A Trail of Poison

A Trail of Poison by Headless Hydra

This product is 29 pages long. It starts with a cover, dedication and credits. (3 pages)

Chapter 0 – Intro to the adventure. (3 pages)
This is a adventure for 2nd level characters investigating animals being poisoned. This adventure is suppose to take place in Mor Alden: City of Mages campaign setting but could with little trouble be used in any setting with a small city near a large dark forest.

Chapter 1 – Entering the Spindlewood (6 pages)
Spindlewood is the name of the forest in the adventure. This part is where the PC's get contacted to help try and find out what is poisoning the local animals. There is 3 encounters in this section, with a neat reward that the PC's may or may not find at this time.

Chapter 2 – The Tower by the Shadow Lake (14 pages)
This is the bulk of the adventure. In this section is when the PC's learn what is really going on, why and who is behind it. Which of course like any good PC's will go off to put a end to their evil ways. There is 8 total encounters in a mini dungeon crawl of sorts. Two of them could prove very dangerous to a low level party.

It finished with a OGL, ad and back cover. (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. This is a simple pretty straight forward low level adventure. It has a solid pretty easy to use plot hook. The adventure has a little investigation in the wilderness followed by a pretty standard dungeon crawl. The artwork is all black and white and I have never seen it before, so I believe it is all original. The artwork all and all is pretty good.

Now the book does have a few flaws. Two fairly minor and one kinda annoying one. The two minor ones are. No bookmarks and no ToC. For a book this size not a big deal but they would have been nice. The bigger flaw is no stats for the monsters anywhere in the book. It list hp and what each one is but that’s about it. So to run the adventure you need the bestiary or Monster Manual. The reason it was done I believe is so the adventure could be use with either 3.5 OGL or Pathfinder as is. Still would have been nice to have two stat block sections or even as free DL's one for each.

While the flaw is annoying it doesn't kill by any means the value of the adventure. So if you are looking for a simple easy to run low level adventure this is worth the money. With a little work you could fairly easily adjust the level up a couple if need be. So whats my rating? For the price* and taking the flaws into account I am giving it a 4 star review.

*Note: I am not sure why but the adventure is listed as 3.50 on Drivethru but only 2.00 on Paizo. My review is based on the Paizo price.

Endzeitgeist reviews Conflict

Conflict

 This product is something different from my usual fare, as it is a player vs. player-driven combat system – Just imagine a balanced battle between teams with the GM as the referee. 

I got the boxed set, containing the Keeper’s Keep map, 5 pages of Conflict tokens, passcards, map counters, 4 pages of effect templates for spells and the like as well as the rule book. 

The rule book is 122 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page dedication, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover and a two page index, 1 page advertisement, 1 page thanks and acknowledgements, leaving 112 pages of content.

That being said, let’s dive in! 

Conflict kicks off by presenting us the central theme of Conflict – Respect for the opponent. After all, PvP should remain fun for everybody. The first 4 pages make a great introduction to the game and explain the concepts that are different from standard PFRPG games like battlepoints, mappoints, etc. The concepts are explained in greater detail later in their respective chapters, but it’s nice to have an overview including a short glossary in the beginning.

Chapter 2 details the point-buy system for character creation in Conflict called battlepoints. (4 pages)

 

After character creation, we get three pages on how to start a match and different match types (22 pages) – they include scenarios like Regicide, King of the Hill, Ambushes, etc. Each scenario comes with a short set of complications, alternatives etc. which make the matches more diverse. Plus: Each match type gets its very own 1 page-illustration, which itself could be the banner of a unit of mercenaries, which brings me to a major plus of the book:

It’s beautiful, the b/w-artwork is great and layout and formatting as well as the way in which the rules of the concepts are portrayed makes this file very easy to read and actually made me chuckle once in a while. Given the nature of a good-humored competitive game between players, this is a good thing.

 

After this plethora of tactical options, we are presented with even more options in the concept of map elements the competing teams may buy to influence the outcome of the battle. (16 pages) They range from healing statues to bursting pods, teleportation squares and the like. The individual elements have modifications (e.g. a healing statue that damages the opposing team instead of healing them) that may lead to bursts of schadenfreude and interesting gambits.

 

7 pages are devoted to Conflict-laws, rules that the teams agree upon prior to starting a match. They range from “only classes xyz” to “no side-kicks” and even the possibilities to steal die roles or evoke a 60-second time-out to announce what a player will do with his/her character.

 

6 pages explain when or when not to use passcards to communicate the movements of the characters to the DM without warning the other team. A sample system for PC-moves with suggested abbreviations is also given.

The next chapter deals with team feats that make the individual players of a team work better together. (4 pages)

 

Chapter 10 deals with “Player’s Tips & Tactics” (7 pages) and offers both a chart of friendly taunts, advice on character optimization, what would be considered wise feat-choices etc.

The GM gets also a chapter (16 pages) on the particular challenges of being the neutral judge in a Conflict game, complete with condition summaries, a table on armor class and attack roll modifiers , common item hardness and hit points etc. – Neat!

For all the people who want to dive into the action, three teams of pregens are presented, each character also featuring a blank version of his/her sheet to modify. (19 pages)

Finally, we get a sheet and a page with a match type summary.

 

Conclusion:

I already mentioned that the books is beautiful and well- and concisely presented. However, there were some minor typos, which albeit they did not impair my ability to grasp the rules, did keep the book from getting an A in editing. Apart from that, I can honestly attest that this book makes you WANT to try out Conflict.

The tactical options are manifold and can easily be expanded upon, the rules as presented are fun and the system fills a definite niche: Sometimes a player pivotal to your session doesn’t show  up, so what do you do? Just whip out Conflict. I also think that this system should be a great way to throw parties, game at conventions etc. With Conflict being a completely different experience from standard role-playing, I have to admit I was quite skeptical at first, but that skepticism has somewhat evaporated.

The matches I had were fun and while I as of yet cannot profess to have crunched the numbers or assured that the system is perfectly balanced, I can attest to the fact that really does count here: 

Conflict makes Pen & Paper/Miniature-driven PvP on basis of the PFRPG fun!

Thus, due to the minor editing glitches, I’ll give this a 4.5-Rudii rating – check it out if you ever wondered how a team you built would fare against one of your fellow players or whether you and your friends would take on another group of adventurers in a tactically-driven brawl.

That's it for now, next time I'm going to look at some classes and (almost) lovecraftian fare.

As always, thank you for reading my ramblings,

Endzeitgeist out.

Endzeitgeist reviews Spes Magna Games Files

It's been quite some time since I first started reviewing books from Spes Magna Games and today, you'll get the rest of the bunch. So, without further ado:  Enjoy the reviews!

In One’s Blood

The pdf is 25 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial and 1 page SRD. That leaves 22 pages of content.

In contrast to the other pdfs by Spes Magna Games I’ve reviewed so far, this one actually features some flavor-text for each bloodline.

The presented bloodlines are:

-Aquatic: Water-based abilities, anti-fire abilities, blur

-Divine:  Has access to a domain, smite and the like.

-Giant: What you’d expect – Rock-throwing, powerful build, Runes, Ancestors

-Ooze: Hard to kill, becomes slightly amorphous, nice cthulhoid fluff in the flavor-text

-Plant: Pun-power in the description made me laugh very hard, plant-focused spells, alluring scent, one with nature

-Psychic: Precognition and interrogation abilities, very suitable for an investigation-heavy campaign

-Vermin: Movement bonus, web casting, chitin armor

 

After that, we get new spells:

-Acid Touch (lvl 4) – self-explanatory

-Cloud of Stingers (lvl 6) – Cloud of nauseating stingers

-Conqueror Worm (lvl 9 – awesome nod for people like me) – devastating entropyblasts

-Dehydration (lvl 6) – self-explanatory

-Jotunblood Form (lvl 9 – actually has 9 different choices available) – become a Giant of your choice

-Ocean’s Depth (lvl 8) – Crushing pressure and icy chill

-Ooze Shape I (lvl 5) –self-explanatory

-Ooze Shape II (lvl 6) –self-explanatory

-Ooze Shape III (lvl 7) –self-explanatory

-Phantasmal Wasps (lvl 8) - Damage and Poison

-Pseudopod (lvl 1)- grow a tentacle

-Pudding Mob (lvl 9) – summon 1d4+1 Behemoth puddings

-Release the Kraken (lvl 9) – Field of powerful barbed tentacles crushes all enemies

-Wall of Water (lvl 5) –self-explanatory

-Whirlpool (lvl 8) – summons a crushing whirlpool

The pdf closes with a new Cr 9 creature, the Behemoth pudding (1 page) and 1 page of Ooze Shape traits that can be chosen via the respective spells.

 

The editing and formatting are ok, I only found one instance of a missing “and”, the prose is concise and to the point, the artwork is b/w and public domain, the small boxes of fluff-text are well-written.

Mechanically, I don’t have much to complain, but the bloodlines themselves were hit-and-miss for me: While the Aquatic, Ooze and Psychic are really cool and feature nice abilities (with the Psychic bloodline being my favorite…), the Giant and Plant bloodlines didn’t impress me that much and the Divine and Vermin bloodlines seemed rather uninspired in contrast to the other bloodlines.

The new spells, though, are AWESOME. They are cool, ooze flavor (pardon the pun with regards to Ooze Shape I – III) and are VERY iconic.

The Behemoth Pudding is a nice bonus.

Conclusion:

The spells alone are worth the VERY fair price, however, I felt as if the product has fallen somewhat short of its potential. Some of the bloodlines are really cool, but, as mentioned above, some seemed rather uninspired. Due to the supremely cool spells, I’ll give this one 4 Rudii, add one Rudi if the idea of an Ooze bloodline or spells like “Release the Kraken” or “Conqueror Worm” make you cackle with glee. If you don’t particularly care for the spells, subtract one Rudi. 

Barbaric Traits

This pdf is 11 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/table of contents and one page of SRD.

That leaves 8 pages of content for you.

Barbaric traits consists of…well. Traits, one of the most popular innovations for PFRPG. But they are not any kind of traits, but rather barbaric ones, i.e. traits inspired by e.g. Robert E. Howards grim barbarian and antediluvian sword & sorcery-style play. Consequently, the traits are not exclusively for barbarians, but rather for all classes and feature some nice prose. They are divided in for categories for your convenience and I’ll include two abbreviated examples so you’ll know what to expect:

Combat (9 traits):

-“Battle-Born” grants a bonus when outnumbered

-“Blood-Mad” gives you a damage-bonus when injured

Faith (9 traits):

-“Heathen Oath” gives you a bonus when swearing to accomplish a specific task

 

-“Ophidian Cultist” grants you a bonus with reptilian creatures

 

Magic (9 traits):

 

-“Lambent Gaze” gives you hypnotic powers with certain spells

 

-“Voice of Pain” gives you a bonus with damaging verbal spells

 

Social (9 traits):

 

-“Black Corsair” gives you a bonus with certain pirate skills

 

-“To the Conqueror” grants a wealth and equipment bonus

 

That makes 36 traits for a very cheap price, all with the distinct “old” feeling you know and love from Howard. The editing and formatting is good, the writing is concise and while not brilliant, good and atmospheric and none of the traits seemed over-or under-powered.

Conclusion:

I’m a sucker for pulp-fantasy, Sword & Sorcery and the like. Conan was my childhood-hero. I love these traits. But even if you’re not that into Howardesk fantasy, you still get a cheap, high-quality assortment of traits. For the price, you’ll get a definite recommendation for this file from me, especially if you plan to participate/run in Paizo’s “Serpent’s Skull AP”, Necromancer Games’ “Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia”, the Conan RPG  or Xoth Publishing’s “Bride of the Spider God” with PFRPG-rules or the like. 5 Rudii. 

5 Adventures, 25 Rooms

This pdf is 19 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/table of contents, 1 page SRD. This leaves 16 pages for 5 adventures – a tight space, so let’s give it a look.

First of all, if you haven’t figured it out yet: This is pure adventure-fluff, id est, no maps, almost no stats, DCs and the like. The adventures are free-form ideas. They are adventures, but you’ll have to do the mechanics yourself.  I think adventures in 5 steps would have been a better moniker, especially due to the distinct lack of 5-room dungeons within this file.

 

Adventure 1: “Guard Duty” is a rather straight bodyguard adventure with a twist. Nothing too special.

 

Adventure 2: “Shelter from the Storm” is a nice sidetrek for the final of one of your murder-mysteries. The PCs screwed up and lost a killer? They want to hunt him on his escape? Awesome, set this one up. Simple, but nice.

 

Adventure 3: “Bird-flu of the Damned” is the goofy over-the-top adventure of the bunch. Your PCs can fight …*dundundunhhhhh* UNDEAD EMUS in this adventure. Do I have to say more?

 

Adventure 4: “Lost Love” is a nod to one of my favorite poets, W.B. Yeats and thus has some plus points. Of all the adventures, this one would need the most DM-work to successfully pull off. I’d recommend some ideas on fey and their courts, e.g. from Open Design for this one.

 

Adventure 5:”I’m so cold” is a rather tragic murder mystery for low-level characters and is best set in an urban environment in the winter after some harsh, cold nights. Of all the adventures, this one is probably the one with the most potential for a gothic-horror-style investigation.

 

The pdf closes with 3 pages of stats, the only stats you’ll get, by the way. The first is an NPC, the second is the emu and the second is the undead Emu. If you’re not intrigued now…I just don’t know.

The quality of the pdf is okay, editing and formatting are very good, it’s easy to read, art is public domain, as usual.

 

Conclusion:

Is this worth your bucks? Well, if you’ve hit a little creative flat-line as a DM, then yes. If you are an experienced DM that improvises complex investigation scenarios on the spot, this compilation might bore you a little. If you buy adventures due to mechanics and because that has been taken of your chest or to scavenge them, you probably won’t enjoy this pdf. For the price, it’s a good buy.

If you’re stuck for ideas and want some quick and dirty scenarios, add a Rudi, for you, this is a 5-Rudii file.

If you’re an experienced investigation/detective-DM, subtract a Rudi.

If you want to scavenge mechanics, subtract a Rudi.

If UNDEAD EMUS got you, buy this now.

On average, though, I’ll give it 3.5 Rudii. Mainly, because there is another book on DM-ideas that has spoiled me beyond belief…and I’ll review it soon.

P.S.: My mighty Dire Beavers could kick any undead Emu’s behind. ;D

Ars Metamagica

This pdf is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD.

That leaves 10 pages of gaming material which are, as I’ve come to expect of Spes Magna Games, well-edited and printer-friendly.

 

The idea of Ars Metamagica is, that one abolishes metamagic feats and replaces them with a new system that actually gives metamagic some game time and makes players use it:

Modifying spells is now done via a kind of caster level check that depends on the metamagic art you apply to a certain spell. If you fail the check, you have might experience some repercussions, depending on how bad you failed:  4 or lesser means that the spell works without metamagic, 5-9 gives you temporary ability damage and a failure of more than 10 fatigues/exhausts you and might even deal subdual damage, if repeated.

Every Caster gets a selection of slots every day called “Metamagic palette”. If e.g. you have a palette of 5, you could choose a metamagic art with a value of +3 and +2. Or 5 arts with a value of +1.

You can also leave slots on your palette open and meditate 1 minute per +1 to fill them semi-spontaneously.

Both preparing and spontaneous casters are addressed and the pdf also takes the metamagic feats from the APG into account. The pdf takes several factors into account and offers revised version of the bard spell Arcane Concordance, a new universal Metamagic rod, Healing Domain’s Healer’s Blessing, Loremaster feat requirements, Magician’s Metamagic Mastery, the feats for Heightened Spell, Reach Spell, Spell perfection and Preferred Spell,  the Sorceror’s Arcane Bloodline and the Wizard’s Universalist School.

We also get 5 new feats to be used with this system as well as two new traits.

 

Conclusion:

This file has been exceedingly hard for me to rate due to several reasons. First of all, I don’t like the standard metamagic system, as it rarely gets used by players and is rather cumbersome. I’m also a fan of magic that may take a toll on one’s body, as reflected in years of house-ruling battlemagic and the like. However, somehow this pdf did not make me jump up and scream “Yes, that’s it!” I was thinking quite hard why that was the case and found the answers: The first one being that, while taking many special metamagic-using abilities into account, it does not provide guidelines for future additions. The second would be that, while comprehensive and well-written, it is not as comprehensive and well-written as some other releases by Spes Magna Games: It took me 3 pages to get the general idea of the system and while the presentation is concise, I think showing the table with all the modifiers before explaining the basic premise of the system is a needlessly complicated way to lead one into the new system.

That being said, you do get a, at least in my opinion, better metamagic system than the one in the standard rules for less than a bus fare. 

Another major plus is the excessive support of the APG.

In the end, I’ll settle for a solid 4 Rudii for anyone who is interested. For all the people who abhor the current metamagic spellcasting system, but want to keep most of the rules intact, check this out – for you, this is a 5 Rudii-file.

Endzeitgeist's Start a Campaign for Free IV

Hello everybody once again! We've had an adventure, a mini-setting, items, feats, alternate rules - What more can one wish for? Well, although Halloween is over, the days are getting shorter and the nights longer - what better time can there be to start a campaign with a rather dark twist? And can one get the fodder for that for free? Turns out one can!

That's why, in todays installment of "Start a Campaign for Free", we're going to take a look at one of the classics of fantasy/horror-staples, the vampire PC - and yes, there is a nice little book for exactly that!

Necromancers of the Northwest have a book called Liber Vampyr, which is exactly what we've been looking for.

Liber Vampyr

This pdf is 90 p ages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement,1 page table of contents, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 83 pages of content.

First of all, let me get something straight: I’m a sucker for vampires. (I know, bad pun…) I love everything about them: From well-written novels to movies to some RPGs to the psychological and sociological theories explaining their prevalence in our cultures, I love them. Unfortunately, a direct consequence of this love is a very specific opinion on what a vampire should be and, more importantly, a very specific idea of what a vampire should NOT be. To cut a long rant short, in my humble opinion, both mainstream D&D and Pathfinder are DOING IT WRONG. I have a very specific idea, possibly influenced by Vampire: The Masquerade (great reading material, although I dislike the system) of rather “European” vampires, not the John-Carpenter-die-by-the-hundreds-kind and so have rigorously enforced a separation between spawns (the latter) and true vampires (with bloodlines, x abilities and frightening foes) and thus did not expect too much from this book.

The aim of Liber Vampyr is, in a nutshell, to make vampires potential player characters.

The pdf kicks off with a comprehensive 2-page introduction to the topic as well as the basic concepts of the vampires, as well as advice for the D_M. One note on the chapters: Each chapter starts with a single page containing a chapter header and artwork. These pages are not included in the number of pages in brackets.

Chapter 1 (17 pages) details three new classes for the so-called revenants, the term used to distinguish the vampires from this book from the standard. The first class is called Revenant Warrior, is a heavy user of vampiric powers and a fighter character. The class has: d10, good BAB, good fort-save, 2+Int skills per level. The second one is the jack-of-all-trades/moderate vampiric powers user/monk, the Revenant Ascetic. The class has: d8, medium BAB, all good saves and 4+Int skills per level as well as a bunch of monk abilities. The third class is the spellcaster of the bunch, the Revenant Mage. The class has d6, bad BAB, good will-save and 2+Int skills per level. The class is a spontaneous CHA-based caster, however, the maximum level of spells he can cast depends on his Int-score. The Revenant Mage is the worst of the three classes, as he can use blood to add metamagic effects to his spells and his capstone ability is rather lame. The chapter also features 2 sidebars, one on causes of vampirism, compiling some myths and the second one about alignment. Unfortunately, this hits another pet-peeve of mine: Good vampires? No way. Neutral ones, okay, but I’ll be damned if a good vampire ever sets his damn sparkling foot in any of my campaigns. Sorry. Rant-mode off. The chapter goes on with useful and nice pieces of advice on playing a revenant, how the interact with fellow PCs, the world, religion, etc. The chapter concludes with two sample revenants, both low-level. Another pet-peeve of mine: Vampires should not be low-level wimps - that's just the problem with vampire PCs I guess. 

 

Chapter 2: Supplemental rules (9 pages) starts off with new appliances of the disguise spell and tables for lore about cruomancy (the vampiric blood powers and magic used by the Revenants) as well as a table on vampire myths. After that, we get 21 new feats for revenants, most are dependant and expand upon blood powers. The chapter closes with so-called a new condition for undead creatures, the so-called Necrosis, a detrimental effect due to being separated from negative energy.

Chapter 3: Prestige Classes (16 pages) features e.g. the Blood Cultist, a mortal that gains bonuses from feeding their vampire master – great for potential roleplaying and,a s all PrCs in this chapter, supplied with extensive information on how to play the class, how to interact with the other PCs and so on. That being said, I think that “Cultist” might be a misnomer here, the class is rather a not-yet-vampiric bride or groom.It sets out what it seeks to do, though. Vampire Disciples are perhaps one of the coolest aspects of the book: Mortals who seek to become vampires via rituals, they follow a set of rituals (portrayed in a separate pdf that is also free and can be downloaded here) that are both flavorful and cool – the journey to vampiric immortality might make for a very compelling series of adventures, ideed. The final class in this chapter is the Vampire Hunter, a foe of the bloodsucking hordes. I did like the class, although I preferred the great fluff of the Vampire Disciples.

Chapter 4: Cruomancy (17 pages): This chapter contains the unique main-innovation of the book, lvl 1-7 blood powers for vampires. The powers, although not spells themselves, are formatted in the true and tried way and this easy to read. We get 44 powers to choose from – although they are not evenly spread for the different levels: There are e.g. only 4 lvl.2 powers, but 8 lvl.3 powers. From supernatural  athletics, to mental enslavement, lethal bites, frightening and even lethal visages and animal-related powers, you get what you’d expect from the staple of vampiric abilities.

Chapter 5: Magic (3 pages): This chapter contains 2 pages of new spells and 1 page of new magic items. The spells are quite cool and can be utilized to craft stories around them – e.g. Mirror Travel and Curse of the Great Plague. The 3 magic items are not as cool as the spells, but also have some nice ideas.

Chapter 6: Vampires (14 pages): All of the creatures are presented as complex, modular creatures. The Culled Ones are semi-vampires that are presented as a race/template. The Feral Vampire is a creature defined by its hunger. It’s a cool creature. The Nachzehrer-creature comes with 4 sets of abilities, depending on the number of days the creature couldn’t feed. The Nosferatu is a twisted creature reminiscent of the classic movie of the same name or the Vampire: The Masquerade-clan, but with a plague-twist. Psychic Vampires, so-called Leannashe, get some psionic powers, which I do like, albeit there are as of yet no official PFRPG-psionic rules.

However, I think they could have used a bit more love or in-depth information. After that, we finally get the defining template of the book, the Revenant. Revenant characters get several weaknesses  (Mirrors, Garlic, Running Water, Unsettling Aura, Unmistakable Appearance, Sunlight, Stakes) and as a subtype of undead, they don’t get the game-breaking abilities of undead creatures. However, this also means that Revenant NPCs won’t be as strong – a concession to them being intended as playable creatures. The weaknesses, as far as I can tell, serve as a nice way to balance the blood powers and the template can be considered to work.

Conclusion:

The book itself features a nice, but not too printer-friendly parchment-like background, easy to read fonts and the editing is good. Although I spotted some minor glitches like double spaces and one minor typo, they did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. The artwork/photos of hot goth chicks seem to be public domain and were a nice touch, as was the additional file containing the rituals for one of the PrCs. Indeed, the fluff, while not always great, sometimes has its moments of greatness and some of the ideas contained herein will find their way into my games. I have to admit one more thing: I’d rather chop off my hand than let players start the game as vampires in any game that is not especially made with this assumption. I’d consider players becoming vampires at high levels when they have devoted much of their levels to the cause, as in the PrC, though. Be sure to check out the 3-page DM-file Steps of the Sanguine Path for this file, too.

That being said, for me personally, due to all the quirky opinions I have about the subject matter and all the books I have so far amassed on the topic, this is a 3.5-Rudii file. For all the people who want some additional vampire-oomph for their PF-game and for everyone who wants to play a vampire, this is a must-have and 5 Rudii, especially due to the fact that it’s FREE. Indeed, I’d suggest to everybody out there to at least give this file a good look – You’ll get at least some good ideas out of this one and can scavenge some nice parts. My final verdict will lie in between with 4 Rudii.

You know what people do in horror movies? Yeah, they use tools to their advantage and in unorthodox ways. The Necromancers also have a nice little file for that:

Clever Uses for Common Items

This little 3-page file contains 1 page of SRD and 2 pages of interesting rules: Ever wanted to distract an opponent with a shuriken? Breathe underwater with a blowgun? Or would you like to see an addition to the crafting rules that helps you determine e.g. the price of an adamantine item or a glamered item? Be sure to check this one out! It’s short but sweet and, of course, free.

My only gripe with it is that it is too short – if it was longer, I’d give it 5 Rudii and I’d love to see the idea expanded to a full book and pay for it. Being short but sweet, I’ll give it 4 Rudii.

And finally, for those of you who are rather inclined to the Lovecraftian side of horror, gibber not angrily, for I have a nice little monster book for you:

Creatures Codex Volume I: Monsters of Twilight

The first publication by Demiurge Press is a nifty 10 page pdf, full-color monster book: 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial and ToC, 1 page SRD. That leaves us with 7 pages of monsters.  

-Dweller in Darkness (Mi-Go) CR 2 – Nice take on the Mi-Go, although I prefer the KQ-version from the phantom fungus article, if only because I like my Lovecraftian critters stronger than CR 2. Other than that – Nice work!

After that, we get 1 page with a beautiful artwork of the next creature, the CR 8 Mi-Go Guardian as well as stats for two iconic Mi-Go devices, the mist projector and the brain canister.  The stats of the Guardian take up another page – I like the take on it.

 

 Then, we get the CR 4 Fetch with a corresponding artwork. This creature felt rather uninspired when compared to the rest, albeit the note on fetch-shields was a nice touch.

After that, we a creepy picture as well as the statblock of the CR3-Knocker – creepy, cool and has a nice little special ability.

 The CR6-Nightgaunt that follows up is another nice addition to one’s bestiary, albeit it somehow lacks a certain je-ne-sais-quoi of alienness in its abilities.

The final creature is the CR4-Twilight Unicon, probably the least favorite creature I have read in this book, as the evil unicorn has been done numerous times and I was missing a paragraph on what to do with e.g. the horn of the creature.

Conclusion:

It’s very hard to beat free stuff, especially if it is presented in such a professional way. The artwork by Heather Frazier is beautiful and especially the Knockers and the Mi-Go-Guardian are awesome pieces. The presentation, formatting and editing of the little book are great and I look forward to seeing follow-ups. For now, I’ll settle with 4.5 Rudii, rounded down, mainly because I was really missing some unique signature abilities on the monster’s side…apart from the Mi-Go-Guardian, that is. I love it. Congratulations to Nick Herold – I’m hoping to see more horror/gritty books for PFRPG soon. 

All right, that's it for now from me, as always, I thank you for reading my ramblings, good gaming to you and yours,

Endzeitgeist out.

Review of Demonheart

Demonheart by Frog God Games

This product is 98 pages long. It starts with a cover, credits, and ToC. (3 pages)

Introduction (4 pages)
It starts with a short intro followed by the adventure background and then closes with a overview of the adventure broken up into it's ten parts.

Chapter 1 – The Village and the Forest (9 pages)
It starts with a few examples of ways to get PC's involved, a bit of information about what is over all going on and finally it gives a over view of the village including a map. There is also several sidebars of information about incidents that can take place while PC's are in the village.

Chapter 2 – Something is Stirring (7 pages)
It has a NPC getting the PC's involved in the main plot, 3 encounters, a random encounter table and a aftermath section.

Chapter 3 – The Devil Tree (10 pages)
This chapter is all about a mini dungeon crawl the PC's are likely to want to investigate at this point in the adventure.

Chapter 4 – Court of Corruption (9 pages)
I loved this section of the adventure I can't say much about it with out spoiling things. But there is games, social events, maybe romance awaiting the PC's in this section. Plus a few encounters. I thought this section was very well done and very interesting.

Chapter 5 – The Lost Hunters (4 pages)
This is a short mini dungeon crawl section.

Chapter 6 – A Plague of Secrets (3 pages)
There is a murder mystery going on in the village that the PC's will almost certainly wish to solve.

Chapter 7 – Spawn of Darkness (5 pages)
A NPC ask the PC's for help again which likely leads to a series of encounters and discovering more about what is going on.

Chapter 8 – In the Ranks of Death (7 pages)
This is the third mini dungeon crawl in this adventure. By this point they should know what is going on and go seeking a way to stop events.

Chapter 9 – The Resurrection (6 pages)
This chapter has two major events going on at the same time. Both need the PC's help. The PC's can choose to go with one or the other but with consequences of doing so. Or they can apt to split up and take on both tasks at once. If they opt to do the later there is enough NPC's involved that players with out PC's in each section can play a NPC and still take part in the fun. This is a ambitious and possible very fun chapter but also because the best course is to split the party may be a problem for some groups.

Chapter 10 – Heart of Darkness (3 pages)
Here the party if it split in two reunite and go to face the final villain of the adventure.

Appendix 1 – NPC's (16 pages)
In this section it has all the NPC's full stated out and broken up by chapter to make it easier to find them.

Appendix 2 – Monster Index (10 pages)
This section has all the stat blocks for all the monsters in the adventure.

It ends with a OGL and back cover. (2 pages)

Closing thoughts. While this adventure is plot based it is fairly sandboxy as well. The events are likely to go in order but they don't have to go in order. So it is a nice mix of plot driven adventure and sandbox style adventure. The artwork is black and white with a very old school 1st edition DnD look to it.

I liked the adventure, it is a very nice mix of plot based, sand box, dungeon crawl, social etc style adventure. A little something for everyone. I did mention my one concern with chapter 9. While I like the idea of splitting the party and it makes sense I could see some groups having trouble with it. Luckily with the NPC's present for player to play it makes it a lot easier to do.

I have the print version of the book so I have no idea how the bookmarks etc is for the PDF. I will not one thing I found kinda odd. The cover art, while it looks fine it has camels on it and looks like it is in the desert but the adventure takes place in a forest. I just found that a bit odd. There was a couple of things I thought could have been better. The section on the murder mystery is a bit light and could have used some more advice on how to run it. So my final rating a 4.5 star. Good adventure with a few minor issues.