[Free RPG Day 2024] Lost Tome of Monsters

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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Bar the dice, the smallest and very probably the weirdest release for Free RPG Day 2024 is the Lost Tome of Monsters: Free RPG Day Edition. Unlike the majority of the other releases, it is not a booklet, but what at first appears to be a pin (or badge) with a backing card. And this is more or less what it is, except that it is also something more. Published by Foam Brain Games, it is actually a ‘Pinature’ and an encounter. Except that description does not help given the fact that right now you are asking yourself, “What the hell is a ‘Pinature’?” It is a portmanteau word that combines ‘pin’ and ‘miniature’, and like that portmanteau word, what you get with is the Lost Tome of Monsters: Free RPG Day Edition is both a ‘pin’ and a ‘miniature’! The pin-part depicts a zombie in all of its ‘purple decayed flesh, knock-kneed, brain exposed, ragged cloth wearing, and blood dripping from the mouth’ glory. It is cartoonishly lurid as it looms over an open book, its pages marked with a ribbon. The book sits slightly forward of the zombie-figure, obscuring its twisted feet. This looks a bit odd, but the reason becomes apparent once you turn the pin over. On the back are two ‘Rubber Clutches’* and they look and are perfectly normal. However, at the bottom of the ‘pin’ there appears to be a hinge, right where the zombie’s feet are. The hinge enables the book on the front of the ‘pin’ to twist through ninety degrees and in doing so, provides a base for the zombie, which now stands vertically like a miniature much like the two-dimensional miniatures sold by W!ZK!DS. Thus, with the twist of the book base, the zombie goes from ‘pin’ to ‘miniature’ and back again. Hence, ‘pinature’.

* This I did know was a thing or what Pin Backs and Pin Attachments were called until I read ‘Custom Pins 101: Types of Pin Backs and Attachments’.

The encounter is described on the card that comes with the ‘pinature’. It is a ‘Challenge Rating 6’ encounter that begins with the adventurers playing dice and having a nice time at ‘Ye Olde Local Game Store’. This is interrupted by a storm and an unnatural darkness which surrounds the establishment and as thunder and lighting flash outside the store’s windows, the doorbell chimes. The shopkeeper screams in fear as it is not another customer that has entered the shop, but a zombie—the zombie of the ‘pinature’. As it lurches towards the adventurers, it utters one word: “Gammeeeesssss……” Do the Player Characters cower in fear or do they let the zombie join in? Also, where did the zombie come from, are there more? How can the zombie understand the rules of the game? And lastly, does the zombie have anything to do with the unnatural dark and the storm? The first question is the crux of the encounter, whilst the others are hooks that the Game Master can expand as possible further hooks.

There is no clear suggestion as to what roleplaying game exactly the encounter is written for, but the ‘Challenge Rating 6’ of the encounter suggests either Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. That said, with the ‘Challenge Rating 6’ being the only mechanical element to the Lost Tome of Monsters: Free RPG Day Edition, the encounter can be very easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice.

Physically, the Lost Tome of Monsters: Free RPG Day Edition is decently done. The zombie ‘pinature’ is small, but nicely detailed and really quite cute. The card captures the zombie ‘pinature’ in all of its lurid detail on the back, whilst the encounter is given on the back. The text for that is small though, and not easy to read.

The Lost Tome of Monsters: Free RPG Day Edition is both cute and silly. The zombie ‘pinature’ is the cute, in addition to being gory, whilst the adventure is the silly, what with adventurers playing in ‘Ye Olde Local Game Store’ and a zombie wanting to play games. Overall, tongue in cheek and not without its charms, but definitely the weirdest release for Free RPG Day 2024.

[Free RPG Day 2024] Second Contact

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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In 2017, Paizo, Inc. published Starfinder: First Contact, a preview of and teaser for its then forthcoming Starfinder, the Science Fantasy roleplaying game which takes the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game forward thousands and thousands of years and to the stars. So it is most appropriate that as a preview of and teaser for the forthcoming Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, Paizo, Inc. has released Starfinder: Second Contact for Free RPG 2024. Where the task of Starfinder: First contact was to introduce the new roleplaying game and highlight some of the differences between it and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, the task of Starfinder: Second Contact is to reintroduce us to the Starfinder Roleplaying Game and highlight some of the differences between it and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition as seen in the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook.

The introduction highlights how the Starfinder Roleplaying Game is going to evolve to be in line with Pathfinder, Second Edition, before jumping straight into ‘What’s New?’. These start with elements and skills that appear in the monster descriptions given in the booklet’s following pages. For example, the ‘Integrated Weapons’ appears in the entry for robots and new skills include Computers and Piloting used by both the Asteray and the Glitch Gremlin. Similarly, several of the spells are used by those creatures. They include Delete, a spell used to remove a limited amount of data, whilst the cantrip, Recharge Weapon, reloads a weapon with a round’s worth of ammunition upon a touch. The new weapons are a couple of laser guns, whilst the rest of the Starfinder: Second Contact is really all about the monsters. These start with the Asteray, Fey Tricksters born where the void and the First World overlap, they wander space looking for distractions and starship crews to consume, and end with the Cybernetic Zombie, which might have an arm cannon or a shriek module or repair nanites! In between, there are Security Robots, Glitch Gremlins—which of course, want to cause mayhem, Laser Wolves, and Ferrofluid Oozes, sentient puddles of ferromagnetic fluids that interfere with technological devices of all sorts. Every creature is given a full page description, stats, and an illustration.

Like the earlier Starfinder: First Contact, there is little to the background of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game to Starfinder: Second Contact. There is mention that Golarion, the setting for Pathfinder, is missing, that rumours arose during the Drift Crisis of super-size versions of Ferrofluid Ooze, capable of consuming whole ships, and that the AbadarCorp is responsible for the manufacture of most robots in the Pact Worlds, becoming a byword for guaranteed quality, but making their weakness commonly known so that criminals and spies can take advantage of them.

Being a release from Paizo, Inc., it should be no surprise that Starfinder: Second Contact is a slickly produced and well-presented booklet. Much like with Starfinder: First Contact for Free RPG Day 2017, Starfinder: Second Contact is very technical in nature in comparison to the other releases for Free RPG 2024. Nevertheless, Starfinder: Second Contact is a solid introduction to the technical elements of the roleplaying game, one aimed more at fans of the roleplaying game rather than the general roleplayer.

Free RPG Day 2017: Starfinder: First Contact

Now in its tenth year, Saturday, June 17th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera. The scenarios are of course for existing games, but whilst the quickstarts may likewise also be for existing games, many are for forthcoming games, giving gamers a chance to experience a new game or setting before they are released. One such title is neither a scenario nor a quickstart, but a teaser, introducing elements of a forthcoming roleplaying game. That title is Starfinder: First Contact.

Since 2009, Paizo Publishing has been releasing and supporting material for its Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game and in fact, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game remains one of the best supported games currently available, with innumerable supplements, scenarios, and campaigns. In previous years, Paizo Publishing has supported Free RPG Day with scenarios like We Be Goblins. For 2017, Paizo Publishing released Starfinder: First Contact. This is a teaser for Starfinder, Paizo Publishing’s Science Fantasy roleplaying game which takes the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game forward thousands and thousands of years and to the stars. To some extent, the genre of ‘Dungeons & Dragons in Space!’ has been explored before, most notably with TSR, Inc.’s Spelljammer in 1989 and then with the Dragonstar Starfarer's Handbook from Fantasy Flight Games in 2001.

As a first glance, Starfinder: First Contact does three things. First and second, it introduces us to what is different in the Starfinder Roleplaying Game in comparison to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and it tells us what is new in the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. Third, it introduces us to eleven monsters and creatures that are home not just to Golarion—the campaign setting for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game—but the Golarion solar system. Much of what is different as presented in Starfinder: First Contact relates to how monsters and creatures are presented in Starfinder. So, taking its cue from Pathfinder Unchained, the monster stat block in the Starfinder Roleplaying Game is slimmed down, for example, only listing ability modifiers and not ability scores; only listing feats that let a monster do something, whilst subsuming feats that grant bonuses into the relevant statistic; and the unification of the various types of sense beyond the basics into blindsight and blindsense. The new comes in the form of Class Abilities like the Cloaking Field, a kinetically rechargeable device that grants a bonus to the Stealth skill, and Grenade Expert, being able to throw a grenade further and jury-rig a small grenade within a few minutes; Universal Monster rules such as Limited Telepathy and Unliving; and weapon abilities, like Arc, Burn, and Explode, representing how much deadlier weapons—especially guns and energy weapons—are in the Starfinder Roleplaying Game.

Perhaps though, the most interesting suggestion in Starfinder: First Contact and thus Starfinder Roleplaying Game is that the new roleplaying game is going to allow the players to roleplay a great many of the races as aliens. Now they are weaker versions of the standard interpretations of the races, but enable a player to take the role of a Space Goblin junker, a Ratfolk mechanic, spellhacking Lashunta technomancer, and so on. Eleven races are given in Starfinder: First Contact—Bloodbrother, Contemplative, Ellicoth, Haan, Ksarik, Necrovite, Orocoran, Sarcesian, Security Robot, Space Goblin, and Space Pirate. Ranging from 1/3 to 13 in terms of C/R, the Contemplative, Haan, Sarcesian, and Space Goblin are given Racial Traits to allow them to be played as Alien player characters.

Unfortunately, there is nothing of the background of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game to be found in the pages of Starfinder: First Contact. That said, a very little of the background can be gleaned from the monster and creature descriptions. For example, the importance of Absalom Station, infested as it is with Space Goblins who use it as a staging point from where they can hijack ships and travel to the stars and how security on the station is handled by Security Robots, whilst some gangs have hacked some Security Robots and used them to protect their own interests. Unfortunately, all a little too slight to give much of the flavour and the feel of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game.

Being a release from Paizo Publishing, it should be no surprise that Starfinder: First Contact is a slickly produced and well-presented booklet. In comparison to other releases for Free RPG Day 2017, Starfinder: First Contact is very technical in nature and has little to offer the casual gamer beyond perhaps being a little intriguing. For the devotee of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game there is much in the pages of Starfinder: First Contact to entice their interest, especially if they are looking to expand their genre from fantasy to science fantasy and to see the future of Golarion pushed thousands of years into the future.