Min/Max Boards

I’m still focused on Koryo Hall of Adventures, but I’ve started reading another book which I have some strong opinions and thoughts on, so I’m going to do a mini-review. The City of Brass was one of those products I considered reviewing for High 5e, and while this is coming to pass I cannot really review it like I do with my other ones. While there's a lot of worthwhile material that can be mined for other games, the more objectionable content reoccurs repeatedly enough throughout the book that it's impossible to ignore. An in-depth chapter-by-chapter analysis would be too draining, so I'll leave that to others who wish to pick up the torch.




For those not in the know, City of Brass' earlier incarnation was a city-based planar metropolis made during the final years of the 3.5 era, with some accompanying adventures. Back in the day I read it and found it very much my jam, but as of 2020 Frog God Games wanted to revamp it for 5th Edition and the OSR, along with expanding the adventures into a true level 1 to 20 epic Adventure Path. The City of Brass is ruled over by the Grand Sultan of the Efreet, who back in primordial times was a tyrant who among other things caused a civil war among the genie clans and rebelled against the gods. As to why the latter, he wanted to enslave mortals who the gods sought to appoint as masters of the universe. The once-scenic and nice City of Brass ended up his dominion ever since, and he's been pissed off ever since at life in general. He seeks to achieve godhood by invading as many worlds as possible and retrieving the soul of Sulymon, a mortal prophet who is believed necessary in restoring a shard of his former power.

Notes on the BBEG: I will first admit to an error in the previous post. The current Grand Sultan is not the original instigator of the rebellion who was cursed by the gods. That was Iblis, a noble genie appointed by Sulymon (who was a genie at the time) who eventually misused his power. Sulymon later cast out his dark half to avoid repeating his past errors of judgment, which took the form of the Grand Sultan. This new evildoer violently overthrew the Sultana of the City of Brass, who was a fair and just ruler. There are some who believe that the current ruler is Iblis reincarnated, which the Grand Sultan encourages for propaganda purposes. And is also why he wants to capture the soul of Sulymon, who is the greatest threat to his rule.

The stuff relevant to the AP proper is that the Sultan is planning an invasion of the Material Plane via a Cult of the Burning One which worships him under the guise of a merciful god. They are infiltrating various lands under the guise of a new religion, recruiting among poor and disenfranchised groups. Once they get enough power,  they foster civil war and invasions, seeking to raise a Caliphate of Flames across the Lost Lands.*

*which is the material plane setting of Frog God Games.

So upon reading the above, one would be rightly concerned about problematic portrayal. Well Frog God games seemed aware of it, and apparently sought to take this into consideration.



Frog God Games sought to hire a sensitivity reader/cultural consultant to tackle potentially contentious topics, although from my reading I’ve come to one of two conclusions:

1.) they more or less just ignored her besides one or two itty bitty things, because there’s still a lot of stuff in here that sets off alarm bells.
2.) this product was so damn racist it's practically unfixable, and what we have now is but a pruned version of something much worse.

And while it's an entirely separate book, I'm also reading the DM's Guild 5e conversion of al-Qadim, which more or less manages to do everything right so far that FGG did wrong. They hired actual Arabs to edit and do sensitivity reads, they de-emphasized things like non-evil slavery (although mamluks are still a thing), and replaced religious-specific mentions of Mosques/Imams/etc with more religiously neutral terms like shrine, temple, and priest. I dunno if I'll review that book, but it's interesting in contrasting the two as I read them.

The adventure kicks off in the Barony of Lornedain, a European-coded realm whose inhabitants have been kidnapped by slavers working for the Cult of the Burning One. Although it talks about other options, the PCs are presumed to be locals in the area, which kind of heavily implies that the party will be European-coded characters. This isn't the only time the AP will imply this assumption, either.

The local Baroness is actually in on this; she secretly converted to the Cult and has been using an eccentric local villager as a scapegoat. The PCs end up searching for the villagers, first through an underground series of caverns and eventually into the baroness' estate, where the PCs find evidence of her employment with said Cult.

The major means of the PCs being tipped off is finding the journal of one of the kidnapped farmers, who was a crusader part of a larger army who invaded the eastern lands of Numeda and looted their temples in the name of his gods. He saw a noblewoman among his number make a deal with an efreeti for 3 wishes, and has fearfully kept the knowledge to himself ever since.

So while the NPC in particular is rather ashamed of his past, the PCs are indirectly aided by a character who is basically a Deus Vulter.

Numeda is one of the middle eastern-coded nations that fell to the Cult early on.
Also, in one of the written missives to the baroness, a cultist speaks of a ‘caliphate of flames’ and the text describes the overall missive as the "gibbering thoughts of a true believer."




But enough about coded Islamophobia, let's take a break to talk about bad game design in adventures!

PCs can gain a magic ring that gives them a fire elemental ally by the name of Qalb, whose father has been turned into a living geothermal battery by the City of Brass' Sultan and thus shares a common enemy against the Cult. It's rather cool, as he levels up in size and Hit Dice with the party and there are (so far) 2 scenarios which acknowledge NPCs reacting differently with him in the party.  Although the adventure doesn’t take into consideration how population centers would react to the PCs taking such a creature within their boundaries, given it’s quite literally living flame. Qalb cannot be dismissed either by his own abilities or by the ring, so he's pretty much with the party at all times. And over the course of leveling up he can reach from Small all the way to Huge size, which presents maneuverability problems. The ring necessary to summon the elemental is hidden in warg shit as part of the cavern-based dungeon and won’t be found unless Detect Magic is used. There are multiple magical visions showing the PCs where to find the ring, which can result in backtracking and seems unnecessary.

There’s mention of a ledger in the traitor noblewoman’s house of selling kidnapped people to a boathouse near the city of Bard’s Gate. It explicitly references an adventure from the city sourcebook of the same name, and acknowledges that such an adventure is beyond the capabilities of the party at their current level and says that pursuing the lead will most certainly get them imprisoned and enslaved. Even though the kidnapped people were those who the PCs don't know and not the specific villagers who kicked off the quest, it's still a hook many gaming groups may want to jump on. Putting it there seems counter-intuitive. Granted they later get a hook of the kidnapped people they do know being taken to the city of Freegate, which is detailed in this book and the next area to visit after killing/imprisoning/etc the baroness.

Thus ends the first chapter of this AP, the next begins as the PCs visit the City of Freegate!




The cultists’ new religion and establishment in Akados (the 'western' continent of the Lost Lands) has semi-covert Islamophobia and some overall anti-immigrant/anti-poor people vibes: mysterious groups from Libynos (the African/Arabia continent) showing up in foreign and poor neighborhoods of cities, their religion drawing in disenfranchised people, and building large spires as centers of worship. The Cult builds big structures known as Brazen Spires in cities where they establish power bases, using magic to erect them overnight. I cannot help but see comparisons to the minarets of mosques, which are also tall and spire-like. Freegate’s political leadership has been compromised with clones from a Mirror of Duplication, so the government seems blind to the worries of the indigenous populace, who "can’t believe the authorities are letting a new religion take root." One of the uncorrupted officials who directly invokes this opinion is meant to be a PC ally. Additionally the thieves’ guilds are worried about Libynosian customs, preferring staying a few months in jail to getting limbs chopped off, and can also be a PC ally due to this reason (along with wanting the Spires’ loot).

Random encounters include a sex worker desperate for money whose work has gotten harder due to the cults’ rising popularity (they offer sex, and food, and other stuff, for free), protestors invoking rights of free speech at the local forum being attacked by a mob of cultists, and said cultists causing chaos as they show off their newfound wealth by throwing money in the streets which causes a greedy mob to block up traffic.

The Cult of the Burning One is talked about as everything from a sinister group to local nuisances in-character. The sole positive trait  is mentioned in-character that the cult has helped a lot of homeless people and beggars due to just giving away money and food for free, but also similar rumors of how suspicious it is in where this money's coming from and how the cult doesn't seem to spend outside the community.




So the Spire proper is a dungeon crawl. The first floor level of the Burning Spire is called the Mosque of Adoration, where a giant burning head of the Grand Sultan of Efreet can magically enchant worshipers to praise and trust him. Guards at the ground floor are described as being from lands foreign to the characters, implying that the PCs can’t be Libynosian/from Numeda/etc. To further the "PCs are Western-coded" theme, some NPCs in the Burning Spire are from other lands in Libynos besides Numeda, such as Khemit (not-Egypt) and the Maighib Desert (not-North Africa), that were recruited into the Cult of the Burning One.

People are recruited via free food and sex, with enchanted doppelgangers who can shapeshift to fit peoples’ ‘heart’s desire.' The room of “Paradise,” the public-facing area that entices new worshipers, is quite orientalist in its descriptions: pools full of “visitors and nubile servants splashing playfully in the waters,” a platform where a quarter of performers “play music with an oboe-like instrument, a tambourine, a long-necked lute, and a dancing girl in a tight orange gown with brass cymbals on her fingertips,” people smoking “strange herbs from glass hookahs,” and doppelganger servants are dressed “in lewd attire consisting mainly of strings of pearls and beads of ruby, emerald, and sapphire bring plates of steaming meats and honey-dipped delicacies to the attendees.”

Two Praetors (Freegate's military officers) can be freed from the Burning Spire’s dungeons, and if escorted out will gather troops to lead an assault on the Spire to destroy it immediately. The adventure discusses what happens if PCs try to assault the complex openly (hundreds of cultists rally to defend it) but doesn’t say what happens if the Praetors lead the assault or what must be done to sway the city over to this (most of the leadership has been cloned/replaced). There is discussion on various ways of destroying the Spire, so credit where credit is due.

The adventure ends when the PCs find out where the cult's been sailing from, the nation of Numeda across the sea in the continent of Libynos. From here the adventure opens up into a pseudo-sandbox where the PCs (in addition to fighting the Cult of the Burning One) have to find 4 elemental stones which can help them get to the City of Brass.




The Isle of Sarmad Yazdg-or is an optional dungeon crawl in the Sea of Bhaal chapter. It is a temple dedicated to Hecate whose oracles are born with the ability to see visions when consuming lotus leaves that are ordinarily poisonous to others. Despite being a Greek goddess, there are small hints at the inhabitants being Arab-coded, such as having musical instruments specific to Middle Eastern and North African cultures . Although they are rather mercenary and sell their services to all manner of political power players, they are aligned at the moment with the Cult of the Burning One.

In addition to the extra seats and pews, this voluminous chamber also holds a small area on the north end dedicated to musical instruments, which are often used during ceremonies. In addition to the usual sitars, flutes, and drums, a number of mizwad (a type of bagpipes), mizmar (horns), riqq (hand drums), and sagat (hand cymbals) can be found.

One of the senior priests has a concubine by the name of Al-Sheera, and is found “scantily clad and chained by her ankle to the bed.” She is helpful to the PCs who free her given her abusive treatment, marking her as the first good-aligned Arab-coded NPC in the adventure path...who is a sex slave.

During a brief trip to the Elemental Plane of Air, the PCs can meet a cloud giant and djinn who are Arab-coded NPCs, with the names Imlaq and Caliph Omar. They are helpful to the party, although the cloud giant is of ill intent and stole Omar’s castle in his absence. So besides the sex slave, the only other “good guy Arab” so far in this AP is distinctly non-humanoid.




When the PCs get to Numeda, they find it in the middle of a civil war with one side backed by the Cult of the Burning One and the other side being remnants of the former king’s government. Like in Freegate, the Cult offered relief and succor to the beggars and the poor of the streets. The text later refers to them as “brainwashed citizens (seeking to) exact vengeance on their perceived former oppressors with the help of burning dervishes, hariphs, and monsters from the City of Brass itself.” The capital city of Kirtius, which houses the bulk of the adventure, has a crime-ridden Foreign Quarter full of the largest numbers of loyalists to the Cult and more (and unique) random encounters. The cultist patrols are led by an Imam of Fire, further codifying the “Cult of the Burning One = Islam” subtext. And also a bit of “you can’t trust foreigners wherever you go” vibe.

There are Good Guy Arab-coded characters here; 2-4 are named characters, but there's several dozen nameless resistance movement scouts and soldiers. The book mentions that the former government had holy orders of paladins who worshiped Anumon, a Lawful Neutral god with good tendencies. There is the surviving prince of the former kingdom now kept as a hostage, and Sir Muniq who is a knight leading a band of resistance members. And two princesses who are sex slaves of the ruling efreeti emir.

The adventure 'concludes' once they defeat said emir, who may grant them a wish in exchange for sparing his life. Said wish can help return the rest of the missing villagers, although the AP still gives PCs motive to continue the fight. Soon after, the Sultan of the Efreet manages to steal the soul of Sulymon, the immortal prophet who was instrumental in defeating the Efreeti so long ago. As Sulymon was favored by Anumon, a god in charge of shepherding souls to the afterlife, said god is pissed off enough to stop doing his job until things are set right. This causes the Material Plane to crawl with undead specters all over the place.

Thoughts So Far: When it comes to tabletop RPGs and the Arab/Muslim world, it's inevitable that there's some degree of orientalism or coming in from an outsider's perspective and getting things wrong. Still, I think there's something to be said in intent and how much said writers try. Al-Qadim, for all its faults, does have Arab/Middle Eastern/Muslim fans, and at the time was written in a liberal "well-intentioned white guy" sort of way. And there are some writers who just do the surface level stuff (genies, deserts, camels, etc) that are still very stereotypical and orientalist, but don't automatically indicate ill intent or xenophobia. And then, there are books like City of Brass.

The AP is awash in coded prejudices, from the "East vs West" implications, the evil religion infiltrating not-Europe being strongly Fantasy Islam, having an Arabian Nights flair but the PCs are very much expected to be European-coded, the overall dearth of non-villainous Arab-coded NPCs, Frog God overall being a problematic publisher, other Lost Lands material which has had subtle and blatant racism.

For the last part, read my Northlands review, particularly the latter half involving Native American Trolls and an Ottoman-coded invading empire worshiping a Babylonian death god.

In the interests of fairness, I'd like to note that Northlands had an initially inclusive setting, and the original creator helped write up the first half of the AP. But after that he had to work on other projects and the Frog God Games core staff got to work on it, which was a stark contrast to the earlier material.

It all adds up to paint a very unpretty picture.

I may or may not continue this mini-F&F if there's enough interest. Right now I'm focusing on Koryo Hall of Adventures and some others after this, but as these are just brief initial readthrough impressions they're quicker to do.

For the unknowing, there’s an OGL friendly online wiki!

In between my Let’s Read projects I’ve been working on another. As a long-time fan of Spheres of Power, I really enjoy the converted version of 5th Edition. Much like the original system, it too is open-ended without being overpowered, with many options to emulate all kinds of character concepts. As many gamers are fond of using existing settings with their own peculiar foundations of magical law, power levels, and themes, I figured it’d be best to write on how Spheres of Power & Might can be best utilized in some of the more well-known ones. I’ll be covering both official and third party material.

Each post has appropriate sections. Major Traditions covers the Casting and Martial Traditions most known and appropriate to the setting. Advanced/Legendary Talents illustrates if such talents are appropriate for the world, and which ones in certain cases. Technology Level is self-explanatory and discusses how certain choices in the Equipment and Tinkerer spheres may or may not be appropriate. New Rules & Subsystems covers a wide gamut of options indicative appropriate to the Sphere-ified setting. Finally, Popular Archetypes tells you how to best build certain concepts, classes, and character options iconic to the setting!

I will compile entries via a Table of Contents in the OP if possible.

Forgotten Realms
Dragonlance
Ravenloft
Dark Sun

The conversions came out sometime last month. I backed it on KickStarter and been reading both products for quite some time. Needless to say that I'm a fan; it allows for a great level of customization unseen in typical 5e builds.

Back in 2014, I ran a campaign known as Arcana High. The pitch was that the PCs were students at a world-renowned magical academy, but ended up inheriting relics which allowed them to transform into the Secret Swords, a team of masked heroes from times of yore. I’ve gone on to GM many other campaigns from then on, but even seven years later it is one of my most memorable campaigns. I used the Pathfinder system with the caveat that every PC must have levels in a full or partial spellcasting class, and the Secret Sword relics automatically granted Big Six bonuses along with anti-divination and disguise abilities to better maintain a secret identity. Topping this all off was my own feat-like progression of special abilities derived from superhero tropes. For this I drew influence from magical items rather than class features, so as to at once reduce the Christmas Tree effect while also allowing for meaningful progression. Furthermore, I had a more focused sense of what I wanted the game to be; I knew that things in Pathfinder got crazy past 12th level, so I sought to keep things in the setting (including the larger threats) within this scale while still doing my best to emulate “larger than life” adventures. In all but the final arc PCs still had regular concerns of balancing school life with magical vigilantism. And while they were talented enough to handle themselves, several ‘mid-level’ NPC allies they made along the way could still usefully contribute in smaller ways to their adventures.

While I’d like to think that I did an adequate job with the tools that I had, if I were to run Arcana High again I would not use Pathfinder or a D&D system for that matter. Even back then I realized that I was fighting against the rules in order to better fit genre constraints. Which naturally make me concerned about how Supers & Sorcery handles this, and for an Edition that is notably lower-powered than Pathfinder. Most superhero RPGs in general are not class-based, instead providing a point-based toolkit to build one’s character. Secondly, the power levels of superheroes vary wildly depending on the characters in question and genre. Thirdly, the limitations of race mean that choosing more exotic options are out of the question unless you’re using a 3rd party supplement or starting at a higher level. You can’t expect to run a D&D Superhero game without someone asking at some point if they can play as a dragon, or maybe even a Treant that sounds like a monotone Vin Diesel. Fourth, the reliance upon Vancian rest refresh rates and accumulation of spells and items means that it’s harder to emulate a single-themed character like the Flash or one who’s not a gadget-user, in that you’re bound to pick up tangential abilities over time. There’s also the fact that the core abilities of many superheroes are at-will features, and the pacing between battles and damage recovery don’t play well in the endurance run dungeon crawl that is D&D.

Fifthly, one trick pony character types often boil down to martials making repeat attacks rather than something more interesting. For example, if I were to emulate the Hulk in Champions, Masks, or Mutants & Masterminds, the systems in place easily let my character pick up something big and throw it, pick up someone else and wield them as a weapon, let them stomp the ground and create a shockwave, use super-strength to leap really far, and various other effects beyond just punching someone hard. The RPGs in question all do this very differently, but the martial/caster divide is notably absent in superhero media for a variety of reasons. And then of course there is Godbound, which is an OSR version of Exalted that does away with many D&D tropes in order to better emulate the “PCs are divine heroes” flavor.

Last but not least, superheroes as a genre are incredibly broad. Even from the same publisher and era, they have very different set-ups and aspects. Peter Parker’s comics mostly detail an otherwise normal young man whose down-to-earth worries of schooling, his job at the Daily Bugle, and Aunt May help emphasize his grounded nature of a “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.” The X-Men focuses on themes of prejudice and the fear of humanity being upstaged by hyper-evolved mutants, with said mutants trying to find their place in a hostile world. Then there’s the Silver Surfer, a space-traveling artificial life form who has trouble relating to Earth at all and often acted as a voice of reason against our petty, backwards ways during the Silver Age of Comics. Each of these characters have different levels of power, but strong attempts at emulating their comics into RPG form will result in very different systems and settings unless one goes for a ‘generic’ approach.

With all that being said, I find combining superhero aesthetics with 5th Edition to be a tall order. Supers & Sorcery doesn’t seem to be aping any specific ‘style’ of superhero as mentioned above, instead billing itself in the broadest terms possible. As such this puts it on the level of something like the “build your own genre” of Champions vs. the more focused RPGs such as Masks. And even games such as Champions have the sense to put Spider-Man and Superman on different power tiers. More so than Pathfinder, Bounded Accuracy leads to a smaller power curve, closer to the “street level” than cosmic level that some superheroes can attain. I get that 5e compatibility sells books as a publishing strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily speak to the strength of the system. Throughout this review I’m going to be keeping the above in mind.

Sorry if that ended up as a bit of a rant. But I wanted to outline what I feel Supers & Sorcery has to contend with, and what the likeliest questions would-be readers are going to have about the stories one can make in its world.


Supers & Sorcery is just as much a settingbook as it is one of crunch. It centers on the city of Beacon, a bustling fantasy metropolis sitting at the nexus of a bunch of planar gateways home to all sorts of people. Various neighborhoods are themed around the various Ages of Comic Books, or designations of popular tropes and trends of real-world superhero tales. Golden Age is the emerging WW2 genre with strong influences from pulp predecessors, Silver Age is more light-hearted with sci-fi themes, Bronze Age is gritty antiheroes, ninjas, and...wait, the author is confusing Bronze Age with Iron Age. The Bronze Age of Comics was in the 70s, when the genre took a more mature turn with the unshackling of the Comics Code Authority. It was strongly marked by social change, such as more superheroes of color, more explicit left-wing political commentary, and the ‘powering down’ of some of the more ridiculous Silver Age antics. The Iron Age was post-Watchmen, which was more mature in the sex and violence sort of way. The Modern Age is thus defined in this book as a super-vague timeframe which combines elements of the previous Ages.

There’s also a full-page Dedication to Chadwick Boseman, talking about the actor’s influence in the superhero genre.


The first few chapters of Supers & Sorcery focus on the player-focused side of options. We get two new races thrust upon us: the Chloryfolk, who are a race of sapient music-loving plants. Their base traits include +2 Wisdom, being able to rest faster to spend Hit Dice while maintaining contact with sunlight, and proficiency with the Performance skill and 2 musical instruments. They have 6 subraces reflective of their native region along with +1 to an appropriate ability score; for example, Aquatic grants the ability to breathe underwater and a swim speed along with speaking with undersea life.

The other race is the Gnobold, a rare and new species in Beacon who are all the children of a gnomish-kobold couple and effectively an extended family. They gain +2 Dexterity, have Darkvision, advantage on all mental saves vs magic, limited telepathy in the form of mumbling, and advantage on attack rolls when within 5 feet of an ally. The two subraces include Anointed Gnobold, which grants +1 Wisdom and the ability to grant the attack roll and magic save advantages to adjacent allies 1/rest, and Craft Gnobold which grants proficiency with tinker’s tools and land vehicles but can also make a kit-bashed simple mechanical device during a short rest.

Origins reflect your PC superhero’s Origin Story, aka the source of their powers. The setting of Beacon has 4 major sources of superpowers: alien heritage, magic, science, and extraordinary skill. You get 6 Origin Points to spend as you wish among the categories, and gain 3 more at 11th level. Each source has a small list of abilities ranked from 1-4 points. Most of the features are rather minor things at 1-2 points (learn 1-3 cantrips, bonus language, darkvision and nonflight speed, etc), although features in the 3-4 range tend to be more significant (flight speed, resistance to 2 energy damage types, bonus spells, Expertise as per a Bard or Rogue, etc).

*But one specific new source of powers, arkwave energies, are not listed among them, and are in fact part of the new Archon class. I feel that this is an oversight, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen things in this book that could use a second editing pass.

The book is rather vague as to whether Origins are meant to work in tandem or as a replacement for Races and Backgrounds. Normally one would think that they add onto it, but as the book brings up the idea that the GM can use them as replacements, it thus begs the question. Honestly Origins have some nice features, but cannot really make up for the ability score bonuses and features that races provide, much less the bonus skills and equipment of backgrounds. This is one of the weaknesses of 5th Edition: in Pathfinder, one could play as a monstrous race by using their Challenge Rating as a rough baseline for their effective level, and there’s an unbalanced yet weighty system for creating new races. For Godbound, race doesn’t really matter, and the Words of divine power one gains access to are broad and powerful enough to replicate a wide variety of concepts. And in actual superhero RPGs, the benefits of species are bought as superpowers just like anything else.


The Archon is the new class for Supers & Sorcery. They are the product of supernatural arkwaves which spread across Beacon every 20 years.* Archons are capable of instilling other people with superpowers, making them a valuable commodity. They feel a strong pull towards some ideal or virtue, which also manifests in the forms their powers take.

*the book notes that they spread farther than the city, among all the worlds of the Ring of Virtue.

The Archon has 1d8 Hit Die, is proficient in light armor, simple weapons, alchemy kits, Constitution and Charisma saves, and chooses three skills from a list of mostly physical and charismatic choices along with some cerebral ones such as Arcana, History, and Nature. At 1st level they are immune to disease, their Strength and Constitution scores cannot be reduced by any means, 1/rest they can enhance their senses to grant advantage on the next Investigation or Perception check made in an hour, and can communicate telepathically with intelligent creatures within 60 feet.

At 2nd level they gain a Warlockesque progression of Empowerments which are special abilities they can temporarily grant to others. They also get a Presence Attack which is an at-will ranged ability that deals 2d6 force damage +1d6 every 2 levels afterwards. Alternatively (and this is a permanent decision) an Archon can instead make their Presence Attack a melee one, gaining proficiency with martial weapons and use Charisma modifier for the attack and damage of all weapon attacks, along with +1d6 to +4d6 bonus force damage made with such attacks depending on their level.

At 3rd level they choose one of 3 Principalities which serve as subclasses, while at 5th level they can spend a reaction to reduce oncoming damage by half their Presence Attack die (or the choice of gaining Extra Attack instead for more martial builds). 6th level they gain temporary hit points after a long rest, and at 9th level they can cast Spiritual Weapon as a bonus action but at the cost of having their Presence Attack damage halved. Their later class features are more utility in nature: at 10th they gain enhanced movement of at-will flight, parkour (Dash as bonus and advantage on Acrobatics/Athletics), or teleportation whose uses are limited by short rest. At 13th they can speak and understand all languages, at 15th gain proficiency in Strength saving throws (Intelligence if already proficient), at 17th can grant their enhanced movement to an ally, at 18th can use their Charisma score in place of a die roll result 1/long rest, and at 20th level they can Empower two creatures at once with the same use and can also permanently Empower others.

The Principalities represent common feel-good virtues. Hope allows the Archon to summon mirror-image echoes which have telepathic contact, and grant various boons such as advantage on saves vs charm/frighten conditions to nearby allies, the echoes becoming automatically Empowered when an ally is Empowered, and gain advantage on attack rolls and bonus damage when fighting next to allies. Compassion is all about defense and healing, granting a limited use healing touch which restores hit points equal to the Presence Attack die, advantage on Medicine checks and effectively always having a healer’s kit on hand, can grant temporary hit points to nearby allies 1/long rest, and can end a variety of negative Conditions on allies benefitting from the healing touch. Principality of Justice are offensively focused, performing criticals with Presence Attacks on 19-20, the ability to push away and knock prone opponents if the Presence Attack is the variant melee option, count as one size category larger when it’s advantageous to the Archon, can create a gravity-warping ark field that can grapple multiple opponents and impose disadvantage on all attack rolls made against nearby targets 1/long rest, and a suicide ark bomb that deals AoE damage if the Archon is dropped to 0 hit points 1/long rest.

Empowerments are abilities which are learned as the Archon levels up. They start with 2 at 2nd level and gain 2 more at 5th, 11th, and 17th level and gain a final 9th Empowerment at 20th level. There are 20 Empowerments to choose from and their respective durations differ: most last for 1 minute, but others can last for 10 minutes or even hours. They include things such as having a creature treat their weapon attacks as magical, advantage on initiative rolls, gaining a special ranged elemental attack, resistance vs a certain damage type, flight, limited regeneration, and alternate forms such as etherealness, increased/reduced size, and shapeshifting into a CR 1 or lower creature of the Beast type. Archons cannot empower themselves, only others.

As a class the Archon feels odd to me. They seem to be the setting’s “special shtick” a la Eberron’s Artificer in that they are a reflection of a societal archetype. But in terms of superheroes they are a bit limited in being an “energy blaster” as their primary capability. Which in the world of Dungeons & Dragons is also the most common magic-user archetype for beginning players, which doesn’t really wow me. The granting of special abilities to allies is a nifty one, although as the Archon cannot Empower themselves there're only so many superhero archetypes they can emulate.

Speaking of which, there is one new subclass for every PHB class, each one’s features being an obvious callout to some notable Marvel/DC character.

Path of Growth Barbarian turns into the Hulk. When you rage you increase 1 size category along with enlarged personal equipment, reach, and +1d4 bonus damage as the initial feature. They can eventually grapple creatures of any size, gain advantage on Intelligence checks in interactions with Large and larger-sized creatures,* gain advantage on attacks vs smaller creatures, and the capstone ability imposes the Frightened condition on hostile creatures that start their turn within 10 feet of them.

*which is weird as Intelligence skills are more or less internal, i.e. what the characters knows vs what they can cause other creatures to do. Unless it’s meant to make them more easily identify giant monsters? Either way strange wording

College of Soundwaves Bard manipulates raw sound for a variety of purposes. They begin with resistance to thunder damage, learn the Thaumaturgy cantrip but can only use the booming voice feature if learned in this way, and gain proficiency in Persuasion or Insight. They also can spend Bardic Inspiration to subtract from a creature’s attack roll or add to a target’s saving throw roll if a hostile creature uses a verbal component spell within 60 feet. Later features include 2d6 to 4d6 bonus damage on all spells and attacks that deal thunder damage, can let a limited number of creatures within the AoE of said attacks auto-succeed on relevant saves as well as suffering no damage, and the capstone ability lets them create a sphere of silence at will and can mess with a target’s action economy by messing up their inner ear orientation by causing dizziness.

The Emotion Domain Cleric is an empath, capable of sensing and manipulating emotions. Their bonus spells are mostly buffs and debuffs (fear, confusion, calm emotions) along with some utility (zone of truth, locate creature). They initially gain proficiency with Insight and Persuasion and can grant temporary hit points to allies during a short rest by expending spell slots, Their later features include a Channel Divinity that can instill indifference or enragement (6th level) in a target, impose disadvantage on the saving throws of a target that attacked them, and their capstone ability allows them to spend a reaction to make an attacking target autofail a relevant roll.


Circle of the Mark Druids focus on a more specific kind of shapeshifting, honing the abilities of a particular animal type. They choose a specific CR 1 or lower Beast as their ‘mark,’ which grants additional features on top of the normal Wildshape boons when the druid takes their form. Such options include +1 AC, gaining an alternate movement speed based on the creature's form, certain minor senses (darkvision or advantage on Perception), or dealing bonus damage with natural weapons equal to Wisdom modifier on top of Strength/Dexterity. They also have Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals prepared as bonus spells, and their later features include improving their base traits (more AC, better movement, blindsight, etc), the ability to gain one creature-specific special ability of another wildshape form when shaped into their Mark, and their capstone ability grants them a bonus trait as well as the ability to cast Conjure Fey 1/long rest that takes the form of a pack of animals of the Marked beast.

The Super Martial Archetype is basically a poor man’s Superman. Your initial ability grants you Super Strength which...grants advantage on Strength checks and can add double your Strength modifier to attacks made with weapons while grappling. At 7th level you gain Super Vision which...grants you double proficiency on Insight and Perception. At 10th level you gain Super Speed which...lets you cast haste 1/short rest. 15th is Super Flight, where you gain a flying speed equal to your walking speed. At 18th you gain an at-will ability to use a reaction and reduce any form of damage by 1d10 + half Fighter level.

Way of the Steel Strike Monk turns you into a cyborg...no wait, it just gives you a magitech arm. You initially gain proficiency with tinker’s tools and an artifact which grafts onto or replaces a limb. You need to maintain said artifact daily or it suffers an Exhaustion-like Disrepair that gets worse over time.* But using the artifact with a Flurry of Blows allows the monk to add both their Strength and Dexterity modifiers to damage, and can cast Light but only on their artifact. Their later features include the ability to spend ki points to cast Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, or Shatter and can increase the effective level by spending more ki points. They can also learn to cast Protection from Energy 1/rest, and their capstone ability lets them store up to 6 unused ki points into their artifact during long rests and can spend a reaction to cast one of their spells as an opportunity attack when a creature would provoke such an attack.

*wow as though being a poor man’s Iron Man wasn’t cool enough!

Oath of Gesh Paladins are Aquamen clones of all things. They make an oath to the Lord of Water, and are tasked with protecting the seas and their ecosystems. Their bonus spells are mostly utility and nature themed (create or destroy water, misty step, dominate beast, etc) and their Channel Divinity can let them add Charisma on top of Strength for melee attack rolls, advantage on Strength to push objects, and can impose disadvantage on attack rolls targeting adjacent allies. Their later features include an aura that grants resistance to cold damage and can move freely in water without penalty, casting Insect Plague that takes the form of a moray eel swarm, and their capstone ability can summon a CR 8 or less Water Elemental.

Evenfall Rider Rangers were attacked by a vampire or werewolf, partially gaining their abilities but also a burning desire for justice/vengeance against the species that wounded them so. They gain vampires and lycanthropes as bonus favored enemies, add 1d6 damage once per turn on all weapon attacks, gain darkvision, and gain Find Steed as a known spell. However, they are saddled with a curse depending on whether they’re a partial vampire or lycanthrope that activates on a failed Wisdom save once every 4 days or full moon respectively. Vampires gain an overwhelming urge to feed upon blood, while lycanthropes must hunt for prey and gain 1 level of exhaustion.* Later features include gaining bonus known spells depending on type (suggestion, invisibility, vampiric touch, and the like), gaining advantage on grapple checks vs vampires and lycanthropes and against the Charmed condition, can take half or no damage from AoE effects on failed and successful saves, and their capstone abilities cause all CR 5 and lower Court of Empty Night members to be afraid of the Ranger, and a bonus spell (confusion or faithful hound). Their final capstone ability lets them make 3 bonus weapon attacks 1/long rest when attacking a foe with 25% or fewer HP total (Ranger always knows the percentage of all targets) and stuns them if they’re still standing.

*What is up with archetypes imposing penalties now?!

Gatekeeper Rogues learn how to teleport for a player-defined reason (choose your choice of comic book logic upon gaining the archetype) and find novel uses for it. They initially can teleport anywhere within the 5 foot reach of a target whenever they hit with a melee weapon and this doesn't count against their movement. Their later features let them cast Blink, Misty Step, Dimension Door, and eventually Plane Shift and Teleport a limited amount of times per day (fewer times for higher level spells). They can use Dimension Door against unwilling and grappled opponents, inflicting Sneak Attack damage automatically when teleported in such a manner.

So umm...where’s that at-will teleport? I don’t expect it to be like the spell, but even short-range jumps are pretty iconic! Heck there are official PHB archetypes that let you do this outside of combat!

Red Right Hand Sorcerer Bloodlines are born as one of two surviving twins, possessed of the uncanny ability to absorb luck from others and use it for themselves as a result of fiendish influence. They initially can speak Abyssal, Infernal, gain double proficiency on all Charisma checks with fiends, and as a reaction can impose disadvantage on a single roll of a target within 60 feet a limited number of times (CHA modifier) per long rest. Their later features include the ability to spend Sorcery Points to add +1 to +3 to a spell attack roll,* 1d4 to 5d4 bonus damage,** or +1 to +3 Save DC of a spell*** 1/long rest. They can later take the form of a bat-winged demon, imposing the Frightened condition on nearby hostile targets, and their capstone ability lets them spend 7 Sorcery Points to grant additional features to said demonic form such as ignoring Frightened condition immunity, gaining flight speed, and a broad GM Fiat “perform acts of basic magic without expending a spell slot.”

*nice!

**cool!

***that’s overpowered!

I’m unsure of what comic book character this bloodline’s based. It feels closer to something you’d find in a regular D&D setting.


Warlocks with the Cosmic Light Otherworldly Patron are chosen by a powerful figure to enforce justice in the multiverse via the wielding of arkwave light energy. Their expanded spell list is mostly utility and defense-focused (daylight, flame strike, spirit guardians, etc), and their initial features grant them advantage on saves vs the Frightened condition and can deal 1d4 bonus force damage on their first attack made after the condition ends for every round that it lasted. Later features grant them a 30 foot flying speed (this kicks in early in comparison to other subclasses, at 6th level), immunity to inhaled toxins, resistance to force damage and immunity to the Charmed condition, and their Capstone Ability (appropriately-named A Corps of Your Own) lets them summon 10 illusory copies 1/long rest when they cast Eldritch Blast, and each one can make a single 1d12 force damage attack while also granting the warlock effect line of sight of everything within the illusory copies’ senses.

We also get a new Pact of the Ring for Warlocks with this subclass, granting them a magical ring that can be replaced via a 1 hour ritual. It grants the warlock the ability to turn their Eldritch Blasts into sustained forms up to 10 cubic feet in size, and can be maintained indefinitely and deal said cantrip’s damage to all who touch them (but otherwise can’t do anything else besides damage). Higher levels let them maintain more such shapes, and at 17th level can form it into a single construct.

A Green Lantern Corps patron is a cool idea, but I cannot help but feel that they would make a more appropriate Paladin. Additionally, said superhero’s core feature of being able to make energy objects isn’t replicable with said class and Pact. There’s no mention of if said Eldritch Blast shapes can sustain a certain level of weight, to what degree they are transparent for cover purposes, and if said shapes can mimic the function of ‘real’ objects.

Wizard School of Logomancy is devoted to the magic of words, and also has more traditional stage magic aesthetics; so it’s Zatanna. The initial features include the ability to ‘reverse’ the damage type of a cast spell (acid becomes poison, fire becomes cold, etc) and deals 1d4 to 1d12 bonus damage depending on wizard level when cast in such a way, and can teleport as part of their movement and leave an illusory double behind that is mistaken for the caster on a failed Intelligence save. Later features include the ability cast spells without somatic components provided they have an immediate casting time,* attempts at Counterspelling the wizard’s spells require an opposed Insight/Deception check in order to work, can deflect hostile spells back at the caster by speaking the verbal components backwards, and their capstone ability lets them create an AoE hallucination that imposes a variety of damaging debuffs based on a random roll of the target’s perception (wrapped in chains and submerged in water, being sawn in half, etc).

*the rules do not have an ‘immediate’ casting time. They’re separated into actions, or by minutes/hours for longer casting times.

There are four new Spells in this chapter. Heroic Landing is like Feather Fall but generates an AoE shockwave attack upon landing; Ice Cube is a cold-based version of Fireball but with a cube-shaped AoE; Twin Powers Activate has to be cast by 2 people with knowledge of the spell, transforming one of them into a CR 5 or less Beast, the other into a CR 5 or less Elemental. Finally, X-Ray Vision allows one to see up to 15 feet through objects and barriers but is blocked by common metal and lead.

Alter Egos are Super & Sorcery’s backgrounds, representing common civilian identities. There’s 12 of them, and quite a few have highly similar if not identical skill and equipment lists to PHB ones, albeit renamed to be specific to Beacon-specific institutions and trades. Some of the more interesting ones include Beacon Herald Reporter (choice of knowledge-based skill proficiencies, proficient with Forger’s Kit, and access to library and old newspaper archives), Lamplighter (city watch, Thieves’ Tools or Gaming set, plus choice of History, Insight, Investigation, or Persuasion, along with various minor favors from people due to local contacts), Mogul (come from a rich family or came into wealth, one tool proficiency of choice, Insight & Persuasion, and can craft magic items in 1/3rd the time when making use of company resources), and Shattered Son (anti-establishment group, gain Sleight of Hand & Stealth, proficiency in Disguise Kit & Thieves’ Tools, and knowledge of fast and discrete routes, a hidden safehouse, and patrol routes of law enforcement).

This chapter ends with two Feats. Resolute requires one to have 13 or higher Constitution, but allows one to immediately regain hit points upon reaching 0 hit points by spending half their remaining Hit Die; this is a limited-use ability, and unlike rest-based refresh rates for PCs is recharged on a 5 or 6 on a d6 roll every long rest, more akin to monster abilities. The other feat, Super Flight, increases one’s Dexterity by 1 and a flight speed equal to one’s base walking speed.

The ability to fly (and swim, burrow, and other unconventional movements) indefinitely is one of the most common abilities in superhero comics. However, it does raise the question of former class features which grant flight. There’s also a number of magic items that grant a similar ability, ranging from Uncommon to Rare. As flight from S&S’s new classes are often gained at higher levels, and don’t add to existing movement rates nor does this feat, it does beg the question of what happens if this feat becomes superfluous or tradable when the class feature is gained.


A mere 3 pages long, this chapter hardly qualifies for the title. Owing to how so many superheroes have constant companions, sidekicks are an optional system for NPC allies which players can level up and build like PCs but with special rules.

Sidekicks level up congruently to PCs, but at a halved rate. Instead of using typical classes they have Sidekick levels but can gain proper class levels after their 3rd sidekick level. Sidekick levels are notably weaker than real classes, with a mere d6 Hit Die, a starting proficiency bonus of +1, and limited proficiency in a single language, skill, tool, and simple weapon. At levels 2 through 10 they gain their choice of a single benefit such as more individual weapon/armor/tool proficiencies, ability score increases, cantrips or 1st-level spells, and proper class features of a real class equal to half their level. Their proficiency bonus grows to +2 at 3rd level and +3 at 10th level.

I gotta say, these rules are rather underwhelming. I’ve seen better rules in Matt Colville’s Strongholds & Followers for NPC allies that can grow alongside party members. And although they're much newer releases, the Sidekick rules from the official Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and Spheres of Power/Might’s expansion do the same thing but better. There Sidekicks are inferior to true PCs, but have more notable increases over the course of play.


At 2 pages this section’s even shorter than Sidekicks! Six new rules are provided to give a more superheroic feel for 5e games, and thus an intended higher level of power. The first rule allows PCs to spend the Hit Die to add the rolled result (no CON modifier bonus) to d20 rolls, damage rolls, and even to subtract the result of an enemy’s successful saving throw vs one of their attacks/spells/etc. Another rule allows the spending of Inspiration to cast a spell at a slot one level higher or to gain access to a class feature 2 levels higher for an undetermined amount of time. A third rule allows PCs to voluntarily take on levels of Exhaustion to gain advantage on attack rolls/saving throws or +5 to a single ability score for 3 rounds. Or to cause a target’s successful save to auto-fail. The fourth rule causes a “knockback” effect on critical hits where targets are flung through the air and fall prone as well as taking bonus damage if they come into contact with a solid surface. A fifth rule causes PCs to be able to take an instant short rest whenever they change into or out of their costumed identity, and long rests whenever they foil a supervillain’s plot. The final rule takes the Minion system from 4th Edition where enemies designated as “mooks” have only 1 hit point but their stats are otherwise unchanged.

A lot of these rules tend to give static increases to abilities vs more thematic changes. I do like the one-hit Minion idea, although some need work like the Inspiration use having a specific duration. Another thing I would’ve liked is a kind of scalable table of magnitude for higher power levels of superheroes, like the Hulk and Superman being able to lift entire buildings. For example at Tier 1 (1st-4th) you are street-level crime fighters and use the base guidelines for D&D, but at Tier 4 (17th-20th) you can blow up asteroids with your fists.

Thoughts So Far: The new material has left me unimpressed and only reinforced my concerns that Superhero D&D is better off using another ruleset in order to properly emulate genre conventions. The sample class archetypes are at once too unbalanced and too restrictive at emulating the diversity of character archetypes that are part and parcel of superhero fiction. Although there were attempts at opening things up in regards to race and origin, the inability to play actual monsters and more fantastical creatures (conceptually similar if not mechanically identical) that you’d expect in Superhero D&D is another point against its favor.

Join us next time as we cover the setting proper in Part 2: A World of Heroes!

If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters.

Most D&D settings, OSR and otherwise, are pretty conservative in wanting to maintain a stagnated level of pseudo-medieval technology. Innovations, magical and otherwise, have various handwavium explanations for why they fail to impact society especially in regards to economy and standards of living. Barring higher-fantasy examples such as Netheril’s floating cities or dragon-sorcerers turning Athas into a desert. While said societies inevitably fell into ruin, there aren’t many campaign settings with focus on their grandness before their downfall.

Magical Industrial Revolution was written to turn this trope on its head, positing the city-based setting of Endon where magical inventions are rapidly transforming society in ways both positive and negative. It is a pre-apocalyptic setting: magic is not inherently destructive, but bereft of societal and ethical considerations it runs a very real risk of causing disaster and/or being turned into yet another tool of oppression for the powerful. But in the meantime, Endon is meant to be an up and coming magical superpower inserted into the GM’s preferred setting, drawing people from all over the world hoping to take advantage of its many boons. It is built for that pseudo-B/X ruleset that predominates the OSR, although it has some mentions here and there of more modern iterations of D&D. A lot of its charts and tables are more or less system-neutral, which helps in this regard.

Magical Industrial Revolution has a Victorian aesthetic, although the author Skerples mentions that it can still fit in typical Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy. He points out that real-world technological industrialization wasn’t spread out evenly even in the 19th Century, and many realms remained rural even when they gained access to machinery. Furthermore, Endon is also meant to serve as an example of one of those Golden Age civilizations of magic whose legacy seems to dot many campaign worlds as ruins brimming with treasure. Once the city and its surrounding network falls, the spells and magic items once taken for granted are now rare and precious things.

Endon is thus representative of a transition period from Renaissance feudalism to modern industrialism, although said author does is also insistent that the book is not meant to be a political allegory beyond how “even good intentions and idealism can wreak dreadful havoc.” I disagree with this premise in that the political subtexts of changing Victorian society still seep through, but I’ll go into more detail on this in later chapters.

But in spite of the toolbox nature, MIR does come with some pseudo-setting preconditions. One, Endon’s magic is mostly arcane in nature; most inhabitants are secular and the gods if they exist seem to have a hands-off approach towards the city’s events. Furthermore, scholars have a theory that spells are living beings not unlike souls. Spellcasters “learn” magic by allowing said spells to attach to their own soul in a symbiotic relationship.  Spells gain sustenance by being cast and bound into objects, and the energy they require for sustenance comes from the sun which is why most spell slots and spell effects recharge on a daily basis. This is also why magical items of a permanent or multi-charge nature take more resources to build, for they require more “spell food” to keep the spells within them alive.

Secondly, there are brief alterations to gold and XP gain. The standard OSR means of accumulation exist, but PCs can gain XP for ‘story-based awards’ such as inventing something new, getting appointed to public office, averting some magical disaster, and other means of making a mark upon society. Additionally, gold piece values correspond on a 1-1 basis of what 1 British Pound was worth in 1800. Which according to the Bank of England is equivalent to 844 pounds in 2019 via adjusting for inflation, or $1,100 US Dollars in modern times. The book claims that it’s $100 USD modern, but my much larger findings are based on Bank of England website and MorningStar Investment. The latter I found via Googling “British Pound to US Dollars” and using the calculator provided. But at the end of the day I’m not an economist so I may be off in some regard and just using the more immediate results. For gaming groups using AD&D or 5th Edition rulesets, they’re advised to increase gold piece prices tenfold.

Thirdly, a set of new rules for campaign progression are given. There are 8 major Innovations occurring in Endon that can transform society in a big way, each with 6 Stages. The final Stage causes an apocalyptic event that irreversibly changes Endon (and possibly the world) for the worse. The GM can use as many or as few Innovations as they desire, but generally speaking barring actions from the PCs every Season/year/game session* a 1d6 for each Innovation is rolled. If it is equal to or greater than the current Stage, it advances to the next Stage. Furthermore, there’s also a Tempo score ranging from 1 to 3, which represents how the city itself changes both magically, technologically, and socially as a result. The score starts out at 1 and goes to 2 once all Innovations reach Stage 3, and goes to 3 when they’re all Stage 4 or above. A lot of locations and events give a list of how things change via Tempo, and for campaigns taking place in or with frequent trips to Endon it helps convey a gradual sense of change. Basically higher Tempos cause magical services and items to become cheaper, but at an increase of strange supernatural phenomena, arcane pollution, and radical social changes resulting from the freeing up of human manual labor and an extremely high output of once-rarer resources.

*depending on ideal campaign flow.


Endon is more or less an independent city-state, and its inhabitants are called Endoners. Humans are the dominant population at all levels of society, although the fantasy races exist in small pockets throughout. While there are foreigners from all over the world, Endoners have a bit of an elitist streak and tend to downplay the accomplishments of other civilizations by making favorable comparisons to their own. The provided history of the city is minimalist: it was originally a military camp that grew into a settlement of its own and soon a large city over the course of a thousand years. But ten years ago two major events happened: first, a foreign wizard made great innovations in magical theory which he collected into the Principia Arcana. Said work posited a grand unified theory of magic, linking otherwise disparate traditions and spells together as well as putting forth the theory of spells being living creatures that feed off of energy from the sun. Secondly, a wizard used a pair of minor spells to create a self-carding, self-spinning loom which brought him great wealth in the textile industry. These two wizards marked the beginning of a progression of events that inspired the Magical Industrial Revolution.

Important Locations covers 25 major landmarks and buildings in Endon along with a full-page map and cross-referencing of appropriate page numbers for related material (tables for opera plays, politicians, etc). They are simple three-sentence descriptions (one sentence for each Tempo) and an accompanying NPC who can provide goods and services to the party. There’s quite a bit of good material, and the brevity manages to adequately convey the atmosphere of the place and social change. For example, at Tempo 2 the Parliament building erects a giant enchanted clock tower that can broadcast emergency messages. The River Burl becomes increasingly hazardous and filthy as the campaign progresses: at Tempo 2 street urchins sifting through sewage take to wearing stilts to avoid mutations and disease which some of them catch anyway, while at Tempo 3 packs of dangerous eels prowl the waters to feed off of magical residue.

Weather in Endon conforms closely to real-world London, being a temperate-to-cold climate and very foggy. A d12 table is rolled at a time convenient for the GM to mark the day’s weather; at Tempo 1 a 1d6 is rolled, while Tempo 2 and 3 are d10 and d12. The first 6 results are rather mundane, although 7 to 10 causes more erratic changes such as dense haze and a “stinkwave” of chemical smells from rivers and factories. The 12th result is a Nightmare Fog, a dangerous result of the build-up of thousands of spells being cast in a day over long periods of time, giving rise to dangerous tentacular multi-colored smoke. Said fog deals 1d4 damage per round to those within it, but can be kept at bay with heat sources and wind. The first time it strikes the city it will kill hundreds of people and go down as a national tragedy, but later on the city will adapt to future Nightmare Fogs by enacting safety measures of varying effectiveness.

And it would not be a proper OSR sourcebook without new tables! Among our results we have d100 Buildings in Endon, with the latter 50 separated into smaller d10 tables representative of a neighborhood’s social class; d100 Random Encounters with similar d20 tables separated by social class and subject matter ranging from street-sellers to angry mobs to run-away carts and arcane experiments. There’s also less eventful sightings such as a passing hot air balloon in the sky or a news reporter conducting street interviews. Furthermore there’s also Rambles, a jumbled condensed collection of half-sentences for the GM to randomly throw in to scenes representing the constant presence of people in a big city.

Our chapter ends with an in-character advertisement from one of Endon’s newspapers. Boff! Magazine is a political satire pamphlet whose jokes are a continued presence in this book:



From the theoretical to the practical, all sorts of new spells, gadgets, and species are being created in Endon. However, only a few people have both the connections, skills, and capital to ensure that their research changes society on a truly grand scale. These 8 Innovations are the primary movers of Endon’s Tempo, and each of their initial 5 Stages provide new goods and services in line with their industry (and cheaper prices for existing goods and services). Stage 6 represents Terminal Events that cause things to come crashing down in a catastrophic way, and there are suggestions provided for how PCs can Avert the Apocalypse. Half of the Innovations come with an NPC Innovator (or pair of Innovators) who are the primary inventors, while the other half represent a common phenomenon or service that cannot be claimed by one owner but is instead a group of competing industries or an eventual monopoly of the service. The Innovators are not high-level archmages, and are 2-3 Hit Die characters with middling combat capabilities save for perhaps their own unique spell/item that can give them an edge.

Each Innovation’s means of Averting differ, but tend to have a few similarities: PCs can turn public opinion on to the dangers of it, they could sabotage the industry or turn the public on to an alternative service or resource, and/or predicting the upcoming dangers and devising safeguards to prevent them. Not all of the solutions are Luddite in getting rid of said industry, although a few suggest that legislating and taxing the market as an end in and of itself to make said industry grow less. While I’m not some laissez-faire capitalist, later chapters will reveal that Endon’s legal system is a joke and that government regulation is unlikely to work given the mixture of incompetence and corruption in the halls of power.

Miles’ Moving Miracles: George Miles wants to improve upon the rare, expensive, and just not all that safe array of aerial magical transport; it’s far too easy to fall off a broomstick or carpet. Starting out with floating rods that can move via a small jolt of magic, Miles improves upon this with proper vehicle frames such as coaches that can hop long distances and flying carriages powered by successive castings of levitation and mundane propulsion. The military takes interest in this and funds his company for aerial warfare, and eventually George decides to devote all of his efforts in building a machine to fly to the moon. Said pseudo-rocket looks like a giant iron tree made up of millions of Movable Rods. It will inevitably explode and shower Endon in molten iron once it takes off, or destroy the ozone layer and expose the world to unfiltered sunlight, or push the entire city into the sea by falling over.

*In the book there’s no apostrophe, but this appears to be the grammatically correct choice.

Room to Live: The use of extradimensional spaces usually produces small rooms capable of holding no more than a few people at once and are typically used by adventuring types. But what if their use is devoted to the expansion of living space and large-scale storage? The creation of a Portable Room catches on among the rich and famous, with an interior that can last for 10 years. Over time entire industries migrate indoors, shipping companies can transport huge loads efficiently, and the creation of extradimensional reservoirs combat flooding. Endon can afford more living space, but the lack of proper air circulation in said spaces causes low-income housing to be sweaty, smoke-filled spaces and proper counting of population is next to impossible save via the counting of chimneys. The Terminal Events represent the rending of space-time as rooms collapse in on each other, unexpectedly shrink or expand, and portals no longer reliably leading to their intended locations. Buildings and their entire inhabitants seemingly vanish, causing many to turn to cannibalism as they’re trapped in a maze of interdimensional spaces.

A World Without Roads: Teleportation spells are both high-level and tend to only transport a relatively small amount of mass. True “teleportals” that are permanent and can be used without an archmage are a highly-desirable good. The creation of the True Teleport spell begins with Earnest Perring building a pair of teleportation circles in two neighborhoods, and soon a self-regulatory business known as the Circle League is established by taking over smaller teleportation-related businesses in the industry. The League uses its resources to establish more complicated circles to work over longer distances while making said circles from cheaper spell components. Endon opens up a circle with another major city in the campaign setting, although this boon to trade and transport comes at a cost as extradimensional creatures from “Elsewhere” pop up with frightening frequency to attack people, and the Circle League resorts to threats and violence to cover up such incidents. The Terminal Event comes as Elsewhere Rifts pop up around the circles, consuming the surrounding landscape and letting otherworldly horrors invade the Material Plane.

True Polymorph: While the power to shapechange has many boons, the major industries of Endon find success in the alteration of animal test experiments. Menageries of “unnatural creatures” spring up as tourist attractions and pets for the rich, polymorphed meat means that the poor no longer have to be vegetarian as said meat becomes even cheaper than fruits and vegetables due to the abundance of transformable rats and pigeons. Meanwhile, businesses delve into the potential of polymorphing creatures into the forms of long-extinct and totally fictitious creatures. The Terminal Events include a range of maladies: polymorphed meat giving eaters magical cancer, while polymorphed creatures based off of dinosaurs and the nightmarish dreams of transmuters break out of captivity and lay waste to the city.

A Peaceful City: The use of divination magic to prevent crime and apprehend lawbreakers catches on after a serial killer is apprehended due to the use of a scrying spell. Household industries pop up of detective-diviners offering to locate lost people and objects while law enforcement makes use of it for obvious reasons. The use of scrying spells for sexual voyeurism creates public outcry to take it out of the private sector in favor of “responsible use.” Scrying is restricted to police use, and Endon’s crime rate drops, but law enforcement becomes increasingly authoritarian and uses divination to gather blackmail material in order to cement their power. The Terminal Event occurs as Endon stops culturally evolving and innovating as hordes of people move out, the remaining people become half-starved, magically enchanted thralls whose minds are shaped into “proper moral behavior” under the new police state.

Conjured Workforce: A small-time illusionist by the name of Neil Bligh creates an invisible workforce of “illusionary servants” to perform tricks for the public. He then realizes he can offer said servants for rent. Neil starts to make alterations on his spell for wider arrays of tasks, and other businesses follow in his wake. Entire industries fire their own laborers in favor of said magical servants, and being a wage labor economy with no social safety net this causes mass poverty and unemployment. Those whose jobs do not depend on physical exertion are safe, but they are 20% of the population. Political radicalism and angry mobs turn Endon into a more violent place. Bligh creates a new “Intelligent Servant” that seems self-aware, and other spells become harder to cast in Endon. Eventually a legion of said intelligent servants, feeding off of the ambient magical energy, turn Endon into a giant magic drain and take over the city, enslaving spellcasters to “feed” them magic and driving out or killing off everyone else.

Coal & Iron: The rediscovery of geomancy via research allows a Thaumaturgic Mining Guild to gain government backing to part the earth and gain access to new sources of ever-deeper mineral veins. Iron and coal become ever more common to the point that roads and skyscrapers made of iron are omnipresent, while steam engines and railways are a common means of private and mass transit. A huge military-reinforced wall is eventually built around Endon. The Terminal Event is that after widespread damage to the earth a group of earth elementals or some other subterranean monster awakens from digging too deep and lays waste to the city. Or maybe instead a group of rust monster eggs hatch, with all the food they could ever want and soon breed out of control, burying the city in piles of rusty flakes.

The Power of Creation: Anna Hartwell and her business partner John Huffman use logic gates to program clay golems with simple instructions. They then create Personal Calculating Golems which can perform mathematical functions and become a mainstay for financial institutions and scientific bodies. Illusion spells are used to make golems that are primitive computers, and despite becoming the richest business in Endon the two inventors are unsatisfied. They begin work on an Omni-Spell, a theoretical programmable spell of unlimited creation and transformation. The Terminal Event comes when a golem-computer device installed with this spell is told to create ten copies of itself at a public demonstration. The copies then make more copies, which then create even more copies, rapidly sucking up spell energy and creating a magical dirty bomb in the process that destroys Endon. Alternatively they could give it the command “Live” and thus create a selfish god-like being. Or the spell conjures 100 million gold coins and crashes the economy.

Thoughts So Far: The initial set-up of a high-magic Victorian metropolis is a rather peculiar setting for the OSR. I do like how Magical Industrial Revolution posits a world where Vancian casting logically applied can result in some rapid social change, and manages to answer why much of the world can still be “recognizably medieval” while also not necessarily leading to an age of prosperity.

The use of Innovations and Tempos to reflect a changing setting is also a cool one, and I do like how they’re not solely background elements. Each of the innovations comes with new and advanced equipment and services that PCs can make use of. I do feel that some of the Terminal Events feel a bit slap-dash or out of nowhere. The gradual increase of weird phenomena for Room to Live and World Without Roads give the PCs good precursors of wrongness, but the exploding rocket-rod of Miles’ Moving Miracles comes out of nowhere. There’s also the fact that Endon is inevitably doomed unless the PCs can avert all 8 catastrophes. It is meant to be a pre-apocalyptic setting, but this inevitable fatalism may make the players’ efforts feel wasted depending on the gaming group.

Join us next time as we cover the next few chapters covering Services, Social Classes, and Seasons of Endon!

There’s no denying that medieval Europe dominates the conceptual playspace of Dungeons & Dragons when it comes to fantasy counterpart cultures. And even on that note it draws most of its influence from Medieval Britain, with a multicultural sprinkling of various monsters. Official and fanmade worlds have been delving beyond these constraints, with Oriental Adventures being one of the most notable older works. However, much like the British-centrism of not-Europe, OA’s own focus draws heavily from Japanese pop culture with a smattering of Chinese influences here and there. Beyond this, a lot of Fantasy Asia write-ups tend to be by people with no strong ties or ancestry in the locations they’re deriving influence from, and the adoption of folklore, culture, and other features all too often ends up inaccurate or stereotypical.

Unbreakable is a 3rd party D&D project of adventures written by Asian creators, with emphasis on showcasing content beyond the stock archetypes seen in Western popular culture. It’s but one volume in a larger project of yet-to-be-released books. Each chapter lists a short biography and social media links of said writer, as well as what media and/or folkloric influences they used when said adventure derives inspiration from an existing work. There’s also Content Warnings for material that gaming groups may find objectionable or uncomfortable, and there’s brief talks of Safety Toolkits which are handily linked to in a Google Document. In terms of objectionable content nobody was edgy enough to portray sexual violence thankfully, although there are some darker inferences such as torture in one adventure and another centering around monsters that kill and eat children. But some of the CWs seem to be things that are either common enough in fiction that the types of people who would have trouble engaging with them in an adventure would be ill-pressed to play tabletop gaming in general: for example, the first adventure’s CW is Water & Storms, and the seventh lists Poverty & Shapeshifting under its CWs. But I cannot object too much, especially given that the opposite effect is far too common in most gaming groups.

Other commonalities of the adventures include separation of content into Chapters, pronunciation guides are given for proper names, and NPCs of note are given pronouns next to the first time their name appears. Quite a bit of the adventures have notable nonbinary characters, as seen through the use of they/them pronouns. But beyond these universalities it is very clear that the book has different authors. From writing style to mechanical design, the adventures differ greatly in content. They are also setting-agnostic; while they hint upon elements that point to specific cultural elements, most of the Unbreakable adventures take place in relatively isolated locales and city-states whose specific outlying regions and borders are left to the whims of the Dungeon Master.


Our first adventure is scaled for 1st to 4th level characters and is a rather straightforward wilderness trek where the PCs visit a gold dragon’s abode to reverse a spate of weather-related disasters. The set-up involves a pair of dragons, Jin-Zhi and her daughter Jin-Hao, who watch over a mountain range with a village at its base. Jin-Zhi had a good relationship with the villagers, who often asked her to use her magic to bless the weather to avert famine and the worst of nature’s wrath. While on a business trip Jin-Hao was placed in charge of the mountain due to some convincing on her part, and in a case of mistaken identity was asked by the local magistrate to perform magic beyond her capabilities. Eager to prove herself, Jin-Hao inadvertently summoned a hailstorm which ruined the village’s crops and stranded the magistrate in the mountains. Jin-Zhi was none too pleased to learn about this turn of events and transformed her own daughter into a golden-scaled carp. The villagers are now angry at Jin-Zhi for “betraying” them and have resorted to overfishing the nearby river to avoid famine.

Enter the PCs, who come upon the village while on their travels and hear about the recent ill news. The initial arrival has some role-playing and skill checks to help the desperate villagers out, whether helping them get more fish or convincing them not to overfish. Jin-Hao is caught by a net, who in magic talking carp form is the immediate adventure hook: pretending to be a water spirit, she offers to help find out the fate of the missing magistrate and parley with the mountain’s dragon “as a fellow spirit.” The local villagers are either too busy attending to domestic duties, too resentful of the dragon, or too ill-equipped to make the dangerous mountain trek themselves.

Jin-Hao is willing to accompany the PCs, but is too prideful to be taken in a container of water and instead opts to swim along the river running down the mountain. The various encounters involve dangers along said river or involve persevering against the watery elements. One such encounter includes helping an ogre hermit find his lost maps (buried in his house’s rubble due to the hailstorm) in exchange for unblocking a dam of rocks, a nest of blood hawks lying in wait near a malfunctioning Boot of Levitation (formerly owned by the magistrate) which acts as a “sitting duck floating in mid-air” trap to those who step over it, and the use of skill checks and possible magic to track down the magistrate via finding his scattered belongings. Sadly Fa-Zhong, said magistrate, suffered injury to his legs from a lightning strike and believes that the dragon will be able to heal his wounds. He can still walk, but not very well. As the party is closer to the mountain’s peak than the village, he and Jin-Hao view this as the more prudent course of action.

The final part of the adventure takes place by a mountain lake, and Jin-Zhi’s lair is at the top of a flat mountain peak with an archway at the top marking the Dragon’s Gate. Carved to look like a pair of golden dragons, it transports those who pass through it into a beautiful grove. Magical protections prevent any form of approach besides manually climbing the cliffside via a damaging invisible force field, and Jin-Hao will warn the party as much.

Jin-Zhi will confront the party as they enter the grove, and Jin-Hao will intervene before any hostile misunderstandings on her mother’s part occur. She’ll explain to her mother and the party the truth of things and asks Jin-Zhi to heal the magistrate. Jin-Zhi proposes that she’ll grant this request and also teach her daughter the magic needed to restore the village’s crops should she be able to best her in combat. Jin-Hao says that this task is beyond her, and instead offers for the party to fight in her stead after all they’ve done in proving themselves along the way. Turns out this was a secret test of character by Jin-Zhi to see if her daughter learned her lesson in humility, and accepts these terms if the party does as well.

The duel with Jin-Zhi is not to the death: she is an Adult Gold Dragon, but attacks nonlethally and only in the form of a weaker animal shape. Said animals range from giant crabs to crocodiles, formidable opponents yet nothing too out of range for a party to handle. Jin-Zhi has a set of unique lair actions which can conjure mist for one round and to change shape into another animal form. She ceases combat after receiving a predetermined amount of damage from the party, which ranges from 40 to 80 depending on the overall numbers and level of said party. If the party’s KOed they will wake up in the lair, but overwise the ending to the adventure is more or less the same: the magistrate Fa-Zhong’s legs are healed, a spell is cast to restore the crops, and Jin-Zhi transforms her daughter back into dragon form and flies everyone down to the village to explain what happened. The villagers are understanding and apologies are given and accepted on both sides. For their troubles, the party is given a golden oyster that can produce a single-use Pearl of Power every 30 days.

Thoughts So Far: I find this to be a passable adventure, if a bit linear for my tastes. Its main weak point is that although suggestions are given for adjusting encounter difficulty, very low-level PCs play very differently than the upper limits of what the adventure suggests. 1st level PCs are very fragile and have a lot less resources to draw upon before requiring rests. I do like the relative sparsity of outright combat and in the case of the ogre a nonviolent alternative which would be good for such a low level. I admit that the final encounter with Jin-Zhi had a lot of tension lost given that the end result is the same whether or not the PCs manage to beat her in a duel. I get that she’s meant to be Lawful Good and is unlikely to let the villagers starve, but maybe something like offering the magical item as a “win condition” or only offering to do one of two miracles (healing Fa-Zhong or restoring the crops) on a loss would put some actual stakes in the fight.

Join us next time as we read Feeding the River, an adventure where the party must put a stop to a powerful pollution spirit despoiling nature and the riverside villages!

This adventure is based on the Chinese Proverb, “The Carp has leaped through the Dragon’s Gate.” In Chinese mythology, the Dragon’s Gate is a waterfall. It is said that if a carp is strong enough to swim up the turbulent river and over waterfall, it will transform into a dragon. This proverb is often used to demonstrate that if one exemplifies perseverance, success will eventually be achieved. The theme of this adventure plays on this proverb by also including a caveat - that one’s successes are not only due to personal skill, but also with the help of others.

I would like to thank Jacky Leung (Death by Mage), for inviting me to this project. It has been a great experience working with other Asian Americans and Asian Canadians as we bring our own experiences to this game we all love.

Ethan Yen is a writer and content creator. Ethan can be reached at ethanyen.com or via Twitter @ethnyen]

The concept of RPGs that are “like Dungeons & Dragons, but X!” is a very dry well by late 2019. Straight clones of every major iteration of D&D are over 10 years old, while popular newer products attempt instead interesting and novel spins. The Nightmares Underneath is a cross between Darkest Dungeon and a fantasy Middle East where dungeons are otherworldly invaders of malevolent disposition. Wolves of God is B/X era D&D, but set in a fantasy Dark Ages England. Games like Troika! and The Ultraviolet Grasslands are very much their own systems, departing majorly from standard fantasy in favor of something closer to an acid trip. The OSR movement is moving to more novel boundaries in recent years. Whether or not this coincides with the public denouncing their more conservative and toxic holdovers in recent memory is a factor in which I’m unsure of, but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s helped their corner of the hobby chart new ground.

But there is an avenue the old-school crowd hasn’t really touched: making hybrid versions of old-school and newer-school systems. Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles & Crusades came the closest in borrowing some 3rd Edition elements, but overall were very much their own systems. Five Torches Deep sought to strip down the mechanical chassis of 5th Edition to the bare bones, layering OSR muscle and sinew to make a rules-lite alternative. It’s more accurate to describe Five Torches Deep as a 5e clone than an OSR one. To what extent it’s successful in this endeavor, and whether it’s worth playing on its own apart from its existing influences, we’ll discuss in this review.

What Is This? covers the core concepts of 5TD and what it strives for in a handy single page. It seeks to make combat more dangerous than basic 5e, less predictable magic, and a greater emphasis on resource management while dungeon delving in the form of rations, light sources, and such. 5TD PCs are designed to be weaker than their 5e counterparts, notably in the HP and ability score generation. Bounded accuracy in the form of a D20 + modifier vs a DC, proficiency bonus, and ability modifiers are kept. But the DC for most things is a default 11 unless otherwise noted, which can make characters with higher scores quite competent in proficient fields.

Player Characters covers ability scores, race, and class. Scores are the same as in 5th Edition (although the max modifier is +4 at 18), although dropping to 0 in any causes death rather than unconsciousness. There are 4 races: humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings. They have no special abilities of their own besides the non-humans starting automatically with a 13 in 2 favored scores and rolling 2d6+3 in order for the other 4. Humans roll 3d6 in order for all 6 scores, but can swap the results of 2. Non-humans are restricted in their class choices, and need a 13 or better in classes with which they’re not traditionally associated. For example, a Halfling needs a 13 or higher Strength/Intelligence to be a Warrior or Mage, while an Elf needs a 13 or higher Strength/Wisdom to be a Warrior or Zealot. Given that their max in such scores can only be 15 due to the alternate rolling, races are heavily pushed into playing as certain class types.

I’m not really fond of this change. I understand that various OSR games often gated classes based on race, but even in Basic D&D virtually every race could be a Fighter or Thief, and it was more generally the ‘advanced’ classes like Paladin and Ranger which were humans-only. Additionally, nonhumans no longer have any unique features, which makes them less appealing options.

Leveling up takes longer than in 5th Edition, and the maximum level is 9. You level up to 2nd at 2,500 XP and it costs double the amount every level thereafter until 5th (20,000), at which point it’s 10k more for 6th, 20k for 7th, and 25k each for 8th and 9th.

There are four classes which fit the typical Warrior/Thief/Mage/Cleric fold, but the Cleric is renamed to Zealot. Every class is proficient in two ability checks plus 3 (or 4 if Thief) pseudo-skills known as proficient checks relevant to their class. They gain bonus proficient checks automatically from their subclass archetype. At 1st level they gain their starting HP plus automatic equipment. At 2nd, 5th, and 9th level each class gains a unique ability; at 3rd and 7th they gain access to an archetype and one of its features;* 4th, 6th, and 8th they gain a +1 to an ability score of choice.

*the archetype chosen at 7th must be the same as the one at 3rd, so no Warrior Barbarian/Rangers for you!

The initial skills and equipment are automatically chosen at 1st level, but with some allowance of choice for weapons and armor, and Sundries which represent miscellaneous equipment rolled randomly at a table in the back of the book.

One of the first things you’ll notice when reading Five Torches Deep is the layout. Every single page has everything relevant in one convenient spot, with nothing in the way of orphaned lines or half-empty columns. This is really helpful in navigation, and visually pleasant to read. However, when it comes to classes this brevity is a bit of a detriment, particularly in regards to archetypes.



The Warrior looks rather interesting, although I do spot some peculiarities. For being proficient in “will,” does this relate to willpower and thus resistance towards enchantment and similar features? The Warrior gets a Healer’s kit, but it doesn’t look like its initial checks and abilities cover that kind of thing. Is first aid training something in which all adventurers are presumed to know? The ability to counter in melee is pretty cool, and making bonus attacks is something we all expect from Fighters.

For archetypes the Fighter’s Order is really good: although discussed later, an Active Action is the equivalent of a normal Action,* and as such can grant bonus attacks/spells/etc during the round. “Immune to Weather” for the Ranger is rather broad, and does beg the question of if this means that they can avoid the effects of damaging hazards such as being able to swim normally in stormy seas or tank a lightning strike. As a GM this is one of the level-based choices so I’d rule as such, given that the brunt of danger is doing to be underground.

*there are 3 actions in Five Torches’ Deep: Active, Movement, and Quick.



The Thief is proficient in all kinds of weapons, which is interesting on account that this will include things such as polearms and heavier weapons. Being proficient in “tools” may mean that they’re sort of an omnidisciplinary craftsman beyond just thieves’ tools. Its core features are quite good, particularly the 5th level’s defensive ability. The Assassin’s “Stealth after Attack” option is really powerful; stealth is covered under Gameplay, but when you successfully Stealth no enemy effect or attack can directly target you for as long as you do not take any hostile action. The Bard’s ability to auto-detect magic can be helpful for avoiding supernatural traps and danger. The Rogue doesn’t get anything as amazing in comparison.



The Zealot is pretty much your old-school healbot cleric, but with a few nifty features. The 5th level ability may seem quite strong, but 5TD doesn’t have alignment and the “evil” tag is reserved purely for aberrant and supernatural foes and those who traffic with them. The “sadist” tag I presume is meant to make up for this given that ‘typical monsters’ such as bandits/goblins/orcs wouldn’t register but are typically portrayed as loving violence for its own sake.

For archetypes, there’s mention of turning undead, but it is its own spell now rather than an innate feature. “Advantage vs injury” is a bit broad; does this include checks to avoid injury of all types? To recover from? It may be very broad in this instance and a no-brainer choice depending on how the GM rules. The Druid’s wildskin left me sad; I get that such a broad feature is hard to consolidate in such a rules-lite system, but druids in other games are able to take the shapes of dangerous animals such as wolves and horses. In Five Torches Deep, they’re more or less confined to being very fragile scouts. The Paladin’s ‘advantage to help allies’ is similarly broad as the Cleric’s ‘advantage vs injury’ dilemma.



I’m a bit interested in what ‘finesse’ entails. In basic 5th Edition it was a weapon descriptor which allowed the use of Dexterity instead of Strength for attacks. Does this mean that 5TD mages are lithe and nimble? The ability to reduce damage is nice, but more limited than the Thief’s 5th level equivalent. Auto-dispelling spells is a good utility feature, but given its time limit is not something of use in combat. The 9th level capstone is very powerful on account that cantrips function the same in 5TD as in 5e: an at-will ability.

For archetypes the Sorcerer and Wizard get some very nice features. Quickcast means that you may be able to cast 2 spells during the same round which can be useful for a variety of cases, while doubling area and duration is also good. There are no stats for familiars, so I am unsure to what extent they’d be treated as a Retainer. The Warlock is clearly meant to be a more ‘martial mage’ but given the class’ terrible HP is an inferior option. The ability to deal bonus damage by inflicting it on yourself may have uses, but spells in 5TD overall avoid direct damage save for a few, making the Warlock more limited in utility than the other archetypes.

Equipment is highly simplified in 5 Torches Deep. Armor and Weapons of all kinds are consolidated into a few clear categories. Light Armor, Heavy Armor, and Shields which grant levels of protection and can only be used by certain classes. Heavy Armor imposes disadvantage on Stealth and stamina checks, unlike 5th Edition where it’s just the former. Melee and Ranged weapons are separated into Simple and Martial categories, which have larger damage entries depending on how they’re gripped. The base die type for simple weapons are d6, martial d10. Two-handed weapons deal one die type higher for damage, but wielding a one-handed weapon in 2 hands allows you to roll the base damage die twice and keep the best result. Some melee weapons have reach of 10 feet, and ranged weapons can hit anywhere from 15 to 300 feet depending on what makes sense but impose disadvantage in melee.

Weight is calculated differently in 5 Torches Deep. Everything is measured in Load, where 1 Load measures any object around 5 pounds. PCs can carry Load equal to their Strength score, and reduce their speed by 5 feet for every 1 Load above this value along with disadvantage on all checks. Being encumbered is something you really don’t want to have happen to you!

What about smaller items and bundles, as well as multi-use items? Well this is handled as Supply, or SUP for short! Instead of tracking individual arrows, lockpicks, torches, etc, a PC announces what kinds of equipment they seek to stock up on before their next adventure. Their SUP is determined by their Intelligence score and can be spent to refresh kits, get one more lockpick when your current set breaks, have a handy potion on hand, refill your lantern/quiver, etc. There’s a nice table of how much SUP things cost, although a few pieces of equipment such as Alchemical Grenade, Dragon’s Breath Bomb, and Quicksilver are mighty costly (5 to 9) but are never mentioned again in this book. Foraging in the wilderness can restore SUP with DC 11 and 1 hour worth of time.

We get 3 new rules for less common cases of gear. You attune magic items much like in 5th Edition, but the primary limit on the amount you can attune at once is equal to your Charisma modifier. For equipment, gear has a Durability score from 1 to 5, and said score reduces by 1 when said items are put in stressful situations or damaged on a critical hit in combat. Shields are very useful in this regard, for they can automatically block the damage of an appropriate attack in exchange for losing Durability. As shields have 2 Durability, this makes them super-useful for dodging certain death. Our final rule involves repairing and crafting items; the former allows one to restore Durability if the person is proficient in the proper tools and takes 1 hour per attempt (usually during a rest), and Crafting is a more involved 4 step process where an item is built but takes half a day of work per stage and attempt.

Overall I like these equipment rules, especially for Supply. Shields in 5 Torches Deep are incredibly useful and allow PCs a safe means of avoiding one-hit kills particularly at low level. That every class is proficient in them means that virtually every party will have a few on hand.

Hello everyone! This is not a Let's Read of a single product so much as a bunch of smaller sourcebooks detailing new classes and subclasses for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The OP will serve as a WIP Table of Contents linking to later posts. I'm focusing on some of the more well-known classes, as well as ones which don't have detailed reviews around the Internet.

Greetings everyone, and welcome to my next Let’s Read! I know that I said I’d review SIGMATA, but I found myself feeling a lot more passionate about another book. As such undertakings take quite a bit of time and effort on my part, I felt it best to do the ones that fill me with the most excitement and energy.

Back in the 90s and early Aughties, Bioware was the most prominent studio that brought the Dungeons & Dragons rules to the realm of video games. Even their much-acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic used rules derived from the Star Wars D20 System. Although Bioware moved on to its own Intellectual Properties over time, the company brought countless gamers to the Forgotten Realms seeking to learn more about the vaunted cities of Neverwinter and Baldur’s Gate.

In a way, it wasn’t too unsurprising when the lead designers of said games (as well as Dragon Age: Origins) wrote up a 5th Edition-compatible adventure for their account of Baldur’s Gate. But that was not their only delve into tabletop; last year they advertised a very successful KickStarter for an original setting.

Odyssey of the Dragonlords is part setting, part level 1 to 20* adventure path that takes heavy inspiration from Greek mythology. The continent of Thylea is dominated by two divine pantheons, the Five Gods and the Titans, who settled into an uneasy Oath of Peace for 500 years. But the Oath’s magically-binding duration is coming to an end, and the PCs are spoken of in a prophecy to be Thylea’s only hope. As the wicked Titans muster their forces to bring ruin and devastation, every day is one step towards uncertain doom.

*the book advertises 1 to 15 but it got extended as a stretch goal.


Our book opens up with a discussion of distinguishing tropes to make Odyssey stand out from the typical D&D faire. For one, the plot has high stakes: even at level 1 the PCs are assumed to be well-known and accomplished heroes with a few mighty deeds already under their belts. At low levels the rulers of city-states are calling upon an audience with them, and at higher levels they can even challenge the gods themselves who have convenient stat blocks for such a purpose. Oaths are powerful and cosmically-binding, and accruing fame from deeds nets you followers and power represented by a Fame score. Fate and prophecies are a gift and a curse which even the gods cannot defy, and the lives of mythic heroes have elements of comedy and tragedy.

The fate part is subverted in the adventure path proper, as some visions that can be averted and there are multiple ‘timelines’ the major Oracle character can witness. The comedy/tragedy thing isn’t really something one can do save based on the subjective tastes of the group. The adventure likely has potentially tragic moments (cities being destroyed, NPCs suffering cruel fates, adventure plots and backstories revolving around past injustices, etc), but more comedic and absurdist elements aren’t really present from my initial reading.

The World of Thylea: Thylea is an island-continent located in a remote section of the known world, guarded from the rest by the actions of the local gods. Ample islands and peninsulas reach off its southern shores, lush forests and valleys occupy much of the central area, while wild steppes in the far north are ill-explored save by nomadic bands of centaurs, cyclopes, and various monsters. Thylea’s recorded history stretches back 2,500 years, when much of the continent was home to fey races such as nymphs and satyrs, and the ur-cyclops race known as gygans* ruled a mighty empire. Two deities, the Titans Sydon and Lutheria, reigned supreme over the land and received worship and sacrifice by mortals. Over time, various refugees, sailors lost at sea, and other people from unknown lands found themselves on Thylea’s shores, where they had complicated relationships with the native races. Sometimes such conflicts were violent, and they beseeched Sydon and Lutheria for protection. Which they received, but not enough that they were capable of building civilizations beyond some meager far-flung villages.

*a smaller yet more intelligent subrace of six-armed cyclops.

This all changed when a group of warriors astride mighty bronze serpents known as the Dragonlords set wing and foot upon Thylea’s coasts. They helped the settler races build great cities and repel the worst of the centaur and gygan raids, and soon the Titans grew jealous at their status. The First War was waged, causing great devastation on both sides. As the last of the Dragonlords fell, a new pantheon of Five Gods came down from heaven to prevent the Titans from destroying all. Eventually an Oath of Peace was brokered between the old and new pantheons; the details were vague, but for 500 years Sydon and Lutheria swore not to take revenge upon Thylea’s mortals and in exchange they would continue to receive honor and tribute in the form of temple maintenance and daily sacrifices.

But as of the campaign’s beginning, it is mere months before the Oath of Peace ends, and the famed Oracle prophecies the Doom of Thylea. Where even the gods die and the mortal races are wiped off the face of the earth. The PCs, notable heroes in their own right, are summoned by her to find ways of averting this dire prediction.

Powers, Factions, & Mortal Kingdoms of Thylea: These next three sections discuss religion and politics of the setting. Beginning with the deities, it is known that the gods and goddesses of Thylea are not the only ones out there, although foreign gods from the wider world leave Thylea largely untouched and their worshipers are few in number beyond some storm-tossed foreigners. The two major pantheons are the Ancient Titans and the Five Gods, although there are Forgotten Gods whose names and power grew few to the point that they are rarely honored outside of specific groups. With a few exceptions the gods do not dwell in separate planes of existence, but live in the Material Plane so as to keep a closer watch on their mortal charges. For example, Sydon spends much of his time in the lighthouse-fortress Praxys, while Pythor and Vallus are the ruler and wife of a ruler, respectively, in two of the larger city-states. Narsus, the God of Beauty, is not technically ‘forgotten’ but is the patron god/prisoner of the city-state of Aresia.


As you can see by the above, the Titans are the more ‘natural,’ cruel, and tempestuous of the pantheons. Thylea is the oldest titan, for it is said that the very continent is her body, her limbs extending as deep roots throughout the earth. Kentimane is Thylea’s husband, a gigantic being who stands taller than the highest mountain and regularly patrols the seas around the continent so as to guard his wife’s tomb from outside threats. The twins Sydon and Lutheria are the two surviving children of Thylea and Kentimane, their siblings long since murdered or imprisoned at the hands of their wicked kin. Sydon is a tyrannical deity in control of the seas and storms, and he longs for a world where all bow to his feet. He brooks no worship of any other entity besides his sister Lutheria, and even then only grudgingly. Lutheria is a cross between Hades and Dionysus, a harvester of souls and granter of insanity who encourages her followers to care about nothing but themselves and take what they will without consequence. Unsurprisingly the squickier elements of Odyssey shine through involving her or her worshipers; most NPCs who are sexual predators are loyal to her, and the goddess herself is a rapist in the “use enchantment magic to make people have sex with each other” kind of way.

The worship of Sydon and Lutheria is a controversial one among mortal society; people make sacrifices to Sydon more out of fear than loyalty and for safe voyage, and many find Lutheria’s doctrines disgusting. But Lutheria has devotees among some noble houses, her followers control the wine trade, and they host some of the larger public holidays which makes her a tolerated evil.

The Five Gods are the new pantheon, and unlike Sydon and Lutheria their acts of folly extend more to irresponsibility and lapses in judgment than outright sadism or malice. Mytros is the Goddess of Dawn and for whom the largest city-state is named. She is now back in the celestial realms after a battle with Sydon and Lutheria, and is by far the most common deity for clerics among the settler races to worship. Volkan is the God of Craftsmanship and invention, and is also the Santa Claus equivalent of the setting where he travels during the winter solstice as children await his gifts and sweets. Pythor is the God of War and has ruled over the city-state of Estoria for centuries after overthrowing its tyrannical king, and while popular his impulsiveness and alcoholism has dulled his ability to make wise decisions. Vallus, the Goddess of Wisdom, was once a traveler of the world and a collector of lore. Now she serves as the wife to King Acastus of the City of Mytros, and is prayed to for those seeking wisdom in overcoming some dilemma. Finally, Kyrah the Goddess of Music is a cross between Hermes and Apollo, known for being a quick-stepping trickster who provides inspiration to musicians and artists of all stripes.

Thylea has Mortal Kingdoms but no true nation-states or empires in modern times. Generally speaking, society is divided into two groups: the three major city-states and smaller settlements under their protection, and various independent tribes and villages who are scattered yet self-sufficient. The native races largely fall into the latter category barring a few exceptions such as the satyrs who are fond of visiting larger settlements.

The city-state of AthensMytros is a grand metropolis that is the religious, economic, and cultural center of Thylean society. It is home to the great Temple of the Five and ruled over by King Acastus, a descendant of one of the Dragonlords and notable for trying to rebuild said ancient order by somehow reviving the formerly-extinct race of dragons. The city-state of Estoria* is a border stronghold which holds off raids from the northern steppes; the god Pythor sits in a castle on the highest hill where he can survey the land. Finally, the city-state of SpartaAresia is home to some of the most famous warrior societies. While it doesn’t have a reigning god, its founder kidnapped and imprisoned Narsus, the God of Beauty. This act has led to centuries’ of on and off wars with Mytros. Aresian culture takes great pains to appear, well, spartan among the upper classes to separate themselves from the ‘decadent, barbaric Mytrosians.’ In practice its upper class is more elaborate at hiding their wealth and parties while using bread and circuses to keep the loyalty of the common folk. The southern islands are controlled by no large overarching power, with various barbarian tribes reigning supreme. The Amazons are the most well-known by outsiders and live in the largest island of said archipelagos: Themis.

*Apologies for not knowing what Greek City-State it’s based on.

We get a look at the ten major factions of Thylea, organizations who are either tied to a political or religious group or a power in their own right. Many of them check off typical fantasy trope boxes: the Cult of the Snake is a notable Mytrosian thieves’ guild, the Academy of Mytros is the foremost center of learning where philosopher-wizards hang out to share spells, the Order of Sydon is a paramilitary organization taking increasingly violent action against temples of the Five, the Centurions* of Mytros are said city’s standing army, and the Druids of Oldwood worship Thylea and make sacrifices to her to atone for the ‘original sins’ of the settler races’ presence on her land. The Temple of the Five and the Temple of the Oracle are institutions dedicated to the Five Gods and Versi the Oracle respectively, and only the former gets involved in secular politics with the Oracle being more removed from mundane affairs. The last three factions are monstrous in nature: the remnants of gygan tribes band together in small families and seek vengeance against the settler races, the centaurs of the Steppes war upon each other and the city-state of Estoria when they’re not partying and stargazing, and the Raving Ones are maenad worshipers of Lutheria who dwell in caves and shadowed glens, ambushing unlucky travelers to rob, torture, and sacrifice to their patron.

*hey, that’s a Roman term!

The inhabitants of Thylea are collectively referred to as Mortals, even those among the native and fey races to distinguish them from the more monstrous and divine entities. The ‘native races’ include the more classic Greek mythology creatures: centaurs, the various cyclops subraces (who are sadly non-playable), medusae, minotaurs, satyrs, and sirens. The ‘settler races’ include the standard PHB stock, and are pretty much assimilated wholesale into greater Thylean society beyond a few rare exceptions: orcs do not exist on Thylea so the half-orcs are a small community in Mytros, while tieflings are referred to as “Stygeans'' and live in Mytros’ ghettos due to a believed association with Lutheria. Dragonborn are virtually non-existent, and if one were to show up the average Thylean may think them to be either a monster or a scion of the Dragonlords.

The inclusion of the non-human PHB races is perhaps the most obvious case of ‘square peg round hole’ for importing D&D tropes into Odyssey. Most NPCs who aren’t of the native races or monsters are humans, and there’s no real place in the world for elves or dwarves that makes thematic sense. I find that the native races more or less fill most of the PHB races’ roles: centaurs and minotaurs are strong warrior guys, nymphs are nature-loving magical people, medusae are the cursed and shunned outcasts, and satyrs and sirens have Dexterity bonuses and racial features which are good for subtle distractions and/or mobility. The only real thing missing is a half-elf ‘jack of all trades’ or Small-sized races like gnomes and halflings.

We briefly get into the Laws and Oaths of Thylea. They are magically-binding aspects of the world which virtually all native Thyleans know, and even the gods can be limited by them. Generally speaking if a person swears to do or not do something, then they suffer some persistent misfortune should they intentionally break the oath. The Furies, who are not gods but very powerful beings, are three women tasked with interpreting and enforcing said Oaths. They dispatch erinyes to take the more egregious Oathbreakers to their own special hell in the afterlife known as the Island of Oathbreakers.

The most common types of Oaths are Guest Friendship (hospitality to those who invite you into their home) which is used for neutral meeting grounds and periods of peace even between sworn enemies; an Oath of Peace, where the swearer promises to commit no violence against them or their servants; an Oath of Protection, a one-time promise to come to a person or group’s aid in times of crisis; and an Oath of Service, where someone swears to perform one task on behalf of an individual. This last one is the most rare for said task is open-ended and the beneficiary of the Oath can ask them to perform dangerous, suicidal, or even wicked deeds.

We also get a list of sample curses for those who break Oaths, but can also be for those who otherwise anger the gods or commit some other great crime. They are persistent conditions which worsen over time and are typically only cured via powerful magic or rectifying the original misdeed. Curse of the Harpy and Curse of the Medusa transform the victim into the aforementioned monster types, while Curse of the Graverobber makes all food non-nourishing and slowly starves the tomb-robber to death.* Finally, Curse of the Treacherous causes the Furies to dispatch a trio of erinyes devils with special spells and equipment (entangling ropes, plane shift, etc) to kidnap the unfortunate soul and take them to the Island of Oathbreakers.

*this is only inflicted on those who steal from holy sites; otherwise the average adventurer would be in deep shit.


Epic Paths are one of the larger aspects of Odyssey of the Dragonlords. Added on in addition to standard backgrounds, they are aspects of a PC which tie them into the larger plot. There are certain points in the Adventure Path where a relevant Epic Path will provide an alternative means of solving a task, bonus quests and rewards, fosters a relationship with an existing important NPC, and in some cases explains what the PC was up to before the start of the campaign.

Barring one exception they are all mutually exclusive, so every PC must have a different Epic Path than the rest of the party. Additionally, each Path has a Divine Boon of some sort where the PC can be rescued them from death for free only once in the campaign. It may take the form of a notable NPC coming to resurrect them, fate turning things in their favor at the last moment, the spirit of a loved one possessing their body to bring them back from the brink of death, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, there’s a Divine Blessing which is gained via completion of the Epic Path’s overall story, and some can end earlier than others on the Adventure Path.

The Paths’ entries outline the various milestones encountered during the adventure, but said adventure sections in the appropriate chapters also make callbacks in handy little sidebars for user-friendliness. For said reasons I won’t cover them here but instead during the review of relevant chapters.

Demi-God: The PC is one of Pythor’s many bastard children, and the god feels in his heart that their progeny will succeed where he failed and maybe take his place as the God of War.

Vanished One: The PC is the last surviving Dragonlord, but the Oracle Versi became obsessed with them and jealously took them as a favored pet/implied concubine a la Odysseus and Circe. Her magic helped the Vanished One be virtually ageless, but ephemeral time spent in a secluded cave has dulled their abilities.

Doomed One: Lutheria has a thing for murdering children, and sacrificing babies is one of her cult’s most infamous rites. The PC parents were part of her cult but refused to offer up their only child for slaughter. This earned their death at the hands of the goddess’ many servants. Lutheria’s minions have tormented the PC ever since and making their life hell, the goddess viewing the whole affair as incredibly funny.

Unlike the other Paths, the PC can be resurrected immediately twice upon death, but the third time they remain dead forever unless or until Lutheria is destroyed.

The Haunted One: The PC had a happy idyllic life with a loving family. But a prophecy foretold that the PC will find a way to overcome death itself, thus posing a threat to Lutheria’s dominion. So she used her powers to gather the souls of the PCs’ loved ones in her scythe. But she made one mistake: the PC somehow escaped her clutches thanks to Mytros shielding them and erasing all memories of their legacy from reality. But the PC remembers what they lost, if not necessarily the deities involved.

The Gifted One: Like the Demi-God the PC has a divine bloodline, but as one of Sydon’s grandchildren. The cruel god murdered his mortal wife, but was unaware that she gave birth to a daughter, who is in turn the PC’s mother. Said PC is destined to restore the glory of the Dragonlords and defeat their grandfather.

The Lost One: The PC is the survivor of a shipwreck from a foreign realm outside of Thylea, and more than one PC can choose this Epic Path. This one has the last least ties to the adventure path, and its main goal is to find a way back home.

The Dragonslayer: The PC’s village was wiped out by a dragon raining flaming breath down upon hapless innocents. Said ‘dragon’ is actually Helios the Sun God (something not known immediately), and the Epic Path revolves around hunting down and slaying the one who took everything from them.

The Cursed One: The PC hails from a family or tribe who carry an ancestral curse from the Titans’ wrath. The PC has faced a life of difficulty, and their brethren are fated to die off within a generation if a means of lifting the curse isn’t found.

Guidelines are provided for the DM to make their own Epic Path; the advice focuses mostly on how to ideally space the magic item rewards based on level, making granted special powers equivalent to Epic Boons from the DMG, NPC mounts and companions should be of CR 3 or lower, Divine Blessings follow the guidelines for Supernatural Gifts (Blessings unsurprisingly) under the DMG’s Other Rewards section, and the Divine Boons should involve a key NPC from the plot riding in as the cavalry to save the PC’s now-dead bacon.

The remaining sections are short entries which can be better summed up in future chapters: an Adventure Overview outlining the plot in bite-sized chunks as well as recommended Fame and Experience Levels for the major Chapters, advice on Session 0 prep and how the PCs came together, and sample advice for role-playing the more notable and recurring characters of the Adventure Path (most notably the gods). The last part of our chapter is a picture of the Thylean alphabet which is similar to the one of Ancient Greece’s.


Thoughts So Far: I feel that this is overall a rather good introduction to the world of Thylea. We didn’t get into any deep detail or new mechanics and rules, and some of the entries feel like they’d be more appropriate in later sections on account that they show up much later in the book. I do find it rather funny how the city-state with the God of War as ruler is not the one ripping off of Sparta, though.

The mechanics-facing aspects of the Epic Paths show up in the appendix, and speaking of which they’re a mixed bag. Some of them have more pertinent ties into the world and larger plot, such as the Demi-God and Haunted One. Others feel more like side-plots at most such as the Cursed One, Lost One, and Dragonslayer. The Vanished One being captive by an incredibly possessive character has quite a few warning bells,* and given that the Oracle is meant to be a major patron and the person who summons the call to adventure for the party in the first place, it is the kind of thing that may require a social contract or Trigger Warning for the gaming group to clear beforehand. Additionally, the Doomed One and Haunted One are too close in concept (Lutheria took away your family) and their relevant plot points are also the same. I understand that trying to make enough potential paths which have differing consequences echoing throughout an entire campaign can be difficult, so my criticism on the sameness front is a bit muted.

*like making the PC swear an oath to return to her cave when all is said and done, trying to murder characters they fall in love with, and also restoring said PC to life via a kiss as the Divine Boon.

All in all, I feel that this is a good introduction, but some things can be ordered better.

Join us next time as we cover new options for PCs: races, class archetypes, spells, equipment, and the rewards and Divine Blessings for the Epic Paths!

The Northlands Saga Complete is a Norse-themed sword and sorcery adventure path and campaign setting. Made for both Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry, it is a far-ranging epic inspired by the culture and folklore of the Viking era, and for the past year I have been running it for a weekly Sunday group. Although like any level 1 to 20 Pathfinder campaign it has its system-related warts (and some questionable plot and narrative choices), it helped create a campaign that has been lots of fun, and with all the notes and work I’ve done on it I decided to make an in-depth review.

So a brief history of the publication. Back in 2011 when Skyrim was the next big thing and the hills were alive with the sounds of thu’um, Frog God Games began working on a playtest for a Viking-themed adventure. One of the chief writers, Ken Spencer, was an archeologist and history teacher who had a deep passion for medieval Scandinavia and its legends, and sought to create a setting which borrowed heavily from that region’s cultural aspects. Four adventures were made in total set in the Northlands, but the line was put on hold for five years until a successful KickStarter produced a massive book with the original adventures plus eight new ones and a complete setting to boot.

Northlands Saga Complete is split into two major sections: the Northlands Saga Campaign Guide and the Northlands Saga Adventure Path. After that are several appendices of player handouts and maps (both player-friendly and GM eyes’ only versions), pregenerated player characters, and a bonus stand-alone adventure. We are going to cover the Campaign Guide here first.


This is the introductory chapter covering the overall feel of the world, the regions’ history, and a discussion on Kennings (compound expressions with metaphorical meanings often used in poetry). Basically the Northlands is part of the wider Lost Lands campaign setting published by Frog God Games, but the influence of the rest of the world is minimal enough that the Northlands may as well be its own. The Northlands is a low magic sword and sorcery style realm where most of civilization are villages at best and while magic is a common occurrence in the form of cunning women and folkloric charms it is rarely understood and wholly accepted. The setting has fantasy races, but is humanocentric in a Ravenloftian vein where dwarves and elves are isolated, halflings and gnomes don’t exist, and cannon fodder baddies tend rival Vikings, cultists, and various kinds of giant-kin instead of kobolds, goblins, and orcs.

The Northlands proper is sits on the northern reach of Akados, the major continent of the Lost lands, and the southern reach of the arctic continent of Boros. It has a Meditteranean-style geography where a central North Sea dominates the center and the various lands circle around it and sea travel is a vital aspect of life.


The region has been home to thousands of years’ worth of immigration, with the ethnic Northlander humans the most recent arrival (800 years ago). The first settlers were the Andøvans, who mastered bronze-working and whose cultural legacy is only known via the large amount of haunted mountain ruins and barrow mounds left behind. They went to war against invading trolls and lost, causing their culture to cease to be. A thousand years later the next group of settlers were a tribe of elves known as the Nûk on a religious pilgrimage. With the forest the only place unclaimed by the numerous trollish tribes they and settled there in secret.

1,500 years later, a tribe of humans known as the Uln arrived and unsuccessfully warred against the trolls. They went further north and settled into newly-discovered city ruins, which had buried texts dedicated to the demon lord Althunak whose growing cult plunged the cities into bloody war. The Uln driven from the cities soon became the Ulnat, the fantasy counterpart-Inuit people of the Northlands. The Lord of Ice and Stone’s cult held sway for a time until a hero, Hvran the Half-born, earned the trust of several tribes and led a band of heroes. They fought a mighty battle against the demon-god himself, and Hvran sacrificed himself to trap Althunak beneath a frozen lake.

150 years later a group of Hel worshipers are contained in a walled-off peninsula after war with others. There was a dude named Swein Sigurdson who thought that Hel had it all wrong and fought and escaped with like-minded people into the not-Underdark, where Swein received a vision from Wotan, head of the Æsir who told him of a new place to settle which turned out to the the troll-occupied Northlands. Traveling through the Under Realms for months they finally found light and fought a war against the trolls. They won, the giants were driven off, Swein Sigurdson was declared the High King, and the society of modern Northlanders came into being.

TL;DR Barrow-building humans fight and lose against trolls, elves migrate to the forests, the not-Inuit defeat not-Sauron, not-Nordics are led by Odin through the Underdark to the Northlands and drive off the trolls. And if you’re wondering what the deal with the seeming disconnected events is, they tie into the later campaign to various extents. Especially Althunak who is more or less the BBEG of the Northlands Saga.


Along with a pronunciation guide on Nordic spellings not present in English, the last section of the introduction discusses the concept of kennings, or word pictures expressed by skalds and reciters of oral traditions. Quite a bit of in-game text and NPC conversation makes use of such kennings, although not overly so (mostly important and well-spoken NPCs). Basically they are ways to paint a picture of common concepts via metaphors, references to godly traits, and the like. It gives a sample list of common kennings as a means of using them in your own campaign.

Pronunciation of words from a Nordic base is no easy task to a non-Nordic tongue, and many of the place names, and names of gods and heroes are just that. They are not, for the most part, intended to be a true rendering of Norwegian or even ancient Norse words and names, but they are meant to convey that flavor. As a result, there are some spelling habits that are perhaps strange to the eyes of many gamers. As a result, we’ve included a little bit of a pronunciation guide, though it is no way meant to be a didactic or exhaustive discussion of the subject in any real-life context. It merely explains the conventions we have used in the Northlands Saga. As with anything game related, they are there for you to use or ignore as you see fit.

Of immediate note is undoubtedly the fact that many names end in an ‘r’ that do not normally do so. This final ‘r’ of Nordic origin is often left off in Western renderings, but to lend the air of legitimacy to our Northlands setting, we have opted to go for the older, more obscure spelling. However, in general the final ‘r’ is silent unless it follows a vowel, so that ‘Thor’ is still ‘Thor’, but ‘Grimr’ would be pronounced ‘Grim’. In the case of ‘Baldr’, however, conventional use would still pronounce it ‘Balder’, so this rule is far from absolute.

For vowels, ‘Æ, æ’ is usually pronounced like ‘eye’ or ‘ay’; ‘Á, á’ is pronounced like ‘ow’; ‘Ö, ö’ and ‘Ø, ø’ are pronounced like ‘oeh’, and the other accented vowels are held longer. Unaccented vowels usually have their long sound. The letter ‘Ð, ð’ is called ‘eth’. It is pronounced as a ‘th’ sound and is sometimes used interchangeably with the letter ‘Þ, þ’ (called ‘thorn’ and also pronounced with a ‘th’ sound).

While these hints by no means create a fully authentic pronunciation in terms of real ancient Nordic and Germanic languages, they will help you to catch the intended flavor and feel. However, if it is easier, just use the spellings for the look of them and make your pronunciations whatever is simplest for you. Use them as best fits your tastes.

Common Kennings of the Northlands

Alfar dwimmer: magic
Baldr’s bane: mistletoe
battle-dew: blood
blood-ember: axe
blood-worm: sword
breaker of rings: Køenig or jarl
Corpse-ripper: the dragon Nídhöggr, chews
upon the corpses of murderers, adulterers, and
oath-breakers
easer of raven’s hunger: generous leader
feeder of ravens: warrior
Freyja’s tears: amber
Hanged God: Wotan
Frigg’s thread: gold
icicle of blood: Sword or spear
Loptr’s favor: fire
Loptr’s mead: lies/deception
mind’s worth: courage/honor
moon distaff’s thread: silver
Rán’s hammer: waves
raven harvest: corpse
ring-giver: Køenig or jarl
sea-steed: ship
shame of swords: shield
Sif’s hair: gold
sky-candle: the sun
slaughter-dew: blood
Slayer of Giants: Donar
spear-din: battle
swan of blood: raven
sword-sleep: death
wave-cutter: ship
wave-swine: ship
wave thread: sea serpent
Wotan’s children: raven
weather of weapons: war
whale road: sea
wolf-hearted: coward, oath-breaker, one
without mind’s worth
wound-hoe: sword
wound-sea: blood

The chapter starts off by mentioning that in terms of D&D races the Northlands is not as varied as the typical setting or other places in the Lost Lands. Only humans and Nûklander elves have any significant population size (with a few half-elves around), and the few dwarves around are relegated in small communities in the two largest towns. Halflings, gnomes, and elves of other tribes are individual foreigners if they come into the region. Orcs, half-orcs, goblins, bugbears, and gnolls are virtually absent, but replacing their niche are all varieties of giant. Just about every type of Monster Manual giant can be found in the Northlands along with some new ones in this book, and there are many varieties of trolls. The setting mentions that giants in the Northlands are always of Evil alignment, and giant and troll-blooded people merely a strong tendency than an inherent trait. Funny enough, although the pre-generated PCs include a dwarf, there are about 200 total in the biggest towns, and are kind of a being in Norse mythology, they don’t get a write-up in this chapter at all and are more or less “invisible” in the adventure path.

There is a brief entry on languages, with some interesting notes: one, there is a “Common” tongue but it’s spoken far south in lands once dominated by an expansive empire which never touched the Northlands and so isn’t a language you start play with automatically. The lingua franca of ethnic Northlanders is Nørsk, with the written version known as Runic and treated as a separate language (literacy is rare and effectively an art all its own). Andøvan is now a dead language, and Nûklander, Seagestrelander, and Ulnat are spoken by their respective cultures. Two demonic cults, the Beast Cult and the Children of Althunak, respectively use Beast Cult Sign Language and Old Uln as secret code tongues.

The Northlanders are the most populous human cultural group in the setting and pretty much fantasy counterpart Scandinavians. Although no strangers to warfare, most Northlanders live an agricultural lifestyle of growing crops and animal husbandry. Still, their economy is supplemented by warfare, trade, and raiding and almost every family owns several weapons for self-defense and chainmail if they’re well-to-do. They have a hierarchy of social classes ranging from thralls (slaves, usually foreigners or those in debt), freemen (majority of Northlanders), and jarls (Northland leaders who have enough wealth and goodwill to get the other social classes to pledge their lives to them). Northland social structure is not ironclad; thralls can buy their freedom, and in some lands a jarl’s influence is tempered by democratic assemblies known as Things or fall out of influence if his competence falters.

The rest of the section is rather wordy, but I can point out a few interesting things: Northlanders don’t use horses for warfare (they are meant for travel); many of them have a social gathering known as a Thing where every person can cast a vote for matters of laws, crimes, and public works projects; the laws of housing where a guest and host have mutually-beneficial social contracts; and that religion is a low-key affair where local priests known as godi are a part-time local position and that actual spellcasting clerics and druids are very rare specialized godi who forged a bond with a specific deity.

Next up are the Nûk or Nûklanders, elves who are more or less fantasy counterpart-Sami. They are the descendents of a persecuted cult whose god said that he would lead his people north to a bountiful land far north. After several civil wars encouraged them to move thousands of miles to the promised land, they found that their dream destination was far from hospitable. Betrayed, the people turned against the more devout followers and leaders in a night of slaughter and forsook worship of the gods in favor of calling out to the spirits of nature.

Nûklanders primarily live in the forests and tundras of the Northlands’ northernmost reaches and beyond as nomadic reindeer herders. They have some limited trade with the Northlanders of Estenfird and are on generally positive terms with them. Nûk societies are governed entirely by direct democracy councils (the concept of one person commanding many is a strange concept to them). Their society also greatly distrusts arcane magic, and practitioners face exile or death if they cannot conceal their talents. Druids, oracles, and rangers are the most common classes, with fighters rarer but when they do show up make for amazing cavalry with war-trained reindeer.

In game terms Nûklanders share the racial traits of Pathfinder elves, save that instead of gaining typical enchantment/sleep resistance and spell resistance/spellcraft bonuses they get cold resistance 5 and the silent hunter trait (reduce stealth penalties for higher speed by 5 and can use Stealth while running at -20).

The other human ethnicity detailed are the Seagestrelanders, and I am unsure what real-world culture if any they are meant to replicate. The term “Seagestrelander” is a catch-all for the hundreds of warring tribes that live between the southwest shores of the North Sea and the southern plains of the Sea of Grass. Most of them live within the forests of their namesake and the coastal shores, with expansion blocked off by natural geography. They are mostly farmers, herders, and fishermen and their lands are poor in mineral wealth. As Northlanders have metal goods, said group is willing to trade them iron weapons and armor in exchange for amber, gold, and slaves. This last commodity exacerbated the violence among the Seagestrelanders themselves and with Northlanders, with rival tribes selling off prisoners of war and Northlander vessels come to raid as well as trade.

Seagestrelanders build their villages around god-trees, the stumps of massive hollowed-out tree trunks where idol representations of their deities are placed. Funerary and worship rites take place here, and Seagestrelander spellcasters gain automatic Maximize Spell on all spells cast within 30 feet of a god-tree. Magic is even less common among them than the Northlanders, but when it does show up they are almost always honored regardless of their type of magic. All spells, arcane or divine, are viewed as gifts from the gods.

Seagestrelander characters are usually of the martial variety. The section mentions that Seagestrelander PCs will face difficulty in the Northlands, as the vast majority of them are thralls and generally assumed to be such by the populace. It mentions the idea of a slave PC, but doesn’t go in much on actual advice beyond “role-playing challenge for experienced and mature groups.” Interesting thing is, slavery and thralldom isn’t really touched upon in the adventure path, and demographics-wise thralls make up a very small portion of the population (one to five percent in places and almost never past ten percent).

Although not detailed here, one human ethnic group I wanted to touch on are the Ulnat or fantasy counterpart Inuit. They live in the Far North, an arctic region north of the Northlands dominated by tundra and mountains. Like the Northlanders they are a heavily maritime people, relying upon the sea for their livelihood. They are a society of hunters and trappers because their native environs are unsustainable for agriculture, and their main method of transportation on land are sled dogs. The sourcebook does not make much mention of their religious and cultural traditions beyond the fact that the heroes who overthrew the Cult of Althunak are buried in small tombs with their prized possessions.

The Giant-blooded are one of the 2 entirely new races of the setting. They are like half-elves or half-orcs in that they are either the product of a human-giant union or more rarely two human parents. Giant-blooded infants not raised by giants are usually killed at birth, and those who are spared are relegated to the fringes of society on account of giants’ negative reputation. A few jarls keep giant-blooded around for their great physical strength for both farming and warfare purposes, but others treat them as freak shows to show off to entertain guests. Giant-blooded rarely if ever appear among the Seagestrelanders, and given the Ulnat’s geographic position unknown among them. They are quite likely to be adventurers on account of societal prejudices and innate wanderlust pushing them to move.

Stat-wise giant-blooded are almost entirely built to be melee warriors. They have +4 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Dexterity, and -2 Charisma. They are Large, have a Reach of 10 feet and speed of 40 feet on account of their large frames, and to offset the size and Dexterity penalties to AC they have +1 natural armor. Low-light Vision is their only ability not explicitly “muscle-based,” so if you’re going to be giant-blooded your role is more or less determined for you unless you’re going for a self-imposed challenge.

The other new race are the Troll-blooded who are much like the giant-blooded save they are even rarer, more physically monstrous, even more vilified, and have a strong persistent hunger that is a drain on larders during wintertime. Those not slain at birth are either hidden away from the rest of society or treated as expendable thralls to be thrown in battle against one’s enemies. Troll-blooded adventurers become so mostly to find a means to satiate violent drives and their hunger (the book notes that heroes eat well no matter their ancestry).

Stat-wise troll-blooded are melee-friendly, but not as much as the giant-blooded. They have +2 Strength, +4 Constitution, and -4 Charisma. They are Medium size and have darkvision to a range of 60 feet, along with a pair of claws that deal 1d4 damage and the Ferocity trait which is similar to the half-orc’s save that you are staggered when you fall below 0 hit points. In line with their heritage, their last two traits are the ability to safely eat any organic substance and immunity to ingested poisons from this, and take 1 more damage per damage die from fire-related attacks.

Troll-blooded are a bit more versatile than giant-blooded on account that their racial traits are a bit all over the place. Their claws and ability to eat anything are very situational, but ferocity is effectively a free Diehard feat. The Strength and Constitution bonuses are nice, although the giant-blooded’s reach is a more attractive option for melee types.


Picture from bobkehl of deviantart and not in the book but did not want this to be too wall of texty

Although technically covered in the Northlander section, there an in-depth discussion on classes. Unlike other settings Northlands has classes which are “banned” or at least heavily discouraged or changed around. The setting is more or less Early Middle Ages/Viking Era in technology and aesthetics: Alchemists, cavaliers, gunslingers, inquisitors, monks, ninja, and samurai are almost invariably foreigners from the Southlands (catch-all term for everyone south of the Northlands). The book notes that the PCs are meant to be heroes of an epic saga, and should be able to break the mold via a good backstory of how they came upon these strange traditions.

Classes which are reflavored for the setting include Barbarians, who are holy men and women of Wotan (Odin) who struggled with violent impulses but learned to tame their inner fires via divine guidance. They are either Bearsarkars or Ulfhanders, new archetypes described later in new rules in Chapter 4. Bards are known as skalds and well-respected for their inspiring abilities and knowledge of history and culture in spite of their arcane powers (which they try to disguise as “natural ability”). Clerics and Druids are a rare sort of godi (who normally don’t cast spells) who made a pact with a specific deity to carry out their will. Nûklander druids are an exception, who don’t worship the gods but instead call upon the spirits of nature to grant them power. Fighters are perhaps the most common PC class among the Northlands in general, but Monks are typically seem as having a near-supernatural control over their bodies and distrusted. Paladins are all-female spear maidens who pledged their services either to Baldr, Donar (Thor), or Wotan (Odin) but are seen less as holy warriors but rather defenders of home and clan whose abilities are derived from the blessings of wyrd (fate). Rangers are the next most common class after Fighters, usually of the non-magic-using archetypes (I don’t know if any such exist in Pathfinder tho). Rogues are surprisingly rare, the justification that theft is a major crime, there are not many locks and mechanical traps save in the ruins of the Andøvan, and what “organized crime” exists in the Northlands are less thieves’ guilds and more bandits, raiders, and the Jomsvikings who are decidedly more martial in nature. Arcane spellcasters of all stripes are exceedingly rare to the point of only really being known in myth and legend and when encountered most people assume them to be dangerous, and summoners are particularly hated for belief that their minions come from the Ginnungagap (primordial cosmic void) or the creations of demons and giants. The only two exceptions to this mistrust are the aforementioned bards and cunning women, an all-female sorcerous bloodline supplemented with healing powers. Both of these disciplines are well-respected professions. Seagestrelanders are more open and view magic of all kinds as blessings of the gods, whereas Nûklanders outlaw all types of magic save non-deific druidism.


And so ends our first chapter!

Next up is Odal, the Lands!