Tis the Season for Giving: Twelve Free PDFs for Your Home Games!
Christmas is fast approaching and that means that gifts are being bought for every child and semi-distant relative. The malls are packed with hordes of disgruntled parents pressing their way through the crowds, just hoping to find that perfect gift for each of their 2.5 children, while pickpockets’ sticky fingers cling to wallets not their own. It’s a mess that will leave many of us grouchy and resentful just in time to see the people who get under our skins the most for the holidays. This season of giving tends to put so many of us in a foul mood because of the pressure associated with finding that perfect gift. So for a few minutes let me take some of that tension away by presenting you with Ten FREE and Pay What You Want PDFs for your role-playing games! Happy Holidays!
1. Roll XX by Various Authors
This Pay What You Want PDF from Neoplastic Press is a fantastic resource, not only for quickly answering the nagging questions that seem to always pop up, but for inspiring some wild moments in your games! The book is divided into sections based on the game type with questions pertinent to each game grouped together. The first section, which gets the most use at my own table, is Fantasy. It’s followed by Superhero, Science Fiction, Horror, and Modern with Superhero and Science Fiction being the two smallest sections. The questions themselves are often the sort of common things that come up in regular gameplay while the answers run the gamut from wildly unexpected to the mundane. If your game has gotten a bit dull and you’re looking to bring some spice into it this book is a great place to start as so many of the questions, regardless of their designated section, can be brought to use in your home games.
If you enjoy this book I highly suggest that you pick up the second volume and look up other products by Rafael Chandler. Chandler has an amazing talent for putting out really good books and seeing his name attached to a project is often reason enough to check it out.
9. Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley by WM. McAdams
Alongside creating maps of the world and populating it with monsters it seems that creating a mysterious, ancient civilization from whole cloth is one of the most common projects a Dungeon Master will drop themselves into. Unfortunately very few of us have much knowledge of these sort of mysteries so we inevitably fall back on the most common tropes we learned from documentary films, well-worn histories of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and terrible B-movie sub-plots that made us groan when we first ran across them. With the end result being predictable games that follow the usual scenarios that our players have explored hundreds of times before.
We don’t have to go down that route. Instead of providing a passable lip-service to the more well-known ancient cultures we could explore some of the more mysterious ones that have populated the New World. In Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley McAdams attempts to shine a light on one of the mysterious, ancient civilizations that populated the Americas before the cultures of Western Europe and Eastern Asia found the continents.
The short book, being only 120 pages of actual text on the subject, is a quick read that features both discussions of the ancient tales and what the culture of these peoples might have been. The book is filled with over three hundred illustrations depicting everything from ancient animals and monsters to totems and burial mounds. For a Dungeon Master attempting to build an ancient civilization in their home games this book is a treasure trove!
You can find a free copy of the book on Google though the copy I linked to was found on the Internet Archive.
8. The Cyclopedia Talislanta by Stephan Michael Sechi
Talislanta is one of the games from early days of this hobby that looked at what Dungeons and Dragons was doing and decided to go in a different direction. The world expresses a greater sense of nuance with distinctive cultures and races populating it with varying degrees of success. Yet what makes this game’s setting so fascinating is how distinct it feels when compared with worlds like the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk which often seem to lose their distinctive flare over time as each new product seeks to make the settings more generic than the last.
While the entire catalogue of Talislanta is available for free download the Cyclopedia Talislanta represents my favorite introduction to the setting. The Cyclopedia features fantastic artwork, a full color map, dozens of locations briefly described that can be brought into any setting, and lots of creatures that can be converted over to your favorite system with little effort (especially when using Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons).
7. Extinct Monsters by Rev. H. N. Hutchinson
One of the most rewarding experiences for a Dungeon Master comes when you surprise your players by taking a tired, old monster that has been used a thousand times and put a new spin on it, and this book by Rev. Hutchinson is just that sort of experience. Rev. Hutchinson approaches the subject of extinct monsters with a scholarly eye that can sometimes make the reading experience somewhat tedious and occasionally laughable - but the text of this book isn’t where it shines. Instead it’s the gorgeous illustrations that provide the most provocative and fruitful ground for the imagination.
Yet this book is more than just its illustrations and professorial discussions of extinct species. This copy that has been provided for free from Harvard University actually was the cause of a man being sentenced to two years hard labor. Finding that out sent me down a Cthulhu-esque game and has given me hours and hours of fruitful gaming with my players discovering each of these extinct monsters were anything but.
6. Swords and Wizardry Core Rules by Matthew Finch
Swords and Wizardry is arguably the most popular retro-clone going today and there’s little reason to wonder why. The game is beautifully organized with an intuitive layout that makes learning the older style rules practically painless. Black and white illustrations can be found on throughout the core rulebook and set the tone for the style of game Swords and Wizardry does best: old school.
Yet perhaps the best thing about the Swords and Wizardry system is the online community surrounding the game. Hundreds of resources, ranging from monsters and spells to adventures and treasure, can be found with a simple google search. This version of the classic Dungeons and Dragons game is a fantastic pick-up for anyone interested in the older style of gaming – and since the PDF is now free on Lulu you can’t ask for a better time to check it out!
5. WitchCraft by C.J. Carrella
If you enjoyed White Wolf’s storyteller games then you owe it to yourself to give C.J. Carrella’s WitchCraft a chance. Drawing heavily from modern Neo-Paganism for its setting’s underpinning the game has a deeper feel than the White Wolf games while still providing players with a variety of choices in how to play the game. Perhaps the best part of this game, though, is that the system comes without the baggage that White Wolf’s games can sometimes bring with them.
The artwork is well done throughout the book and the layout is easy to follow. My one gripe with this game is that when the authors include some form of story element the font used is a bit off-putting. Even with that caveat this book is well worth picking up as it puts a unique spin on the genre while allowing to still enjoy the best aspects.
4. Artistic Homes by Herbert C. Chivers
For many Dungeon Masters the most difficult things to keep fresh in a long running campaign are the everyday homes and shops that your players are bound to explore (and more often than not ransack). So often as Dungeon Masters we spend the majority of our time designing our deadly dungeons instead of considering the less exciting aspects of the worlds our players’ characters inhabit. Which tends to result in the rather monotonous boxed buildings that have become the standard fare in our hobby. Just thinking about the countless 20’ x 20’ rooms I’ve explored over the years (each with a chest, bed, and solitary window in the southwest corner) has me rolling my eyes.
That’s where this massive 1903 volume of Herbert Chivers’ work comes into play. This 1,036 page tome features hundreds of building designs from the simple one story affairs that often dominate our games to massive multi-floor monstrosities that could be used as hotels, mansions, and governmental buildings. This fantastic book is filled with beautiful illustrations that you can show your players and detailed floor plans that can be used with almost no effort.
The best part? This book is in the public domain and available for free at the Internet Archive.
3. Mythender Roleplaying Game by Ryan Macklin
Mythender is the sort of over the top game that always tends to deliver more action and gonzo style play than you had ever hoped for with the end result being a great time being had by all. The concept of this game is that you are a Mythender, a mythic hero who travels the world to destroy its gods and monsters.
In this game you have to embrace the most awe inspiring elements of your imagination. Jump off a mountain with a flaming sword onto a giant? Absolutely. Spit in Thor’s face while insulting his mother and walk away? You bet. Kill Anubis? Heck yeah! Ride a dragon into the Devil’s mouth to rip his heart out? You bet your rear you can!
If ever you wanted to have an opportunity to be the hero of your dreams this game is that chance. It’s relatively quick to learn but possesses enough complexity to ensure a wide variety of play experiences. A great all-around game!
2. Brikwars, Building Brick Combat System by Mike Rayhawk
This miniature war-game is incredibly fun and it has finally found a use for all the boxes of Legos that have been cluttering my parents’ attic since we shoved them up there when I went to college. The game is built on the idea that destruction and mayhem are just part of the fun and worrying about the laws of physics on continuity are for nerds. While you can certainly play this game in a serious fashion, carefully crafting your strategies, in doing so you’re completely missing out on the fun of the game.
Brikwars is a robust challenge for new and old war gamers alike that provides for a satisfying experience every time you play. [FONT=&]With game you can expect the rules to be forgotten and for the pure joy of waging war on your friends to take over. [/FONT] I love the flexibility, humor, and speed of this game and cannot recommend it enough.
1. Secret Santicore 2013 Vol. 1 and Secret Santicore 2013 Vol. 2 by Various Authors
The Secret Santicore project is one of the best things to ever come out of the blog-o-sphere. The project began when Zak S., who writes the blog Playing D&D with Porn Stars, had an idea that he called the Secret Arneson Party where people would e-mail a central individual all their campaign needs (new races, traps, magic items, ect.). Then the central individual would mix all the needs up and e-mail them back out to the people who sent in their own needs. This way everyone would get to participate. The response was phenomenal and the project has been growing with each successive year.
What’s so amazing about this project is its professional look and feel. While game companies within the industry have been putting out PDFs for years they rarely measure up to the quality and usefulness of this volunteer project. Whether you’re looking at the art, which is universally great, or the layout these PDFs have been designed by people who want this project not only to be a fun read but to actually be useful at your table. All they ask is that when someone has done something you find useful that you e-mail that person and tell them how worked at your table.
If you enjoy this project then I hope you’ll join them next year by sending in your own question and answering one in kind. Or even better volunteering to help finish the project! You can find out more about Secret Santicore at the official blog for the project.
Christmas is fast approaching and that means that gifts are being bought for every child and semi-distant relative. The malls are packed with hordes of disgruntled parents pressing their way through the crowds, just hoping to find that perfect gift for each of their 2.5 children, while pickpockets’ sticky fingers cling to wallets not their own. It’s a mess that will leave many of us grouchy and resentful just in time to see the people who get under our skins the most for the holidays. This season of giving tends to put so many of us in a foul mood because of the pressure associated with finding that perfect gift. So for a few minutes let me take some of that tension away by presenting you with Ten FREE and Pay What You Want PDFs for your role-playing games! Happy Holidays!
This Pay What You Want PDF from Neoplastic Press is a fantastic resource, not only for quickly answering the nagging questions that seem to always pop up, but for inspiring some wild moments in your games! The book is divided into sections based on the game type with questions pertinent to each game grouped together. The first section, which gets the most use at my own table, is Fantasy. It’s followed by Superhero, Science Fiction, Horror, and Modern with Superhero and Science Fiction being the two smallest sections. The questions themselves are often the sort of common things that come up in regular gameplay while the answers run the gamut from wildly unexpected to the mundane. If your game has gotten a bit dull and you’re looking to bring some spice into it this book is a great place to start as so many of the questions, regardless of their designated section, can be brought to use in your home games.
If you enjoy this book I highly suggest that you pick up the second volume and look up other products by Rafael Chandler. Chandler has an amazing talent for putting out really good books and seeing his name attached to a project is often reason enough to check it out.
9. Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley by WM. McAdams
Alongside creating maps of the world and populating it with monsters it seems that creating a mysterious, ancient civilization from whole cloth is one of the most common projects a Dungeon Master will drop themselves into. Unfortunately very few of us have much knowledge of these sort of mysteries so we inevitably fall back on the most common tropes we learned from documentary films, well-worn histories of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and terrible B-movie sub-plots that made us groan when we first ran across them. With the end result being predictable games that follow the usual scenarios that our players have explored hundreds of times before.
We don’t have to go down that route. Instead of providing a passable lip-service to the more well-known ancient cultures we could explore some of the more mysterious ones that have populated the New World. In Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley McAdams attempts to shine a light on one of the mysterious, ancient civilizations that populated the Americas before the cultures of Western Europe and Eastern Asia found the continents.
The short book, being only 120 pages of actual text on the subject, is a quick read that features both discussions of the ancient tales and what the culture of these peoples might have been. The book is filled with over three hundred illustrations depicting everything from ancient animals and monsters to totems and burial mounds. For a Dungeon Master attempting to build an ancient civilization in their home games this book is a treasure trove!
You can find a free copy of the book on Google though the copy I linked to was found on the Internet Archive.
Talislanta is one of the games from early days of this hobby that looked at what Dungeons and Dragons was doing and decided to go in a different direction. The world expresses a greater sense of nuance with distinctive cultures and races populating it with varying degrees of success. Yet what makes this game’s setting so fascinating is how distinct it feels when compared with worlds like the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk which often seem to lose their distinctive flare over time as each new product seeks to make the settings more generic than the last.
While the entire catalogue of Talislanta is available for free download the Cyclopedia Talislanta represents my favorite introduction to the setting. The Cyclopedia features fantastic artwork, a full color map, dozens of locations briefly described that can be brought into any setting, and lots of creatures that can be converted over to your favorite system with little effort (especially when using Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons).
7. Extinct Monsters by Rev. H. N. Hutchinson
One of the most rewarding experiences for a Dungeon Master comes when you surprise your players by taking a tired, old monster that has been used a thousand times and put a new spin on it, and this book by Rev. Hutchinson is just that sort of experience. Rev. Hutchinson approaches the subject of extinct monsters with a scholarly eye that can sometimes make the reading experience somewhat tedious and occasionally laughable - but the text of this book isn’t where it shines. Instead it’s the gorgeous illustrations that provide the most provocative and fruitful ground for the imagination.
Yet this book is more than just its illustrations and professorial discussions of extinct species. This copy that has been provided for free from Harvard University actually was the cause of a man being sentenced to two years hard labor. Finding that out sent me down a Cthulhu-esque game and has given me hours and hours of fruitful gaming with my players discovering each of these extinct monsters were anything but.
6. Swords and Wizardry Core Rules by Matthew Finch
Swords and Wizardry is arguably the most popular retro-clone going today and there’s little reason to wonder why. The game is beautifully organized with an intuitive layout that makes learning the older style rules practically painless. Black and white illustrations can be found on throughout the core rulebook and set the tone for the style of game Swords and Wizardry does best: old school.
Yet perhaps the best thing about the Swords and Wizardry system is the online community surrounding the game. Hundreds of resources, ranging from monsters and spells to adventures and treasure, can be found with a simple google search. This version of the classic Dungeons and Dragons game is a fantastic pick-up for anyone interested in the older style of gaming – and since the PDF is now free on Lulu you can’t ask for a better time to check it out!
5. WitchCraft by C.J. Carrella
If you enjoyed White Wolf’s storyteller games then you owe it to yourself to give C.J. Carrella’s WitchCraft a chance. Drawing heavily from modern Neo-Paganism for its setting’s underpinning the game has a deeper feel than the White Wolf games while still providing players with a variety of choices in how to play the game. Perhaps the best part of this game, though, is that the system comes without the baggage that White Wolf’s games can sometimes bring with them.
The artwork is well done throughout the book and the layout is easy to follow. My one gripe with this game is that when the authors include some form of story element the font used is a bit off-putting. Even with that caveat this book is well worth picking up as it puts a unique spin on the genre while allowing to still enjoy the best aspects.
For many Dungeon Masters the most difficult things to keep fresh in a long running campaign are the everyday homes and shops that your players are bound to explore (and more often than not ransack). So often as Dungeon Masters we spend the majority of our time designing our deadly dungeons instead of considering the less exciting aspects of the worlds our players’ characters inhabit. Which tends to result in the rather monotonous boxed buildings that have become the standard fare in our hobby. Just thinking about the countless 20’ x 20’ rooms I’ve explored over the years (each with a chest, bed, and solitary window in the southwest corner) has me rolling my eyes.
That’s where this massive 1903 volume of Herbert Chivers’ work comes into play. This 1,036 page tome features hundreds of building designs from the simple one story affairs that often dominate our games to massive multi-floor monstrosities that could be used as hotels, mansions, and governmental buildings. This fantastic book is filled with beautiful illustrations that you can show your players and detailed floor plans that can be used with almost no effort.
The best part? This book is in the public domain and available for free at the Internet Archive.
3. Mythender Roleplaying Game by Ryan Macklin
Mythender is the sort of over the top game that always tends to deliver more action and gonzo style play than you had ever hoped for with the end result being a great time being had by all. The concept of this game is that you are a Mythender, a mythic hero who travels the world to destroy its gods and monsters.
In this game you have to embrace the most awe inspiring elements of your imagination. Jump off a mountain with a flaming sword onto a giant? Absolutely. Spit in Thor’s face while insulting his mother and walk away? You bet. Kill Anubis? Heck yeah! Ride a dragon into the Devil’s mouth to rip his heart out? You bet your rear you can!
If ever you wanted to have an opportunity to be the hero of your dreams this game is that chance. It’s relatively quick to learn but possesses enough complexity to ensure a wide variety of play experiences. A great all-around game!
2. Brikwars, Building Brick Combat System by Mike Rayhawk
This miniature war-game is incredibly fun and it has finally found a use for all the boxes of Legos that have been cluttering my parents’ attic since we shoved them up there when I went to college. The game is built on the idea that destruction and mayhem are just part of the fun and worrying about the laws of physics on continuity are for nerds. While you can certainly play this game in a serious fashion, carefully crafting your strategies, in doing so you’re completely missing out on the fun of the game.
Brikwars is a robust challenge for new and old war gamers alike that provides for a satisfying experience every time you play. [FONT=&]With game you can expect the rules to be forgotten and for the pure joy of waging war on your friends to take over. [/FONT] I love the flexibility, humor, and speed of this game and cannot recommend it enough.
The Secret Santicore project is one of the best things to ever come out of the blog-o-sphere. The project began when Zak S., who writes the blog Playing D&D with Porn Stars, had an idea that he called the Secret Arneson Party where people would e-mail a central individual all their campaign needs (new races, traps, magic items, ect.). Then the central individual would mix all the needs up and e-mail them back out to the people who sent in their own needs. This way everyone would get to participate. The response was phenomenal and the project has been growing with each successive year.
What’s so amazing about this project is its professional look and feel. While game companies within the industry have been putting out PDFs for years they rarely measure up to the quality and usefulness of this volunteer project. Whether you’re looking at the art, which is universally great, or the layout these PDFs have been designed by people who want this project not only to be a fun read but to actually be useful at your table. All they ask is that when someone has done something you find useful that you e-mail that person and tell them how worked at your table.
If you enjoy this project then I hope you’ll join them next year by sending in your own question and answering one in kind. Or even better volunteering to help finish the project! You can find out more about Secret Santicore at the official blog for the project.
