Fifth Edition Filleted

How would you react if someone offered to run a horror scenario for you using Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition? Turn the offer down flat? Run a mile? Ask why would anyone would want to run a horror game using Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition when there are a hundred-and-one alternatives readily available, many of which are specifically designed to handle the genre? After all, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is best suited to running heroic (some would even go as far as superheroic) high fantasy, even in its own horror setting of Ravenloft, with highly capable Player Characters who possess abilities and powers that are effectively miraculous, and probably likely, an array of magical items that make them even more capable, let alone being swaddled in Hit Points and the Frightened Condition not actually having that much of an effect in game. Before you run away or yell at whomever made you that offer or throw another roleplaying game at said person, what if someone else told you that there is a horror roleplaying game based on Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition which casts the ‘heroes’ as ordinary men and women who can get scared, act out of desperation, pay for their mistakes, and are forced to suffer unfair odds in the face of terrifying situations, horrifying monsters, and malign evil? All that and it is uncomplicated and easy to learn, plays and runs fast, and is supported by numerous scenarios straight out of the book, one of which you could be playing within an hour of the Game Master opening the book? You might not believe me, but such roleplaying game really does exist and upfront it makes a claim on the front cover so bold that you might wonder at the designer’s audacity.

FiveEvil: A Game of Unnerving Terror, Subverting the Expectations of the World’s Greatest RPG is that roleplaying game. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Handiwork Games, best known for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes and the second editions of both Cold City and Hot War, it is a roleplaying game of modern horror, intended to cover everything from the style of Stephen King, The Walking Dead, and Twin Peaks to Halloween, The Thing, and The Ring. It makes multiple changes to standard Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. These start with it not being a Class and Level roleplaying game and it not having either abilities, powers, or Feats. Also gone is Inspiration, although Advantage and Disadvantage remain, and yet even more radically, there is no combat system and no attack rolls, and in keeping with the genre, but not necessarily Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the Horror that the Player Characters are forced to confront is out to get them—and it does not play fair. This is a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters do not seek out the Horror or choose to confront it, but one in which the Horror seeks them out and confronts them. With all of that gone, what does FiveEvil give in its stead?

The Player Character looks very different in FiveEvil. He has the traditional abilities of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, and they are rated between three and eighteen. He has skills, but these are limited to twelve, two per ability, and he has Hit Points, typically ten for an average Player Character. After that, the changes really start. He has two Descriptors, which can be a job, hobby, or archetype, such as accountant, fly fishing, or surly teenager. Each Descriptor has a bonus, typically +4 for the job or stereotype and +2 for the hobby. These are applied to the skills that the Player Character is proficient in, two for primary Descriptor and one for the secondary Descriptor, as well to a Save Bonus for each Descriptor. He has four Personality Aspects—Habit, Belief, Flaw, and Relationship—that help define how the Player Character should be roleplayed. They can be invoked to ignore the Intensity of a situation and thus make a needed roll easier to achieve or to shake off a point of Desperation. A Player Character starts with no points of Desperation, but will acquire them as he is forced to struggle to survive the odds in the face the Horror. The more points of Desperation a Player Character has, the greater the likelihood that he will make mistakes and fall victim to whatever plans the Horror has for him.

Creating a Player Character in FiveEvil is a matter of choosing Descriptors and their associated skills and saves, defining the four Personality Aspects, and rolling for the abilities. This is done on three six-sided dice, though other methods are suggested. The process is quick and easy.

Mathias Pouke
Descriptor #1: Attentive Editor (+4)
Descriptor #2: Roleplaying Fanatic (+2)
Habit: Makes too many puns
Belief: Expect the worst and you will never be disappointed
Flaw: Fear of missing out
Relationship: How any cats can one man have?

Strength 10 (+0); Athletics [o], Intimidation [o]
Dexterity 12 (+0); Agility [o], Stealth [o]
Constitution 13 (+1); Grit [o], Survival [o]
Intelligence 14 (+2); Investigation [×], Knowledge/Recall [×]; Save [×]
Wisdom 10 (+0); Insight [o], Perception [o]
Charisma 13 (+1); Deception [o], Persuasion [×]; Save [×]

Hit Points: 12
Desperation: 0

Mechanically, in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, when a player wants his character to act, he rolls a twenty-sided die and if the result after applying any bonuses, is equal to or greater than the Difficulty Class of the action, then the character succeeds. This is exactly the same in FiveEvil, except the Difficulty Class does not depend on the action being attempted or necessarily how challenging it is. Instead, it is based on the Intensity of the situation that the Player Characters are in. The Intensity value runs from zero to six, going from just another day at zero through the situation being pressed at two and disrupted at three to murderous at six. So, the more tense and dangerous the situation (accompanying music is, if this was a horror film), the higher the Intensity. When the Intensity value is zero, the Difficulty Class is always ten, but the Difficulty Class increases as the Intensity increases, raising up to sixteen. The players always know what the Intensity value is as the Game Master has to display it on the table. In this way, it lets the players know how tense the situation is and thus the degree of horror that they need to lean into, as well as its mechanical difficulty. Whatever the Intensity Difficulty Class, it is the current Difficulty Class for all actions, whether a Player Character wants to leap from one rooftop to another, decapitate a zombie with an axe, or search the library for the correct eldritch tome. This includes Saves as well, but most rolls will be ability checks as there are no skill checks.

If the result is equal to, or higher than, the Intensity Difficulty Class, the Player Character succeeds, but if not, he fails, and the situation is likely to go badly against him. If the result is a natural one, or is less than the Player Character’s Desperation, he has made a Mistake. The Game Master chooses the result which fits the situation, which might be that the Player Character stumbles, hurts himself, takes extra time, suffers Disadvantage, or drops, breaks, or forgets something, and so on. Conversely, if the result is a natural twenty or simply twenty or more, the Player Character catches a Break. In this case, the Game Master choses a benefit for the Player Character, which might be that he is impressive, finds something useful, gains Advantage, discovers a vulnerability of the Horror being faced, and so on.

In addition, the Game Master may need to roll a Doom check. This is rolled against the current Intensity Difficulty Class without modifiers and is used as an oracle to determine if the situation or an aspect of it favours the Player Characters or not.

The horror genre drives those subject to its terrifying events and encounters to act out of desperation to survive, let alone escape. No less in FiveEvil, but when a Player Character acts out of desperation, he gains points of Desperation. In return, a roll can be made with Advantage, a flat +2 bonus can be applied to ability checks or saves after their roll has been made, to temporarily ignore the effects of being Wounded, or to increase the damage inflicted in an attack by the current Intensity value. A Player Character can have a maximum of ten points of Desperation, before he can no longer act out of desperation. However, the acting out of, and gaining points of, Desperation, has its consequences. Any ability check or save roll whose result is under the Player Character’s current Desperation total, the Player Character makes a Mistake, and if the Player Character still has points of Desperation when in a rest, they have to be processed. This means that the Player Character comes to terms with what he has just encountered, survived, or witnessed. When this happens, there is a chance that one or more of the Player Character’s Personality Aspects is alienated. Mechanically, an alienated Personality Aspect cannot be invoked, but narratively, an alienated Personality Aspect indicates that the Player Character’s personality has suffered and he has lost something of himself. If all four Personality Aspects are alienated, the Player Character has lost the will to carry on, cannot act out of Desperation, and is effectively out of the scenario.

Alienated Personality Aspects are the equivalent of sanity in other horror roleplaying games, but in FiveEvil, instead of the loss of raw numbers indicating a Player Character’s state, it is who the Player Character is and how he acts that are affected. He suffers loss rather than has an effect imposed upon him, but this only comes about because the player has decided that he wants to put his character at greater risk and accumulate Desperation. Instead, where the effect of the Horror or the situation is imposed is on the Intensity value and whilst it is imposed collectively, it is till up to the player to decide how his character acts and whether or not that is through Desperation. Ultimately, it is up to player agency, but since FiveEvil is a horror roleplaying game, that choice is often a case of choosing the least bad option rather than the best option.

Instead of combat encounters, FiveEvil has Terror Encounters. These are the roleplaying game’s set pieces in which the Horror confronts the Player Characters. From the off, the Player Characters are on the back foot. Once the Game Master sets the stage, the Player Characters must make a Terror Save which determines if they freeze in terror, run away, or can act. However, the Player Characters do not so much act in Terror Encounters, but react. This is because the Horror always goes first in a Terror Round and as a Terror Reaction, a Player Character can do just one thing. This is either to fight and attempt to inflict harm on the horror, flight and runaway, or finish whatever other task the Player Character wants to do. To do so, a player Character must face the Horror and make a Doom check. In the unlikelihood of a ‘reprieve’, the Player Character gains a second Terror Reaction, whilst on a Success, he avoids any Evils, is subject to an Evil on a failure, and suffers an extra Evil on a Doom result. An Evil is an effect inflicted on the Player Character by the Game Master, either selected appropriately to the situation or rolled randomly, and they can be either minor or serious in terms of severity. Minor Evils are suffered on rounds one and two of a Terror Encounter, whilst Serious Evils come into effect from the third round onwards.

Terror Rounds are patently unfair and favours the Horrors rather the Player Characters and is entirely intentional. The Player Characters are ordinary folk and the Horror not, and survival is never guaranteed. The explanation of how Terror Rounds work is supported by a lengthy example of play which very nicely showcases how all of FiveEvil works.

All of the play rules in FiveEvil are covered in the book’s first forty pages, including base advice, the elements of both Player Characters and Horrors, and running the roleplaying game. The advice for both player and Game Master is upfront and is to play hard, earn and give trust, take the hits, feel the fear, and play safe both in establishing the tone of the game and how it then plays out. Taking all of this in hand, the Game Master and her players are ready to play the first of five scenarios in FiveEvil. This is ‘Wakefield House’ in which a group of high school teenagers are confronted by Kyle, a friend of theirs who disappeared the year before, a victim of his tragic circumstances. In the first part, the Player Characters are confronted by Kyle and run away, but are haunted by his presence as they try and work out what has happened to him and how they can stop him or rescue him. There is a emotional strand to the scenario in that each Player Character is not as good a friend to Kyle as he or she should have been and rescuing him is their path to redemption as much as his.

‘Wakefield House’ is a short affair, playable in a single session or two. It is also easy to prepare and comes with six pre-generated Player Characters, such that a Game Master really could read through the first forty pages of FiveEvil and the twenty-page ‘Wakefield House’ and have it ready to run in surprisingly short amount of time.

The rules for Player Character generation follow this and it comes with plenty of advice and suggestions in terms of Descriptors and Personality Aspects for different settings. All of this is done by page eighty or so, with the remainder of book dedicated to the Game Master and running and creating for FiveEvil. The advice throughout is thorough and helpful, but at its core is the idea that whilst FiveEvil likely draws heavily from films and books in terms of inspiration, and might look like a story from a film or a book, what it really is, is a trap for the Player Characters. They are trapped by the situation they are in and they are trapped by whatever plans that the Horror has for them, but they are also trapped by their Personality Aspects as they are what will motivate them. That is, when they are not running away! The advice also examines the different modes of play, going from Quiet Mode to Suspense Mode, and finally Terror Mode with Terror Encounters. There is advice too on running investigations, but particularly good is the section on ‘Horror Stagecraft’ which examines different techniques that the Game Master can use to maintain a rhythm of tension rising and falling. Being explicit about the odds, but preserve hidden truths until they need to be revealed (always at the worst moment in the story); getting under the skin of the players not to scare them, but help them scare themselves by leaving gaps in what their characters know and listening to them; keeping the suspense unbearable by setting up the threat and dialling up the Intensity, but allowing to slow down too; throwing in jump scares (with a nice Lewton bus reference thrown in); maintaining the tension in the moment; and more. The advice is excellent and it could have been published in standalone book of its own and it still would be good, not just in the FiveEvil rules.

The advice continues with a guide to creating scenarios, including deciding on a setting, choosing a Horror, selecting the right type of trap that the Player Characters will fall into, and pitching a scenario to the players. Settings break some archetypical locations for a horror, asking questions about each, giving suggestions as possible Player Characters and their group dynamics, adding setting details, and backing it up with advice on using the settings. Examples include an isolated research station, touring band, wilderness adventure, busy hospital, boarding school, grimy spaceship, charming suburb, and dead end town, each one a toolkit to help the Game Master set the stage for a scenario. The example Horrors include alien insects, vampires, ravenous carnivores, infections and zombies, cultists and the things they serve, and unstoppable maniacs. It feels like a short list, but they are constructed more like archetypes and it is easy to see how they can be fleshed out to be something more specific in detail and flavour for a scenario.

So far, FiveEvil has been primarily aimed at single scenarios. For campaign play it offers various different types of encounters and other options that extend play. These include hunt encounters when the Player Characters are being hunted and specific challenge encounters for difficult situations; expanding character options with particular areas of knowledge called ‘Know-Hows’ and developing a Player Character in the long term; and handling mysteries. There is a good toolkit help the Game Master create mysteries and again, just like the advice on horror stagecraft, it is worth reading by any Game Master who wants to run horror, not just FiveEvil. Then, this backed up by examples, including revisiting ‘Wakefield House’ to run it as a mystery.

Lastly, FiveEvil includes four, ready-to-play scenarios. ‘Last Fun Weekend’ sees a high school reunion go wrong at a lonely house in the hills where the Player Characters grew up; in ‘Everyone Got Something Going On’ the Player Characters get locked in downtown and hunted by a brutal killer when they attend a mandatory counselling appointment; in ‘Out of the Circle’ they are members of a religious cult who go in search of a missing member only to discover some horrible truths about her; and in ‘Big Screamin’ Demons’ a band whose members hate each other get back together for final time on a private island because the billionaire’s pay is good. The scenarios vary in length, none more than two or three sessions long. ‘Big Screamin’ Demons’ does disrupt the tone a little, being an over the top comic rock opera of a horror scenario. All four scenarios are good though and showcase the possibilities of FiveEvil very well.

Curiously, what FiveEvil is reminiscent of is 13th Age from Pelgrane Press. 13th Age presents a radical blending of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition combined with genre enforcing storytelling mechanics. Putting aside the Class elements of 13th Age—Features, Talents, and Power—what feels specifically reminiscent of the epic fantasy roleplaying game in FiveEvil are Descriptors and Intensity. Descriptors feel like Backgrounds, the equivalent of skills in 13th Age, being very broad in their description and application, whilst Intensity feels like the Escalation Die in 13th Age. Both possess the same scale, running from one to six, and both values are player-facing, so that the players always know what they are. The Escalation Die literally sits on the table in front of the players and a six-sided die could do the same when playing FiveEvil. The Escalation Die is a bonus combat, designed to speed up combat in 13th Age, triggering various bonus effects, and making it more exciting. Intensity does not make the situation more exciting, but more tense, more horrific, and more challenging, the inverse of the Escalation Die. Both though, enforce their respective genres.

Physically, FiveEvil is very well presented. Both artwork and cartography are good. The writing though is excellent.

Whilst it is true that the underlying architecture of Dungeons & Dragons remains in FiveEvil, making it accessible to players of the world’s most popular roleplaying game, the changes to FiveEvil are more than enough for players who have eschewed either Dungeons & Dragons or Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition to look at it and see a very different roleplaying game. These changes are not other elements drawn from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or other similar fantasy roleplaying games, but with techniques and mechanisms more familiar to storytelling design. These enforce the genre again and again, making play tense, placing Player Characters in horrifying situations, and confronting them with terrible choices as they are confronted by real monsters and Horrors. FiveEvil: A Game of Unnerving Terror, Subverting the Expectations of the World’s Greatest RPG is an incredibly accomplished redesign of the hobby’s number one roleplaying game that both fulfils the claims of its subtitle and fails to fulfil the claims of the subtitle. It fails in part because the architecture of Dungeons & Dragons underlying the roleplaying game still remains and in part because so many changes are made to get what FiveEvil to do what it does, but succeeds because the end result really does what you expect Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition not to do. That said, FiveEvil: A Game of Unnerving Terror, Subverting the Expectations of the World’s Greatest RPG does not change Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition so much, as slice it open and gut its insides, filleting it right down to the barest of bones before building it back up again to make it a mean, lean scaring machine.

Your Advanced Player’s Handbook

Depending upon your point of view, when it comes to roleplaying games, we live in an age blessed or cursed by choice. There are too many to choose from, too many genres, and of course, not enough time to them all. This situation is not really different when it comes to playing the big roleplaying games of the hobby’s first and premier genre to this day—fantasy. For some, roleplaying is synonymous with Dungeons & Dragons and thus synonymous with fantasy. That was true in the early days of the hobby with Dungeon & Dragons in 1974 and it remains true today with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Yet not everyone is happy with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and this has led to an ever expanding array of options in terms of Dungeons & Dragons fantasy. Many of the alternatives, from Old School Essentials to Labyrinth Lord, from OSRIC and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, draw from previous iterations of Dungeons & Dragons. However, there are also modern variations of Dungeons & Dragons that offer choices in terms of options and complexity, most notably the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Tales of the Valiant. Then there is Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition.

Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition is a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition compatible roleplaying game that offers Dungeons & Dragons-style play with more options and with it greater complexity. Not necessarily a huge amount of complexity, but enough that switching from another Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition requires some adjustment. As with Dungeons & Dragons, there are three core rulebooks. These are Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Monstrous Menagerie, and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Trials & Treasures. Of these, the player will only need access to the first, whilst the second two are definitely for the Narrator, who will of course need all three books.

The Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is the book for player. It covers Player Character creation and details what a player can roleplay; combat and adventuring; numerous spells, combat manoeuvres, and exploration knacks; and lots of adventuring equipment, weapons, armour, vehicles, and strongholds. It comes as a fat slab of a book, but fortunately, a player does not to read everything in it. He needs to know how to create a character and what his character can do, how both adventuring and combat works, and what the expectations of play are. So, he can pick the parts that he needs to play right now and if he changes a character, he simply needs to read the description of the things that the new character can do. What it means is that the player just needs to read the bits that are pertinent and read the other bits latter.

Starting with the Player Character, he will have Hit Points, Abilities and Ability Modifiers, and a Proficiency Bonus in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition just as he does in Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Otherwise, a Player Character is defined by his Heritage, Culture, Background, Destiny, and Class. Heritage represents a Player Character’s parentage, what might be called ‘Species’ or ‘Race’ in other fantasy roleplaying games; ‘Culture’ is the environment in which the Player Grew up in; ‘Background’ his occupation; ‘Destiny’ his story, both what has happened in the past and then could happen in the future; and ‘Class’ what his abilities are. The Heritage, whether it is Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Human, Orc, Planetouched (either Aasimar or Tielfling), or Mixed Heritage sets age, size, and speed for the Player Character, but also grants certain gifts and a paragon gift at Tenth level. For example, an Elf has ‘Darkvision’, ‘Fey Ancestry’, and ‘Trance’, but can have the gift of either ‘Mystic Rapport’, ‘Prescient Vision’, or ‘Preternatural Awareness’, and when the Player Character reaches Tenth Level, can have ‘Elfsight’, ‘Inexorable Insight’, or ‘Spiritual Awareness’. The traditional Half-Elf or Half-Orc found in other similar fantasy roleplaying games can be represented by using the Mixed Heritage option.

Humans in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition have the traits of ‘Fast Learner’ and ‘Intrepid’. The first means that a Human Player Character gains knowledge or skill faster, but not necessarily the wisdom to use it, reflected by an extra skill Proficiency and requiring less time to train in armour, tools, armour. The second means that in a pinch, a Human player Character can make an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw with Expertise, and then again after a short or long rest. The Human Player Character also has the choice of the Gifts of ‘Diehard Survivor’, ‘Ingenious Focus’, and ‘Spirited Traveller’, with the Paragon Gifts of ‘Determined’, ‘Wind at Your Back’, and ‘Voracious Learner’. Altogether, this covers some of the character of humanity and makes a Human Player Character that little bit more dynamic.

A Player Character’s ‘Culture’ can be Caravanner, Circusfolk, Collegiate, Cosmopolitan, Dragonbound, Dragoncult, Forsaken, Godbound, Imperial, Itinerant, Lone Wanderer, Nomad, Settler, Steamforged, Stoneworthy, Tyrannised, Villager, Warhordling, Wildling, Deep Dwarf, Deep Gnome, Eladrin, Forest Gnome, Forgotten Folx, High Elf, Hill Dwarf, Kithbáin Halfling, Mountain Dwarf, Mustbairn Halfling, Shadow Elf, Stoic Orc, Stout Halfling, Tinker Gnome, Tunnel Halfling, or Wood Elf. What each provides a range of different traits, skill proficiencies, languages, and more. For example, Cosmopolitan means that the Player Character knows how to be ‘Discretely Armed’, has ‘Fashion Sense’ and can thus read others through their bearing and what they wear, ‘Skill Versatility’ grants Proficiency in Culture and another skill, ‘Urban Denizen’ means he knows his way around a city, is ‘Well-Connected’ and knows someone from another culture or heritage, and is literate in Common and two other languages.

What is interesting about some of these Cultures is that ordinarily, they would actually be represented by the equivalent of Heritage in other roleplaying games. So, for example, the Elf Heritage represents a base line, but if a player wants an Elf from the Dreaming or Fey Wild, he chooses the ‘Eladrin’ Culture, and then more traditional Elf types are represented by the ‘High Elf’ or ‘Wood Elf’ Cultures, whilst the ‘Shadow Elf’ Culture does the ‘Dark’ Elf or ‘Drow’ of other fantasy roleplaying games. Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition does this in turn for the Dwarf, Gnome, and Halfling Heritages and is much easier way of handling the differentiation.

‘Background’ is what a Player Character did before he became an adventurer. This can be Acolyte, Artisan, Charlatan, Criminal, Cultist, Entertainer, Exile, Farmer, Folk Hero, Gambler, Guard, Guildmember, Hermit, Marauder, Noble, Outlander, Sage, Sailor, Soldier, Trader, or Urchin. This grants the first of the Player Character’s two Ability bonuses, Proficiency in two skills as well as tools and languages, a connection, a memento, and feature which shows how the Player Character interacts with the world. For example, The Cultist Background grants +1 to Intelligence and another ability; Proficiencies in Religion and either Arcana or Deception; a language; a holy symbol, common clothes, and five torches; and the ‘Forbidden Lore’ Feature which allows the Player Character to research a topic and knows in what book if he fails an Arcana or Religion check. Of course, members of the cult that the former cultist belonged to, might be looking for him.

‘Destiny’ gives a Player Character with Motivation and Inspiration and a means of fulfilling this Destiny. The given Destinies are Chaos, Coming of Age, Devotion, Dominion, Excellence, Knowledge, Metamorphosis, Revenge, Underdog, and Wealth. For example, the Motivation for ‘Knowledge’ might be ‘Meaning, ‘Superiority, or ‘A Cure’; the Source of inspiration is ‘Learning’, which grants a Player Character Inspiration after studying for eight hours or more or making a discovery; the Inspiration Feature is ‘Critical Evaluation’ which enables the Player Character to use that Inspiration to assess a creature or item and learn one thing about it; and the Fulfilment Feature is ‘Converging Theories’ which happens when the Player Character brings together scientific and spiritual theories in a single hypothesis. It grants bonuses to the Player Character’s Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, as well as increasing their maximums. Essentially, a Player Character’s Destiny is a roleplaying incentive. In other words, roleplay the Motivation and desire behind the Destiny and the Player Character will be rewarded with a mechanical benefit in the form of Inspiration. It is also an indication from the player to the Narrator what sort of story arc he wants his character to have in addition whatever stories and plots the Narrator has planned.

The Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide details thirteen Classes. These are Adept, Bard, Berserker, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Herald, Marshal, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Of these, the Adept is the equivalent of the Monk in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the Berserker of the Barbarian, and the Herald of the Paladin. The Marshal is a new Class, war leaders and motivators, providing support on and off the battlefield. Every Class opens up three or more Archetypes at Third Level, which grants more specialised abilities over the course of a Player Character’s progress. For the Cleric, this includes ‘Healer’, ‘Oracle’, ‘Sun Priest’, and ‘War Priest’, whilst for the Marshall, this is ‘Gambling General’, ‘Swift Strategist’, and ‘Talented Tactician’. For the most part, there will be a lot that is familiar with these Classes in comparison to similar fantasy roleplaying games, but there are a lot of changes too, for example, allowing the Warlock to have Intelligence and Wisdom as a primary ability, rather than just Charisma.

One of the biggest changes is to the Fighter Class. It still gets Fighting Styles, such as ‘Duelling’, ‘Protection’, and ‘Two-Weapon Fighting’, and then adheres to a Fighter Archetype such as ‘Brute’, ‘Duellist’, ‘Gladiator’, ‘Knight’, and ‘Sharpshooter’. The Fighter, as well as the other martial Classes—the Berserker, the Herald, the Marshal, and the Ranger—also has access to Combat Manoeuvres. To use a Combat Manoeuvre, the Player Character expends Exertion, the cost varying from Combat Manoeuvre to Combat Manoeuvre. A basic Combat Manoeuvre, like ‘Disarm’ or ‘Knockdown’, does not cost anything and inflicts basic damage, whereas, ‘Missile Volley’ costs two Exertion and enables the Player Character to attack a number of opponents equal to his Proficiency value and ‘Iron Will’ costs a single point, but grants Advantage on a Saving Throw to resist being charmed or frightened. There are roughly one-hundred-and-fifty Combat Manoeuvres, and what they enable a player to do is really design a Martial character and have him fight how he wants and how he wants him to be cool.

All of the character and Class information is followed by the equipment chapter. This covers everything you would expect—arms, armour, adventuring gear, mounts, and more. The more includes rare weapons, different materials, and spellcasting foci, but also services, hospitable donations, and even building strongholds. The latter includes numerous example buildings. Then there is a chapter on multi-classing and Feats which a player can choose instead of improving an Ability when prompted when the character gains a new Level. Another addition to the range of Feats is Synergy Feats, which enable a Player Character to enhance a Feat he already has. In addition, some Synergy Feats require multi-classing as well. For example, ‘Bladechanter’ enables the Player Character to treat dual-wielded weapons as a combination of spell components and focus, grants him an Armour Class bonus equal to his Intelligence if he is not wearing armour, and the capacity to cast a spell through a weapon that has been used to strike an opponent. This requires the Player Character to be at least a Third Level Fighter, a Third Level Wizard, and posses the Two-Weapon Fighting style. Later on, the Player Character can then take the ‘Whirling Incantor’ and ‘Eldritch Whirlwind Master’ Feats at later Levels.

To create a character, a player first rolls his Ability values. This is done on four six-sided dice and the lowest value discarded. (Other methods are also provided.) He then chooses his character’s Heritage, Culture, Background, Destiny, and Class, followed by equipment. Every Class description includes lists of possible starting equipment and the equipment section includes equipment per Class past First Level. This does include some magical items. The creation process is not challenging, but it does involve multiple choices and it takes a while. Of course, with multiple players, it means that the set-up time for a campaign is a little more involved and replacing a Player Character mid-play is not quick either.

Mechanically, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, as with other modern iterations of Dungeons & Dragons is a d20 System roleplaying game. Like Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, whenever a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls a twenty-sided die and attempts to equal to, or greater than, a difficulty value. This can be the Armour Class of an opponent, the Difficulty Class of an Ability or Skill check, a Saving Throw, and so on. A natural roll of twenty will always succeed and is counted as a Critical Success, whilst a roll of a natural one is counted as a Critical Failure. In either case, there will be extra effects. It uses the rules for Advantage and Disadvantage introduced with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and now prevalent in a great many other roleplaying games. Lastly, it includes Expertise. This represents greater knowledge or skill about a situation and whether from a Class feature or trait, grants a Player Character an extra die to roll when attempting an action. This is a four-sided die, but if Player Character is granted more than one Expertise die, the size of the die to be rolled is increased rather than multiple dice being rolled. The Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide goes into some detail about how and when Ability and Skill rolls might be made, the Difficulty Classes, the outcomes situation by situation, including both Critical Success and Critical Failure, and so on, and all of which is illustratively helpful. It adds two new skills, Culture and Engineering, and a host of Specialities that grant a Player Character Expertise. All Player Characters have Specialities at First Level and gain more as their Proficiency Bonus increases.

Adventuring covers everything from time, movement, and travelling to what a Player Character does during downtime, when he is not adventuring, and then also his Prestige, his reputation, and optionally, calling in favours, based on Prestige. The rules for both adventuring and combat work as you would expect. Three additions in combat include the actions ‘Press the Attack’, ‘Fall Back’, and ‘Sprint’. ‘Press the Attack’ enables a Player Character to focus on an opponent and attack with Expertise, but the defender can ‘Fall Back’ as Reaction to move back and negate the attacker’s use of Expertise. ‘Sprint’ is when a Player Character does nothing but run and this will quadruple or triple the Player Character’s Speed depending upon armour worn. Two other additions are ‘World Actions’ and ‘Countdowns’. ‘World Actions’ make environments dynamic and potentially dangerous. For example, ‘Frigid’ gives an environment that can have ‘Frostbitten Surface’, ‘Icy Patch’, and ‘Snow’, meaning that the touching cold surfaces can inflict cold damage, changing direction when moving can be difficult, and the area is obscured. The ‘World Action’ is ‘Cold Chill’ which forces the Player Character to make a Saving Throw versus Constitution or suffer cold damage. ‘Countdowns’ covers situations when a Player Character is racing against time, for example, can a cliff be scaled before it crumbles or will a thief pick a lock before the guards complete their rounds? This is handled by pool of six sided-dice rolled at the beginning of every round. Each roll of six means that a die is removed from the pool and when there are no more dice to roll, the potential danger is triggered. It adds lots of randomness to situations such as this.

One fifth of the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is dedicated to spells and spellcasting, most of which lists all of the spells for the various spellcasting Classes. There are lots of tweaks throughout the spell list, so anyone coming to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition from a similar roleplaying game will need to give each spell description a closer examination than they might otherwise think. Some spells are absent, such as Arcane Gate and Aura of Life, but there are new additions such as Soulwrought Fists and Searing Equation. Perhaps the biggest addition are rare versions of spells. There are lots of spells named for famous wizards in Dungeons & Dragons, such as Bigby’s Arcane Hand, Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound, and Tenser’s Floating Disk. In fact, many of the changes to the spells in the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide have been made so that they no longer contain such names for obvious reasons. In Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, rare spells are variants of existing spells that spellcasters have reworked and made their own. For example, Magic Missile is a ubiquitous spell, which launches a trio of glowing bolts at one or more targets, but Kreven’s Ruinous Magic Missile is a version which causes targets hit by this spell’s missiles to suffer the Rattled condition unless they make a Saving Throw versus Strength.

Lastly, the appendices in the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide covers conditions, including tracked conditions such as fatigue and strife, and mental stress effects; gods, faith, and beliefs, including Domains for the Cleric Class; a small selection of beasts and creatures; and notes on compatibility. The latter is not an extensive list, more a starting point. However, it still means that a lot of the content for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition can be imported into Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition.

Physically, the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is very well presented. The book is well written and the artwork is decent throughout.

Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition and thus the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is a choice and all about choice. It is an alternative to Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition, one that the Narrator and her players are likely to choose because they want more choice and detail in their fantasy roleplaying. There can be no doubt that the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide delivers that, whether that is the options for Heritage, Culture, and Background in particular, follow by Destiny and Class, or the addition of Combat Manoeuvres which empower the martial Classes and make their combat options more exciting and dynamic. There are lots of useful details which help player and Narrator alike, such as the detailed examples of skill and Ability checks and Critical Successes and Failures which give an idea of how and when they work (or not). Of course, with all these extra elements and the greater choice and detail comes greater complexity and more involved play mechanically. This will suit some players and not others, but there plenty of other, similar roleplaying games offering a similar style of play if Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition is too much. That is one of the benefits of having so much choice.

One issue with Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition and in particular, the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is its accessibility. A player or Narrator coming to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition will have less of a problem making the switch than someone new to the hobby picking up the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide for the first time. For either, but especially the player new to the hobby, the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide really could have been improved with some examples of character creation and play and combat, to see the rules in action. That would have made it choices easier to grasp and better displayed the designers’ intent, more so given just how daunting the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is as a book.

As an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, what Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition offers is more choice and more detail, and with it, more complexity. That is what some players and some Narrators want and the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide delivers that and for the most part, delivers and explains that very well.

[Free RPG Day 2026] Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. 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. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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The Rat King Returns! For Free RPG Day 2026, Goodman Games published an adventure that was special in three ways. Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is a scenario that celebrates Goodman Games’ twenty-fifth anniversary by bringing back a villain first seen in 2003 with Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King, the first adventure it published for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. Second it celebrates the twenty or so years of Free RPG Day that tells the story of its genesis. Third it celebrates the contributions of Goodman Games to Free Free RPG over the years, with a gallery of every cover of every title donated to Free RPG Day in that time on the inside front and back covers. Sadly, they are presented in black and white, but nevertheless, it is still see them good in one place.

The scenario, Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne, is written to be systems neutral, but includes stats and write-ups for its NPCs and monsters for the publisher’s own Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. With the inclusion of the latter, the scenario works well with the recent Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King, but with the inclusion of the former, Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne marks the first time that the Rat King saga has been written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is designed for a party of First and Second Level Player Characters and can primarily be used in one of two ways. The first is as a sequel to the events of Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King, taking place a few weeks or months later, using the same Player Characters. The second is as sequel as sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, the saga of as a whole, taking place decades later. Of course, it can also be used as a standalone scenario, but either way the scenario can be played through in a single session.

The scenario opens with the Player Characters once again in the village of Silverton, the site of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’. Of late, there has been no merchant traffic along the road to the north to the city of Soulgrave and the village’s constable has not returned after having gone to investigate. (Oh, how the village has suffered.) A dwarven merchant claims that Lawrence Gannu, the Wererat and Rat King that threatened the village as an act of revenge that played out in ‘Idylls of the Rat King’. There are numerous rumours to gather, but quickly the local miner’s guild offers a reward and the Player Characters are on the road to the Silverton Mines (once again).

What the Player Characters discover is a much changed mine. It is smaller, no longer infested with either Goblins, Wererats, or Goblin-Wererats, let alone a vampire. That vampire though, Serrenna Valuois, who was long buried deep below the Silverton Mine, and who may or may not have been killed at the end of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’, has direct influence upon the mines as they are now and the scenario. Her hatred and her thirst, long left unslaked in the centuries of her imprisonment has been reflected and manifest in the Unslaked, a horror that has instilled occupants of the mines and creatures nearby with increasingly debilitating thirst that can only be quenched by fresh blood. There are several encounters throughout the mine where the Player Characters encounter victims of the Unslaked, who will attack randomly upon sight and several where they will be touched by the Unslaked and influenced by its thirst, as well as the possibility that, they too, might be influenced. Magical healing will definitely lift the effects of the Unslaked, but there are means of resisting the effect, the exact details of which are left to the Dungeon Master or Judge to decide.

The scenario packs a lot into a short space. There are the constable and his colleagues to rescue, plenty of call-backs to ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ to discover, and not one showdown, but two! The last one is with the Rat King himself—and that actually might set up a sequel. Of course, there already is a sequel in the form of Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, but there is potential for the Rat King to be revisited in future scenarios.

Rounding out Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is ‘The Secret History of Free RPG’. This is a two-page interview conducted by Stu Horvath—author of Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership—with Joseph Goodman and the Aldo Ghiozzi. It is a pleasing little read that captures the beginnings of an annual fixture of our hobby.

Physically, Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is well presented. Both the artwork and the cartography are decent too.

Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is a short, horror scenario that fleshes out more of the Rat King and his saga, whether that is as part of the saga, or as a sequel. Players who have played the previous scenarios will enjoy the call-backs, whilst for those new to it, it could be their introduction to the saga with ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ run as a flashback. Or it could be simply run as a one-shot. In whatever way the Dungeon Master or the Judge decides to run Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne, it shows that there are yet more stories to be told in the fight against the Rat King.

Faraway Fantasy

From the Hintherdale and the North Star Region with their high, rugged mountains in the north, the lands of Easten Faraway stretches over a thousand miles to the south of the untamed frontier of the Buckwild and the lush Silver Woodlands beyond. Underneath, an extensive network of caves and caverns, connected by tunnels and in some places, the extensive mines of iron, gold, and silver—and even of adamantium and mithril, form the Underworld. Dug by Purple Worms, Deep Gnomes, and Duergar, the Underworld is heavily populated by Drow and rife with a variety of fungi. There are strange areas here and there also, known as Otherlands, such as Fey crossings and Shadow crossroads. Over time, going back thousands of years, the surface lands of Easten Faraway are settled by the Jötunn giants, by Dragons, and by High Elves, Mountain Dwarves, and Dragonborn. All left their mark and warred with themselves and each other. The Jötunn by the shattered rocks from other regions and huge thrones built from rocks, and also by the Three Swords, one hundred feet tall blades driven into the ground. The Dragons by the absence of Elemental Dragons, destroyed or driven out during the Second Winter War. The High Elves, Mountain Dwarves, and Dragonborn by numerous magical portals found across the region, some of which still operate today and lead to places far away and far beyond. Their Golden Age ended millennia ago, and in more recent times, following the Second Winter War, the region’s biggest volcano, Ilde Volcano, erupted, reducing its surrounding region to ash, killing over a thousand people, and triggering an earthquake that shattered parts of the Underworld; the Grey Pestilence spread like plague across the lands, only ending with quarantine and the burning of the dead; and the Silver Woodlands were burned by a rare Red Dragon before it was felled by an arrow to the eye. Although the lands of Easten Faraway have been subject to invasions from other lands and across the sea, the most recent threat came from below, when bloodthirsty Drow captured and sacrificed victims from the surface world to their goddess, the Spider Queen. Only with great personal sacrifice by the Winterhold Guards of the town of Winterhold, immolating themselves and the invaders in the town hall. It is an event that is still recognised today.

This setting is presented in The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway. Published by Midnight Tower following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is a campaign setting based on the authors’ homebrew campaign world, influenced by Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. Designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, it presents the setting, its geography, history, legends and lore, religion and gods, culture, and a whole lot more. Throughout, it is peppered with plot hooks, almost one every two pages or so, but it also covers a lot of information about the setting in a fashion that never threatens to overwhelm the reader. So, it starts off with its calendars and time, geography and climate, flora and fauna, and languages pronunciation. None of these are extensive chapters, but it is enough. The history chapter is much longer and gives a good feel for how the region came to be like it is now. There is a timeline, but a more detailed one might have been helpful. The chapter on legend and lore details three fantastic locations that adventurers would have to quest for to find. They include the Ancient Temple of the Valkyria, only found by the brave and true of heart, most notably by paladins dedicated to her, who must pass the Sacred Trials that test their strength, wisdom, and valour, but which is said to hold treasures donated by faithful paladins over the years, thus attracting the attention of adventurers. Ilde Volcano is a prominent landmark in Eastern Faraway, known for the destruction above and below ground with its last major eruption, including the nearby Ice Dragons Peak and Drakenberg Castle and secret subterranean prophetic carvings, whilst some caverns, like those of the secretive Dragonborn, remained untouched. The Silent Woods are perhaps the strangest location in Eastern Farraway, a maze of tangled, burned trees, brought about by a giant conflagration laid as curse upon two feuding brothers for their greed. These are described in some detail, but the Game Master will need to develop them further to be playable locations.

The influence of Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore upon the setting primarily shows in the choice of dominant pantheon, which is Norse, with gods such as Odin, Freyr, Hela, Loke, Thor, and Tyr. Their worship is detailed in turn as is that of several other gods not tied to the pantheon. Other links include the creation of Midgård upon Yggsdrisal, which includes the Prime Material Plane along with the Feyworld and the Shadowfell. This is simply part of the background and surprisingly, The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway does not emphasise this aspect, whereas another fantasy setting might have done. The result is more a fantasy setting in which the Norse gods are worshipped, but which the peoples of Eastern Farraway are not the Vikings that you might expect. Another way in which it shows is in one of the setting’s two new Player Character species of the Norn. They are statuesque nomads living in the very far north, distant descendants of Val’kÿrian, goddess of battle and mercy, who value truth, honour, and loyalty. They have proficiency with the Survival skill, saving throws versus exhaustion, have advantage on first strikes daily, and wolves and ravens are always friendly to them. In some ways, they are the closest that the setting gets to actual Vikings. The other species is the Mist Elf, who live high in the mountains and are often called Mountain Elves. Curiously, unlike other Elves, they dream and sleep, and tend to be philosophers, poets, and writers. Consequently, they need to sleep at a third (if not half!) of the day, but can see through mist and fog, can communicate with others through their dreams, and if reduced to zero Hit Points, there is a slight chance that they will fade into the Ethereal Plane from whey they will return stabilised.

In addition to the two new species, The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway details a new Player Character Background, that of the Messenger, who carries letters and other communiques across the land, whilst new adventure trinkets replace those from the Player’s Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition with more appropriate to the setting. Magical items are rare in Eastern Faraway, so adventurers and others often wield ‘Expertise Weapons’, whether Clanforged, Moors Birch, Strike Arrows and Bolts, Iron Oak, or Darksteel Blades. They typically grant a bonus to hit and/or damage, whilst the Staff Sling (or Goosegirl Sling) is used by Halflings and Gnomes and can double range or increase damage depending on the type of ammunition used. Darksteel is found in the Underworld and is so light that a two-handed weapon can be used in one hand! Heirloom items are magical and rare, dating back to the Golden Age, like the Belt of Thor’s Might, Horn of Summoning the Fallen, and Khali-Di-Zar’s Hammer. These are wondrous and require attunement and their powers can be unlocked at First, Third, and Fifth Level. For example, the Belt of Thor’s Might has twelve charges that refresh daily and the user can expend them to do a shattering strike, and he also learns the Shocking Grasp cantrip. He can also expend charges to cast spells such as Heroism, Thunderous Smite, and Witch Bolt, increasingly more powerful at tiers one, two, and three.

Chapters also present the nature of magic in Eastern Farraway, the region’s factions and organisations, politics and government, and more. It notes that magic is rare, and in the case of warlocks and sorcerers, deeply mistrusted. As noted above, magic items are rare and most are relics of the Golden Age. The supplement gets down to specific details of specific regions, looking in turn at the North Star Region in the north, Buckwild in the south (the default starting point for any campaign in Eastern Farraway), and then, surprisingly, the Underworld. In every case, there is a short history of each location, its important people and NPCs, and points of interest. For example, the Underworld chapter describes the city of Myl Argoth, the largest Drow settlement in Eastern Farraway, a Drow matriarch and assassin who resides on the surface and is in charge of negotiating mining rights with the surface authorities, and a Drow cultist who worships Selene rather than the Spider Queen. Locations detailed include the Spider Queen’s Bone Cathedral, built from the bones of her enemies (the bones of Drow are incorporated into ceremonial buildings, weapon hilts, jewellery, and the like), whilst the Duskryn Arena, once a religious site, is now where fights, duels, and executions are staged. All three region write-ups give flavour of how each feels content as well that the Dungeon Master can use. New monsters in The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway include Gonks, known for their conical felt hats which make them look like mushrooms and for protecting forests and farmsteads, and Jötunn.

The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway comes to a close with several pages of adventuring material. This starts with five adventure seeds—in addition to the plot hooks liberally scattered throughout the book. They include being accused of theft by a wily trader, but it is all a scam, investigating a haunted mill and confronting a ghost, and finding out why several people have quietly walked out of their homes in the middle of the night and then disappeared, and more. Some of them are easier to use than other and some will require fleshing out. The ‘The Thieves’ Guild’s Lair’ is a fully detailed and mapped location, ready to use bar a hook for the Player Characters to attempt to infiltrate it. Lastly, ‘Before the Times of Heroes’ is a short starting adventure set in Buckridge, a village in the default starting region of Buckwild. The Player Characters are all teenagers and Commoners, not yet having had the chance to advance to First Level and acquire the details, abilities, and trappings of a Class. They are asked by a local apple farmer to find two barrels that appear to have gone missing on his two-day journey to the village. In the course of their investigation, the Player Characters will come to the aid of a local woodland creature, find the missing barrels, and confront the thieves responsible. As a reward, they will be introduced to several NPCs who each offer them a chance to learn and train in a particular Class. The Player Characters will then return their home village at the start of the Hunter’s Moon Trilogy.

Physically, The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway is very well presented. It looks and feels very much like a book for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It is well written, the maps are good, and the artwork is excellent.

At first glance, it is not easy to identify why play in the setting of Eastern Faraway because The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway does not give the potential purchaser and Dungeon Master a strong or immediate selling point have that sets it apart from other settings for Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition or that she can use as a pitch for her players. Yet the setting of Eastern Faraway does have one, and that it is a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy setting offering all of the adventure that you would want without being radical or overwhelming either the Dungeon Master or her players with an abundance of lore. From its origins as a homebrew campaign, it is clear that a lot of love has gone into the setting and a lot of work in making the setting of Eastern Farraway engaging with The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway.

Ultimately, it is this accessibility that is the selling point to The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway. It presents a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy setting with some Norse flavour, some mysteries, and some tensions, and makes it easily accessible, effectively uplifting its homebrew origins to professional standard. Overall, The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway is a solid introduction to and overview of the Eastern Farraway setting.

2008: Saga of the Rat King

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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In 2003, Goodman Games launched its long running Dungeon Crawl Classics series, which combined old style play with modern rules, with Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King. In that scenario, the Player Characters’ investigations into raids by Goblin bandits on caravans carrying silver ore lead to the nearby Gannu Silver Mine which turned out to be infested by not just Goblins, but rats and Wererats. The final confrontation in the mine is with Lawrence Gannu, cursed by the villagers of Silverton to be a Wererat after they blamed his father for a dangerous discovery in the mines, returned to take his revenge upon the villagers. This scenario was more recently republished as Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King, for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. In 2006, the publisher released a sequel, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King. The Player Characters have an opportunity to confront Aaron Gannu, father of Lawrence, in this sequel. However, he has other designs on the Player Characters and they are tested sorely as he lures them into his lair, weakens them and depletes their resources, before capturing them. Fortunately, the Player Characters, only armed with luck and wits, do have the opportunity to escape, find their possessions, and fully arm themselves once again before the final showdown. Both Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King were written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, rather than the publisher’s own (not yet published) Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is not written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Published in 2008 for sale at Gen Con Indy in 2008, it is instead a special module in more ways than one, First, it is written for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, rare in 2008 as it would be for today. second, it combined both Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King. Third, it not only compiles the previously published scenarios, but includes a third new part, ‘The Scourge of Silverton’. This connects the two scenarios and it means that together, all three parts can be played as a single campaign taking the Player Characters from First Level all the way up to Sixth Level.

The plot to both Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King remain the same. In the former, the Player Characters explored the apparently abandoned Gannu Silver Mine and find it crawling with Goblins and Wererats, one level of the mine being reworked with zombie slaves, and Lawrence Gannu the Wererat overseeing it all as well as something else hidden deep in the bowels of the mine. In the latter, the Player Characters are in the city of Soulgrave tracking down a ring of slavers and are lured in one big dungeon trap by Aaron Gannu, father of Lawrence, who will have his revenge! Divided over three acts, the Player Characters will be tested in each. First, with a series of challenging dungeon encounters designed to wear them down; second by capturing them and stripping them of all their equipment; and third, with dangerous battle against Aaron Gannu’s minions and finally, Aaron Gannu himself. It remains an evil dungeon. However, there are changes to both because, understandably, this is a compilation for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, not Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition.

The most obvious change is from a roleplaying game with intrinsic rules for skills, skill checks, and other activities to a roleplaying game without those. Here we are in classic ‘rulings not rules’ territory, Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King leaving it very much up to the Dungeon Master to decide upon the specifics of how resolve a Player Character action. Unfortunately, this is not consistently applied throughout the adventure anthology, giving it slightly unbalanced feel. Without the suggested mechanic solution for each and every situation, it feels authentic to the design and play of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but where they are included, they intrude rather than feel natural.

However, the adaptation from Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition has been less consistently applied to the ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ part of the campaign. One of these is narrative in that as a section of boxed text explains whilst Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King had Goblin Wererats as its main monsters, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition restricts lycanthropy to Humans only. Thus, there are no Goblin Wererats in Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, only Human ones. Neither are there any Goblin Clerics in Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, these also having been changed to Human Clerics, though still devoted to the rat gods Narrimunth and Nimlurun. Similarly, the Goblin Wizard of the original has been changed to Human Wizard, but in this his illustration is that of the Goblin in the original, and whilst the bandit chief and his guards are now described as Human, their illustration still shows them to be Goblins. Lastly, Half-Orc slavers have been added to the scenario. These effectively replace the Goblins who would fight to the death to protect the young Goblins in the tribe’s nursery. So now the Half-Orc slavers will fight to the death to protect their slaves, which though ties in with the slave ring theme found in ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, it still does not make sense narratively.

It should be noted that ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ still retains the story element of the Player Characters being captured by the Rat King. As problematic as this in terms of storytelling and player agency, it is very difficult to change this because it is pivotal to the events of the scenario.

In between ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ and ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ is ‘The Scourge of Silverton’. This is designed for Player Characters of Third and Fourth Level. It is designed as a short bridging affair between the two scenarios, but it is not a full enough adventure to provide sufficient Experience Points to take the Player Characters from ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ to ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, so the Dungeon Master will want to run other content before it as ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is a direct prequel to ‘Revenge of the Rat King’. It provides a specific reason for the Player Characters to travel from Silverton to Soulgrave. The scenario draws the Player Characters back to Silverton, which has been restored to its fortunes with the death of Lawrence Gannu and the driving out of his bandits at their hands. Lawrence’s younger half-brother, Marcus, equally as evil, has heard of his brother’s death and working with their father, has concocted a plan to take revenge upon the Player Characters. This will play out in ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, but to set this up and draw the Player Characters in, Marcus kidnaps several of the villagers from Silverton and holds them to ransom. The villagers of Silverton ask the Player Characters to deliver the ransom to the Deveraux Silver Mine and ensure the safe return of the hostages.

The Player Characters have the choice of handing over the ransom or fighting their way into the mine. Either way, they will have a fight to get to the hostages as the situation is not simply a ransom and hostage exchange, but of course, a trap! Marcus has seeded the mine with traps and groups of his men, who will snipe and harass the Player Characters as they work their way to where the hostages are being held. Ultimately, there will be a confrontation with Marcus, but he and his chief henchman will escape the mine in Indiana and the Temple of Doom style in a mine cart with the Player Characters in hot pursuit.

‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is a set-up and also a set-up to a set-up, that of ‘Revenge of the Rat King’. It is short and serviceable, playable in a single session or so, and primarily combat focused. The addition of Marcus Gannu is the main addition to the trilogy in terms of its storytelling, but the main problem with ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is that it sets up Marcus Gannu as a villain, but then lets him exit the trilogy of scenarios as he does not appear in the updated version of ‘Revenge of the Rat King’.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is done in the then style of the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. The artwork is decent, though not always befitting the text, and the cartography varies in style and quality. This is from the very plain, even dull, maps of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ to the detailed maps for ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ and ‘The Scourge of Silverton’. Unfortunately, Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is not let down by its adaptation to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but rather by its lack of consistency when it comes to terminology and phrasing. Errors are strewn throughout the book. Not necessarily to make Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King unplayable, but more than enough to irk the veteran of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and potentially confuse the Dungeon Master who has less experience of playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King provides three different styes of dungeons. ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ is a dungeon crawl; ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is an extended combat encounter, a game of cat-and-mouse through the mines; and ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ is a challenging, even evil, obstacle course that will test the players’ lateral thinking and dungeoneering skills perhaps more than those of their characters. This gives it variety that is neatly tied to its theme of revenge that runs through all three parts.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is really a trilogy in two parts because ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is not enough to bridge the gap between the events of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ and ‘Revenge of the Rat King’. It does, however, provide a reason for the Player Characters to play through ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, so very much a mini-prequel. Which means that Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is not really a mini-campaign either, since it has a beginning and an end, but no real middle. The Dungeon Master will have to provide that, and perhaps one way of doing it, is to use Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King as a precursor to the classic campaign, Against the Slave Lords, since there are elements in ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ inspired by that campaign.

[Free RPG Day 2026] The Crooked House

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. 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. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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The Crooked House is a haunted manifestation of the Crooked Queen, a twisted wooden edifice in the American Gothic edifice that stands on the hill above the village and has many names and owners. Today it is known as Druskenvald Manor, named for the current owners Philip and Adela Druskenvald, given the building and its grounds as gift from the local mayor, eager to have someone own and restore it and perhaps bring some life to the village. In the past, it was Lockwood Estate, but they died or disappeared in a great tragedy, it has stood empty until the Druskenvalds arrived. Now they are in danger, for the building twists all who stay within its walls, playing on their worst fears, the minions of the Crooked Queen driving them to madness and preparing them for sacrifice within its walls! Now Philip and Adela Druskenvald are the next victims of both the house and the Crooked Queen, and the Player Characters have invited to dine with them. Most obviously to celebrate their good fortune, but also because Adela has been suffering from unsettling nightmares…

The Crooked House: Folk Horror Roleplaying for Four 3 Characters is a scenario for The Crooked Moon, the folk horror roleplaying game setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition published by Avantris Entertainment. It includes a dark and dangerous mystery and some thoroughly vile monsters and villains, all wrapped up in an atmospherically twisted haunted house.

The first thing that strikes you about The Crooked House are its production values. Against its sepia tones that make it stand out from anything else released for Free RPG Day, the artwork is excellent, especially of the monsters that appear in the scenario. The three dimensional cutaway map of the house is good too, although perhaps a little dark to read proper. The standard maps are really good though, capturing the feel of a lived in house that has gone to seed due to its misuse by the Crooked Queen and her servants, including Vessla Browntooth, the Weasel Hag, and the Crooked Man, Vessla’s minion, who will taunt the Player Characters again and again, before fading away each time.

In fact, the Crooked Man is the first person that the Player Characters will encounter in the adventure, hinting at that the things they will find inside whilst also relishing what might become of them once they are inside. Some of that is also foreshadowed in the paintings that they find in the foyer that in turn unsettlingly depicting the former occupants and the current occupants, and worse, the Player Characters! Even then, the paintings have been cursed and have deleterious effect upon anyone who examines them. They are the first of many things that have been twisted in the crooked house and there is a constant pattern of the familiar features of a family home so twisted and turned to horror. Many of these things are classic haunted house elements, such as the spirit board in the parlour and need to hold a séance, a self-playing harpsichord in the music room, a rich feast that quickly reveals itself to be rotten and then attacks the Player Characters, and so on. Yet there are some little tweaks here and there, like the haunted wooden doll which instead of attacking the Player Characters begs for their help in checking for monsters, and instead of a deluge of blood flowing out of a room and into the hallway a la the film The Shining, the Player Characters are in the bathroom when it fountains up from the plughole! In nearly every instance, the Player Characters need to engage with these in order find a half dozen artefacts connected to the history of the house and its former occupants.

As the Player Characters advance through the house, they are harried by a variety of nasty creatures including a sneak of weasels, which does not give up and they all speak in voice, saying the same phrase over and over, as well as a Boogleswarm, a swarm of fey weasels that covets and collects teeth (like the Tooth Fairy, but without leaving a pound coin under the pillow). In fact, teeth are one of the recurring motifs throughout The Crooked House, the Player Character find them crunched under foot and inserted into nooks and crannies. The weaselly nature of the scenario does not stop there, for eventually, the Player Characters will make their way to the top of the house and manage to open the way to the secret chamber where Vessla Browntooth, the Weasel Hag is performing the ritual she needs to sacrifice the souls of Philip and Adela Druskenvald. Will the Player Characters be able to stop her?

Besides the excellent maps, the Game Master is given full stats for all of the monsters in The Crooked House. Notably, all of them have a ‘secret’, something that a Player Character might know about with an appropriate skill roll. These are suggested, but it would have been nice if there was a way to discover them narratively as part of the playthrough of the scenario. The Treasury details a pair of interesting magical items found the house, but which are actually cursed (of course, they should be). Also included is a quartet of Player Characters. They consist of a Gnarlborn Druid, a Plagueborn Monk, a Stoneborn Cultist, and a Threadborn Reveler. They are not poor example Player Characters, but there is no explanation though how they relate to each other, the scenario, or The Crooked Moon setting. They fit a Gothic horror-fantasy setting, not a modern setting of any kind, and both Philip and Adela Druskenvald are depicted as modern characters, dressed for the Jazz Age of the nineteen twenties. Consequently, they feel out of place alongside the scenario.

Physically, The Crooked House: Folk Horror Roleplaying for Four 3 Characters is very well presented. The artwork and the artwork are both great and the maps excellent.

The Crooked House: Folk Horror Roleplaying for Four 3 Characters is thoroughly enjoyable, Gothic horror, haunted house scenario. What lets it does as a whole are the sample Player Characters which not match the feel of the scenario. That said, there is nothing to stop the Game Master from running the scenario with a slight adjustment using standard Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or a modern horror treatment such as FiveEvil.

[Free RPG Day 2026] No Place Like Homebrew

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. 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. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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No Place Like Homebrew is a sampler for No Place Like Homebrew, a supplement from Roll & Play Press, which provides the Game Master with hundreds of settlements, factions, NPCs, monsters, countries, and more. Everything is clearly laid out and colour-coded—purple for characters, brown for factions, green for locations, and red for creatures—such that the Game Master can consult the supplement and find something that she wants in the right section. Further, where needed it has stats. In the supplement, these are for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, making it compatible with the world’s number one roleplaying game, but these are neatly compartmentalised such that a Game Master could easily ignore them and develop the content using the system and stats of her choice. The No Place Like Homebrew sampler has no such stats, but is colour-coded and thus everything is easy to find and identify what category each falls into.

The No Place Like Homebrew sampler opens with a handful of countries, leading with a description of Theotalis, ‘Opulent country rich in silver.’, known for Castle Theotalis and its gleaming spire as well as the fact silver views run in abundance across the county. The citizens are wealthy and silver is held as sacred though the mines are now mechanised. Dotted across the country are old silver statues which may be a source of riddles, advice, or snippets of lost history depending upon who you ask. Conversely, ‘Fozanzia’, a ‘Magical, smog filled-wasteland’, was once a centre of arcane research, but was reduced to an unhabitable wasteland following a failed attempt to artificially recreate dragon’s breath as a weapon. It is now shrouded in thick, draconic fog, scorching golden yellow by day, freezing grey by night. Except for the dragons and wyverns that roam the sky, the only things that live under the pall of magical fallout are hardy, but have mutated. However, if a creature survives long breathing in the miasma, it develops its own dragon breath… All six entries are categorised ‘Setting’ and ‘Country’, but also fall into a combination of the ‘Exploration’, ‘Safe’, ‘Magic’, ‘Horror’, ‘Dangerous’, and other categories. 

Under ‘Realms and Leaders’, the sampler details three different dragons. ‘The Winged Terror’ is a wounded wyvern, recently escaped from a gladiatorial arena and clumsily trying to adapt to outside world; ‘Precept Regent’ are father, mother, and son Gold Dragons travel the world learning and giving lectures on all manner of different subjects; and ‘The Underking’ claims dominion over all that lies under the ground and sees mining efforts as invasions! Thus, we have a creature that is wild new threat to the countryside, a trio that might be the very sages that the Player Characters are looking for, and a would-be ruler of the Underworld.

The centre part of the sampler is devoted to the widest selection of interesting options to import into the Game Master’s campaign—people, organisations, and the occasional monster. Unfortunately, whether it is the ‘Syphapods’, translucent underground octopi that drop on people and suffocate and constrict them or the ‘Duneshredders’, landsharks that swim in the desert sands, the monsters in the sampler manage to be uninspired and uninspiring. Much, much better are the NPCs. ‘Cerulea Prim’ is a Stone Giant renowned for cave paintings, occasionally takes commissions to paint murals, but lets others add to the paintings in her cave and now wants to find an inspiring band of heroes to feature in her next work. The ‘Shardpick Syndicate’ is a band of Dwarves known for their diamond-tipped picks which enable them to rework old mines and dig out previously inaccessible seams of ore and gems, but this is all a front for its leader’s true aim—finding a lost city! ‘Nym’ is a Nothic fascinated by the surface world and tortures those it captures for their knowledge and secrets, but giving up the knowledge beforehand might prevent her from attacking you. Other entries include a  popular author looking for inspiration in the wilderness, a high priest to a sun god wanting donations to restore his remote temple whilst pining for the love that his faith denies him, and an assassin who uses scorpion venom, but who has lost his favourite and mostly deadly scorpion! Overall, it is a nice range and there is definitely something or someone that the Game Master can add to her campaign.

Pride of place goes to ‘The Copperpot Arms’, an inn so large it has capacity for five hundred guests. It is fully detailed and ready to use, and even though the map is too small, it gets across a sense of its layout. Lastly, the No Place Like Homebrew sampler gives an idea of its ‘Campaign Primers’. These include tone, inspiration, and pitch, as well as campaign overview, lore and mechanics, key locations, important characters, and inciting incident. Lastly, there are some Session Zero questions to put to the players about their characters. The included ‘Pirate Campaign: King of the Blue’ is inspired by One Piece meets Monster Hunter and consists of a world of drifting island nations, one of which is Theotalis from earlier in the sampler (and the book), and the big hook is the hunt for a shipwreck said to be laden with pirate treasure. The primer comes with NPCs; lore and mechanics such as building crew reputation, upgrading ships, and using knock-off electrum coins in a world where the silver coin is the prime currency can get a pirate or a Player Character into trouble; and an inciting incident to get the campaign started. Overall, it is a good page of details, but still with room aplenty for the Game Master to add her own content.

Physically, the No Place Like Homebrew sampler is well presented. It readable and accessible and the artwork is decent.

The obvious problem with the No Place Like Homebrew sampler is that it is bitty, lots of little things rather than one whole that can be used as is. As a preview though, it does a good job of showcasing what is in the actual No Place Like Homebrew book and there is content in the sampler that the Game Master can take inspiration from. It is far from the best item published for Free RPG Day 2026, but where others might get immediately used, it might be something that the Game Master dips into at a later date.