Tag: Module

Free RPG Day 2019

Today is Free RPG Day 2019!

Did you participate?

We sure did!

Established in 2007, Free RPG Day works with participating hobby game retailers and RPG publishers to bring new and exclusive RPG products and adventures into the hands of gamers worldwide. Fans can grab brand new material for a variety of RPGS for free by stopping by their local participating game and hobby shop.

Last year my family had a ton of fun with Free RPG Day, particularly with Paizo’s two releases: Skitter Shot, a first level Starfinder adventure featuring a crew of excitable skittermanders, and We Be 5uper Goblins, a hilarious sixth level Pathfinder adventure featuring some infamous goblin heroes on their most epic and amazing adventure yet! For those of you who missed FREE RPG Day 2018, both modules are available as a free download on Paizo’s website, or as a physical copy for five dollars.

Free RPG Day BooksThis year Free RPG Day was held on June 15, 2019, with Paizo’s free downloads of the PDFs being available on July 1, 2019.

My husband, my children and I headed out for a trip to our local game shop. There’s a few places you can go in Winnipeg for RPG products, but our shop of choice is Game Knight Games and Cool Stuff. It’s a bit of a trek to get there, two buses and at least an hour and a half of travel time for us, but it has a great selection of RPGs, board games, miniatures, and collectible card games. They also have a spacious game space. It’s a wonderful store. The buses were accommodating, and we made good time. In no time at all we headed inside and perused the goodies on offer. There was quite a selection!

There were two products we knew we wanted to bring home with us: Skitter Crash, a third level Starfinder adventure featuring skittermanders, and We Be Heroes? a Pathfinder Playtest adventure for first level goblins. My seven-year old daughter immediately scampered over to the table and swept up Skitter Crash, while my son grabbed We Be Heroes? This left my husband and I a bevy of books to browse. In the end, my husband settled on The Witcher Easy Mode: An Introductory Booklet to the Witcher TRPG, and I scooped up Modern Age Threefold Quickstart.

Free RPG Day 2019

The Witcher Easy Mode: An Introductory Booklet to the Witcher TRPG is just that –– an easy introduction to The Witcher TRPG. 30 pages in length it includes rules, six pre-generated characters and a short adventure called Still Waters.

Modern AGE Threefold Quickstart is an easy to understand gateway to the Modern AGE RPG that comes with streamlined rules, reference sheets, five pre-generated characters, and an introductory adventure called Burning Brighter. It’s 40 pages long and has a lot of nice art inside.

we be heroes? free rpg day 2019
We Be Heroes?

We Be Heroes? is an adventure we knew we wanted to bring home with us. It’s a Pathfinder Playtest adventure, using the final version of the Playtest rules. We Be Heroes? is a first level adventure written by Brian Duckwitz which continues the tradition of the super popular We Be Goblins series (We Be Goblins!, We Be Goblins Too!, We Be Goblins Free!, We B4 Goblins!, and We Be 5uper Goblins!). However, this adventure features a whole new team of goblin adventurers who are set to take on the minions of the Whispering Tyrant! (And zombie pigs?!) Driven by hunger and the orders of their chief, the goblins of the Crookedtoes tribe are tasked with finding out why all the animals in the forest have fled the region, and what happened to the tribe’s best scout. They get to meet up with some heroic knights, explore a wrecked farmhouse, and… be heroes! We absolutely adored reading this adventure and intend to play it soon — although whether we’ll play it as a Playtest adventure, switch it over to Pathfinder First Edition so we can play it right away, or wait for August and switch it over to Pathfinder Second Edition rules remains to be seen. Either way, we’re going to have a blast with it. If you didn’t get your hands on this amazing product, don’t worry. You’ll be able to download it for free on Paizo’s website in two weeks or so.

skitter crash - free rpg day 2019
Skitter Crash

Finally, there’s my personal favourite… Our skittermander heroes from Skitter Shot are set to continue their adventures in Skitter Crash! Written by Jason Keeley, this is a third level Starfinder module that sees our skittermander heroes crash their ship on a mysterious swampy planet after a run in with space pirates and an interstellar cyclone! They’ll need to find their ship, deal with the space pirates, and (of course!) make some nu-friends! The adventure was a lot of fun. So fun, in fact, that we played it today at our local gaming store with a wonderful GM (you’re awesome, Wil!) and another player new to RPGs (I hope you had fun, Robin!).

The verdict?

This adventure is a BLAST. I highly recommend it.

Skitter Crash Battle

I hope a lot of you got out to Free RPG Day! If you did, I’d love to hear what kind of products you got your hands on, and what you thought of them.

Happy gaming!

Jessica

 

Enter the Dungeon of Doom

My kids love Dwarven Forge.

They’re obsessively browsing the Dwarven Forge website, and watching their many youtube videos. My son takes every opportunity to bring it up, attempting to convince me I should buy him some for his birthday, or for my birthday, or maybe my husband’s Christmas gift.

So when my son asked if he could download the free Dungeon of Doom Adventure a while back, I let him. And when he asked me over and over if I had read it yet, I pushed it up a little higher on my to-read list.

You see, I like Dwarven Forge, but when it comes to adventures, I tend to prefer a sweeping story over a classic dungeon. And the Dungeon of Doom adventure? Seemed like one big deadly dungeon.

Which it is. But, turns out, it’s also awesome! Haha.

I finally got around to reading the adventure and was pleasantly surprised. Every encounter area is well planned, well executed, and exceptionally creative –– all things I expect from Dwarven Forge. There’s some basic plot hooks to get the adventure moving, but not much else. On the surface, at least. There’s much more going on in this dungeon delve than anticipated, as the PCs will uncover as they adventure.

If they survive.

Dungeon of Doom is packed full of layered, multi-stage traps and puzzles that work to create a deadly challenge for the PCs. It’s smart, clever, and surprisingly funny! There’s a wide array of NPCs you can meet and interact with in the dungeon, from ghostly spirits, to chatty gargoyles and, my personal favourite, a talking door. The PCs have plenty of secrets and history to uncover through their exploration, and a lot of powerful treasure to claim. But, as previously mentioned, this is definitely a deadly dungeon! For starters, the dungeon itself drains your PCs life force, making taking a long rest impossible. PCs will need to complete the entire dungeon with relative speed or they’ll run out of resources. In addition, characters that die have their souls trapped within the dungeon and rise as an undead spirit known as a maerghast. Not a desirable end! Along the way the PCs will need to collect magical artifacts known as glyphstones, which are powerful semi-intelligent artifacts which affect the PCs personality and behaviour, but grants them potent magical powers –– some of which can allow players to heal or gain the effects of taking a long rest. But, the greatest challenge is definitely the dungeon itself. As I previously mentioned the encounter rooms are packed full of well-utilized, challenging puzzles and traps which I absolutely adored. It’s deadly, but a lot of fun.

The Dungeon of Doom Adventure is a free download here, and is intended for characters between the levels of 1 and 10. Each challenge is written for three difficulty levels, based on your party’s APL (average party level). APL 1–4, APL 5–7, and APL 8–10, with the variable numbers (DCs, Damage, and so on) separated by a slash. For example DC 12/14/16 or 1d8/2d8/3d8 damage. It’s easy to understand and efficient. Monsters are instead listed on a chart, with the composition of each encounter being determined by your party’s APL. Level 1 parties might face off against a quasit while a level 10 party might face a nalfeshnee in the same location. The adventure is written for 5e Dungeons and Dragons, but has rules in the back for running it for the Pathfinder RPG (which is awesome!). Those of you interested in investing in Dwarven Forge’s Dungeon of Doom products can buy the pieces needed to make the Dungeon of Doom on a room by room basis on their website, while the adventure contains detailed build guides to show you how to set it all up. You can also watch Dungeon of Doom played or see a run-down of the rooms on youtube.

Dungeon of Doom is a deviously deadly dungeon full of interesting puzzles and traps, perfectly suited to challenge players of a variety of levels. I found it absolutely inspiring! I highly recommend you give it read!

Jessica

December New Releases

December’s here and the weather’s getting colder, which means a there’s a whole pile of new d20 products for us to drool over! And so close to the holidays, too! Let’s hope Santa (or at least my husband) is reading this! Haha.

We’re starting out today with the classics: Dungeons and Dragons!

Recent adventures released by Wizards of the Coast include Dungeons and Dragons: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, an adventure for levels 1-5; and Dungeons and Dragons: Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, an adventure for levels 5-20! Both of these adventures are a hardcover book, and one of which has its own map pack: D&D Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Maps and Miscellany. Dragon Heist also has it’s own dice collection: D&D: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist: Dice Set. Other major releases include: the D&D: Core Rules Giftset! My personal favourite release? Dungeons and Dragons: Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica! This awesome hardcover mixes D&D with Magic: The Gathering’s most popular plane: Ravnica. As a fan of Magic: The Gathering, this was one book I couldn’t wait to get my hands on! So far, it’s delightful, but I’m not quite finished reading it yet. When I do you can expect further details here, on d20diaries! Supplementary products include: D&D: Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica: Maps and Miscellany, and D&D: Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica: Dice Set.

D&D: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica
D&D: Core Rules Giftset
D&D: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist: Dice Set
D&D: Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica: Dice Set

Next Up? Let’s take a look at my personal favourite: new releases for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game!

Last month brought us Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Construct Handbook (which is a wonderful book, by the way!), Pathfinder Player Companion: Martial Arts Handbook, and Pathfinder Adventure Path 136: Temple of the Peacock Spirit (Return of the Runelords 4 of 6), which I regret to say I don’t yet own! The Pathfinder Society brought us two challenging adventures which take us to Hell and the Abyss: Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-08: What Prestige is Worth, and Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-09: The Rasping Rebirth! Other releases include the War for the Crown Pawn Collection, Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Docks, and Pathfinder Flip-Mat Classics: Warehouse.

The end of this month brings us a few more wonderful releases! Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Faiths of Golarion looks to be amazing! It focuses on some lesser detailed but very important gods of Golarion. Pathfinder Adventure Path 137: The City Outside of Time (Return of the Runelords 5 of 6) comes out. This is honestly the issue from Return of the Runelords that I’m most excited for. Also coming out after a slew of delays is the Pathfinder Module: Cradle of Night. This deluxe adventure is intended for level eight characters, takes place in Nidal, and heavily features Caligni — also known as Dark Folk — as allies that need your help! Super cool! The Pathfinder Society brings us two scenarios, as always. Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-10: The Shattered Shield is written by Leo Glass, is intended for tiers 1-5, contributes to the ongoing story of the Dark Archives faction, and takes place in Rahadoum. Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-11: The Hao Jin Hierophant is written by Jessica Redekop, is intended for tiers 5-9, and sends your PCs into the Hao Jin Tapestry where they’ll have to deal with both extraplanar and political hazards. Other releases include Pathfinder Flip-Tiles: Urban Starter Set, and Pathfinder Flip-Mat Classics: Pirate Ship.

PFS #10-08: What Prestige is Worth
PFS #10-09: The Rasping Rebirth
Temple of the Peacock Spirit (Return of the Runelords 4 of 6)
The City Outside of Time (Return of the Runelords 5 of 6)
Pathfinder Module: Cradle of Night
Pathfinder Player Companion: The Martial Arts Handbook
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Construct Handbook
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Faiths of Golarion

From Golarion we take off into the stars with new Starfinder Roleplaying Game releases! Whoo! I can honestly say that although Pathfinder is my favourite d20 game, I usually have the most fun reading Starfinder products. The entire team over there at Paizo is doing a great job!

This past month brought us Alien Archive 2, and the dark horror of Starfinder Adventure Path 10: The Diaspora Strain (Signal of Screams 1 of 3). Although I’ve yet to get this delightfully suspenseful book in my hands, I would love to give it a read. It sounds awesome! Definitely not one to play with the kids, though… Haha. The Starfinder Society releases last month were Starfinder Society Scenario #1-26: Truth of the Seeker, and Starfinder Society Scenario #1-27: King Xeros of Star Azlant. For more information on those two scenarios check out this previous blog post. Other releases last month included Starfinder Flip-Mat: Hospital.

This month brings us a few more releases. Starfinder Adventure Path 11: The Penumbra Protocol (Signal of Screams 2 of 3) continues the horror theme on the planet Verces. The Starfinder Society releases two new scenarios of vastly different tiers. Starfinder Society Scenario #1-28: It Rests Beneath is written by Jason Tondro, intended for tiers 1-4, is of particular importance to members of the Wayfinders Faction, and sends the Starfinders to explore a mysterious calcified region of a planet in Near Space.  Colour me intrigued! This scenario also includes the ‘vehicle’ tag, which is exciting! Starfinder Society Scenario #1-29: Honorbound Emissaries is written by Jenny Jarzabski, is intended for tiers 7-10, is of particular importance to the Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) faction, and continues the Scoured Stars storyline. A bonus? I have a feeling this one features another cameo of the delightfully gruff vesk pawnbroker, Julzakama. I can’t wait! Also coming out this month is the Starfinder Critical Hit Deck, which features adorable artwork of skittermanders. I’m incredibly curious to see what’s up with these cards. Plus? They look awesome! Haha.

Starfinder Flip-Mat: Hospital
Starfinder: Critical Hit Deck
SFS #1-26: Truth of the Seeker
SFS #1-27: King Xeros of Star Azlant
Starfinder Alien Archive 2
Diaspora Strain (Signal of Screams 1 of 3)
The Penumbra Protocol (Signal of Screams 2 of 3)
Sunburst Games Realms of Atrothia Legacy Races Revisited
Realms of Atrothia: Legacy Races Revisited

And that’s it! Or is it? This month also featured the release of Sunburst Games first Pathfinder Compatible product, Realms of Atrothia: Legacy Races Revisited. Written by my brother, this product is available from a variety of websites, and lays the groundwork for the upcoming Realms of Atrothia: Primary Expansion! Watch for the Kickstarter coming this February!

Like Realms of Atrothia: Legacy Races Revisited? Watch for the Kickstarter coming in February 2019, and get ready for a whole new world of adventure! 

That’s all for today! Got a favourite product you think I should take a look at? How about a favourite new release? Let us know in the comments!

All the best,

Jessica

 

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