The most expensive 3rd Party D&D/D20 products

[Libertad]

So for no reason other than curiosity and fun I decided to browse Drive-Thru RPG's wide selection of 3rd party D&D products, arranging the search engine list by price.

Some interesting things about Pathfinder on DTRPG is that about one-third of the available works (around 6,000) are $3 or less.  This earlier confirmed my suspicions about the Pathfinder fandom being inundated with mini-sourcebooks and splats as opposed to "full" products, although there are a few rarities of full books being extremely low in price.

Another thing is that a lot of products with the Pathfinder label do not always have the D20 and 3.X labels, meaning that it's harder to find how much Pathfinder dominates the online D20 market.

Discounting bundles, subscriptions, and foreign language products (all of which are official Paizo sourcebooks translated into German), I decided to make a list of the most expensive sourcebooks for both Pathfinder and 3.X D20 games.  Generally speaking, there's a top tier of products above $20; below that and the list of similarly-priced goods grows exponentially with both entries.  As dropping twenty bucks on a full-sized adventure path or sourcebook isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things, I felt like focusing on the bigger entries which might make a prospective customer do an about-take.

Most Expensive 3PP Pathfinder Books

• The Slumbering Tsar Saga ($89.99)
• Northlands Saga Complete ( $75.00 on Drive-Thru RPG, $50.00 on Frog God Games)
• Rappan Athuk-Pathfinder Edition ($40.00)
• Razor Coast-Pathfinder Edition ($40.00)
• The Sword of Air-Pathfinder ($39.99)
• The Road to Revolution: the Campaign ($34.95)
• The Sinking: Complete Serial ($34.95)
• Rise of the Drow ($32.99)
• Mythic Hero's Handbook ($29.99)
• Mythic Monster Manual ($29.99)
• Mythic Spell Compendium ($29.99)
• Snow White ($29.99)
• Tome of Horrors Complete-Pathfinder Edition ($29.99)
• Zeitgeist: “The Gears of Revolution”-Act One: The Investigation Begins (Pathfinder) ($29.99)
• Advanced Races Compendium ($29.99)
• Gothic Campaign Compendium ($29.98)
• Freeport: the City of Adventure for the Pathfinder RPG ($29.95)
• Quests of Doom Complete Pathfinder Edition ($27.50)
• Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms ($25.00)
• Book of Lost Spells ($25.00 on Drive-Thru RPG, $19.99 on froggodgames.com)
• Veranthea Codex ($24.99)
• Suzerain ($24.99)
• Strange Magic: Ethermagic, Composition, and Truemagic ($24.99)
• The Southlands Campaign Setting ($24.99)
• Ponyfinder Campaign Setting ($24.99)
• Ponyfinder: Forgotten Past ($24.99)
• Ponyfinder: Tribes of Everglow
• Neverwhen ($24.99)
• Neverwhen Starships ($24.99)
• Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen (Pathfinder) ($24.99)
• Dungeonlands: Machine of the Lich Queen (Pathfinder) ($24.99)
• Dungeonlands: Palace of the Lich Queen (Pathfinder) ($24.99)
• The Grande Temple of Jing ($24.95)
• The Eamonville Incursion ($22.99)
• Forgotten Foes ($22.33 on Drive-Thru RPG, $15.99 on Paizo)

Roughly half are mega-adventures or adventure paths of some sort.  Even the Gothic Campaign Compendium and Freeport have sample adventures in back.  Aside from Rise of the Drow, the top 5 are all massive projects by Frog God Games, a bunch of folk who own a lot of the old Necromancer Games/White Wolf Sword & Sorcery Stuff.  An interesting note is that FGG are also OSR fans, and aside from Tsar all the listed products have Swords & Wizardry versions as well.

I will say that I'm the proud owner of 12 out of the 23 20 out of the 35 products above: basically I'm only missing the three Mythic Books, both of Neverwhen, the three Dungeonlands series, Road to Revolution, and the Suzerain and Veranthea settings. Too much to keep up with now.

Freeport's the combined version of the system-neutral setting guide and the Pathfinder supplement along with new adventures.

Tome of Horrors is an excellent monster book I use a lot in my campaigns.

Zeitgeist can actually be bought for $35 for a subscription (the campaign's still being written), including the Act One collection; get that instead.  From what I read so far it's a really cool fantasy Victorian D&D setting where the PCs are royal agents thwarting evil plots against their nation.

Ponyfinder is more of an acquired taste and rather short for its price (120 pages), but it is very pretty.

1 on 1 Adventures is a novel idea and collection of eleven Pathfinder adventures strongly focused around the expertise and skill-set of a particular class.  For example, a gambling tournament at an eccentric old noble's estate is for roguish classes.  I have yet to run any of the adventures myself, though.

As for the rest, Slumbering Tsar is quite literally a gargantuan mega-dungeon (952 pages) which can take the PCs from 7th to 20th level, centering around a ruined demonic city presided over by Orcus (a favorite of Frog God/Necromancer Games).

Rise of the Drow is a Level 1 to 20 adventure path involving the PCs fighting against a drow invasion of the surface world by taking the fight down into the caverns.  It's got really high production values, with writers like Ed Greenwood and a lot of artists.

Rappan Athuk was an infamous mega-dungeon (levels 1 to 20) back in the early days of 3.5 geared around being the table-top equivalent of I Wanna Be the Guy, as every level was dedicated to killing PCs.

The Razor Coast was a Polynesian-themed setting/adventure path which was stuck in development hell since 2009 before being picked up by Frog God Games to finish.  The setting is unique enough that I might check it out.

Sword of Air...eh, I haven't heard much of it other than being Frog God's owner's home campaign setting since 1977, which seems weird considering how drastically different Original D&D is from Pathfinder.  It's not the only super-old setting I've seen converted to PF (City-State of the Invincible Overlord being such a planned project), which kind of makes me wonder how much Gameplay and Story Segregation is going on when new concepts in PF mess with a setting's core assumptions.

Road to Revolution was apparently a collected conversion of a 3rd Edition Adventure path set in the Great City Campaign Setting.  I looked at the setting and adventures, and they don't really describe much in the product blurbs to make them really stand out from others.

Gothic Campaign Compendium's a collection of new rules material (class archetypes, spells, etc) for a gothic horror type of game, as well as some adventures.  Could be neat, although the price tag's a deterrent unless I hear more stuff about it.

Dungeonlands: Palace of the Lich Queen is apparently part of a trilogy of high-level adventures, combining elements of modern pulp and science fiction with fantasy.  It's one of the few published adventures (official or 3rd party) meant for 18th-20th level PCs, so it might be interesting to see if the designers incorporated any problems of high-level play to accommodate the dungeon crawl.

Neverwhen's apparently a meta-setting with ways on connecting various campaign worlds and genres together.  Can't find out much more than that.

Faces of the Tarnished Souk is actually part of an overarching setting in the Plane of Dreams by Rite Publishing, as first seen in the Coliseum Morpheuon.  From what I saw of the preview, the NPCs seem monstrous and trippy, like a scaly dinosauric warrior who is actually a contemplative ascetic, or a fallen inevitable who now enforces the law dressed as a wandering monk on busy city streets.

Most Expensive 3PP D20/3.X Books

1.   Ptolus: Monte Cook’s City by the Spire ($59.99)
2.   Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock ($59.99)
3.   Wilderlands of High Fantasy (new) ($48.00)
4.   The City of Brass ($39.99 on Drive-Thru RPG, $14.99 on Frog God Games)
5.   The World’s Largest Dungeon ($39.95)
6.   Heroes of the Jade Oath (AE) ($29.99)
7.   Dungeon Crawl Classics #35: Gazetteer of the Known Realms ($29.99)
8.   City State of the Invincible Overlord ($28.50)
9.   Starship Troopers: The Role-Playing Game ($26.97)
10.   Big Bang Ricochet - Workhorse #1: HMMWV ($26.00)
11.   OCS Tome of Terrors ($25.00)
12.   "ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution" - DIGITAL BOXED SET! ($25.00)
13.   Etherscope ($24.99)
14.   Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG ($24.99)
15.   Dragonmech ($24.99)
16.   Egyptian Adventures – Hamunaptra ($24.00)
17.   Slaine the RPG of Celtic Heroes ($23.99)
18.   Silver Age Sentinels: D20 Edition ($23.98)
19.   Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game ($23.97)
20.   The Eamonville Incursion ($22.99)
21.   Tome of Horrors II ($22.99/$24.99)
22.   The Black Bestiary ($21.95)
23.   Legends of the Samurai Hardcover ($21.95)
24.   Trinity D20 ($20.99)
25.   Book of Erotic Fantasy ($20.99)
26.   Aberrant D20 ($20.99)
27.   Adventure! D20 ($20.99)
28.   BESM D20 Revised Edition ($20.97)



WIP

[Unbeliever]

Dungeonlands: Palace of the Lich Queen is apparently part of a trilogy of high-level adventures, combining elements of modern pulp and science fiction with fantasy.  It's one of the few published adventures (official or 3rd party) meant for 18th-20th level PCs, so it might be interesting to see if the designers incorporated any problems of high-level play to accommodate the dungeon crawl.

I'm playing through part of this now.  I think the book before the actual "palace" of the lich queen, which is the Foyer of the Lich Queen or something.  I can say more when I have some free time, but suffice to say I am very unimpressed. 

Speaking specifically to the OP, so far the designers seem to have no idea how high level gameplay works at all.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

... foreign language products (all of which are official Paizo sourcebooks translated into German) ...

Noticed this little gem.
So PF 3rd party is almost all English language, with a smidge of German.

Hello Market Kitty.

[Libertad]

Recently Legendary Games released 3 books for Pathfinder, $29.99 each:

Mythic Hero's Handbook

Mythic Monster Manual

Mythic Spell Compendium

All of them incorporate the rules from Mythic Adventures, a Paizo product which is sort of like epic level for Pathfinder, only confined within levels 1-20.  It basically gives powerful abilities based on mythic tiers, meant to represent the descendants of the gods, heroes chosen by destiny, etc.  PCs gain more tiers by completing legendary quests and stuff.

Personally I do not have much experience with the Mythic ruleset, although from what I hear it has some nice things for martials yet the stuff for mages is of course wildly stronger.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Heh, makes me wonder about pitting a Mythic Half Caster against a non-mythic Full Caster.


Not to drive home my tangential point 1 post up,
but one of the dudes at gamingden posted this
semi-inferred amazon sales chart for 5e.
I noticed the rather large amount of German sales.

(click to show/hide)

[Libertad]

Update: Added Strange Magic to the Pathfinder list.  It definitely has some Tome of Magic vibe going about it, in that it presents 3 new magic subsystems.  I can't speak for Composition and Truemagic, but I own the Ethermancer base class before it got replaced by the Ultimate Ethermagic book.  It's a pretty nifty spiritual successor to the warlock, focused more on the cosmos and great void of the planes than infernal pacts.

[zook1shoe]

2nd party book Dragonlance Towers of High Sorcery is going for $65+ on amazon and eBay

[Libertad]

So I decided to request several of these books as birthday presents in addition to my own purchases, and I'm now the proud owner of Slumbering Tsar Saga, Rise of the Drow, Rappan Athuk, Razor Coast, Gothic Campaign Compendium, and Strange Magic.

I'm already talking about Rappan Athuk in this thread, and I'm reading the others off and on with varying degrees of scatterbrain.


Slumbering Tsar is pretty much the largest D20 book I know of, clocking in at 1.5 Ptoluses or 951 pages.  It is a very large adventure, taking PCs from 7th level to 20th and possibly beyond.  The idea is that there's this ancient evil city named Tsar which was destroyed by the forces of light and Good eons ago, and ever since it has been a cursed place.  It does't follow a linear format and is more sandboxy in the sense that the PCs have plenty of places to explore.  The book is divided into three sections: the Camp and the Desolation, detailing the scarred wasteland surrounding Tsar and the desperate colony of folk nearby (many of whom have their own side plots and dark secrets).  The second book details Tsar itself, while the third book details the hidden citadel of Orcus which is summoned to the Material Plane after conditions are filled in the previous adventure.

The citadel is not only shaped like a giant Orcus, it is a series of dungeons with names corresponding to the relevant body parts.  The Lap of Orcus is of course the "entertainment district" for the resident demons.  There's a party in the demon lord's pants and everybody's invited!

The book itself was years in the making due to various real-life things (it was too large to be practically published), and originally was detailed as part of a subscription series dividing it into parts.


Gothic Campaign Compendium is a bunch of new spells, archetypes, items, monsters, and three adventures for campaigns of gothic horror.  A lot of the ideas are quite thematic, such as the Bathynaut alchemist who goes deep-sea diving into the lightless depths of the world's oceans along with the ability to fashion underwater depth charges and torpedo bombs.  In spite of the name, the compendium deals more with Lovecraftian types than what we think of Gothic horror.  There's tomes which drive you insane and alien entities from beyond the stars, as opposed to brooding vampires in decrepit castles and venerable tarot-wielding seers.  There's also a Xenocidist Ranger archetype and some spells which deal with "genetic purity," being better able to 'purge the unclean,' which includes genuine monstrosities as well as half-elves and the like.  The book implies that the xenocidists obsessed with keeping their society free of foreign taint might not be the saviors of mankind, but yet another threat to them.

[Craiconn]

Endzeitgeist and others all really love that Strange Magic trifecta.  I bought the Truenaming PDF the other day in a big RPGNow haul (primarily Raging Swan Press stuff - I really love everything that they publish).  But I haven't been able to dive into it yet.

The GCC looks like a nice add for those wanting to Ravenloft-up their PF campaigns.  Fluff looks tasty - don't know much about the quality of the crunch.

I like Razor Coast - but I like Freeport a tad bit better. 

Rise of the Drow looks absolutely epic.  Underdark campaigns are my all-time fave.  Did you know that at Paizo Superstore, you can buy, like 3 or 4 extra Rise of the Drow supplemental softcover books to the main series?

[Libertad]

The Southlands Campaign Setting is now out.

It's by the same creators of the Midgard Campaign Setting, so I have high hopes for this being a quality book.  From what I recall reading about its KickStarter, it has heavy Egyptian/Arabian themes.

[Libertad]

Anyway, here's a brief rundown of the non-Pathfinder D20 stuff   Of the following I own 7: Book of Erotic Fantasy, City of Brass, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Dragonmech, Ptolus, Tome of Horrors II, and Zeitgeist.

Of these I'd only say that City of Brass, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Ptolus are worth their price.  Tome of Horrors and Zeitgeist can be gained via a Complete version or subscription respectively.  Dragonmech is cool, but its mech rules are clunky and need a serious rework to not be a book-keeping nightmare.  Book of Erotic Fantasy misses the mark by focusing too much on mechanics of dubious balance and not enough GM/player advice and social contract-type stuff.  City of Brass is a good book full of adventures and adventure material, but it's really only suitable for high-level PCs which might dull it in comparison to Ptolus.  Ptolus is an amazing user-friendly city book with adventures to last an entire campaign, while Dungeon Crawl Classics is one of the most popular and nifty OSR games out there.

Ptolus: Monte Cook's City by the Spire is Monte Cook's magnum opus, a city-centric campaign setting which was designed to fit the tropes of 3.5 D&D like a glove, with some steampunk elements to boot.  Basically it has all the cool metropolitan city features, plus a sprawling series of caves and dungeons beneath the earth and around the eerie spire.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock is a megadungeon set in the fictional world of Dungeon Crawl Classics.  It sells itself as a complete campaign from 1st to 15th level.


Wilderlands of High Fantasy and City-State of the Invincible Overlord is an edition-updated version of the oldest known third party D&D books.  From what I can derive they're classic Conanesque settings with a heavy emphasis on wilderness hexcrawls and tyrannical city-states.

The City of Brass is a re-imagined version of the planar metropolis where genies were one of the first races of the gods, but the efreeti rejected the favored status of humanity and their golden city turned to brass and consigned to hellfire as a curse.  It is an interesting book, where the metropolis not in the Plane of Fire, but at a crossroads between Air and Earth known as the Plane of Molten Skies.  It also includes a series of adventures, and a lot of its material revolves around high-magic stuff.


The World’s Largest Dungeon ($39.95) is a poorly-done yet notable megadungeon meant to carry PCs from 1st to 20th level.  Unfortunately, the lack of settlements and item shops, an inability to escape the dungeon, and some poorly thought out house rules really gimp the campaign.

Heroes of the Jade Oath (AE) is an Asian setting originally developed for Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, but eventually got a Pathfinder version.  It derives inspiration from Chinese and Japanese media, but aside from that I can't find anything more specific.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #35: Gazetteer of the Known Realms is the campaign setting linking together all the adventures of Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Starship Troopers: The Role-Playing Game is a D20 Mongoose product adapting the licensed series into a tabletop RPG.

Big Bang Ricochet - Workhorse #1: HMMWV is weird.  It's a subscription to a bunch of D20-influenced stats around military Humvees.  This is pretty much core D20-itis.

OCS Tome of Terrors is a monster book for the Outcastia campaign setting, along with new PC races.  The sample creatures sound quirky (adamantite dragon and hill behemoth), with a huge range of CR.

ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution" - DIGITAL BOXED SET! is the 4th Edition version of Zeitgeist's Act One book.  Is also highly-acclaimed by that Edition's fanbase as well as Pathfinder's, so it's good that it translates well between the systems.

Etherscope is an alternate history setting where Victorian technology and innovation is more geared towards mad science, and a hundred years later space exploration is a reality.  Has steampunk, pulp, and horror elements.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG is an OSR (old school revolution) game which does not ape any specific retroclone.  Instead it goes for the feel of 1970s gonzo D&D, where dungeons are just as likely to contain star-spawn from an alien world as sleeping dragons, where the forces of Law and Chaos are inscrutable forces manipulating mortals for their own ends.  Notable for a PC funnel, where each player starts with 3-4 PCs each no better than non-combatant peasants, and those lucky few who survive the first adventure become bonafide 1st level PCs.

Dragonmech is a post-apocalyptic setting ravaged by meteors and dragons from space.  Most of civilization lives in mobile mecha-cities and utilizes titanic constructs for battle.  Dwarves are the dominant race due to their unmatched industry, and zombie leviathans and living trees are just as likely to be "mechas" as the typical steam-powered juggernauts.

Egyptian Adventures – Hamunaptra is a Green Ronin setting based off of fantasy counterpart Ancient Egypt.

Slaine the RPG of Celtic Heroes is another Mongoose title licensed off of the Slaine comic series.

Silver Age Sentinels: D20 Edition was written by Steve Kenson back in 2002, but quickly eclipsed by Mutants & Masterminds.  It had a psuedo-point buy system, although it was still based off of class and level as a core framework and based off of a specific setting, making it less versatile than M&M.

Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game is a Mongoose licensed RPG, surprise surprise.  The most notable thing I remember about it was that it had 3 classes: Street Judge, Psychic Judge, and Civilian (the generic NPC class for everyone else).

The Eamonville Incursion was an adventure whose draft was believed to be lost forever before Frog God Games recently unearthed an old manuscript.  It's set in a frontier realm plagued by bandits, economic hardship, and monsters, perfect fodder for adventurers!

Tome of Horrors II got its price fixed since I last saw it, but considering that ToH Complete is the 3 books compiled together, it's better to save up money for that instead of buying them individually.

The Black Bestiary is one of Chris Field's D20 sex books in his Black Tokyo setting.  Moving on.

Aberrant, Adventure!, and Trinity are all D20 versions of a very popular, award-winning superhero setting written by White Wolf.  The conversion to D20 was less than stellar, from what I heard.

Legends of the Samurai Hardcover is a new system and campaign setting for martial arts in medieval Japan.

Book of Erotic Fantasy is the infamous book which indirectly weakened the D20 license's power and got a lot of talk for game mechanics for sex.  Although it receives a lot of scorn for focusing on spells, die rolls, and the like which aren't the core forcus of eroticism, in comparison to all the creepy sex books out there it's one of the more tasteful ones IMO.

BESM D20 Revised Edition is wildly unbalanced even by D20 standards, a poor attempt to take BESM's point-buy powers system welded onto D20's class and level system.  Even PCs of the same level can vary wildly in power, ranging from useless baggage to CoDzilla on steroids.

[Unbeliever]

I'm a little bummed that the Gothic Campaign Compendium is more Lovecraft than Universal Monsters.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some Lovecraft, and I think there's a bit of a renaissance with it nowadays.  But, I would like the option to Ravenloft up things and get some classic brooding castles and suspicious villagers without the baggage that Ravenloft, et al. brings.  It's just a product space that I'd like to see something really good done with.

I remember liking Hamunaptara when I looked at it.  The Green Ronin Trojan War book was pretty good, too, although it's not quite the way I would deal with that setting.

Was Aberrant/Trinity "very popular"?  I played it briefly, as did most of my friends who were very into White Wolf.  But, I never remember it really having legs. 

Slumbering Tsar sounds sort of awesome, with the notable exception of the shape of the tower (which sounds kind of silly).  Any idea why they decided to name the city after Russian monarchs, though?  I like the idea of the City of Brass, it's a place I've always loved thematically and find evocative, although Sigil quickly eclipsed it.  But, based on the brief comments here, their read on it doesn't really grab me. 

[Libertad]

I'm a little bummed that the Gothic Campaign Compendium is more Lovecraft than Universal Monsters.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some Lovecraft, and I think there's a bit of a renaissance with it nowadays.  But, I would like the option to Ravenloft up things and get some classic brooding castles and suspicious villagers without the baggage that Ravenloft, et al. brings.  It's just a product space that I'd like to see something really good done with.

I concur.  Paizo's setting has a gothic-themed adventure path and nation, but I don't know if it's any good.

I remember liking Hamunaptara when I looked at it.  The Green Ronin Trojan War book was pretty good, too, although it's not quite the way I would deal with that setting.

I only own the Medieval Player's Manual, which pulled inspiration and research materials from Ars Magica (which never got a D20 version, to my knowledge).  It mostly dealt with medieval Britain and France, going for a more Arthurian feel than a comprehensive overview of European societies.  It did have interesting alternative spellcasting classes based off of superstitions at the time, such as the theurge who made pacts with wicked spirits, benevolent cunning magicians who were village herbalists and wise women, and an astrologist who instills their spell power into rituals and physical objects.  There was also several holy feat trees like laying on hands for virtuous people, and the Saint core class' shtick was to get them as bonus feats.

I also found it funny in that the campaign material posited that not only did the Abrahamic deity exist, but he granted his powers and insight to virtuous believers regardless of their denomination, and even Jews and Muslims.

Was Aberrant/Trinity "very popular"?  I played it briefly, as did most of my friends who were very into White Wolf.  But, I never remember it really having legs.

It was very well-regarded for its writing and handling of superhero tropes.  Sadly, my experience with White Wolf games lies firmly in the World of Darkness camp.

Slumbering Tsar sounds sort of awesome, with the notable exception of the shape of the tower (which sounds kind of silly).  Any idea why they decided to name the city after Russian monarchs, though?  I like the idea of the City of Brass, it's a place I've always loved thematically and find evocative, although Sigil quickly eclipsed it.  But, based on the brief comments here, their read on it doesn't really grab me.

I looked in the forward to the book again, and I couldn't find a reason for Tsar's naming.  Frog God Games has a mega-thread on Paizo where some of the authors are filling in details about their implied setting as well as their work history, so I might ask over there unless someone else does first.  Yes, I also post over there as Libertad.

However, it looks like Tsar has a sister city (also destroyed and fallen to ruin) by the name of Tsen which can be explored in Sword of Air.

Sword of Air is Pretty Great

I'm actually really digging Sword of Air right now.  It's sort of like an adventure path, but less of a path and more of a sandbox.  Yes, there is a main "plot" and big-time NPCs, but the adventure as-is just lays out likely avenues and introductory rundowns of important locations; otherwise the PCs have relatively free reign to explore.  Its first picture is a monkey piloting a runaway train, accompanied by an essay about the railroad structure of plots and the inevitability that things will go awry, so it's best to keep things loose and provide a rough draft instead of plot A to plot B for adventures.

Sword of Air follows an interesting MacGuffin quest in a typical fantasy frontier region of forest, mountains, and plains full of dungeons and ruins of prior civilizations along with some forlorn towers and magical places.  The Sword of Air is a legendary artifact once wielded by a hero to save the world, and how two archmages locked in a struggle are fighting over it due to its power.

 It does have an old-school vibe to it: sandbox method is king, as I mentioned before.  Scaling dungeons and opposition to PC level isn't a priority but at the same the higher-level stuff is harder to find or requires some previous work to get to in the first place.

One thing I like in this adventure is that it doesn't take itself as seriously as many other sourcebooks do.  While not quite Munchkin D20 or Charles Barkley's Shut Up and Jam Gaiden in terms of frequency of RPG parodies, it has some encounters and elements which would feel overly silly in other works.

(click to show/hide)

There's a flock of giant mutated geese lairing in an abandoned farmstead; there's also a nalfeshnee demon is disguised as a purple demon cow which got trapped in a barn by a wizard as a latch-ditch effort; said wizard's farmhouse has personal properties and floorboards enchanted with magic mouths to scold thieves and vandals ("Hey!  What are you doing there?!").  One location has two feuding clans of hillbilly dragons, the Hatfields and McCoys.

The biggest one by far is the history of Joe Platemail.  Various FGG books I own made references to him, usually as an example of how heavy armor might be a liability in certain environments. Turns out that Joe was a real PC in the author's old group games. He was an extraordinarily lucky Fighter with abysmally low mental ability scores. He survived where many others failed by the luck of the dice, but finally met an ignoble end of the hands of his own armor, drowning to death as he found himself unable to swim in heavy metal.

On page 47 of Sword of Air, Joe Platemail III has Pathfinder stats. He's a 20th level Fighter with an 18 in Str/Dex/Con and 3 in Int/Wis/Cha. The text points out that the GM is encouraged to make his legendary luck an actual thing, in that deadly attacks and traps always seem to affect people near him instead of the man himself.  He doesn't actually appear in the adventure beyond a sidebar explaining why his name comes up in examples, but the fact that they took to time to provide a stat block and backstory is pretty cool.

Combined with Rappan Athuk's Banana of Holding and one-page obituary of KickStarter contributors and playtesters as gravestone names, I'm beginning to like Frog God's more whimsical worldbuilding.

My biggest beef so far with Sword of Air is that it commits the cardinal sin of fantasy mapping by making each hex really fucking big (50 miles from one end to the other).  And the 3 major area maps are 10-12 hexes north to south and 18-20 hexes west to east.  Even the United States runs around 2,500 to 3,000 miles from west to east coast.  And Sword of Air's located in a valley.

I dunno, I prefer 6 mile hexes.  The fictional nation in my OSR campaign with Raineh Daze was 2/3rds the size of Ireland, and that worked just fine.

[Sleek]

The 3PP that puts out the most expensive products (on average) is Frog God Games.  Of which I am a fan of a high percentage of their campaign settings and mega-modules.  Frog God Games used to be known as Necromancer Games back in the 3.5 days.  Their campaign settings and mega-modules are pretty popular with the CharOp Dungeon Grind community anyway.  Since my move to Pathfinder from 3.5 (in both of my tabletop groups), we've played in a bunch of the Frog God adventures and they are a decent pre-packaged,out-of-the-box test of CharOp prowess.  We'll be heading through Sword of Air soon ... and I can't wait!

[Libertad]

I was editing my previous post to include some stuff as you made your post, Sleek.

On that note, I should probably spoiler some stuff like plots and encounters if anyone here's going to run through it.  I don't think that things like the Banana of Holding need that, but encounters definitely.

I will say that I'm heartened to hear that FGG is popular among CharOps folks.  A lot of time I see Pathfinder and OSR folks and fans as more or less separate camps whose taste in games are too fundamentally different, but it's nice to see that the company's products are enjoyed by both groups.  I don't see PF/OSR folks complaining about shoddy translation or mechanics for their preferred edition for Rappan Athuk or Tome of Horrors, which can't be easily said of most conversion material.

[Unbeliever]

I will say that I'm heartened to hear that FGG is popular among CharOps folks.  A lot of time I see Pathfinder and OSR folks and fans as more or less separate camps whose taste in games are too fundamentally different, but it's nice to see that the company's products are enjoyed by both groups. 

For what it's worth, I liked most of the Necromancers Games stuff I looked at.  Although the boss encounter for the mega-dungeon I played was poorly put together. 

But, for example, I enjoyed that stuff (whose name currently escapes me) far more than I did the Lich Queen stuff which people have been talking up lately. 

[Craiconn]

We've played quite a few FGG products over the years.  Back in December, we finished the Pathfinder-converted 'The Lost City of Barakus' - which was a load of fun.  Back when they were first published, we also delved into various Necromancer Games (FGG's predecessor) adventures as well.  If my memory is correct - Vault of Larin-Karr, parts of Rappan Athuk, Morrick Mansion, Crucible of Freya, etc.

The main designers/developers at FGG/NG have no problems with placing crazy-high CR jumps from encounter to encounter.  While many players balk and cry "Unfair!" at such play dynamics, I personally enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out the best way (under immense, deadly pressure, of course) to deal with such encounters - fight, retreat, fighting withdrawal, parlay, monitor-remotely-or-from-stealth or "get creative". FGG games are a wonderfully effective tutor at teaching you such things.

[Libertad]

Anyway, I found a Gen Con pic of several Pathfinder books on display, including several Frog God Games books on this list:



See Slumbering Tsar and Tome of Horrors, with pages counts in the 800-900s?  Yup, those are what they look like physically.

[Libertad]

I've noticed that a lot of the Frog God/Necromancer Games stuff is sold on the official store page, in some cases at significantly lower prices than their Drive-Thru/Paizo equivalents.

The City of Brass can be gotten for $14.99 as a PDF here, for example.

So another thing I'm finding interesting with Frog Gods' Lost Lands implied setting is that there's a willingness to address that magic can effect society.

In the follow-up for the Sword of Air, if the PCs commit a crime in a city and seem a threat above the typical city watch, the government will employ resident spellcasters to aid in their apprehension.  For example, if a corpse is found somewhere, a cleric at the temple will attempt speak with dead to determine the killer's identity.

In the Paizo thread for Frog God's 2015 catalog, Greg A. Vaughan admitted that in some regions technological advancement is slower than usual due to the use of equivalent magical spells obviating the need for development in some areas.

There's also a city-state which employs an undead labor force and magical research to effectively become an Industrial Revolution-esque level of technology, but with spells and zombies instead of magic.  It's part of an upcoming megaproject, the Blight, which is the brainchild of Richard Pett, the guy who did the Styes adventure in Dungeon Magazine.  It's actually that setting with the serial numbers filed off due to WotC claiming intellectual property of the Dungeon adventure, but the author has a lot of unused setting material inspired by that adventure.

[Libertad]

The $20 Crowd

So I noticed that quite a bit of the more well-known full sourcebooks are around this price range, so I decided to include them here.

1. Ultimate Psionics: A compilation of Psionics material published by Dreamscarred Press over the years.

2. Thunderscape The World of Aden Campaign Setting: A magitech steampunk world which recently suffered a cataclysmic event known as the Darkfall, where all the monsters from horror stories and superstitious tales became reality.  Used to be an obscure video game series from the 90s, but the license was bought to turn into a campaign setting.

3. The Lost City of Barakus: A Frog God book, this details a massive dungeon which is the ruins of a long-dead high-magic civilization.

4. Tales of Zobeck: A compilation of adventures in Midgard's pre-eminent city written by many different authors.

5. Spheres of Power: This alternate magic system is a rising star among the Pathfinder fandom for being relatively balanced while capable of emulating several genres.

6. Razor Coast-Heart of the Razor: Four adventures set in the Razor Coast setting, ranging from 5th to 10th level.

7. Midgard Campaign Setting: A world which derives inspiration from Central European folk tales as well as more iconic fantasy with interesting twists.  It is a world where deities wear masks to hide their identities, the gnomish race is damned into servitude by Asmodeus, a dragon-ruled empire is making serious inroads among the known lands, and there are game mechanics for clerics who worship entire pantheons as true polytheists.

8. Maximum Xcrawl: Powered by Pathfinder: A Pathfinder update on the 3.X system.  Set in an alternate modern Earth where the Roman Empire still exists and technology and magic exist side by side.  The most popular reality show contest is Xcrawl, simulated dungeons where gladiators and athletes compete for cash, fame, and prizes!

9. Heroes of the Jade Oath: A campaign setting which derives inspiration from Chinese and Japanese cinema and folklore.

10. Halls of the Mountain King: A Midgard adventure set in the dungeon of a vanished dwarven clan.

11. Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen: Part of the Dungeonlands series.  Unbeliever probably knows more about it than me.

12. Dungeonlands: Machine of the Lich Queen: As above.

13. Deep Magic: A huge collection of new spells and magic systems by a bunch of well-known authors.  Apparently there's not much synergy and it's really poorly balanced.  As a Redditor once described it, a combination of gold and garbage.

14. Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Subscription: New feats, spells, and archetypes for supplemental existing Pathfinder races such as the catfolk and samsaran.

15. Amethyst Renaissance 2.0: A game set in modern Earth where magic and science are at odds.  Faeries and dragons in the subway, elves and dwarves in urban sprawls.

16. Advanced Bestiary for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game: An updated Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin Publishing, focuses entirely on new monster templates..

17. 1001 Spells: Exactly what it says on the tin.

18. Mythic Magic: Core Spells: Provides Mythic versions for every spell in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook.

19. Remarkable Races: Pathway to Adventure Edition: New and unorthodox races.  One of the oldest 3rd party books for Pathfinder, and it still stands strong in quality.

20. Realms of Twilight Campaign Setting: A world wreathed in darkness as the sun extinguished, leaving only moon and stars to provide light.

21. Realms of Beltora Campaign Gazetteer: Another old (2008-09) Pathfinder product, not much is known about it other than the product description, which provides a generic fantasy setting.

22. Primeval Thule for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game: A Conanesque setting with some new and interesting ideas.  Living glaciers threaten to consume the north, the elven civilization is falling apart from lotus addiction sold by cultists of Nyarlathotep, and the new background system provides unique traits for the PCs to distinguish them from the masses of Thule.

23. Modern Adventures: Basically D20 Modern updated to Pathfinder, but with new classes and settings.

24. GM's Miscellany Dungeon Dressing: A beloved GM's aide to provide on-the-fly elements to populate your dungeons.

25. Cerulean Seas Campaign Setting: A fantasy setting where 99% of the material world lies beneath the waves.  Merfolk, elves, selkies, anthropomorphic crabs, and other creatures are the dominant races.  Cities are built among icebergs, coral reefs, and among the abyssal planes of the lightless depths which are the Underdark equivalent.  Has interesting spins on real-life underwater locales, such as fungal blooms being favored havens for undead because they consume most of the surrounding water's oxygen.