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[Let's Read] The Nightmares Underneath: 2nd Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8077977" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/apzaSv4.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter 8: A World Full of Nightmares</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Edition Changes:</strong> 1st Edition used to have a Chapter preceding this one called Wandering the Wastes which had rules for overland travel and was quite brief in length.</p><p></p><p>This GM-centric chapter has all of the tools needed for creating ruins, nightmare incursions, monster design, and similar things. Quite a bit of this material is common advice and suggestions we’ve heard in many other supplements, so I’m skipping over those in favor of the new stuff.</p><p></p><p><strong>Creating Nightmare Incursions</strong> provides the universal rules of such dread places. Incursions manifest in places shadowed from the sun, and due to their extradimensional nature are not bound by physical constraints. However, their interiors are almost never spacious; such places are only located deeper than any human explorers have gone, and any ‘skies’ located within are illusions. Incursions are made up of one or more Lairs, which are treated as dungeons unto their own with their own Anchors, Crowns, and Levels.</p><p></p><p>Nightmare incursions have four general types: Deathtrap dungeons are full of traps with hardly any monsters; Heretic Temples are primarily inhabited by corrupted humans who serve the nightmare realm; Monster Hordes are a beacon to (non-nightmare) monsters, either corrupting their minds like Heretic Temples or offering them some boon or resource to tempt them; Spawning Pits are full of monsters of the nightmare type. All lairs are capable of hosting Corrupted Outposts, adjacent physical spaces in the material plane which otherwise protect or conceal the lair entrance and has additional dangers; it’s counted as a dungeon of its own, but one level lower than the lair itself and has no anchor or nightmare monsters. Furthermore, the layouts of lairs can differ and connect to each other in various ways as a kind of dungeon network or megadungeon. Tunnel Incursions are simple linear progressions: each additional lair’s entrance is at the end of a previous one, while Hive Incursions are nonlinear and maze-like in outline. Zone incursions directly overlap the physical world, always in a place shrouded against sunlight.</p><p></p><p>Each lair also has an anchor, which is bound up in human emotions and thus is the literal lifeblood of said lair. The value of anchors are randomly determined via 2d6 + lair level, meaning that higher-level lairs can be more valuable. Alternatively, they can be a magic item. We also have a list of tables for determining the Profession/NPC type for corrupted humans, trap types and accompanying effects, and potential sources of inspiration for monsters. Non-nightmare monsters range from standard fantasy to the creepy via brief descriptions (drowning pool selkie, corrosive amoeba, etc), whereas the table for Nightmare monsters is exclusively horror-themed (ghosts of your failure, burrowing parasites, the untouchable feast).</p><p></p><p><strong>Edition Changes:</strong> The tables for monsters provided specific examples from the Bestiary back in 1st Edition as opposed to inspirational descriptors. Given that said monsters were of variable level this resulted in a rather broad threat range.</p><p></p><p><strong>Creating Nightmares</strong> list a table of various emotions and how incursions and monsters keyed to them may manifest, and also common monster types they attract. Characters who die inside nightmare incursions have their memories and fears learned by the dungeon, and are then incorporated into its foundations. The GM is advised to ask a series of questions to the player of a dead PC: “who are you leaving behind?” “Who do you blame for this untimely end?” “What great hopes and dreams die with you?” and other tragic queries are provided.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/NHqCgD5.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Monster Stats</strong> provides the GM with tools to create enemies of all stripes. In most cases things hew closely to OSR standards, but with a few exceptions:</p><p></p><p>They have attribute scores, like the PCs.</p><p></p><p>They don’t provide Experience in and of themselves.</p><p></p><p>They have a Level indicating their overall level of threat, as well as guidelines for determining how many special abilities they have. Monsters are typically at or near the level of a lair, with deviations meant to represent particularly dangerous individuals or pitiful hordes. They add this level to their attacks (barring some that are non-combatants or rely upon indirect means of harm) and skills in which they are proficient.</p><p></p><p>A Surprise Rating is given for how difficult or easy it is for PCs to take notice of said monster. Armour Rating.</p><p></p><p>The major size categories are Tiny (cat and smaller), Small (child-sized), Medium, Large (horses), and Huge (elephant and larger). Creatures cannot deal damage via conventional means to those who are at least two categories larger, although poison, explosives, and the like can help.</p><p></p><p>Monsters roll their Disposition just like PCs, although particularly large and supernaturally resilient beings may roll three Hit Dice. Tiny creatures typically have 0 Disposition and fall down in one easy stroke.</p><p></p><p>Monsters of Level 4 or higher are recommended to have a bonus damage die akin to Fighters, the ability to attack more than once in a round, or have an Area of Effect attack.</p><p></p><p>There are seven creature types. Beastlings include mundane animals as well as “animal people,” oozes, and chimeric creatures such as lycanthropes, manticore, griffins, and the like. Dwellers in the Deep represent aberrations, alien life forms from deep sea trenches, and things beyond time and space. Faeries include the eponymous creatures of European folklore but also goblins, trolls, genies, and dragons who are regarded as the “gods” of faerie-kind. Golems are artificial constructs of all types. Humans and Undead are self-explanatory. Nightmares are the unnatural spawn of the nightmare realm, made manifest from mortal fear and sin.</p><p></p><p>Creatures of the Nightmare type have special features. Only nightmares as a creature type have alignment restrictions: they are either Chaotic if their primary purpose is to destroy social order, or Evil if they seek to corrupt and destroy individual bodies and souls. Additionally, they are always vulnerable to a particular substance or environmental effect and are immune to one conventional source of harm. Furthermore, they cannot leave the presence of a lair for long: 1st thru 3rd level nightmares can stay outside for weeks but crumble in the presence of daylight; 4th thru 6th can only be out until the next sunrise and then die; 7th and higher are unable to visit the physical world at all barring some unique MacGuffin or ritual.</p><p></p><p>Undead and Golems (which represent artificial beings in general) have no Health score. While they have Disposition, they cannot recover from damage (wounds, attribute loss) unless they have some life-draining attack or from outside magical aid. Damage beyond their Disposition is applied to Ferocity which imposes a disability of some kind once it equals half their Ferocity and are killed once it is equal.</p><p></p><p>I find this last bit rather interesting, as it contradicts the early claims of 0 Disposition means a fallen opponent in Chapter Six. Are undead and golems meant to be far sturdier by design, or are these rules meant to be used for “boss level” creatures of this type?</p><p></p><p>There’s also a list of Benefits and Special Powers, as well as Flaws and Weaknesses to further customized creatures. Generally speaking a creature should have one benefit per level, with flaws cancelling out benefits on a 1 for 1 basis. Creatures with more or less net benefits than their level are considered stronger or weaker than average for determining overall threat assessment. Of particular note are Presence Effects, which are “always on” effects which radiate out from a creature, such as supernatural fear, a cloud of poison gas, or a shroud that sucks all light within a certain radius into it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Edition Changes:</strong> An actual bestiary was provided as its own Appendix in 1st Edition (which I will review) but was excised in 2nd Edition due to later plans for a proper bestiary sourcebook.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/GwmGSUS.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Creating Ruins</strong> covers those heretical tombs in the Vale of Serpents and various non-nightmare related dungeons. They operate on slightly different sets of rules: for one, they’re more likely to contain magic items among their treasure on principle, and do not have creatures of the Nightmare type unless an incursion is inside or nearby the ruins. Ruins have their own 5 types: Empty Ruins are bereft of value but may have squatter inhabitants; Gates of Darkness have a portal to other realms within of some kind; Monster Fortresses are more or less what they sound like; Next of Evil have a mixture of human and monster inhabitants; and Sealed Tombs are places that remain untouched since its construction and thus any inhabitants within are invariably some kind of immortal being.</p><p></p><p><strong>Edition Changes:</strong> Ruins creation rules are a new feature of 2nd Edition.</p><p></p><p>Rival Adventurers can be encountered in ruins, whose intentions and general Profession and social classes are determined via a die roll. Other potential inhabitants include Corrupted humans (only found in Gates of Darkness and Nests of Evil) who have some connection to the nightmare realm; Guardians who are golem or undead servitors; typical Monsters; and of course Nightmares, who are the rarest result and won’t be in appreciable numbers unless in a Gate of Darkness or from a nearby incursion.</p><p></p><p>There’s miscellaneous tables for determining the overall history and conditions of the ruins. What Age where they built? What kinds of historical items and records exist? Tables for generating room types are provided on an appreciable d100 table, and a d6 roll for the Surrounding Area explains why said ruins haven’t been taken over or are well-traveled (rough terrain, magical curse, hostile natives, etc).</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/bgvygoI.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Running a Nightmare Incursion</strong> is the final section of the final chapter proper, and mostly concerns rules for determining encounters within and what happens when an incursion is left to its own devices. The Anchors and Crown have special rules: an anchor is an object whose purpose is immediately known whenever a PC or other being immune to duration-based nightmare curses sees or touches it. Once an anchor is removed from a lair, the dungeon fades out of existence, expelling its non-nightmare contents back into the material plane or an adjacent lair if buried deep within a tunnel/hive network. In the event that the destruction of a lair ‘cuts off’ an access point to a lair, said incursion remains adrift in the nightmare realm, but may eventually take root in the material plane if it attaches itself to another lair or some magical item or ritual allows transportation into it.</p><p></p><p>Every nightmare incursion also has a suggested Expected Value of the worth of its treasure in cyphers based upon Lair Level. I really like this touch; given that all Experience gained is via recovered treasure from incursions or ruins, it is handy for the GM to know how well-stocked to make their dungeons and more accurately gauge campaign length.</p><p></p><p>The Crown is a predetermined monster (usually the strongest kind) or a group of monsters of related types that show up together. They can be encountered at a fixed place in the dungeon, but also encountered anywhere within the incursion due to the Countdown Die’s rules.</p><p></p><p>For determining random encounters, an Encounter Die ranging from d4 to d12 (depending on the ‘crowdedness’ of the dungeon, relative danger of fixed encounters, how ‘nightmare’ heavy the monster population is, etc). The Die is rolled once every Turn, if they are particularly loud, or entering a new area with no fixed encounter for the first time. A 3 or less indicates some type of risk: encountering a wandering monster or NPC, the PCs’ light sources or ongoing spell durations are unexpectedly taxed from an environmental hazard, or some other troubling event of the GM’s imagination. There’s also a Countdown Die, a secret value which is determined by rolling the Encounter Die and counts down by 1 whenever a living thing dies in the PCs’ presence, the PCs move to a different area while carrying the Anchor, or the Encounter Die is rolled for a random encounter. When the Countdown is reduced to 0, the Crown appears and attacks the PCs, and if they survive a new Countdown Die is rolled. Splitting the party makes the Countdown track separately, and reunification uses the lowest Countdown Die result from then on out.</p><p></p><p>But what happens when nightmare incursions are left to their own devices? Such <strong>Growing Dangers</strong> occur for every 2 weeks an incursion persists after discovery by the PCs. A d6 table and a related chart based on the dungeon type determines how the nightmares work their will upon the world. The incursion can spawn a lower level lair (level 1 lairs cannot do this), grow in size or level, lure humans into it in some manner to suffer terrible fates, attract/spawn more monsters, or its inhabitants go out into the world and attack nearby communities. If a lair reaches level 9 it stops growing in power, but there’s a 1 in 6 chance every week that it will destroy the nearest human settlement in a cataclysm or absorb the place and its inhabitants into the nightmare realm. If such a dreadful event occurs, the incursion and any joined lairs fade away and leave but a lifeless wasteland where it once stood.</p><p></p><p>And before you ask, the value of a lair’s anchor and treasure does not increase in the event they grow in level; PCs who hope to ‘wait out’ an incursion for promises of greater reward merely put the world in greater danger.</p><p></p><p><strong>Edition Changes:</strong> In 1st Edition there was a final section, NPC Adventures, which was for generating NPC adventure parties who also fought against the nightmare incursions. Tables were made for determining their Profession, Alignment and Levels (but never higher than 4th) and there's a 2d6 + modifiers table for determining their level of success against an incursion. 2nd Edition dispensed with this section.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far:</strong> These are some pretty good rules. I particularly enjoy the concept of a Countdown Die which represents the ever-lurking threat of being watched, and the rules for incursions wrecking woe in the world for PCs that neglect them put a blatant timeframe for party action vs rest and retreat. I do find it interesting how monsters and dungeons have Levels which are tightly wound together, unlike other OSR games which take a fast and loose approach to threat levels within the world. The rules for creating monsters are welcome, although given that they roll 3 hit dice at most they are more fragile than monsters in other OSR games save for golems and undead.</p><p></p><p><strong>Join us next time as we cover a Bestiary of Monsters!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 8077977, member: 6750502"] [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/apzaSv4.png[/IMG] [B]Chapter 8: A World Full of Nightmares[/B][/CENTER] [B]Edition Changes:[/B] 1st Edition used to have a Chapter preceding this one called Wandering the Wastes which had rules for overland travel and was quite brief in length. This GM-centric chapter has all of the tools needed for creating ruins, nightmare incursions, monster design, and similar things. Quite a bit of this material is common advice and suggestions we’ve heard in many other supplements, so I’m skipping over those in favor of the new stuff. [B]Creating Nightmare Incursions[/B] provides the universal rules of such dread places. Incursions manifest in places shadowed from the sun, and due to their extradimensional nature are not bound by physical constraints. However, their interiors are almost never spacious; such places are only located deeper than any human explorers have gone, and any ‘skies’ located within are illusions. Incursions are made up of one or more Lairs, which are treated as dungeons unto their own with their own Anchors, Crowns, and Levels. Nightmare incursions have four general types: Deathtrap dungeons are full of traps with hardly any monsters; Heretic Temples are primarily inhabited by corrupted humans who serve the nightmare realm; Monster Hordes are a beacon to (non-nightmare) monsters, either corrupting their minds like Heretic Temples or offering them some boon or resource to tempt them; Spawning Pits are full of monsters of the nightmare type. All lairs are capable of hosting Corrupted Outposts, adjacent physical spaces in the material plane which otherwise protect or conceal the lair entrance and has additional dangers; it’s counted as a dungeon of its own, but one level lower than the lair itself and has no anchor or nightmare monsters. Furthermore, the layouts of lairs can differ and connect to each other in various ways as a kind of dungeon network or megadungeon. Tunnel Incursions are simple linear progressions: each additional lair’s entrance is at the end of a previous one, while Hive Incursions are nonlinear and maze-like in outline. Zone incursions directly overlap the physical world, always in a place shrouded against sunlight. Each lair also has an anchor, which is bound up in human emotions and thus is the literal lifeblood of said lair. The value of anchors are randomly determined via 2d6 + lair level, meaning that higher-level lairs can be more valuable. Alternatively, they can be a magic item. We also have a list of tables for determining the Profession/NPC type for corrupted humans, trap types and accompanying effects, and potential sources of inspiration for monsters. Non-nightmare monsters range from standard fantasy to the creepy via brief descriptions (drowning pool selkie, corrosive amoeba, etc), whereas the table for Nightmare monsters is exclusively horror-themed (ghosts of your failure, burrowing parasites, the untouchable feast). [b]Edition Changes:[/b] The tables for monsters provided specific examples from the Bestiary back in 1st Edition as opposed to inspirational descriptors. Given that said monsters were of variable level this resulted in a rather broad threat range. [B]Creating Nightmares[/B] list a table of various emotions and how incursions and monsters keyed to them may manifest, and also common monster types they attract. Characters who die inside nightmare incursions have their memories and fears learned by the dungeon, and are then incorporated into its foundations. The GM is advised to ask a series of questions to the player of a dead PC: “who are you leaving behind?” “Who do you blame for this untimely end?” “What great hopes and dreams die with you?” and other tragic queries are provided. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/NHqCgD5.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Monster Stats[/B] provides the GM with tools to create enemies of all stripes. In most cases things hew closely to OSR standards, but with a few exceptions: They have attribute scores, like the PCs. They don’t provide Experience in and of themselves. They have a Level indicating their overall level of threat, as well as guidelines for determining how many special abilities they have. Monsters are typically at or near the level of a lair, with deviations meant to represent particularly dangerous individuals or pitiful hordes. They add this level to their attacks (barring some that are non-combatants or rely upon indirect means of harm) and skills in which they are proficient. A Surprise Rating is given for how difficult or easy it is for PCs to take notice of said monster. Armour Rating. The major size categories are Tiny (cat and smaller), Small (child-sized), Medium, Large (horses), and Huge (elephant and larger). Creatures cannot deal damage via conventional means to those who are at least two categories larger, although poison, explosives, and the like can help. Monsters roll their Disposition just like PCs, although particularly large and supernaturally resilient beings may roll three Hit Dice. Tiny creatures typically have 0 Disposition and fall down in one easy stroke. Monsters of Level 4 or higher are recommended to have a bonus damage die akin to Fighters, the ability to attack more than once in a round, or have an Area of Effect attack. There are seven creature types. Beastlings include mundane animals as well as “animal people,” oozes, and chimeric creatures such as lycanthropes, manticore, griffins, and the like. Dwellers in the Deep represent aberrations, alien life forms from deep sea trenches, and things beyond time and space. Faeries include the eponymous creatures of European folklore but also goblins, trolls, genies, and dragons who are regarded as the “gods” of faerie-kind. Golems are artificial constructs of all types. Humans and Undead are self-explanatory. Nightmares are the unnatural spawn of the nightmare realm, made manifest from mortal fear and sin. Creatures of the Nightmare type have special features. Only nightmares as a creature type have alignment restrictions: they are either Chaotic if their primary purpose is to destroy social order, or Evil if they seek to corrupt and destroy individual bodies and souls. Additionally, they are always vulnerable to a particular substance or environmental effect and are immune to one conventional source of harm. Furthermore, they cannot leave the presence of a lair for long: 1st thru 3rd level nightmares can stay outside for weeks but crumble in the presence of daylight; 4th thru 6th can only be out until the next sunrise and then die; 7th and higher are unable to visit the physical world at all barring some unique MacGuffin or ritual. Undead and Golems (which represent artificial beings in general) have no Health score. While they have Disposition, they cannot recover from damage (wounds, attribute loss) unless they have some life-draining attack or from outside magical aid. Damage beyond their Disposition is applied to Ferocity which imposes a disability of some kind once it equals half their Ferocity and are killed once it is equal. I find this last bit rather interesting, as it contradicts the early claims of 0 Disposition means a fallen opponent in Chapter Six. Are undead and golems meant to be far sturdier by design, or are these rules meant to be used for “boss level” creatures of this type? There’s also a list of Benefits and Special Powers, as well as Flaws and Weaknesses to further customized creatures. Generally speaking a creature should have one benefit per level, with flaws cancelling out benefits on a 1 for 1 basis. Creatures with more or less net benefits than their level are considered stronger or weaker than average for determining overall threat assessment. Of particular note are Presence Effects, which are “always on” effects which radiate out from a creature, such as supernatural fear, a cloud of poison gas, or a shroud that sucks all light within a certain radius into it. [B]Edition Changes:[/B] An actual bestiary was provided as its own Appendix in 1st Edition (which I will review) but was excised in 2nd Edition due to later plans for a proper bestiary sourcebook. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/GwmGSUS.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Creating Ruins[/B] covers those heretical tombs in the Vale of Serpents and various non-nightmare related dungeons. They operate on slightly different sets of rules: for one, they’re more likely to contain magic items among their treasure on principle, and do not have creatures of the Nightmare type unless an incursion is inside or nearby the ruins. Ruins have their own 5 types: Empty Ruins are bereft of value but may have squatter inhabitants; Gates of Darkness have a portal to other realms within of some kind; Monster Fortresses are more or less what they sound like; Next of Evil have a mixture of human and monster inhabitants; and Sealed Tombs are places that remain untouched since its construction and thus any inhabitants within are invariably some kind of immortal being. [B]Edition Changes:[/B] Ruins creation rules are a new feature of 2nd Edition. Rival Adventurers can be encountered in ruins, whose intentions and general Profession and social classes are determined via a die roll. Other potential inhabitants include Corrupted humans (only found in Gates of Darkness and Nests of Evil) who have some connection to the nightmare realm; Guardians who are golem or undead servitors; typical Monsters; and of course Nightmares, who are the rarest result and won’t be in appreciable numbers unless in a Gate of Darkness or from a nearby incursion. There’s miscellaneous tables for determining the overall history and conditions of the ruins. What Age where they built? What kinds of historical items and records exist? Tables for generating room types are provided on an appreciable d100 table, and a d6 roll for the Surrounding Area explains why said ruins haven’t been taken over or are well-traveled (rough terrain, magical curse, hostile natives, etc). [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/bgvygoI.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Running a Nightmare Incursion[/B] is the final section of the final chapter proper, and mostly concerns rules for determining encounters within and what happens when an incursion is left to its own devices. The Anchors and Crown have special rules: an anchor is an object whose purpose is immediately known whenever a PC or other being immune to duration-based nightmare curses sees or touches it. Once an anchor is removed from a lair, the dungeon fades out of existence, expelling its non-nightmare contents back into the material plane or an adjacent lair if buried deep within a tunnel/hive network. In the event that the destruction of a lair ‘cuts off’ an access point to a lair, said incursion remains adrift in the nightmare realm, but may eventually take root in the material plane if it attaches itself to another lair or some magical item or ritual allows transportation into it. Every nightmare incursion also has a suggested Expected Value of the worth of its treasure in cyphers based upon Lair Level. I really like this touch; given that all Experience gained is via recovered treasure from incursions or ruins, it is handy for the GM to know how well-stocked to make their dungeons and more accurately gauge campaign length. The Crown is a predetermined monster (usually the strongest kind) or a group of monsters of related types that show up together. They can be encountered at a fixed place in the dungeon, but also encountered anywhere within the incursion due to the Countdown Die’s rules. For determining random encounters, an Encounter Die ranging from d4 to d12 (depending on the ‘crowdedness’ of the dungeon, relative danger of fixed encounters, how ‘nightmare’ heavy the monster population is, etc). The Die is rolled once every Turn, if they are particularly loud, or entering a new area with no fixed encounter for the first time. A 3 or less indicates some type of risk: encountering a wandering monster or NPC, the PCs’ light sources or ongoing spell durations are unexpectedly taxed from an environmental hazard, or some other troubling event of the GM’s imagination. There’s also a Countdown Die, a secret value which is determined by rolling the Encounter Die and counts down by 1 whenever a living thing dies in the PCs’ presence, the PCs move to a different area while carrying the Anchor, or the Encounter Die is rolled for a random encounter. When the Countdown is reduced to 0, the Crown appears and attacks the PCs, and if they survive a new Countdown Die is rolled. Splitting the party makes the Countdown track separately, and reunification uses the lowest Countdown Die result from then on out. But what happens when nightmare incursions are left to their own devices? Such [B]Growing Dangers[/B] occur for every 2 weeks an incursion persists after discovery by the PCs. A d6 table and a related chart based on the dungeon type determines how the nightmares work their will upon the world. The incursion can spawn a lower level lair (level 1 lairs cannot do this), grow in size or level, lure humans into it in some manner to suffer terrible fates, attract/spawn more monsters, or its inhabitants go out into the world and attack nearby communities. If a lair reaches level 9 it stops growing in power, but there’s a 1 in 6 chance every week that it will destroy the nearest human settlement in a cataclysm or absorb the place and its inhabitants into the nightmare realm. If such a dreadful event occurs, the incursion and any joined lairs fade away and leave but a lifeless wasteland where it once stood. And before you ask, the value of a lair’s anchor and treasure does not increase in the event they grow in level; PCs who hope to ‘wait out’ an incursion for promises of greater reward merely put the world in greater danger. [B]Edition Changes:[/B] In 1st Edition there was a final section, NPC Adventures, which was for generating NPC adventure parties who also fought against the nightmare incursions. Tables were made for determining their Profession, Alignment and Levels (but never higher than 4th) and there's a 2d6 + modifiers table for determining their level of success against an incursion. 2nd Edition dispensed with this section. [B]Thoughts So Far:[/B] These are some pretty good rules. I particularly enjoy the concept of a Countdown Die which represents the ever-lurking threat of being watched, and the rules for incursions wrecking woe in the world for PCs that neglect them put a blatant timeframe for party action vs rest and retreat. I do find it interesting how monsters and dungeons have Levels which are tightly wound together, unlike other OSR games which take a fast and loose approach to threat levels within the world. The rules for creating monsters are welcome, although given that they roll 3 hit dice at most they are more fragile than monsters in other OSR games save for golems and undead. [B]Join us next time as we cover a Bestiary of Monsters![/B] [/QUOTE]
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[Let's Read] The Nightmares Underneath: 2nd Edition
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