The Blood that I shed do I devote to serve within the eternal Train of Souls. The Eyes of Flesh do I sacrifice for the gift of that immortal Eye which shall view all destruction. The Mortal Soul do I forsake to the void which shall be filled. My voice I raise until it shall […]
B. asks: I just finished the first session of a new campaign. One of my players pitched a character who was “very strange, but in a charming way.” In the first scene she told the chief of police that his eyes reminded her of her dead mother, then she ran in circles around another NPC, […]
This long scroll of human skin has been stitched into a moebius strip. It speaks of dark and blasphemous rites: In the days before the Slumber, the One Who is of Many Doors came unto those who saw the truth of annihilation. And they who drank of the Truth of Blood reached through the Mouth […]
A great third-party Monster Manual for D20. Minions is a little pricy for its content, but the quality is high. Recommended. Review Originally Published March 13th, 2002 CONTENT Minions: The Fearsome Foes is a third-party monster manual from Bastion Press. It’s a softcover featuring full-color printing on glossy pages, and weighs in at 96 pages. […]
On the cover of this book, written in blood, is the symbol of a coil. On the first page is an oath: “I pledge my body, soul, and purpose to the furtherance of chaos. We shall act as one. We shall breathe as one. We shall think as one. And in our crimson coils we […]
The pages of the first part of this volume are covered with an exhaustive detailing of disease – partly its symptoms, but always the methods for its spread, and never a word about its cures. The second part of the volume espouses the teachings of the Brotherhood of the Plagueborn. These cultists seek to achieve […]
First: I’m frequently asked what my session notes look like. People want an example of what my prep looks like. Second: Last week at Green Dragon Fest, I was asked if I would be sharing the scenario I ran on the Alexandrian. I said I’d like to do that, but wasn’t certain if it would […]
Dream Pod 9 has established a reputation of visual excellence, and delivers it strongly with their line of poster-size blueprint files. Review Originally Published February 5th, 2002 Dream Pod 9 has earned a reputation of high excellence across its three lines of games (Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Tribe 8 — and if you didn’t […]
This volume appears to be a cult manual for the Brotherhood of Songsingers. The Songsingers worship chaos in the form of the Discord – the “song of chaos”. They perceive the ways of order as the monotony of a single note beaten again and again. They see, in their acts of chaos and wanton destruction, […]
In a word: Excellent. Easily one of the Top 10 D20 supplements released to date. Review Originally Published October 13th, 2001 Let’s face it: When we look at the shelf in our game shop and see yet another D20 monster manual variant, our eyes begin to glaze over. “For the love of God,” we think, […]
According to this book, the thin veneer of civilization is a perversion of the natural order of humanity. We are born as beasts, and it is only by returning to the way of the beast that truth and purity can be found. In short, the book is a cult manual for the Brotherhood of the […]
It’s like starving yourself for three days, and then eating a pecan. Kiraz makes you hungry for information, but leaves you unsatisfied when all is said and done. Review Originally Published October 10th, 2001 Kiraz: The Lost City is the second adventure in the In Search of Panaga trilogy of modules. However, it is also […]
The end of the world we know shall come like to the tolling of a bell. In the beginning there was a darkness at the heart of the world, and it cloaked itself in the shape of Shadow King – He Who Was Banished and wrapped in the threads of the Demonweb. But like a […]
Here’s a piece of bespoke terminology that I often teach my players: low stakes test. It’s not at all unusual for a roleplaying game or storytelling game to gives PCs a resource that they can use to improve their action checks. This might be a meta-currency, charges from a magical item, or some kind of […]
You know him from The Pinky Guard and When Society Collapsed, now Luke Humphris is releasing an amazing new RPG: When Society Collapsed – Dam Nation. Luke joins Justin to share their best GM tips in the first episode of a new video series! Subscribe Now!
The pages of this volume are filled with disturbing and highly detailed diagrams of the most horrible physical deformities and mutations. A closer reading quickly reveals that these deformities – referred to as “the touch of the ebon hand” – are venerated by the writers as the living personification of chaos incarnate. Particularly prized are […]
Where’s the dwarven beef? Review Originally Published October 9th, 2001 Azadmere is a HârnWorld supplement, containing four Encyclopedia Hârnica articles: Azadmere (10 pages), Khuzdul (4 pages), Habe (6 pages), and Zerhun (10 pages). It also includes full-page Player Maps (black and white, unlabelled) and Common Maps (full-color, labelled) for Azadmere (the kingdom), Habe, Zerhun, and […]
What appears, at first, to be a copy of the Book of Athor is nothing of the sort: The pages inside are covered with scrawled diagrams and heretical desecrations of the Nine Gods. A closer reading reveals this to be a cult manual for the “Brotherhood of the Blooded Knife”. The cult venerates chaos in […]
Venom does not merely destroy. To the flesh it may bring mortality, but it serves a higher purpose. It transforms. It translates. To endure venom’s bite is to find strength. This is how we will bring strength to the world; by being the venom which will test its worth. This small, gray-covered volume is a […]
Kandahar asks: Can you run hexcrawls in a very small location? For example, I have a a single valley I want my players to explore. I made a map in Worldographer, but I used 2-mile hexes. I don’t think it’s reasonable to impose very slow travel. Even if this is densely populated, is there any […]
As part of my In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, I’ve developed a number of chaos lorebooks, some of which have featured in various Ptolus Remixes and others have appeared in the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign journal. They’re based around a network of chaos cults — an extensive node-based campaign campaign which incorporated […]
A classic fantasy world, Hârn continues to distinguish itself as a setting of unique detail, depth, and excellence. Review Originally Published October 9th, 2001 Hârn is a fantasy world created by N.R. Crossby and first published in 1983 by Columbia Games. In 1990, a second edition of HârnWorld (which is being reviewed here) was released, […]
And in the darkness of his prison, the Nameless One spun the first strands of the Web of Demons. And the web was laid between and beside the world, building upon the corruption that he had laid. And so he became the Weaver. And in the world which he had lost, there were those who […]
No title marks the tattered, dark brown cover of this book. Its contents are written in a nearly illegible scrawl that could only have been born of hopeless madness. The first several pages of the book are covered in repetitions and variations of a single phrase: FACELESS HATE. (They wait in faceless hate. We shall […]
TM and © 2022 Monte Cook Games, LLC I’ve been running adventures in Monte Cook’s Ptolus for over twenty years, including my long-running D&D 3E campaign In the Shadow of the Spire. The Ptolus sourcebook — originally published D&D 3E, but since released in edition for D&D 5E and Cypher — is one of the best RPG setting sourcebooks ever published. […]
Rappan Athuk promises “the grand-daddy of all dungeon crawls”! It delivers. Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel. That’s Necromancer Game’s tagline. In their introduction to Rappan Athuk they expand on what this means: “Why is the dungeon there? No one knows. Why do the monsters usually fight rather than talk? We aren’t really sure. Why […]
Although presenting a mystery which cannot be solved, The Murder of the Seven Points is probably worth checking out. Review Originally Published October 1st, 2001 After initially being very enamored with the Adventure Boosters format pioneered by AEG, I found myself rapidly souring on the idea after a series of markedly lackluster efforts (my reviews […]
FD writes: I really enjoy prepping the “macro” parts of my campaign, but I hate creating the “micro.” I use your node-based scenario design. I understand the factions and the major characters. I like creating all the connections between these elements and I understand the conflicts and motivations that drive the campaign. But when I […]
Go to Part 1 FEATURES OF CARCOSA “twin suns sink behind the lake” — “twin suns sink into the lake” “where black stars hang in the heavens” — “the night where black stars rise” — “the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa” “strange moons circle through the […]
I’m currently doing a deep dive into the mythology of the Yellow Sign and the King in Yellow. Originally created by Robert W. Chambers for his 1895 short story collection The King in Yellow, they were later adopted into the Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. Like most elements of the Mythos, they have spilled out in […]