Rolling the Bones: A Graveyard Supplement

While the graveyard is a staple of horror movies, it need not be only the province of vampires, slayers and young lovers destined to die before the opening credits. Stereotypical uniform rows of graves or random mausoleums decorated with hackneyed death’s heads works as a mere background in a modern roleplaying campaign, but if a party of heroes finds themselves in a cemetery, they deserve to have that classic feature of the American landscape as real as the alley, the police station or the hospital encountered in the same adventure. This book discusses the important details that help the GM bring the land of the dead to life for her players.

Chapter 2 discusses the four major types of cemeteries and the distinguishing features of each.

Chapter 3 provides suggestions for using cemeteries in a game, focusing on the types of information found among the headstones.

Chapter 4 lists symbols found on tombstones and the DCs for determining their meaning based on a PCs knowledge skills.

Chapter 5 supplies the GM with encounters likely in cemeteries, including stat blocks for the more common types.

Chapter 6 gives information about a small rural cemetery in west Alabama that may be used in a campaign.

Chapter 7 presents a large urban cemetery in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, that may also be used in a campaign.

Graveyard Creation PDF is the Instant Cemetery creator, a step-by-step guide for generating plausible cemeteries for any modern campaign. A form for recording the results is also included.

Layout: Portrait, fully bookmarked
Page Count: 41, 2 PDF files including cover and license

Rolling the Bones

This review is for Rolling the Bones a graveyard supplement for your d20 Modern games. It was provided to me an exchange for a review.

Physical Description: The product comes with 2 PDFs, one is 26 pages (including OGL) and details cemeteries, and the other is 15 pages and gives steps on designing your own graveyards. The main document has a color photograph of a monument as the coverpage and includes 7 color photographs inside mostly of different grave ornamentation. The PDF on designing graveyards has no art, but has black and white diagrams for reference.
Both documents are bookmarked. On the main document, I would like to see the names of the chapters included in the bookmark to better navigate.

For the player: Unless your character has a background that strongly utilizes cemeteries this product probably holds no value for the character. The DCs for identifying symbols on tombstones may be helpful these characters.

For the GM: This truly is a niche product. The idea of a sourcebook on cemeteries is not a bad one, however this book by its own admission focuses on American Graveyards of the south, in particular those in Alabama. If cemeteries are going to be a major focus of your campaign then the information contained may be useful.

Chapter 1: Introduction
This is a brief introduction and includes a summary of other chapters.

Chapter 2: Major Types of Cemeteries
The types of cemeteries described are Urban (Historical and Modern), Memorial Gardens, Rural Cemeteries and Family Plots. It does not mention national cemeteries, but does mention those used to bury confederate soldiers.

Chapter 3: Using Cemeteries in Game
This chapter focuses on how to use a cemetery in your game. Short sections on Hidden objects and chases is mentioned. No mechanics are given more than to make reflex saves common as many hazards litter the graveyard at night.
A little more information is given for those who are attempting to do research about a cemetery and who is in it. The give some information on using Knowledge (History) and the Research skill.

Chapter 4 Tombstone Symbolism
This section is an encyclopedic like entry of different sybols found on graves and what those symbols might stand for. DCs are given for the characters to determine what they mean and include synergies that might help. Unfortunately this chapter does not clearly spell out what skill the DCs are for. Most likely it is for Knowledge (History) as it is mentioned briefly in the previous chapter.

Chapter 5 Cemetery Encounters
This details sample NPCs you might run into in a cemetery, examples include a grave digger, a mourner, an antiquities thief, and a high level genealogist.

Chapter 6 Sample Small Rural Cemetery
A description of a small cemetery in Rural Alabama, a few landmarks are given of the highlights of this cemetery. Surprisingly no encounters are given, and the PDF states that they would be unlikely given the remoteness of the cemetery.

Chapter 7 Sample Large Urban Cemetery
Another Alabama cemetery although somewhat larger and in more detail. A few encounters are hinted on.

Graveyard Creator
This is the second PDF that comes with this product, It takes you through some steps to create a cemetery and has some tables and charts to help you randomly create such things such as a name. The end of this document includes some forms for keeping track of your newly created cemetery.

New Mechanics:
The steps for creating your own cemeteries is by far the most major mechanic introduced in this game. The DCs for identifying symbols on tombstones is also new.

Overview: As stated before this product is extremely niche marketed. It is assuming you are interested in fairly modern cemeteries (no more than a couple hundred years old) in the southern United States. While some of this information will work for other areas, in a product that focuses on cemeteries I would have liked to see some information on European Cemeteries and unique cemeteries like those in New Orleans. Random encounters would have been nice, with optional encounters for those wanting supernatural elements. This book leaves out all mention of supernatural (including undead) which I found disappointing.

Lastly I would like to have seen DCs for such things as spotting a disturbed grave, breaking open a sealed coffin, etc. I rate this book 2.5 stars out of 5, as the information is too specialized for most users wondering about the topic. Some information will be useful, especially the section on creating graveyards IF you plan to prominently feature cemeteries in your game, and since those purchasing this product will most likely be doing so I will round the rating to 3.

It should be noted that this product is from a line from 93 Games which was experessly intended for non-FX modern games. Thus, while the expectation expressed by the reviewer is reasonable for a d20 game product, the author obviously made a deliberate choice to not include the supernatural. Besides, why cover ground that so many others have covered since the dawn of gaming, most recently in Libris Mortis from WotC?

Also, I would disagree with the statement that the graveyard generator is only appropriate for graveyards in the last century. That is not the way it is discussed in the text, and while it may function better for a more modern and active graveyard it can be applied to a a place whose last burial was antebellum, if the GM takes that into account when consulting the tables and uses the maxim for dealing with all game based tables: "if it makes no sense throw it out." Yes, the focus is on south eastern US, but a GM who wishes to create a generic cemetary any where in the US could easily apply the product.

I believe that the product achieves its stated goals. It may not have achieved all the goals the reviewer would have articulated as expectations in a product of this title, that can hardly be the fault of the writer or publisher.

I appreciate the review, but I do think it somewhat misses the point. The supplement does what I intended it to do--provide a resource for GMs in modern d20 games that is realistic in its simulation of graveyards. 93 Games Studio's motto is "as real as it gets," and that's the point of this book.

I do like the ideas presented in the last paragraph for DCs for knowing about disturbing of graves, etc.

And yes, this is a niche product, but that doesn't negate its use. If you're running a d20 modern game and need a cemetery for any reason, this is exactly the book you need.

Rolling the Bones: A Graveyard Supplement is a pdf product from 93 Games Studio. It's written by Donna Fitch and details graveyards, their descriptions and their uses in a d20 Modern game. The pdf is 41 pages long, 2 which are used for OGL declarations and further reading material suggestions, 3 for cover, credits and table of contents, leaving 36 pages of graveyard content. This pdf normally retails on RPGNow.com for $5. This review was done as part of Crothian's Review Project.

Initial Impressions:

As the title suggests, this pdf is about graveyards. It comes in a zip file with two pdf files included, one detailing graveyards and the other containing a random graveyard generator. The layout is well done, the pdfs are fully bookmarked, and there is some appropriate art, mainly in the form of photographs of a variety of graveyards, gravestones and the like. This is a supplement for the d20 Modern game, and while it attempts to avoid, by stating so much in the pdf itself, fantasy horror and the like, I think there is still some useful information in this pdf that can be applied to that kind of genre as well, although more in ideas than actual mechanics.

Rolling the Bones is all about graveyards - what types there are, understanding the various symbols and inscriptions in graveyards, typical encounters that can be had in graveyards, using graveyards in your Modern games, and a lot more useful information. By its nature, it's a niche product, detailing only graveyards, but having said that graveyards are found in almost any place imaginable - people die, people get buried, and so this has more utility than I would've originally thought.

The Details:

The pdf is divided into a number of chapters, each describing a different aspects of graveyards and giving useful descriptive and roleplaying information regarding them. This pdf is almost entirely 'fluff', although some of the example encounters do contain some crunchy bits in the form of stat blocks, but if you want to add a more investigative game relating to family lineage or just spice up your graveyard, then this contains a lot of useful information. It is very much a western style approach to graveyards as wound be found in America, and it would've been nice to see some additional details on, for example, other cultures' responses to death, or just detailing various people's attitudes to death as reflected in their graves, something only touched upon.

Chapter 1: An introduction, giving a breakdown on the contents of each chapter and describing the nature of the pdf - presenting graveyards in a manner different to that typically found in fantasy and horror, and for that reason quite refreshing.

Chapter 2: This chapter looks at different kinds of cemeteries, from the sprawling urban graveyard in the city suburbs to the restive family graveyard on land about to be taken over by mass-marketing retail outlets. It's well-written, detailed, and useful. Different types of graveyards are even divided into subsections where appropriate, and information includes such things are security in graveyards, age, types of gravestones, history of those types of graveyards, where to find them, what they might contain in the form of useful information and lots more.

Chapter 3: This chapter takes a look at the different uses that a graveyard can have in a d20 Modern game. Uses include locations for secret meetings, storage of items that need to be remain hidden. and obviously gathering information on local people and sometimes history, culture, and legend in the form of various inscriptions on the gravestones and in graveyard archives.

Chapter 4: A meaty chapter in the pdf, this one looks at the meaning of scores of different symbols and inscriptions typically found in graveyards. It's very useful, providing game related information on each in the form of skill checks, and providing general meanings for each symbol. It's a useful chapter to give your graveyard some more meaning, spice it up a bit, and add some more descriptive detail to any particular grave.

Chapter 5: This chapter gives some sample encounters with descriptive text that can be used within an graveyard environment. Gravediggers, mourners and other types of people often frequent graveyards, and can provide some useful information, a plot hook, a dangerous encounter etc. This is a useful chapter to get you started, and enough information is provided to even get you started on something bigger, or a grander plot.

Chapters 6 and 7: The last two chapters of the pdf provide descriptive detail on two cemeteries, one rural and one urban. Both are very well written, providing plenty of ambience, lots of information on the gravestones contained, and the environment in which the graveyards find themselves and where they are located. Everything contained in the pdf is tied together nicely in these last two descriptive chapters, bringing the fluff and flavor to practical life.

The second pdf in this product contains a detailed look at generating random graveyards. Everything is considered, from size, to location, to type, to maintenance, to number of graves, to care for graves and much more. A handy sheet is included to aid you in the design of the graveyard, upon which you can write all the details as you take this step-by-step approach to graveyard design. Each step in accompanied by an example design which gives you a good idea of how everything is supposed to work and what the final product of your random generation may look like. This is a good addition to the pdf, and those playing d20 Modern games will certainly find a use for this pdf in their libraries.

Conclusions:

Rolling the Bones: A Graveyard Supplement is a d20 Modern supplement detailing graveyards. It's well detailed, well-written, with good layout and art, providing a complete package on graveyards for your game, and, even for those non-Modern games that wish to add more detail to their graveyard encounters. This is almost entirely a descriptive pdf, providing lots of useful information to enhance your games, something you don't see all that frequently in the mechanics heavy market, and it makes for a refreshing change. Sometimes you don't want more rules, just more information, and that's exactly what this pdf provides. While not earth-shattering exciting and specifically niche in its American background (although a lot of this is equally applicable to graveyards around the world), it's a useful product with no glaring aspects that are poor or wrong, so based on solid descriptive flavor, utility and content, I'd grade this with three and a half stars, rounding up to four stars.

Pinotage said:

...it's a useful product with no glaring aspects that are poor or wrong, so based on solid descriptive flavor, utility and content, I'd grade this with three and a half stars, rounding up to four stars.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Pinotage! I appreciate the positive (and accurate) review!

Donna