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FlexTale Solo Image Oracle Omnibus (system-neutral)
Publisher: Infinium Game Studios
by John [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/28/2024 13:29:39

This is an instrumental book for fantasy game masters or someone who wants to use random imagery to inspire storytelling. It is essentially 6 x 6 x 6 different little pictures (icons) that can inspire decisions or creativity for solo role-playing, group role-playing (for the DM or even for players who want inspiration for their player agency), or even for fledgling writers looking for inspiration and ideas for their creative storytelling. It's 250+ pages chock full of creative ideas and useful information. In the back of the book are several pages of bonus content to help anyone considering converting content from a fantasy RPG 5e to Pathfinder, OSR, or OSR or one of the other systems. There is nothing negative to write about this product. Some may complain about not having expensive artwork, but this keeps the price reasonable; the lack of art lets you do the scenery in your head. If you have enjoyed other solo RPG tools, or random table books for inspiration, you will most definitely find scads of material here to be helpful. Highly recommended as a tool for your own work or creative thinking, and of course, solo gaming.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
FlexTale Solo Image Oracle Omnibus (system-neutral)
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The Steel Road
Publisher: Sinopa Publishing LLC
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/06/2023 20:12:31

TL/DR: Wonderful collection of unique magical weapons with back-stories for each as well as stats for non-magical weapons not found in the 5e PHB. Some nice sketch art as well!

The Steel Road is the kind of book that could be aimed at both D&D players as well as D&D dungeon masters. This book has some great stories in it, telling the tale of a travlling merchant that goes to lots of exotic locations in a fantasy setting that is somewhat based on real-world locations that might have cultural weaponry similar to places in the real world. For example, there is a Zulu Iklwa spear that has non-magical stats for this type of weapon and some nice artwork for it. There is also a little story about how the travelling merchant protagonist of the book encountered these. And a page about King Skaka's Iklwa unique magical one. This is kind of how the book goes, featuring around 50 new weapons and 50 unique magical versions of those weapons. There are little story nuggets scattered throughout the book as well that can provide inspiration to a DM who needs some adventure hook ideas (such as a short adventure for a party to go on to try to aquire one of these weapons). There are no fleshed out adventures here, but again, there is plenty of inspiring artwork and flavor text that it would be pretty simple for an experienced DM to build some adventures based on the ideas presented here. If you're wanted some new types of weapons in your 5e game expecially if you're looking for something non-European-Medieval then this is a great resource for you. Or if you just want some cool magical lewt to throw at your players or to beg your DM to incude.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Steel Road
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Whispers of Persephone (Black Cover)
Publisher: Sinopa Publishing LLC
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/21/2020 19:19:47

TL/DR: Possibly the most creative, interesting, and absolutely TERRIFYING book ever written for D&D about Necromancers.

SUMMARY: So unassuming with its plain black cover. Persephone is the Greek goddess of things that grow in the earth, so the title doesn't immediately scream "evil." But do not let that fool you. Evil is contained in these pages. Pure, quintessential evil. This book is not for the kiddos, folks. If you doubt me, take a look at the other cover version of this with the spine and flesh... ok saw that? Yeah. That's pretty much what you can expect from this book.

Contained within this 145+ page sourcebook is a plethora of content, all of it somehow related to the dark art of Necromancy... the magic of death. The book starts off by introducing one of the most terrifying villains I've ever read about in a D&D sourcebook... THE Necromancer. I'm not talking about A necromancer. I'm talking about a specific, ultra-high-powered Necromancer who leads the Stygian Necromancers sect and is the baddest of the badest of the bad. This villain is so nasty, so powerful, and so despicable, if you build a campaign around this guy and his legions of minions, you will undoubtedly have an EPIC final battle at the end if your heroes make it far enough to confront this bad boy head on. And he has 13 Accolytes that are all extremely powerful necromancers in their own right, with their own scores of minions to aid them as well. Each of these amazing, evil opponents are lovingly crafted with absolutely disturbing full page or more back-stories, and most of them have custom abilities, magic items, and quirks to make them all unique and entertaining. Thinking about running an evil campaign? The author was thoughtful enough to provide printable player-ready character sheets for each of these Acolytes at the back of the book in case you want to run some kind of campaign of darkness (probably one involving back-stabbing and politics, vying for THE Necromancer's adoration).

But wait, that's not all! There's pages of new necromantic rituals, spells, feats, magic items, crafting recipes, monsters, and more! There's even an interesting back-story told via the "quotes" after each entry where various characters from the book have made comments of each of the book's entries. And in the back there's a handful of epic "heroes" that have fought and maybe fell to the evils of this coven of death worshippers. There's tons of ideas in all of this for plot hooks galore! If you can't find something to use in this book in your own campaigns, as a DM, then you just aren't trying hard enough.

PROS

  • Fourteen unique, memorable, and dispicable villains to destroy your players' characters with.
  • A whole new "faction" to add to your campaign setting, Stygian Necromancers.
  • Stygian Necromancy - a whole new arcane tradition for the necromancer specialist caster.
  • 5 Stygian Necromantic Feats you can use to make your necromancers the most vile and hated in all the multiverse.
  • 28 detailed Necromantic rituals and spells that will completely creep you out and your entire gaming table.
  • 10 new necromantic alchemical recipies and substances that can be used to amp up your dark dealers of death.
  • 11 enchantment recipies and/or magical artifacts to equip necromancers and their minions with.
  • 2 new extremely disturbing creatures that can be minions of the necromancer as well as means to alter existing undead to better serve their lords of death, and scare the heck out of your players with.
  • The stories of former heroes that were unfortunate enough to encounter the Stygian Necromancers....
  • 16 full color, outright disturbing thematic artworks, most of them full page works, from Christian Martinez.
  • An interesting "meta plot" story that you discover from reading the back stories of the characters and all the little quotes from each of the book's entries.
  • It has an ending, the nightmares may eventually subside... :)

CONS

  • Maybe a few of the entries could have been trimmed a bit with a little bit terser writing, but that's just a style thing and the amount of material is very sufficient for the asking price.
  • I wasn't sure exactly how much all of the materials for each of the recipies should cost or how much all of them take to perform. Most of them are spelled out, just a few things I noticed.
  • More of a greedy whine, than a con, but I wish there was about twice as much of Christian's amazing artwork in this. Maybe a few more portraits of the Acolytes.
  • I mean, like, if you really, actually use all of this stuff in an actual campaign, you're game is DARK, like, very, very DARK, man. :)

FINAL VERDICT This is a must-buy for anyone planning to run a necromancer with a DM silly enough to let you use (even some of) this stuff in their game. But like, prepare to go to a very dark place you might not make it back from...

As for its intended use, I think mostly this is a DM-friendly supplement that contains a whole wealth of material useful for some completely scary as heck antagonists to pit your players against. There's definitely a wealth of story hook ideas in here as well as the crunch to back it all up with. If you want to run a decidedly DARK themed fantasy game, you need this book. Even if you aren't playing 5e, you could convert most of this to any fantasy system. The ideas themselves are unique and have great flavor; this isn't just a "common necromancer ideas converted to 5e" book. The author clearly has his own take on the theme, and one that is very compelling. RECOMMENDED!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Whispers of Persephone (Black Cover)
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Sinopa Omnibus, Volume Two
Publisher: Sinopa Publishing LLC
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/20/2020 21:42:22

TL/DR: A nice sized sourcebook of interesting villains and potential allies that can be worked into nearly any campaign of 5e, complete with amazing artwork.

Fair Warning: I am an avid fan of this author and have backed many of his Kickstarter campaigns as well as his Patreon page. So I do see a lot of his work as it evolves from ideas to finished product. I was not paid for this review nor was I solicited to write it. I do tend to review all of the Sinopa products, but do not receive any compensation for it (not even free PDFs because I usually already backed the KS :P). My opinions are what I consider to be fair and unbiased based on reading and playing through the content, and I also happen to back and read tons of content from other third party 5e creators, so I consider that when scoring any content here.

PRODUCT SUMMARY This is 50+ pages of densly packed content for the fifth edition of the most popular RPG in the world. This is essentially a "Legends" book with some extremely high-level deity-like beings that you could use in your game in a way other than directly opposing your party (unless you're going for a TPK or they are Epic Level or something). There are a few actual "monster" type characters that you can use for direct encounters, but most of the characters in this collection of fantasy short stories would be best used as an NPC that sets the party to some task or possibly acts as an ally to them. There's also some really interesting characters here, but the best part for me indeed was the writing of the stories. Each NPC has several pages of a story that go along with them, and without fail all of these well-written stories are unique and interesting. Additionally, the artwork is great.

PROS

  • Really amazing art, if you look at some of the posters available from Sinopa you get an idea of the kind of artwork. Each one is a full page, full color piece, one is a two-page spread of the faerie queen.
  • Example: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/284161/Titania-Queen-of-Faerie-and-Arcadia-12-x-18-inch-poster?manufacturers_id=11254
  • Patreon subscribers are lucky enough to see this art every month, and depending on your level you can get a post-card version of it mailed to you, also!
  • Each art piece has a story behind it, and a well written, very intersting story that has lots of potential to be expanded into a great encounter in your own game world. None of the NPC's rely heavily on the author's own campaign setting or anything specific, they can be dropped in nearly any typical mid to high fantasy setting most 5e DM's are running.
  • Stats are provided for the major NPCs and for some of the magical items that could be found.
  • Each of the stories has "hooks" ideas to get the content for that section involved with your party.

CONS

  • None, this is a great deal at 50+ pages of stories and 5e crunch for this price.

I can heartily recommend everyone who DM's for 5th edition check this out. If nothing else it can inspire you to make some memorable encounters. And even players might find the stories fun to read also and there's a few ideas that could work in as companions, patrons, or allies.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Sinopa Omnibus, Volume Two
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Sinopa Omnibus, Volume One
Publisher: Sinopa Publishing LLC
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/20/2020 19:36:18

TL/DR: A very nice sourcebook of interesting encounters that can be worked into nearly any campaign of 5e, with some really stellar artwork showcasing the diverse selection of memorable NPCs.

Fair Warning: I am an avid fan of this author and have backed many of his Kickstarter campaigns as well as his Patreon page. So I do see a lot of his work as it evolves from ideas to finished product. I was not paid for this review nor was I solicited to write it. I do tend to review all of the Sinopa products, but do not receive any compensation for it (not even free PDFs because I usually already backed the KS :P). My opinions are what I consider to be fair and unbiased based on reading and playing through the content, and I also happen to back and read tons of content from other third party 5e creators, so I consider that when scoring any content here.

Summary - This is 50+ pages of densly packed content for the fifth edition of the most popular RPG in the world. I would say most of the "encounter" levels ares for mid to upper level parties. But you could still tone down a bit of it if you want to try and use it on a low end party, and some of it is aimed at low level parties and some of it could be non-hostile encounters suitable for any level. There isn't really an overarching theme to this, it just has really cool NPCs, really cool art, some interesting magic items, and most of all, some really great short-form stories that provide background for each of the "encounters" that could be done with this material. I would say this is mostly an anthology of interesting, well written fantasy short stories that feature great artwork and also have 5e stats added so that you can put ideas from the stories onto your gaming table.

PROS:

  • Really amazing art, if you look at some of the posters available from Sinopa you get an idea of the kind of artwork. Each one is a full page, full color piece.
  • Example: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/284169/Ol-Jack-12-x-18-inch-poster?manufacturers_id=11254
  • Patreon subscribers are lucky enough to see this art every month, and depending on your level you can get a post-card version of it mailed to you, also!
  • Each art piece has a story behind it, and a well written, very intersting story that has lots of potential to be expanded into a great encounter in your own game world. None of the NPC's rely heavily on the author's own campaign setting or anything specific, they can be dropped in nearly any typical mid to high fantasy setting most 5e DM's are running.
  • Stats are provided for the major NPCs and for some of the magical items that could be found.
  • Each of the stories has "hooks" ideas to get the content for that section involved with your party.

CONS: None. This is pay-what-you-want 50+ pages of amazing 5e content and fantasy stories. Only a crazy person would see something wrong with that! :)

I can heartily recommend everyone who DM's for 5th edition check this out. If nothing else it can inspire you to make some memorable encounters. And even players might find the stories fun to read also and there's a few ideas that could work in as companions or home-base NPCs.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Sinopa Omnibus, Volume One
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Ice Kingdoms Campaign Setting
Publisher: Mad Martian Games
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/20/2019 07:51:23

Ice Kingdoms is one of the best researched and well designed OSR products that I have encountered, and I have a lot of them. TL/DR - BUY THIS, NOW. It's a great product for an incredible price.

This book is extremely useful for any DM for any system that is d20 or pretty much ANY fantasy RPG system if you want to run a Norse themed campaign. This book documents the gear, the people, the cultures, the norse mythic races, the gods, and the locations in such a detailed and easy to consume manner that you will not help to be sucked into the setting.

This book is good for any PLAYERS that are playing a norse themed campaign also, even if it's not OSR.

Ice Kingdoms Campaign Setting is filled with great black and white fantasy artwork, many maps, charts, and other useful bits besides just the regular text which is well organized. If there is a single minor negative thing to say is that this PDF needs to be hyperlinked and cross referenced better to make it easier to find things, but good old search works most of the time.

At $3 or even less if you buy in the bundle, this 200 page BEAST of a sourcebook is an absolute STEAL, for anyone wanting anything related to norse fantasy gaming.

The bundle is an even better deal, because it comes with bestiary documents as well as some amazing adventures in the setting. This book stand-alone would be good for players not wanting spoilers for the adventures.

5 STARS - Highly recommended, you could definitely spend your money on a lot less in both quality and quantity of content.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Ice Kingdoms Campaign Setting
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Lost Artifacts of Greyghast - A 5e Magic Item Compendium
Publisher: Many-Sided Dice
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/01/2018 16:22:21

I know what you're thinking. Ah, yeah, another magic item book. Why do I need another magic item book, anyway? Well, yes, this is true. Lost Artifacts is a magic item book at its core. But this book is a LOT more than just a magic item book. First of all it's friggin' HUGE. If you ever decide to quit playing D&D, you could always tie a chain to this and use it as an anchor for your boat. Secondly, it is GORGEOUS. There is a lot of really brilliant fantasy art in here, page after page of amazing items and artwork. But the most important reason you want to get this, as GM at least, is because each of these hundred odd artifacts has an actual STORY to them, and those stories WILL kick off your creative juices and can easily turn into unique adventures for your campaign that you build yourself. There's really a LOT of little hooks here in nearly every item description. You could write adventures for multiple campaigns with all the good ideas here. And that it why this book is a highly recommended for 5e DM's. And as for players, well hey, some of these items are also really USEFUL, so you could pick up a copy and try to convince your DM to put one of these in the next random chest or goblin horde. Yeah, right. I mean, sure, it COULD happen. So why not buy and try?!

Art: 5/5 Story: 5/5 Crunch: 5/5 Value: 5/5

OVERALL: 5/5 - Highly recommended for DMs and tentatively recommended for players of 5th Edition.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Lost Artifacts of Greyghast - A 5e Magic Item Compendium
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The Pine Barrens
Publisher: DARK BY DEZIGN
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/14/2018 20:53:48

The Pine Barrens feels like a love letter to the slasher flicks of the 70's and 80's like Haloween, Friday the 13th series, Nightmare on Elm Street, and more. There are some really twisted scenes in this, but it's all good, as long as the players are up to a huge challenge. Even with a full party of level 8 characters, this adventure has a lot of potential for TPK's at every corner. You may wish to tone down the challenge of some of the combat and instead focus on the horror elements like the creepy ghosts, insane asylum inmates, witches, cultists, slashers, and all around monstrous denizens that wander the Turzee Island, including the infamous TURZEE DEVIL!

FEATURES:

  • Excellent artwork
  • Lots of player handouts to get them in the mood
  • Lots of great maps / cartography
  • Twisted dark encounters with creepy NPCs
  • Good variety of encounters and locations

If the DM puts another small village on the other side of one of the working bridges to the island for the players to use as a base of operations, this module, at over 100 pages of content, could easily last you several sessions of fun if not an entire campaign. This is written for Pathfinder but could also pretty easily be used for 5e or other OGL d20 based games, or even OSR / original edition games with a little minor tweaking. This is a great bargain for the amount of excellent content. Also the book is FULL of great player handouts, maps, creepy as hell artwork, and other content that you can use to evoke the "slasher flick" feel. Put on the soundtrack to Friday the 13th and dim the lights, and you're players will have nightmares for days!

This is part 4 in a 7 part series of very loosely tied adventures that began with Escape from Skullkeep Island. No prior experience with the earlier adventures is required to understand this, at all (there's little that ties them together other than the PC's). Each one of these had gotten progressively more and more sophisticated, and Pine Barrens is so far easily my favorite adventure put out so far by Dark by Dezign. It's quite the bargain given how much content is here compared to the price. You could do a lot worse than pick this up if you like dark fantasy and horror themed adventures. RECOMMENDED!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Pine Barrens
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The Ghoul Well
Publisher: DARK BY DEZIGN
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/24/2018 11:12:52

TL/DR: Nice starter adventure for level 1 or 2 party that can be done in a single session, at a sweet price.

A murder most foul. A baron gone mad with jealousy. An island full of danger for those who seek justice. A boat load of treasure for a crafty band of murder-hobos.

PROS:

  1. Only $1 for 11 pages of actual content is a steal (excluding pages like covers, licenses, or credits).
  2. Nice mix of creatures to deal with.
  3. Cool maps and interesting areas to explore.
  4. Evocative artwork that captures the mood of this decidedly grim fetch quest.
  5. Nice opening story that is generic enough that could easily fit into most campaign settings with minor tweaks.
  6. Should be easy to convert to other d20 RPGs like 3.5e or 5e with little trouble.
  7. A good adventure for new DM's and/or a party of new Players.
  8. Leaves room for some follow up adventures (and promises to have 2 more sequels).

CONS: (No points removed for these because basically these are just things I wish were included and the author already gave a lot of value for the price)

  1. A few missed opportunities for some non-combat scenes that a seasoned DM could make minor changes to add.
  2. Could have used a few more maps and also some maps for VTT play added as JPGs to the package.
  3. There's some missing details about NPCs that can be encountered that could have added more depth to the story.
  4. Some of the encounters will most likely result in a party wipe of level 1's without making a few changes. New DMs or those with new players should take care not to overwhelm the PCs with too many creatures at one time unless they are being stupid.

CONCLUSION: You really can't ask for a better $1 adventure, and this is a sweet little starter adventure for a new campaign. Highly recommended for a DM starting off a new Pathfinder or 5e or other fantasy RPG game and needing content his players probably never saw before. The writing is solid and the artwork is good, and this adventure hits all the right notes for an engaging evening of fantasy role playing. I eagerly await more in this series! This adventure is especially good for new DM's who want something easy to run that will still provide some challenge for even seasoned players.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Ghoul Well
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Slaughterhouse Of The Ogre Mage
Publisher: DARK BY DEZIGN
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/24/2018 07:00:43

TL/DR: A stand alone "oriental" adventure with really great art, good cartography, and plenty of player-handout material, bargain priced for the amount of content that is here.

You know Kung Fu? Well you better know some before taking on this blood soaked "drive-in double-feature" bounty-hunt reminescent of Kill Bill or other extremely violent Kung Fu movies. Do not enter this adventure without a big ass sword and a really strong stomach. Fans of really dark, violent action will probably really like this adventure. It really gives players a chance to cut loose with the carnage. Unfortunately it also seems like a good place for a GM to cut loose with the carnage against the players. A level 5 or even 6 party has about a snowball's chance in hell of surviving this adventure without copious pit-stops.

PROS:

  1. Lots of creatures and opponents here that are fun and rarely encountered in most published adventures.
  2. An interesting dungeon design that is quite surprising and intersting, with some really cool puzzles and traps.
  3. Enemies that are so nasty and arrogant they just have a "come kill me now, kill me a lot" sign written on them.
  4. Artwork is excellent, lots of cool "oriental" flavoring.
  5. Solid cartography and plenty of player-handout pages.

CONS:

  1. It would be preferable to have the maps as JPG files for easier use on VTT.
  2. Severe balance issues (see below).
  3. No real personal investment into the story for the PC's, somehow the GM will want to tie in the ogre magi's forces into the histories of the PC's so they really, really, want to kill them. All.

Balance Issues: For real I don't see how any 5 member party of level 5 standard Pathfinder characters could possibly make it through this grind house without using tactics like going in, surviving 3 or 4 encounters, going out, resting, going back and somehow the enemy hasn't really changed anything to tighten up defenses, doing a few more encounters, going out, resting, repeat. Which would make no sense, the Ogre Magi would start putting up more defenses earlier so it would completely change the "dungeon" layout and encounters, in my opinion. I feel like this adventure would challenge a party of level 9-10 characters. Even level 11-12 characters would not find it to be a cakewalk, and would have to rest a few times. Level 5's? They're going to get seriously murdered unless the GM is not playing the monsters to their full potential. Nearly every encounter has the potential for a TPK, and on top of that, a lot of the encounters are in close proximity to each other, and battles could cause enough noise to bring reinforcements that would ENSURE a TPK of level 5's. Admittedly I haven't run the adventure yet to verify what happens on a play test, but damn! I would suggest just waiting until your players reach level 8 at earliest before throwing this at them.

Conclusion: This is still a very solid adventure, I just feel that it's geared for a party of more competent characters if they want to really be successful. This adventure would not be hard to convert to 5e or 3.5e or other editions of d20 based role playing games. Even if you don't use this adventure outright, there's plenty of fun encounters here that you can borrow and transport into adventures of your own design, so you really can't beat the price tag for this amount of well written and interesting NPCs, enemies, and encounters. Not to mention there's some cool magic items and ideas for traps here too. I only took one point off for balance issues, you could do a lot worse than pick this up. This is billed as part 3 of 7 in a string of adventures but the adventures so far in the series have little to nothing to do with each other, so I'd treat it as a stand alone.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Slaughterhouse Of The Ogre Mage
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Escape The Lair
Publisher: DARK BY DEZIGN
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/23/2018 16:58:14

TL/DR: 75 pages of Tomb of Horror style dungeon romp for Pathfinder, or easily converted to 3.x or even 5e, with tons of great artwork, player handouts, and great looking cartography that will work well for VTT use.

Escape the Lair may have a simple name. Escape the Lair may have a simple plot. Escape the Lair may even have a simple villain. But what Escape the Lair does right, and what it has in spades, is a series of challenging encounters where players will need to use their brains more than their dice to prevent a total party kill. The villain for EtL is a lich, a twisted and evil one that seems to enjoy mentally torturing creatures as well as physical tortures. The lich taunts the adventurers that attempt to enter his lair, fully aware at all times of their progress. The lich has a demented mind, and it shows in the various puzzles and obstacles that he set up in his death-trap "lair". If the party survives this dungeon, they can count themselves fortunate.

Pros:

  1. Non-linear series of unique and interesting encounters that challenge the player's brain as much as the character's stats.
  2. Really good cartography that sets the mood and would work well for VTT.
  3. Lots of player handouts that evoke the proper mood as the lich taunts the characters and frustrates them to get them to make mistakes.
  4. Plenty of content for the price, a bargain!
  5. Easily converted to other systems especially flavors of DnD like 3.5 or 5e.

Cons:

  1. This could be a pro if you really want a true Tomb of Horror experience, but this dungeon probably will kill off a party of level 4 characters. I could actually see a TPK on the very first encounter being a strong possiblity. Be sure to bring a cleric.
  2. The setup as written for how the party gets into this adventure to me felt a bit contrived. I think if they discovered the caves on the mountain peak themselves and just decided to explore without any forknowledge of the "lich" would make for a better story, but YMMV. This kind of "Hook" is something almost every DM has to change anyway so I didn't take off any points for this.
  3. I would prefer to have high detail JPG files of the maps separate from the PDF but in a pinch a screen shot of the PDF page will work for VTT.

Conclusion: This is billed as part 2 of a series of adventures, however, there is little to no connection between the story presented in Escape the Lair and the one from Escape From Skullkeep Prison. A DM could probably make a connection if desired, but this actually works better as a stand-alone dungeon. This could easily be a starting point for a campaign that will end with a final confrontation of the lich villain who set this lair up, and perhaps Dark by Dezign will put out a follow up for this that does that very thing. I would recommend playing with characters that are at least level 5 so they have access to some decent spells and abilities; they will NEED it, trust me. Balancing issues aside, this has some really wonderful traps and encounters in it, and your players will be both thrilled and perhaps killed... haha... better keep a few backup characters on hand. :)

Highly recommended if you're looking for a challenging dungeon that will put your player's dungeoneering skills to the test. Not recommended if your players are babies that can't take a TPK. :)



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Escape The Lair
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Creator Reply:
Thank you very much for the entertaining review! I LOVE your idea about using the separate jpgs to use as player handouts in the way that you said. I am really going to try and carve out some time to ADD these to the DTRPG listings that have them. GREAT IDEA, and I will send them to you as well. Yes, it is a bit challenging. My first adventure, MURDER ON MONTELLIO was cool and fun and received some nice input, but I got the distinct impression that it was just a little bit easy. NOT A PUSHOVER, but not as much of a challenge. Perhaps I may have slightly overcompensated in areas of some adventures. Gathering this data, I am seriously considering doing the following with the 7-adventure, 500-page adventure Compilation. A fellow named Scott has offered some future suggestions to tie these together. It is not because I cannot think of these things myself, but with the KS project going on, and with other KS projects, I SINCERELY like to network and work with other KS backers and supporters. It really is fun! Also, perhaps I can share these adventures with you before I put them out for the public? I Do like your input. Also, I really am considering ADDING a small NPC “Bible” at the back of the compilation. This way, the GM can choose interesting and BRAND NEW NPCs to help HEAL (LOL) the party! I think that was a good point, and I do put in multiple healing potions in my adventures, but I hear ya! Anyway, thanks again for the invaluable input I truly appreciate it and I laughed out loud TWICE while reading thsi entetaining review. I was in Whole Foods and two ladies started laughing AT me because I was bursting out into two bouts of laughter, seemingly out of the blue! THANK YOU FOR THAT!! : ) Let me know if you would like to Preview these adventures? Seriously! Matt
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Xas Irkalla
Publisher: Atramentis Games
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/23/2018 15:50:58

ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Welcome to Xas Irkalla. You will die here. You will die here painfully. Brutally. Without hope. Without love. Without anyone caring. You will die here, lost in the warped realities of dreaming psychotic telepaths. Lost in the chaos that is where dreams and nightmares touch reality. You will die here, in the dark, alone, in a personal hell made all too customized for your own fears, demons, and failures.

Some of you, the smart ones, will fall early, resigned to the fact that your demise is inevitable and more desirable than the torture that is living in this forsaken world. A few of you, the stupid, stuborn ones, will try hard, will survive, for a while, will be brutalized, tortured, maimed, ruined, and finally destroyed. Perhaps before your inevitable demise, you will have some small impact on the everchanging landscapes of Xas Irkalla. Perhaps it will even matter for a year, a few years at best, and then as the sands of time march along, and the shifting reality of this world ebs and flows again, nothing will remain of your deeds, of your life. Nothing, you are nothing, and nothing is all you will ever be.

To describe Xas Irkallas as unforgiving would be a gross, laughable understatement. Millions suffer constantly in the harsh and painful conditions that the terrible gods of this place have allowed to exist. To live is to suffer. Daily, thousands upon thousands of tortured souls gladly welcome death as respite from this blighted world. Thousands more persevere on, surviving, but never thriving, at least not for very long. Souls turn to darkness just to survive here, climbing on the broken backs and shoulders of the less fit, becoming the abuser to avoid the abuse. Will you give up your soul for another day in hell?

ART: 10/10 The artwork evokes a haunting, terrible place reminescent of HR Giger or Keith Thomson. If you like dark, horror-inducing art, you should get this soley based on the artwork alone.

RULES: 8/10 The rules are similar to PbtA except it uses a 1d10 + Modifier (based on skill or attribute) vs target number, 7-9 for "success with complication", or 10+ for "success". Players can chose to use up to 3 dice per roll and take the best roll, however, rolling a 1 causes "stress" which causes your character to slowly go insane and also spawn "demons" from the mind into the reality of Xas Irkalla.

SETTING: 10/10 Most players are not going to probably appeal to this type of setting. This is a setting for masochistic players that want an extreme challenge in a brutal, completely unforgiving place. This is the kind of setting that your players will have to give up idealism and morality just to survive. Sadistic GM's will love this setting. This setting might be fun for a lot of gamers in short spurts, like as a halloween special.

FLAVOR: 10/10 I've read a lot of twisted RPG books. Kult. In Nomine. Demon: The Fallen. The Book of Vile Darkness. Those ain't got NOTHING on Xas Irkalla. This is without a doubt the DARKEST fantasy role playing game I've ever read the rules for. If dark and despairing is what you want in a game, you can't really get better mood and flavor than Xas Irkalla delivers, in spades. If not, well, you probably already stopped reading above when I told you to abandon hope.

STORY: 10/10 There's a lot of history and cool characters, locations, dark gods, and two mini-adventures written here. The vast majority of this book is not game mechanics, it's describing the brutal alien landscape that is Xas Irkalla. Very well written. The starting short story does a great job of setting up the mood right from the beginning, and later chapers that go into details about specific NPCs and places really bring the world to life.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION If you are looking for care bears and little ponies full of loving friendship, this isn't the place. If you're looking for a dark, brooding, and seriously F'd up horror fantasy role playing game, good luck finding anything similar, or anything nearly as horrifying. Highly recommended for the admittedly small audience of gamers that are looking for "blacker than black" dark fantasy.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Xas Irkalla
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Vagabonds of Dyfed
Publisher: Sigil Stone Publishing
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/23/2018 14:55:53

TL/DR: Hippy love-child of OSR and PbtA game theories. Takes the deadly, simulationist aspects of OSR, as well as being somewhat compatible with OSR material (to some degree, tho not to my satisfaction, really). Marries that with the smooth, player-driven narrative and 2d6 mechanics of Apocalypse World Engine games.

Pros:

  1. Very easy to memorize and implement game mechanics that allow a vast range of freedom for both the players and the GM while still retaining some semblance of simulationism reminiscent in old-school revival games.
  2. Flexible character creation that should not take a very long time but allows flexibility for players to emulate many different fantasy tropes or mash ups of different tropes.
  3. Conversion is pretty simple for OSR creature stats to VoD format. But not necessarily that easy for creatures with class levels.
  4. Things like money, economy, encumbrance, resources, and even equipment are somewhat abstracted to speed up play.
  5. At least moderately compatible with literally thousands of OSR adventures.
  6. System lends itself well for "Adhoc" sandbox GMing style where little to no prep can still mean a fun time and meanigful story progress.

Cons:

  1. Conversion of characters or NPCs with class levels from OSR material significantly more work than the monsters without too much guidance in rules so far.
  2. Some things are glossed over while in reality can become sticky points in a simulationist style gameplay going for "harsh but fair" reality. These things can be proactively fixed by adding a little bit more details to the rules based on OSR examples.
  3. The "speed" or initiative system uses negative numbers, seems as if this should have been scaled outward to simplify it by only positive numbers.
  4. OSR magic items and spells will not directly translate over well to VoD, but they are so intrinsically important to the balance of a lot of OSR adventures, this will require the GM to prep more and either convert the spells and items ahead of time OR rework portions of the adventures that make use of them.
  5. While there's a pretty good amount of special abilities for characters presented in the core rules, this is one area that could easily be expanded upon and provide some "advanced" abilities that are unavailable until higher levels. As a result, characters using the core rules only for advancement will tend to have more options and become better at more variety of things rather than getting better and better at whatever their core concepts are about. What you'll end up with is a party of Jack of All Trades instead of a party of specialists, which could make it harder for the GM to spotlight certain PC's for certain things.

Final Thoughts: When I heard about this Kickstarter for Vagabonds of Dyfed I was elated AND saddened. I had already started my own attempt to write a PbtA / OSR style game compatible with OSR material but using PbtA mechanics! So yeah, someone else was already doing my thing. Which is cool, because it saved me from having to do the work, I guess, but kind of sad because I realized I'd never be able to get my rules out before Vagabonds landed. :) However, they had some really great ideas and things I hadn't thought of, so this along with my own conversion ideas has allowed me to finally have a set of OSR style rules that get rid of the d20 in favor of the 2d6 and most importantly requires no-rolling for the DM, other than for random tables and such (but not in combat, fortunately). I feel like Vagabonds of Dyfed is a good "first attempt" at what ultimately will be perhaps the best fantasy RPG rules I could imagine playing. There's a lot of rough that still needs some polish, but I expect that the community for this game will iron out most of that and maybe in a few years we'll have a Vagabonds 2.0 that will include everything I would ever want.

Until then, BUY THIS, by all means, this is a superb mix of fast and player-oriented indie-gaming Apocalypse World Engine style that can still make use of all of those wonderful toys you've collected in your OSR library. Vagabonds of Dyfed is highly recommended for anyone who likes OSR and also likes Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, or things like that. Or for anyone, really, looking for a solid yet rules-light fantasy RPG rules.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Vagabonds of Dyfed
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Escape From Skullkeep Prison
Publisher: DARK BY DEZIGN
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/18/2018 14:22:06

TL/DR: This is a nice size adventure with lots of nice full color artwork that should take a few sessions to go through clocking in around 90 pages, at a price that is very economical.

PROS:

  1. Lots of memorable NPCs and creatures / opponents.
  2. Interesting plot that is mostly straightforward but enough twists to keep players on their toes.
  3. Interesting encounters throughout some of which are optional.
  4. Great full color artwork and some nice B&W artwork spread generously throughout the book, never feels like "wall of text".
  5. Very good cartography with detailed maps that would work well for VTT if they were separated from the PDF.
  6. Interesting new magic and magic items and other interesting items.
  7. Excellent player handout props that can help draw the players into the adventure.
  8. You get a lot of content for the price.

CONS:

  1. Maps should be separate JPG files to make it easier to use on VTT.
  2. Encounters seem really difficult for their CR. I think inexperienced players at level 1 party would most likely party wipe.
  3. A lot of the information is presented haphazardly in a way that reads ok but makes looking up things during play harder, could use a detailed index.

First of all, this adventure is more of a rescue mission than an "escape", just to nitpick the title a bit. I suppose you could actually easily change the scenario to be an actual escape if you wanted to use some higher level PC's and bump up the difficulty a bit by making them search for their equipment while escaping. The plot overall is straightforward, but there's a lot of characters here with their own motivations that can complicate things easily. Smart players will play off the various factions in the prison against each other. This adventure would be pretty easy to convert to 5e or other versions of DnD. This is part 1 of a series but there does not really seem to be much here other than possibly NPCs that would carry over after this mission is over, so it's also great as a stand alone adventure. This adventure would be pretty easy to scale up to challenge a higher level party, in fact I doubt that many level 1 parties will survive it. Overall I recommend this adventure as an interesting and "twisted" dark fantasy adventure.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Escape From Skullkeep Prison
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Creator Reply:
Thank you, John. I believe this to be a 100% honest and fair review, which I greatly appreciate. Your input/suggestions are appreciated as well! I DO admit that I have to not be too cruel with the PCs and make it more possible to survive some encounters in some areas of my adventures. I really appreciate it, and will try to focus on this issue and perhaps next time will receive a 5-star rating in doing so! Thank you again, and have a great week! : ) Matt B.
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Thank you, John. I believe this to be a 100% honest and fair review, which I greatly appreciate. Your input/suggestions are appreciated as well! I DO admit that I have to not be too cruel with the PCs and make it more possible to survive some encounters in some areas of my adventures. I really appreciate it, and will try to focus on this issue and perhaps next time will receive a 5-star rating in doing so! Thank you again, and have a great week! : ) Matt B.
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Tarot Adventures, Book Two: Comet over Echo Rock
Publisher: Sinopa Publishing LLC
by John B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/04/2018 12:36:32

TL/DR: A great follow up adventure for a new series that offers a lot of help for novice DM's to 5e, featuring a setting-agnostic "home base", great artwork, compelling NPC characters, and plenty of room for the DM to expand during or afterward.

Young Pieron, Lord of Glenfallow, requests your party's aid (again if you played Draw of Glenfallow) in securing a nearby silver mine. Help him, and your band of adventurers could wind up with lands, titles, and even rights to some of the silver mine's profits!

PROS:

  • Well defined and interesting NPC characters that can provide quests and assistance.
  • Small, detailed micro-setting that can easily nestle into a wilderness region of most D&D style fantasy settings.
  • Well balanced encounters with good advice for a novice DM on how to run them or tweak them to fit different adventure groups.
  • Fantastic artwork that really draws you into the adventure and evokes just the right mood.
  • Very well done cartography that can be used on VTT or printed out if need be for tabletop use.
  • Plenty of opportunities in the story for a DM to expand if desired.
  • Part two of a series of adventures that can be interlinked for a larger campaign.
  • Example pregenerated party to use if needed for your players or possibly you could use them as a "rival" group seeking the same goals...

CONS:

Not really much I can say that is negative other than, I wish it were longer (it's not too short, but I just really liked it and wish to see more!), and I would also like to see more variety in the monsters, perhaps some rarely used ones or even new unique ones would have been great. This is more of a "wish list" than a "con" against what the adventure actually did. This is an extremely well written adventure booklet and I could find little to complain about. Very eager to see the rest of this series, now!

Final: Recommended for those wishing to continue the Tarot Adventures series that started with Draw of Glenfallow, or if you desire an example of a low level adventure with a good "base of operations" setting with NPCs and a nice mix of overland and "dungeon" encounters.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Tarot Adventures, Book Two: Comet over Echo Rock
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Creator Reply:
Thank you John! I am really grateful that you enjoy the adventure. The art team did a great job and I'll pass this on to them soonest. W.S. "Sam" Quinton
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