhering to any given system, but it works best for low- or rare-magic games and ends up on the rules-lite side of things. One of the major changes this brings to the game, is that it reduces the power-escalation that magic-users have been experiencing since the hobby began; in short, sorcerers using this system do not escalate their power in the same way, which makes this a surprisingly valid alternative for games/settings such as Dark Albion, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc. regarding sheer power.

The rules are simple: Sorcerers begin play with 3 spells; new spells must be discovered, and an Intelligence check or similar roll is required to learn a new spell; on a failure, the spell can never be learned by the respective sorcerer, which has an old-school-ish result of diversifying spell-lists. Each sorcerer can prepare one spell per class level. So, a 4th level character could prepare 4 spells; a 7th level character could prepare 7. These spells are wiped after being cast, in the traditional vancian manner. Unless otherwise noted, a spell has a duration of class level times exploration turns; an exploration turn is equal to 10 minutes.

Specialist sorcerers have a couple of benefits: They may always choose to roll on the table of their specialty instead, and must never make Intelligence checks to learn their specialty’s spells, and all spells of the chosen specialty gain an additional exploration turn duration. However, specialists must choose one specialty of magic, and may never cast spells from it or learn its spells.

Some spells make use of sigils, which are magically-inscribed runes that are clearly visible and act as a signature of sorts. A sorcerer may only ever have one sigil of a given type (for one type of spell) active at a given time, and inscribing a sigil takes an exploration turn (10 minutes); creating a new sigil associated with a spell eliminates a previously created sigil of the respective type. This means that sorcerers can create persistent effects, but it takes time, and the engine prevents spamming the same sigil over and over.

The system has two components I really like: The first is that it makes magical duels possible: Any prepared spell may be expended to protect one person per sorcerer level from the effects of one spell. This decision must be made before damage or saving throw dice are rolled. Additionally, any prepared spell may be expended to generate Maleficence. Each sorcerer’s maleficence is unique and is determined at character creation. Maleficence targets all creatures in melee range, or a single target – it deals two dice of damage (d6s, which the pdf should spell out; it’s obvious from context, though), with a saving throw for half damage. If both damage dice come up as 6s, you get to roll another die and add it to the total, continuing to do so as long as 6s are rolled.

The result of these two rules is simple: You have a pretty reliable defense option against magic, and you have a pretty reliable offense option with the flavor that you wanted for your character. Both are not overbearing, but certainly add to the magic system operating tighter than it should as a system agnostic rulebook.

The book knows 7 specialties, each of which comes with 8 spells: Diabolism lets you bind creatures, erect the classic circles of protection, seal covenants or conjure forth the miasma f hell, to note a few. The latter is a good example of one of the spells that could have benefitted from being a tad bit more precise, as it does not specify the area of effect or range – which is the one thing that consistently irks me about this book. The system never specifies a default range, which is curious, since some effects do mention ranges. This also extends to spells useful in battle, such as Elementalism’s pyrokinesis or the trapped lightning. Said specialty lets you btw. also call forth a tumult of air elementals via chariot of air, which let the sorcerer fly, but drown communication in a cacophonous roar. Opening mouths in the earth (ostensibly the mouths of an elder earth deity) or control the weather.

An odd inconsistency of the book is also that it sometimes spells out that it uses d6s for damage in some spells, while others, like Necromancy’s death ray, deal “three dice of damage” if the target makes their save; aforementioned, very powerful battle spell is btw. balanced by a 1-in-6-chance that a creature slain with it will either later or immediately rise to haunt you. Similarly, animating the dead via lich-craft is risky – it may net you permanent minions, have them simply return to the land of the dead, dissolve…or turn upon you. Necromancers can also transfer youth or vigor via life channel. Much to my chagrin, the spell does nowhere specify that the target needs to have a certain minimum intelligence, so yes, hand me my bag of kittens to drain…

Psychomancy is the specialty that includes enchantment classics like dominate, but also a spell to e.g. decipher an encrypted message or put people to sleep with dust of the sandman. Spiritualism includes ethereal barriers that block magics, use other persons as relays for magic, or open plasmic locks of secured objects, with some sample keys suggested, ranging from the sacrifice of a sinner to a debt to an angelic being, a severed finger, or a song. Translocation is the specialty that includes options to fold space, make targets a living gate (painful for target…), travel the dangerous mirror road, or recall teleport to a previous sigil. Vivimancy, finally, lets you incite bloodlust, using genoplasm to mutate matter and make it collapse (and potentially spawn…things), and it is also here that we can find the system’s variant of haste , the quickening, which does carry the risk of falling unconscious due to the stress it imposes on the system.

Now, you may have noted that, with the base system offering simple offense and defense options, these spells tend to gravitate towards being both specific and feeling very much in line with magic we know from various pieces of non-gaming literature; in many ways, the magic presented here feels magical and volatile. This notion is further enhanced by the presence of spell catastrophes. When non-sorcerers cast, when you’re damaged, when casting beyond normal spell allotment – depending on what you decide, there’ll be a spell catastrophe, with 12 entries presented per specialty, for a total of 84 spell catastrophe entries. These are listed by specialty, but also note a number ascending from 1 to 84, so if you want to roll on a large table instead, you can roll a d% and disregard anything above 84/reroll...or, if you’re sadistic, roll twice.

Now, what makes a good spell catastrophe table? Well, first of all, there should be an impact – a spell mishap should not be something you just shrug off. Unfortunately, plenty of supplements fall off the other side of the band wagon, instead being overly punitive. A good spell mishap is, to borrow Zzarchov Kowolski’s term, a “shenanigans generator”, and not a “lol, you die, so random”-BS. Because that’s an end, and not a chance to roleplay. It is my ardent pleasure to report that the spell catastrophes in this book firmly gravitate to the high-impact roleplaying conductive side of things. So, your diabolism spell failed? Well, what about ALL your associates growing horns? That town cleric and paladin will not be amused…What about being seen as horrifying by those with second sight? Being haunted by plasmic spirits? Now, I did mention that I consider these spells best suited for games with an intrinsic distrust for magic-users, and there are plenty of high-impact reasons in this supplement. What about a botched cast animating all shadows in a nearby settlement, which proceed to try to kill everything? This may not end a campaign, but it certainly puts a serious spin on things…There also are spell catastrophes that make you forevermore require regular rooting, as your limbs require tree-like sustenance. Yep, that would be from the vivimancy mishaps.

So yeah, the spellcasting part of the booklet works imho best for old-school systems that champion a volatile magic that feels occult and forbidden; in many ways, I think this book magics for a better LotFP-spellcasting engine than the default. Similarly, if The Hateful Place’s spellcasting is too overkill for you, this might do the trick.

The second part of the book deals with magic treasures – a total of 50 items are included. These do not come with suggested gp-values, item scarcity or the like – they live solely on the strength of their concepts. To give you a few examples: The Armor of Grogaxus leaves footprints of moist sludge wherever they tread, and ride waves of earth or animate pillars of earth to attack targets; however, a spirit is bound within, and whenever the elemental powers are used, there is a 1-in-20 chance it will be released… The ardent reader may have surmised here that there is no range given for the attack, nor for the speed-increase granted by the wave of earth. Coins of bewitching make those that take them subject to one command from the one paying with them. What about a crown that may erase you from existence? There is a cymbal of names that usually remains silent – but if a name is said and it struck, it sounds if the target is within 100 paces. There is a ridiculously tall hat that renders you invisible if you remain motionless for a long time; what about a cat statuette that can transfix targets? A strange armor with insectoid plumes and feelers that can make inexact dreamstuff duplicates of items. What about a feylight lantern that not just illuminates the vicinity, but which also renders armor weightless?

The goblin-birthing knife lets you slice open the belly of a slain human-type creature (the item prevents the kitten-exploit!) to birth a goblin with a favorable disposition. The meteor lure is placed in the ground, and after a day, makes a meteorite crush everything in the size of a large house. What about a dark mace that can permanently transform you into an orc? The Mizuthian battle-shroud revives one of the fallen, but taints them with dark magic – on a second death, the target becomes a crazed wraith…There are also tablets, which, when placed against a door and shattered, will shatter the door as the tablet does. What about a net that transfixes a target in time?

Yeah, as you can see, these items tend to gravitate to the potent, but dangerous side of things, fitting in rather well with the remainder of the book. The supplement ends with an alphabetic spell index.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are per se very good on a formal level; on a rules-language level, the book system-immanently suffers somewhat from being system-agnostic; I don’t mind that. I do, however, mind that it’s at times slightly inconsistent, and the lack of suggested standards of guidance regarding areas of effect and ranges of spells is neither required for a system-agnostic rules-lite spellcasting engine, nor appreciated. So yeah, this will need a bit more work than e.g. the rulings that enhance e.g. the more charming aspects of B/X. Layout adheres to a one-column b/w-standard without much frills, with pretty large letters and massive headers – this book could have been much shorter in theory. The interior b/w-artworks by Russ Nicholson deserve special mention: Detailed, unique and inspiring, they really elevated this booklet for me. The pdf-version of the supplement comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. The perfectbound softcover sports its name on the spine, which is certainly appreciated. It should be noted that my copy’s cover is not exactly black, but rather dark-grey.

B. Strejcek’s “Wonder & Wickedness” honestly took time to grow on me. At first, I was frankly disappointed by being left alone regarding intended ranges and areas of effect; and yes, a good designer can certainly quickly and painlessly extrapolate those, but they really shouldn’t have to. That being said, once I got over that aspect of the book being not as detailed as I’d have liked to see, the book did grow on me. It manages to make many classic concepts feel fresh, and it breathes that ephemeral, hard to capture notion of magic being both volatile and seductive. I particularly consider it to be a perfect fit for games like LotFP, especially if you want magic to have an impact without destroying your campaign. The system presented here is high impact enough to allow for tactical depth and result in sorcerers being feared and ostracized – but it does not go so far as to make it a bad proposition for groups to bring sorcerers with them.

As such, while this does require some work on parts of the referee/GM, it can be a godsend for specific campaigns and playstyles. If that does not sound interesting, or if you’re looking for a replacement system for your high/standard fantasy campaign, then this is not what you want; if you’re looking for a volatile, occult-feeling system that doesn’t constantly derail your game, then this delivers. The closest analogue, perhaps, would be a simpler DCC-engine: And it GENUINELY is simpler: It has a simple base engine, is easy to parse, and gets successfully rid of the spell-block. So some people will love it for that.

How to rate this, then? Well, ultimately, I think it does very well what it tries to do, leaving me only with complains regarding minor inconsistencies in presentation, and the lack of range/Area of Effect complaints, both instances that simply were not required by the system to operate. These are what ultimately costs this my seal of approval (which it could have easily attained) and half a star, but I can’t bring myself to rounding down from my final verdict of 4.5 stars – I got too many genuinely great ideas out of this booklet.

Endzeitgeist out.