[Free RPG Day 2025] Scry, Scry My Little Eye

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Scry, Scry My Little Eye is a scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It is published by Loke BattleMats and a tester, not to say a taster, for the publisher’s Dungeon Designer Cards. It is designed to be played with four Player Characters, each of Second Level, and completed in a single session, two at most. The set-up is simple. A powerful Mage offers the Player Characters a job. This is to test a dungeon that he has designed and built. All the Player Characters have to do is survive, locate ten Runes that have been hidden around the dungeon, they will be rewarded with a 1000gp for their efforts. The mage, Sazovar, explains that he will monitoring their progress and in return promises no fatalities, even in the if it would appear that the entire party has been killed. What it means is that as far as they are concerned, the Player Characters are being paid to practise their dunegeoneering skills. What it actually means is slightly creepier...

Sazovar has designed the dungeon to be watched. However, not just by himself, but by his friends and colleagues too, and to keep the tension and excitement high, he is quite happy to change things in the dungeon and thus keep the hired adventurers on their toes. This is represented by the key feature dungeon, which itself consists of several connected rooms across two maps included in the centre of the adventure. This feature consists of the Dungeon Designer Cards. These are double-sided. The front depicts a piece of dungeon furniture or dressing, such as a chest, desk, storage shelves, broken floor, pool of water, and so on. Flip them over, and they present the Dungeon Master with a set of four choices. So, the ‘Pool of Water’, “A broken section of floor has filled up with brackish foul smelling water.” The choices on the back consist of a ‘Deep Dive’, ‘Acid’, ‘Damp Coins’, and ‘Watery Dead’. The Dungeon Master can chose one or roll for one, and in the case of ‘Pool of Water’, the ‘Deep Dive’ is a narrow, deep pool containing a glinting Clue; the ‘Acid’ will inflict damage to anything or anyone which falls in; the pool contains ‘Damp Coins’, but the water stinks; and in ‘Watery Dead’, there is a Ghoul hiding just under the surface of the water! The clues in the case of Sazovar’s test dungeon all give the Player Characters a Rune which they need to complete the dungeon and gain Sazovar’s reward. There is a total of sixteen Dungeon Designer Cards, each measuring roughly fifteen-by-twenty feet.

The scenario begins with ‘5E in 5 Minutes’, a very quick guide to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, followed by an explanation of the scenario’s adventure, the hook to get the Player Characters involved, how the Dungeon Designer Cards work, an explanation of the background for the Dungeon Master. All of this is easy to read and prepare, and there is advice too, on how to run the dungeon. In this case, it means adding audience interaction, adjusting the difficulty as necessary, and so on. There are suggestions to, as how to use the scenario once the Player Characters have through it once. There is scope here, of course, for the Player Characters to replay the dungeon with the different options on Dungeon Designer Cards, ones they have not previously encountered, or for Sazovar to populate it with tougher challenges.

The Dungeon Master is supported, not just with maps she can use and the Dungeon Designer Cards she can cut out, but also tokens for the monsters and the Player Characters. The latter also have their own character sheets and consist of a Half-Orc Barbarian, a Halfling Bard, a Human Wizard, and a Half-Elf Rogue. These are all fully fledged characters with some background as well as their stats.

Physically, Scry, Scry My Little Eye is well presented. The artwork is decent, but the maps are very good. This should no surprise given the publisher. One nice touch is that references to monsters, items—magic or not, and clues are colour-coded to make them easier to spot.

Scry, Scry My Little Eye is an easy dungeon to run with very little preparation since the Dungeon Designer Cards do the dungeon design and dressing. It can be run as a one-shot, a convention scenario, or run as part of a campaign, perhaps with the Player Characters becoming dungeon scouts and surveyors to find wilder and more extravagant encounters to implement in their patron’s dungeon, and even expanding the size of test dungeons with further maps from Loke Battle Mats.

Friday Fantasy: The Veiled Dungeon

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books. To date, this has included the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, the Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats, The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, and Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats. However, The Veiled Dungeon is something a little different, something more like Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh.

The Veiled Dungeon is a boxed set containing a set of maps, encounter cards, and a book of encounters and monsters, all of which can be used in the adventure in the book or used by the Dungeon Master to create her own encounters. It is designed as both toolkit and ready-to-play adventure and comes decently appointed in whatever way the Dungeon Master wants to use it. The adventure itself, ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’, is designed for Player Characters of between Third and Fifth Level for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It comes as a boxed set containing twenty separate maps, forty monster cards, and a reference book.

The maps are done on double-sided seventeen by eleven light card sheets, in full colour and marked with a grid of one-inch squares. All are suitable for use with both wet and dry markers. They include hallways, corridors, dormitories, storerooms, workrooms, crumbling bridges over yawning magical chasms, grand staircases, magical circles, ziggurats, shattered rooms, courtyards and entrances, and more. They are bright and colourful and done in the style recognisable from maps from Loke BattleMats. They are also compatible with them, meaning that they can be used alongside all of the publisher’s maps to expand the playing area and add variety.

The monster cards are also double-sided and done in full colour. On the front is an illustration of the creature, which of course, can be shown to the players when their characters encounter them, whilst on the back is its full stats for easy reference by the Dungeon Master. There are one or two NPCs, such as the Veteran Scholar, but the rest are all monsters. Many of them are animated objects—animated objects to be found in the scenario—and it is clear that the author has had a lot of fun naming and designing them. There is the ‘Animated Scroll Storm’, which acts like a swarm of paper that inflicts paper cuts and on a critical can cast a random cantrip; ‘Bad Dreams’ is animated bed that inflicts ‘Things that go bump’ damage and if a target is prone makes them fall asleep ‘Night, Night!’; and ‘Belligerent Bookcase’, a ‘Vindictive Teacher’ that makes attacks against targets with an Intelligence of twelve or less at Advantage and will then ‘Throw the Book’ at them! The most fun, at least in terms of names, is the ‘Chest of Jaws’, that likes to grapple its targets and steal small items with ‘’That’s Mine’ and then hangs on with ‘Lockjaw’ for both Advantage and extra damage. The animated furniture is especially fun and all of the pieces could easily be used elsewhere—as could many of the monsters.

The Reference Book for The Veiled Dungeon is initially somewhat confusing. Is it, or is it not, a scenario called ‘The Veiled Dungeon’? Well, sort of, but first what the Reference Book does is actually break down the elements of the dungeon, not necessarily to help the Dungeon Master run the pre-written version which follows later in the book, but to help the Dungeon Master create something of her own, but still similar. The elements common to both the adventure contained in the box and the one that the Dungeon Master might create include the myth of the Veiled Dungeon and its invasive fog that shifts and walls that move. How scholars keep discovering it and as they dig deeper, becoming obsessed with exploring further, arousing the interest of a deity of madness and obsession, until they make one terrible discovery, and the fog is unleashed, wreathing its way through the complex, changing and twisting the walls and rooms and letting deadly new monsters in!

The Reference Book then takes the Dungeon Master through the different elements of the adventure. This begins with the maps and then provides tables for creating motivations, persons and organisations that might employ the Player Characters, the size of the dungeon and variations upon it, and then multiple different encounters. It breaks these encounters down area by area rather than by individual locations. The last part of Reference Book consists of the bestiary for ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. From ‘Activated Rope’, ‘Animated Scroll Storm’, and ‘Arcane Golem’ to ‘Veteran Scholar’, ‘Unwelcome Rug’, and ‘Wyrmspawn’, every monster gets a decent write-up, typically a paragraph in length. The more major monsters, like the ‘Malevolent Veil Fiend’ and the ‘Sentinel Statue’, get much longer write-ups, as befitting the threats they represent.

The tools are there for the Dungeon Master to create her own version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’, but the Reference Book also includes its own pre-written adventure, essentially the designer’s own version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. This is ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’. The Cerulean Ruins are an important ‘Site of Special Arcane Interest’—or ‘SSAI’—currently being excavated by the Yore Institute. The latter hires the Player Characters to investigate the complex after contact has been lost with its staff and students. It is part-scholar, part-archaeological dig, that gets increasingly darker and weirder. The Player Characters will initially gain some information about the status of the complex from a former employee who has turned ‘ruin raider’, but it does not quite prepare them for what they find. Much of the fittings and furniture have been twisted into malevolent monstrosities and there is a growing sense of madness and chaos, the deeper the Player Characters go. Progress through the dungeon is intentionally compartmenalised. This is done by making the Player Characters need to find keys to unlock particular sections of the dungeon. This is not only a device to have the Player Characters explore every section, but also to prevent them from haring through the dungeon, so forcing the Dungeon Master to clear the table of one set of maps and then set up another.

In the epilogue to the adventure there is an interesting line: “One of the scholars also points out that they have uncovered rumours that might lead to another set of ruins similar to this one!” Which, should the players and their characters follow up on, would enable the Dungeon Master to use the tools to create a new version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’ of her own, which almost exactly, but not like The Cerulean Ruins. What happens if the Player Characters do follow up on this lead is not explored in the Reference Book, sadly, since some overarching plot could have provided more motivation and storytelling possibilities than simple repetition. Nevertheless, ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’ is a good scenario with a decent mix of exploration and combat and a few clues to help the players and their characters work out what is going on.

Physically, The Veiled Dungeon is a handsome boxed set. Everything is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the cartography is as good as you would expect.

The Veiled Dungeon is a slightly odd product, both an adventure and a toolkit to create similarly themed adventures. It perhaps could have done with advice to connect the adventures or provide a bigger plot perhaps, so that the Dungeon Master would have found it easier to create and link, if that is what she desires, the variants upon ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. Nevertheless, whether she is running the included ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’ or a version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’ of her own devising, the contents of The Veiled Dungeon are going to look good on the table.

[Free RPG Day 2024] Not A Drop To Drink

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Not A Drop To Drink is a scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It is published by Loke BattleMats and a preview for the publisher’s The Calendar of Many Adventures 2025, which like last year’s The Calendar of Many Adventures 2024, presents twelve maps and twelve associated adventures, one pairing a month. Not A Drop To Drink is designed to be played with four Player Characters, each of Second Level, and completed in a single session, two at most. It opens with a quick ‘5e in 5 Minutes’ guide before giving an overview of the scenario, a possible hook for the Player Characters, and suggestions on how to make it easier for smaller or lover Level parties or more difficult for higher Level parties. It takes place in a region known as the Amber Vale, best known for its verdant fields of wheat and the blessings of the river goddess, Quellia. Unfortunately, this green and pleasant land has been beset by a harsh drought as the wells have run dry and the farmers of the vale are at a loss to explain it. Quick investigation will suggest that perhaps a curse has befallen the land and point the Player Characters in the direction of the shrine of Quellia, following in the footsteps of a trio of labourers who had gone to investigate themselves.

The first sign that there is more to the drought than a curse is the discovery of smashed well at the shrine and the desiccated body of the shrine keeper. With the help of a Agear puppy being raised at the shrine—Agear Hounds being sacred to Quellia—the Player Characters can push up out of the vale and into the Greenwind Caves, where they can confront the villains of the piece. This takes place in a Dammed Wellspring as cultists attempt to sacrifice the parents of the Agear puppy to a god of famine! In order to reach the cultists and their leader, the Player Characters must cross the floor of the cave which is marked by mud-covered rocks between which runs quite deep, but definitely muddy channels of water. The cultists have laid planks from one rock to another in order to get across, but if the Player Characters follow this route, they will be under fire from the cultists.

As you would expect from a publisher of battle maps, Not A Drop To Drink includes two good maps. One is of the Greenwind Caves, done in a much rougher style than is the norm for Loke Battle Maps. This does not mean that it is a poor map, rather that the style is different to that used by the publisher for maps intended as encounter or battle locations. The other map is of the Dammed Wellspring and has nice sense of space and swirling waters. It is also accompanied by a full set of counters to use for the Player Characters, the NPCs, and the monsters in this last battle scene. The scenario includes four pre-generated characters. They consist of a Fighter, a Druid, a Halfling Wizard, and a half-Elf Ranger. They include full stats and background as well as a decent thumbnail illustration. There are stats for all of the monsters and NPCs and dogs in the scenario.

Physically, Not A Drop To Drink is well presented and written. Coloured text is used to indicate that the Dungeon Master refer to the monsters and NPCs and magic items. The two maps are nicely done.

Not A Drop To Drink is quick and easy to prepare and run. The players and their characters should be able work out what is going on quite quickly, so preparing them for the final confrontation in the Dammed Wellspring. Not A Drop To Drink is good for a single session’s worth of play, whether that is as a one-shot or an addition to a campaign.

Your Adventure Calendar

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books, such as the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, but the publisher also offers its maps in a year long, one map per month package. In other words, a calendar! However, the calendar offers a lot more than just a map per month. Every month comes with an adventure of its very own.

The Calendar of Many Adventures 2024 is almost like any other calendar that you hang on the wall. Exactly twelve inches it folds out to reveal each month as you would expect and an illustration as you would expect. The calendar is mostly as you would expect. Days of the week, month after month. One thing to note is that the traditional days and festivals are not marked. So, no Good Friday or Easter Monday, no Spring Bank Holiday, no Halloween, no Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Consequently, the user will need to add them himself. Instead, there are less traditional days, such as ‘International GM’s Day’ on March 4th and ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ on September 19th. However, instead of some random fantasy picture, every month we are treated to a map. An ice cold, ruined village with a bridge over a frigid river for January, a tropical beach with a ruined boat on the shoreline and a fallen moai a la Easter Island, and a mine tunnel with tracks and trucks and a work and storage area. Each map is marked with two-inch squares and is nicely detailed, such as hats and documents on a table.

In addition, each month is accompanied by a QR code. This downloads two items. First is the map itself for that month. Of course, the physical copy of the map can be used at the table, whilst the digital copy can be used online. Of course, the maps can also be combined with maps found in other Loke BattleMats products, especially the Giant Book of Battle Mats series. The second is a single adventure for that month, a PDF for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, which is designed to be used with the map. They average as being suitable for Third Level Player Characters, but most can be played by Fourth Level Player Characters. Most f the adventures are eleven pages in length and come with ‘5E in 5 Minutes’, a quick primer (or remainder) of the rules, advice on running and balancing the adventure, hook to get the Player Characters involved, background for the Game Master, an introduction for the players, a description of the map and what the Player Characters will encounter, a suggestion as to what might happen next, and then the stats for both the monsters and the NPCs for the scenario. Names for monsters, NPCs, and special items are colour coded to indicate that they are given further detail at the end of the adventure.

For example, ‘Out in the Cold’ is the adventure for January, 2024. It is designed for a group of Third to Fifth Level Player Characters. The village of Derrow has fallen on hard times, its rich hunting grounds spoiled by heavy, icy winters and monsters that kill the stock and terrorise anyone who dares enter the surrounding forests. The local lord, Galfrin Albrent, hires the Player Characters to retrieve an artefact currently on display in an inn in the rundown village of Derrow. When they attempt to do so, a curse is activated throwing the Player Characters into the Winter Realm and a very snowy, ruined version of Derrow. It is here that the main events of the scenario take place on the given map. The Player Characters find themselves trapped here and as they try to find a way out—or a way back—they are attacked by wave after wave of wintery Derrow Wolves and it gets colder and colder. The Player Characters need to survive long enough to do so, and once done, the scenario ends. There are four suggestions as to what could happen next or in later adventures, and stats for an NPC who could accompany the Player Characters if they need help, another NPC, and the villain of the piece. Oddly the NPC, the bartender at the village inn, is given more detail than the villain, in terms of background.

‘Out in the Cold’ is a short adventure, offering no more than a single session’s worth of play, but it is serviceable and easy to drop into a campaign. It is followed by ‘Together We Stand’, a more complex affair for February in which the Player Characters are hired to investigate an alchemist’s lair under a tavern as part of dispute between rival guilds; ‘Fear Under the Sun’ for March opens with the Player Characters shipwrecked and washed ashore, coming to the rescue of cute creatures as the ground shakes; and for April, ‘How Green Your Garden Grows’, the Player Characters come to the aid of a local midwife and herbalist whose garden of prize-winning plants and flowers is under attack. This is important because the award for best garden is due to given very soon. Unfortunately, Granny Green, whose garden is under attack has under attack, has secrets of her own…

Physically, Calendar of Many Adventures 2024 is decently presented, bar of course, the traditional holidays on the calendar. The maps are as well done as you would expect and they are all compatible with the rest of the maps from Loke BattleMats. The adventures themselves are well written and easy to use, and short enough to drop into a Game Master’s campaign, perhaps a side quest or diversion. Plus, whilst the adventures might be written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, they are easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

The Calendar of Many Adventures 2024 is a very nice product, providing the Game Master with a selection of easy to prepare scenarios that she can drop into her campaign. The format is fun and if the scenarios are not connected this year, then perhaps for next year, the Calendar of Many Adventures 2025 could contain a linked set of adventures to form a mini campaign throughout the year.

[Free RPG Day 2023] Heist at the Museum

Now in its sixteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2023 took place on Saturday, June 24th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Fil Baldowski at All Rolled Up, and others, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.

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Heist At The Museum! is a one-shot scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition published by Loke BattleMats. It is a preview for the publisher’s Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, it comes with two battlemats from that book, four detailed pre-generated Player Characters, tokens for the scenario’s for the Player Characters, NPCs, adversaries, and monsters, and six handouts. It also includes ‘5E in 5 Minutes’, a quicker primer on Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and there are several tips on how to run the adventure as well. A seasoned Dungeon Master will be able to prepare the adventure and run it in a single session. It could also be adapted to an ongoing campaign, especially for a group of thieves, rogues, and ne’er-do-wells, though that will require some adjustment upon the part of the Dungeon Master to fit her campaign.

The set-up for Heist At The Museum! is simple. The Player Characters are a gang of thieves known as the ‘Magpies’ which specialises in acquiring historical artefacts. They are hired Braurius Malifont, a wealthy collector of exotic antiquities. Four such items, known as the ‘Tetrad’, are being held by the ‘Storied Chronicles’, the city museum which holds and displays antiquities from all over the world. Malifont gives the four a guide to getting into the museum and the clues he has uncovered to date as to the location of the artefacts he wants. The adventure itself begins en media res, with the Player Characters about to break in. They can access various routes, but once inside they must search the main display area to locate the items and not activate the guards. Their most obvious problem is not toppling the complete dinosaur skeleton of a triceratops! The encounter involves a mix of stealth, combat, and a big puzzle. This relies very much on player general knowledge, but the scenario allows for straight skill rolls should they come up lacking. The scene is as tense as any robbery should be, and ideally, it should end as the guards swarm into the main display area…

The second scene is at the home of Braurius Malifont. He welcomes the Player Characters to his home and congratulates them on their success. There is meant to be twist here—and there is. It is, however, an obvious one. For starters, the surname of the Player Characters’ employer is ‘Malifont’. ‘M-a-l-ifont’. It just sounds evil. Then, Malifont’s other guests are all there at the reception party, sipping wine and enjoying cheesy nibbles, all wear scarlet robes. It is intentional and not designed to be particularly subtle, and of course, Braurius Malifont will turn the tables on the Player Characters and a big fight will ensue.

The four Player Characters in Heist At The Museum! are thieves, all of Third Level. They include a scholarly thief who can step into the shadows, a street blade handy with paired scimitars, a swift thief capable of hit and run attacks, and a trickster who can grant Advantage to his allies and Disadvantage to his adversaries. All four are clearly presented and easy to read, and they come with a detailed background and equipment list. Their portraits are also replicated on their tokens for the scenario.

Heist At The Museum! comes with two maps from the publisher’s Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers. One is a museum location complete with display cases, carpet, stairs, and dinosaur skeleton, the other is personal study and connected bedroom. Both maps are presented in full colour, in one-inch squares. The tokens—which the Dungeon Master will have to cut out as part of the preparation—are also done in full colour and fit the maps.

Physically, Heist At The Museum! is well presented and written. Coloured text is used to indicate that the Dungeon Master refer to the monsters and NPCs and magic items. The two handouts are nicely done.

Heist At The Museum! is quick and easy to prepare and run. If it is obvious in its plotting, Heist At The Museum! is at least short, serviceable, and exciting enough for a single session.

Mapping Your Heists

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books.

A Loke BattleMats book comes as a spiral-bound book. Every page is a map and every page actually light card with a plastic covering. The fact that it is spiral-bound means that the book lies completely flat and because there is a map on every page, every map can be used on its own or combined with the map on the opposite page to work as one big, double-page spread map. The fact that the book is spiral bound means that it can be folded back on itself and thus just one map used with ease or the book unfolded to reveal the other half of the map as necessary. The fact that every page has a plastic covering means that every page can be drawn on using a write-on/wipe-off pen. It is a brilliantly simple concept which has already garnered the publisher the UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards for Best Accessory for the Big Book of Battlemats and both the UK Games Expo 2019 Best Accessory and UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards Best Accessory for Giant Book of Battle Mats.

The newest release from Loke Battle Mats is the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, which presents “Battle maps for Tabletop Roleplaying Ideal for Heists and Other Exciting Encounters!”, marked in either one-inch squares. Unlike other map books from Loke Battle Mats, the plain maps, simple floors without any detail or furnishings, are left until the end, so the volume gets straight to presenting interesting locations that a Game Master can add to her game. It starts with a tavern, all wood flooring and trestle tables on one page, but a stone-floored cellar, connected by a set of stairs on the opposite page. Next, there is some kind of office, which could be town hall or a minor guild hall, but next to that is a gaol with several cells, so together the two maps become a watch house or town guard station complete with its set of cells in which hold suspects or prisoners. Similarly, there are work desks and an office on the next map, but a room with shelves containing books or papers on the other, turning the location into a records office or a library, a plain series of tunnels snake around the map only to connect to room via a hole in the wall (either dug open or blown open with magic of even explosives), whilst an unremarkable work area is turned into something interesting—the backstage of a theatre—because it connects to a stage and auditorium on the opposite page, and an innocent-looking restaurant hides a gambling den complete with dueling room should satisfaction be demanded on the opposite page. Other maps depict warehouses and sections of a sewer system—the latter easy to line up with the sewer maps in other map volumes from the publisher, a sauna complex, a museum foyer complete with triceratops skeleton on display, an abandoned house complete with cobwebs, and even a banqueting hall and kitchen.

The maps are also nicely detailed in places. Food in particular features throughout, whether that is the lonely plate on the desk in the room backstage or sumptuous choice of dishes laid out on the banqueting table, but there are also numerous tools, weapons, and pieces of armour dotting the various locations as appropriate. Another feature is that the maps do not always specifically work for the fantasy genre. They will work in others too. For example, the inn and gambling den would be perfect for the nineteen twenties and thirties, the sauna complex feels very modern, and the museum foyer with its triceratops skeleton would work in numerous genres.

The main feature of the maps in the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers is their capacity to tell stories. Want the Player Characters to tunnel into the vault of a bank? There is a tunnel and map with a broken wall for that, as well as vault on another map. Or, for a bank robbery, take the office and gaol and make the cells individual vaults. The gambling den is perfect for a raid by the police or a rival gang. The stage is ripe for an interrupted performance. All the Game Master or her players and their characters have to do is supply the details of the interruption. Essentially, depending upon the story being played out, the multiple maps can be used as the Player Characters move from one location to another as events unfold. In addition, because the maps in the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers depict urban locations, they can often be used again and again, especially in a campaign which takes place in one town or city.

Physically, Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers is very nicely produced. The maps are clear, easy to use, fully painted, and vibrant with colour. One issue may well be with binding and the user might want to be a little careful folding the pages back and forth lest the pages crease or break around the spiral comb of the binding.

It is clear that a lot of thought of has been put into the design of the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers. Although not every room or map in the collection is either exciting or inspirational, they can all be useful. The best of them are and many of the maps will inspire a gaming group to use them as locations and more, using them to help create the stories they roleplay. The Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers is a really useful sourcebook for city campaigns and its capacity to help tell stories is very nicely thought out.

Mapping Your Castles, Crypts, & Caverns

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke Battle Mats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books.

A Loke BattleMats book comes as a spiral-bound book. Every page is a map and every page actually light card with a plastic covering. The fact that it is spiral-bound means that the book lies completely flat and because there is a map on every page, every map can be used on its own or combined with the map on the opposite page to work as one big, double-page spread map. The fact that the book is spiral bound means that it can be folded back on itself and thus just one map used with ease or the book unfolded to reveal the other half of the map as necessary. The fact that every page has a plastic covering means that every page can be drawn on using a write-on/wipe-off pen. It is a brilliantly simple concept which has already garnered the publisher the UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards for Best Accessory for the Big Book of Battlemats and both the UK Games Expo 2019 Best Accessory and UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards Best Accessory for the Giant Book of Battle Mats.

The Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is a ‘Set of 2 Battle Map Books for RPG’. As a set, it comes as two volume set of map books in a slipcase—open ended at either side for easy access. Each of the two volumes is a twelve-inch squire square, spiral bound book, with each containing sixty maps, all marked with a square grid. These start with a pair of maps with just a plain, but quickly leap into depicting particular locations. There are castle walls with towers and stables, great spiraling stairs, a mess hall, temples and dormitories, libraries and ritual rooms, ornamental gardens, befouled sewer tunnels, and caverns set across a variety of terrain types, and much, much more. And this is more or less the same in each of the two books. This does not mean that the maps are exactly the same in each book. Rather they are thematically similar and this leads into what is perhaps the greatest feature of the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats.

Each two-page spread of the two volumes of the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats consists of two linked maps—physically and thematically. The Game Master can use either of the maps on the two-page spread on their own or together, as a twelve by twenty-four-inch rectangular map. That though is with the one volume. With two volumes together, the Game Master can combine any single map from one volume with any single map from the other, and if that is not flexible enough, any two-page spread from one volume can be placed next to a two-page spread from the other, in the process, creating a twenty-four by twenty-four-inch square map. What is means is that the Game Master can connect the two sections of castle walls to create a longer section, the sewers can be extended, and the mess hall, dormitories, and other sections placed together to form a barracks, for example. As with the other titles in the range, this gives the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books a fantastic versatility which the Game Master can take advantage of again and again in choosing a combination of map pages from the two volumes to create location after location, and then use them to build encounter after encounter.

The individual maps are excellent, being bright, vibrant, detailed, and clear. They are easy to use and easy to modify. A Game Master can easily adjust them with a write-on/wipe-off pen to add features of her own. This is especially important if the Game Master wants to use a map which has previously featured in one of her adventures. She can also add stickers if she wants new features or even actual physical terrain features.

There are four books in the series—the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats, and The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats. There is a difference between the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats and the other titles which is both an advantage and a disadvantage for this set of books. The difference is that instead of focusing of one or two themes, such as dungeons or towns and taverns, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats obviously focuses on three. This gives its a flexibility which means it slots easily alongside a wider range of maps from the other three books in the series. For example, the castle maps from the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats can abut against the street maps from The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats or the caverns added to those in The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats. However, it is not quite possible to create a complete castle or fortress or other buildings or similar buildings with this book set. Rather, it feels as if the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is a book of abutments, sections that support and expand the maps in the other entries in the series, ratehr than being a standalone product. Consequently, they are not necessarily that easy to use on the fly, to ready up an encounter at a moment’s notice. Instead, they are easier to use as part of the Game Master’s preparation and then have everything necessary to play. Then obviously, the maps cannot be used over and over lest familiarity become an issue. Neither of these are issues which will prevent a Game Master from using the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats, but rather that she should be aware of them prior to bringing them to the table.

Physically, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is very nicely produced. The maps are clear, easy to use, fully painted, and vibrant with colour. One issue may well be with binding and the user might want to be a little careful folding the pages back and forth lest the pages crease or break around the spiral comb of the binding. Although there is some writing involved in the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats, it is not really what a Game Master is looking for with this two-volume set. Fortunately, the writing is a little sharper than in previous entries in the series.

There is no denying the usefulness of maps when it comes to the tabletop gaming hobby. They help players and Game Masters alike visualise an area, they help track movement and position, and so on. If a gaming group does not regularly use miniatures in their fantasy games, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats might not be useful, but it will still help them visualise an area, and it may even encourage them to use them. If they already use miniatures, whether fantasy roleplaying or wargaming, then the maps in the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats will be useful—but only to an extent and then really only best used with the other volumes in the series. Still there are so many fantasy roleplaying games which Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats will work with, almost too many to list here…

The Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is full of attractive, ready-to-use maps that the Game Master can bring to the table for the fantasy roleplaying game of her choice. As with other entries in the series, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is both practical and pretty, but its broader focus that it is not quite as useful an accessory for fantasy gaming in general with the rest of the line.

Mapping Your Cyberpunk Game

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books.

A Loke BattleMats book comes as a spiral-bound book. Every page is a map and every page actually light card with a plastic covering. The fact that it is spiral-bound means that the book lies completely flat and because there is a map on every page, every map can be used on its own or combined with the map on the opposite page to work as one big, double-page spread map. The fact that the book is spiral bound means that it can be folded back on itself and thus just one map used with ease or the book unfolded to reveal the other half of the map as necessary. The fact that every page has a plastic covering means that every page can be drawn on using a write-on/wipe-off pen. It is a brilliantly simple concept which has already garnered the publisher the UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards for Best Accessory for the Big Book of Battlemats and both the UK Games Expo 2019 Best Accessory and UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards Best Accessory for Giant Book of Battle Mats.

The newest release from Loke Battle Mats is The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats, which presents “60 Pages of Battle Mats for Modern Tabletop RPGs”, marked in either one-inch squares or one-inch hexes. The first map is plain, but the second is where the volume starts getting useful. The first map is of a classic motel, consisting of an office and a ring of small rooms each with an en suite bathroom. There is a certain seediness to it. This is followed by the first of several roads and streets. Some of these have roadside businesses like a bar or café, whilst others do not. 

For fans of Cyberpunk 2077, the collection includes an underground carpark and rooftops, complete with ventilation units and grills, whilst another has a helicopter landing pad. Other sites include an underground station,  plus a street entrance, a suite of offices and a foyer, parts of a cube farm, and a penthouse apartment or suite. For fans of ShadowRun, there is a convenience store a la a Stuffer Shack, whilst for fans of Bladerunner, there is a high floor of an apartment building, complete with parts of the apartments of the floor, a la the Bradbury Building. This is one of the disappointments of the book in that it is only big to one half of the floor. Perhaps if there is a second volume of The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats, the other half could be included in that?

The last few maps in The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats move properly outside. There is a very rough, dirt race track with a couple of burnt out vehicles, a street scene again with a ruined  vehicle and buildings on either side of the street. There are also maps of ruined buildings and ruined railway platform, complete with a train on its side. The book ends with another plain grid for the Game Master to draw the details on it as she needs them, but perhaps the most disappointing map is that of plain grasslands, which seems out of keeping with the feel and tone.

Essentially, as you leaf through the maps of The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats, they move from bright lights to darker places and into a darker, perhaps apocalyptic future. Or just simply ruins, or dilapidated locations out in the Badlands... What this highlights is the flexibility of the maps in the book. They work for several genres, not just the the Cyberpunk one. Most obviously, the Modern genre, but also the Science Fiction and the Post-Apocalyptic genres too. The most obvious is with The Big Book of Sci-Fi Battle Mats, but for the Cyberpunk genre, this collection plugs into Cyberpunk Red, expanding easily the maps and floor plan options which come with Cyberpunk RED Data Pack, Cyberpunk Red: Easy Mode, and the Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit. Of course, not forgetting other Cyberpunk roleplaying games such as Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG or ShadowRun. Then there are modern roleplaying games and post-apocalyptic roleplaying too numerous to mention that this supplement would work well with.

Physically, The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats is very nicely produced. The maps are clear, easy to use, fully painted, and vibrant with colour. One issue may well be with binding and the user might want to be a little careful folding the pages back and forth lest the pages crease or break around the spiral comb of the binding.

There is no denying the usefulness of maps when it comes to the tabletop gaming hobby. They help players and Game Masters alike visualise an area, they help track movement and position, and so on. If a gaming group does not regularly use miniatures in their modern, post apocalyptic, Science Fiction, or Cyberpunk roleplaying games, The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats might not be useful, but it will still help them visualise an area, and it may even encourage them to use them. If they already use miniatures, whether for roleplaying or wargaming, then the maps in The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats will be undeniably useful.

The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats is full of attractive, ready-to-use maps that the Game Master can bring to the table for the roleplaying game of her choice—and do so in a surprising range of genres. Both practical and pretty, The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats is an undeniably useful accessory for a surprising range of genres. If your gaming group likes its maps, then whether playing a Modern game, Science Fiction game, a Post Apocalyptic game, or a Cyberpunk game, The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats will definitely look good when put down on the table.

[Free RPG Day 2022] Curse of the Dread Marsh Crew

Now in its fifteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2022, was celebrated not once, but twice. First on Saturday, 25th June in the USA, and then on Saturday, 23rd July internationally. This was to prevent problem with past events when certain books did not arrive in time to be shipped internationally and so were not available outside of the USA. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Reviews from R’lyeh was get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.

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Curse of the Dread Marsh Crew is an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Published by Loke BattleMats, a publisher best known for its maps for roleplaying games, such as The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, and The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats, the scenario takes place in the same setting as the Box of Adventure 2: Coast of Dread. It involves pirates, a cemetery, a curse, and undead in short encounter which easily be played in a session. It comes with four pre-generated Player Characters of Second Level as well as a doubled-sided map and a sheet of counters, both on heavy cardboard. The adventure involves a good mix of combat, interaction, and a big puzzle, and is highly thematic, but in terms of its plotting, it needs a bit work.

In Curse of the Dread Marsh Crew the Player Characters are members of the privateer, Dread Marsh, who have been sent on a mission by the ship’s quartermaster, Axell. They were to acquire the Emerald Eye, a great gem, said to be held in the tomb of the legendary pirate, Foxbeard, which is in the Windward Cemetery. As the scenario opens, with Axell’s advice, they have successfully entered the tomb and exited with the Emerald Eye in hand. Yet as soon as they make their exit, the tomb entry slams shut, a mist surrounds the cemetery, and their very flesh begins to rot. It appears that they have been afflicted by the ‘Curse of the Black Mark!’

So the Player Characters begin the scenario being dead! Which brings with it a host of problems—terrible speech, looking and smelling like a zombie, a vulnerability to Radiant damage, and being unable to benefit from any type of Rest, as well as being unable to leave the cemetery. Their first problem though, is that the cemetery watchman along with his dog, Snuffles, arrives to keep an eye on the place overnight. Fortunately, he is short-sighted and so will not spot that they undead so easily. This is not the only difficulty the Player Characters will face as a torch and pitchfork-wielding mob will turn up from the nearest village, but for either encounter, there are plenty of options detailed, so the players can approach them in numerous ways, not necessarily via combat. Similarly, the two locations of the scenario—Windward Cemetery and Foxbeard’s crypt—are both nicely detailed.

In the second part of the scenario, arcane symbols light up around the entrance to Foxbeard’s Crypt. These are part of puzzle which must be solved before the Player Characters can get back into the crypt, but surely, they would have solved that when they broke into the tomb the first time? Inside, they face Foxbeard himself, wanting revenge for their having stolen the Emerald Eye, as well as members of his undead crew. Also, why did Foxbeard not rise and take his revenge when they were they broke into the tomb the first time? The obvious solution would be for the Player Characters to have been brilliant when they originally plundered the tomb and not disturbed the dread pirate in his final resting place  and then forgotten the solution to the puzzle as a result of their suffering from the ‘Curse of the Black Mark!’ The Dungeon Master may instead come up with a solution of her own, but either way, it is a problem in terms of the narrative.

All the while this is going on, the Player Characters are under the effects of the ‘Curse of the Black Mark!’. If they kill anyone in the cemetery—and there is a warning to found if they search the cemetery—the Black Mark on their hand will grow. Kill too many persons and the Black Mark will grow and grow until they are permanently transformed into one of the undead. There is a means to lift the curse to be found, but that means entering the tomb of course.

The four Player Characters include a Fighter, a Rogue, a Warlock, and a Wizard, all Second Level. All come with a back story, a thumbnail portrait, and a tracker for the ‘Curse of the Black Mark!’. The latter s nicely done as a hand, but there are no other mechanical effects as the Black Mark grows. It might have been fun if there had been to help enforce a sense of impending doom if there had been.

Physically, Curse of the Dread Marsh Crew is decently presented. The scenario booklet is general, well written and laid out. It lacks a card cover and so is flimsy. The double-sided map is done on sturdy card and in full colour. One side depicts the cemetery and the entry to the tomb, whilst the other shows the tomb proper. Both maps are easy to use with either the included counters, or with miniatures if the Dungeon Master and her players have them. The counters are decently done, but do need to be cut out carefully.

Curse of the Dread Marsh Crew is potentially a lot of fun and it takes the classic combination of pirates and the undead and does something different with it. The scenario also contains some nicely scenes as a consequence, such as making friends with a dog when you appear to be undead and persuading a baying mob that you are actually alive. Whilst the scenario can be played straight as written, it does have some plot holes which the Dungeon Master will have to fix to really bring out the fun to be had in Curse of the Dread Marsh Crew.

Mapping Your Encounter

There have always been encounters in roleplaying because fundamentally, roleplaying is built on encounters, and the most fun has come from great encounters and their outcome and the roleplaying which comes from them. Yet coming up with interesting, involving, or even challenging encounters can hinder the most creative of Game Masters. So it is no surprise that the industry has fulfilled this need all the way back to books such as Dungeons & Dragons Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three, published by TSR, Inc. in 1977 and Traveller Supplement 6: 76 Patrons, published in in 1980 by GDW. This need has never gone away, with roleplaying genres such as fantasy, horror, and fantasy, along with specific roleplaying games and settings all being treated to their supplements of encounters, personalities, and places. In each book, each of their encounters can obviously be run as written, but each can also be adapted to fit the Game Master’s campaign, or even simply serve as inspiration. One of the latest entries to join this long list of supplements is Untold Encounters of the Random Kind.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is published by Loke BattleMats, a publisher best known for its maps for roleplaying games, such as The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, and The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats. Untold Encounters of the Random Kind promises over a thousand random encounters, much like the ‘Books of Battle Mats’ series across towns, wildernesses, and dungeons, as well as adventure generators, random tables, and more. The latter includes six sample adventures.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is designed to be compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. However, it is not actually a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition supplement and there are no Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition stats or content in the supplement. Instead it uses Keywords across seven categories—Mechanics, Damage, Difficulty, Challenge, Enemy Types, Group Sizes, and NPC Types. So for example, Damage which can be inflicted by an attack, a trap, a spell, an environmental effect, and so on, is listed as Minor, Light, Major, and Lethal, whilst the Difficulty of a task is listed as Simple, Routine, Difficult, Very Difficult, or Near Impossible. All of these are easily adapted to the fantasy roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, whilst the ‘5E Mechanics’ section suggests how the supplement’s Keywords can be translated into Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This is via Keywords, primarily the Keywords for Damage, Difficulty, and Challenge—the latter to Challenge Rating, and together it amounts to just two pages. In a supplement which is over three hundred pages long… The point is that Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is just as easy to use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as it is with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, be it Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord. In other words, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is very much Old School Renaissance compatible.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is tidily organised into its three sections covering town, wilderness, and dungeon encounters. Each section begins with an overview of the nature of the location type, terrain, district, or encounter types (so cemeteries, docks, and noble quarters for towns, arctic, forests, and sea and shore for wildernesses, and dungeon doors, enemies, and intrigue for dungeons), advice on using the encounters, as well as information particular to the section. Thus for Town Encounters there notes on town dignitaries, wilderness and dungeon crossovers, townsfolk, types of town, and how to create non-human towns. For the different types of wilderness, there is guidance on the weather, visibility, geography, and travel and survival, whilst for dungeons there is advice on traps, denizens, building dungeons, crossovers, and more. None of these entries is accorded more than a few short paragraphs, and arguably, any one of them is likely worth an essay or two of their very own. As a starting point though, the advice in Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is solid throughout.

None of the advice in each section is more than three pages in length before Untold Encounters of the Random Kind delves into its encounters. There are more than fifty entries in each of these tables and each one is expanded upon with a full description. These are given alphabetically following all of the tables. There is a degree of repetition here, for example, the ‘Abandoned Cart’ encounter, found with signs of something heavy having been dragged from it, can be found in the Castle Ward, Guild Quarter, High Street, Lanes, and Noble Quarter, but for most part the encounters are confined to one area or district. For example, the ‘Jury’ is only found in the Noble Quarter and a ‘Hollow Tree’ is found in the Forest. Some entries add flavour and feel, such as ‘Fantastic Music’, the wind whistling through past them sounds so happy as they trek across the Arctic region that the spirits of the Player Characters are uplifted, whilst on the Sea & Shore, the heavy salt content in the water and the air matts hair giving the Player Characters odd hairdos. It also affects fur coats. Boons may also be found in be the wilderness and dungeons, such as a ‘Coin Stash’ or ‘Mechanical Oddity’ with an as yet unfathomable purpose, and a dungeon or ‘Ring of the Lost’ which provides protection and a strange effect on compasses and ‘Salvage Onshore’ of valuable trade goods, similarly both found, though in the wilderness. Wilderness boons consist of coins and valuables, survival and supply caches, and even ores and gems. Similarly, dungeon boons consist of coins and other valuables, but also can be clues and of course, magical items. In both cases of wilderness and dungeon boons there is advice on how to include them and their potential story ramifications.

In comparison to the earlier sections of town and wilderness encounters, the dungeon encounter section goes into a bit more detail. There are tables here for location and back story, plus sample monster suggestions and building particular encounters. Again whole essays or even supplements have been written about dungeon design, so the advice is solid, but not deep.

Included at the end of the three sections—town, wilderness, and dungeon—is a pair of scenarios. These are designed for either Second, Fourth, or Eighth Level Players and each consists of a two-page spread. These have been constructed using the tables and encounters in Untold Encounters of the Random Kind with differently formatted text used to refer to encounter types and also Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition monster types. This is by name only, so again no stats. The six include ‘Wanted’ in which a local watch captain wants a shady relative brought in before the con artist’s enemies catch up with him; ‘Parched’, which opens with the Player Characters shipwrecked on the shores of a desert and a five-day trek to the nearest oasis with little water between them; and in ‘The Cursed Folly’, the Player Characters have been paid well to clear out a folly by a somewhat dotty member of the owning noble family who wants to live in it. Each of the six comes with a decent map of the adventure location, but each will require the Game Master to provide the stats for the various monsters. All six are all decent adventures, each offering little more than a session’s worth of play, and potentially the publisher could take the format and do a whole supplement of full encounters like it.

Physically, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is decently presented. It does need an edit in places, but the artwork is excellent. Overall, the supplement is a clean and attractive book.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is not necessarily a book that as a Game Master you need to own. However, as a book of prompts, ideas, and inspiration, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is a useful tome to have on the shelf—whichever version of Dungeons & Dragons or retroclone that the Game Master prefers because this supplement will work with them all.

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Loke BattleMats will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.