I'd say it is more to have things that can involve the PCs rather than to necessarily have the PCs' actions matter to the things. Being a soldier in a big war involves a PC even if the PCs might not be able to be determinative to the course of the war.
I agree you generally want to avoid things...
Return to White Plume Mountain (2e)
2e
Bog Mummy: When a bleak spark of unlife touches a corpse naturally preserved by swamp mud, the result is a bog mummy. In the Great Swamp, it is Thingizzard, the Witch of the Fens, who provides that animating spark.
Any creature killed by a bog mummy...
Do you mean for power level in an RPG? I can see that if a spell does 5d6 and a laser blaster does 10d6 kind of setup.
Narratively though when you have a lot of sci fi and a little fantasy you get things like Star Trek Vulcan mind meld, Babylon Five psychics, and Doctor Who. Each of those has...
My guess would be it is usually when a couple people run a company and then split and do not want to deal with each other over it for whatever reason anymore and do not transfer all the rights to just one of them who could then get the occasional couple bucks from drivethru for sales of their...
Red Steel Campaign
2e
Undead, Undead Being, Undead Creature: ?
Banshee: ?
Ghost, Ethereal Creature: ?
Skeleton: The third skeleton lies on the couch until the second skeleton is disturbed, at which time it animates to defend its long-dead vivifier.
It was beat to the punch in that regard by AD&D 2e Jakandor and their not-evil heavily necromantic Charonti society. Hallowfaust is easier to insert into most campaigns as a useable element though.
Fallout RPG Humble Bundle from Modiphius using 2d20 system.
Also there is the Humble Bundle Physical RPG Core Book sale $159 for 6 physical core books, Bladerunner, Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound, Viking Age, Avatar Legends, Dune, and Gi Joe.
An interesting one for me is Hallowfaust: City of Necromancers from the Scarred Lands. A strongly themed Necromancer magocratic city state, a strongly themed LN necromancer refuge in a hostile monster filled wilderness. It is different in being a place where mindless undead are openly used...
Pirate's Guide is a big 256 page hardcover with a ton of words, but I felt it did a good job of giving overviews and clear tones to start for the overall city and the individual districts to riff off of before getting into specifics and sample stuff. It also has clear strong conceptual themes...
I started back into reading novels and short stories on my kindle again. I finished Legends of the Space Marines, a 40K anthology series of short stories. It fit well with my current recreational reading attention span and my surface level knowledge of 40K. I enjoyed it enough that I queued up...
RA1 Feast of Goblyns (2e)
2e
Undead, Undead Creature, Undead Being: This skull is actually the head of an ancient evil cleric which is now in a near demi-lich state. However, all that it currently does is empower Radaga with her unnatural ability to create undead.
Ravenloft altered Death Spell...
Pirates Guide to Freeport is my favorite fantasy city sourcebook.
Statless, it gives a good overview of tone and themes, the city history, it’s place in the world, and then an organized well district by city district set of chapters, giving a good breakdown of the districts and factions plus...