Tome of the Ancients, Vol 2 - Lairs

[dungeondweller]

- Unique, scalable generation system for developing complete and interesting monster lairs from the ground up or just adding inspiration and detail to ideas you already have...

- Creation system includes complete ideas for lair minions, terrain and mapping, a trap generation section, plus a "Quick Reference" appendix with all the critical charts in one place for ease of use...

- Tables for creating indoor lairs (such as dungeons, temples, etc) at random; Could be used on the fly to create a random dungeon as you go...

- 3 fully designed and populated sample lairs with maps to show what the generation system can create; Or you can plug then into your game as-is...

Have you ever known what kind of monster you want the PC's to face but you're drawing a blank as to where the monster lives? Ever get frustrated that pre-generated adventures and lairs on the internet and in magazines don't quite fit your world? Would you like a dynamic set of tools that help you in creating a unique, detailed lair and inspire your own ideas along the way?

This is the book you've been waiting for.

I've been a Game Master for 20 years and I use this book myself to create truly fantastic lairs for my persistent campaign.

So many other game supplements clutter your game with content you'll never use. At Dungeon Dwellers' Guild Games, we would rather give you the tools to build your own dynamic content, custom fit to your style. After all, who knows your campaign better than you do?

UPDATE: We decided to add some extra maps for you to use in creating your own unique lairs, as well as a blank grid for creating maps that match those found in the book. Included are 3 extra maps (in addition to the maps that come with the pre-generated lairs) and the blank grid for your own use. Enjoy!

 

[Crothian]

The art of dungeon design is sometimes lost with the abundance of pre made modules and dungeon crawls in print these days. There just seems to be so many examples of them out there but very few products that go into the design process and help a Dungeon Master go through the step of creating their own specifically for their own campaign. Tome of the Ancients Vol2: Liars is such a product.

Liars is a sixty page PDF by Dungeon Dwellers that tries to help a DM go through the thought process of creating a lair for PCs to encounter, explore, and possible even loot. The file is a little over three megs zipped and not much bigger when it becomes decompressed. The PDF does not use any bookmarks. Bookmarks are a linked index that makes things very easy to find when using the product.

Liars starts by taking the user through the process of designing a liar. The first thing they suggest is determining who or what is the master of the house. This can be a single creature in charge of everyone else or a group of creatures that works together. Many of the options is given in table form allow for random determination. Need to know what type of creatures runs this liar? Then roll on Master Race/Type table. Need to know what CR the creature has? Then roll on the CR table. However, there are no suggestions for specific creatures after the type and challenge rating are determined. So, Liars will help you get a Magical Beast CR 8-10, but it does not provide you with options for what specific magical beast fit that CR. There is a table for the demeanor of the master of the liar but no explanation or examples of how these demeanors can be creatively played.

The second section goes into the terrain the lair is found in. I found this a little odd since each creature has a specific terrain type, yet there are random tables here for that. So, we could end up with a desert dwelling creature in the artic using these table. Obviously, the DM needs to make sure that the results make some sense, but I found some of this a little too random. It is nice that is does have a table for the original builders, but I would have liked to have seen some explanations on how the original builders would craft a lair.

Many lairs consist of multiple creatures so the minions can be very important to the feel and design of a lair. They have a table to determine the over all encounter level of the lair for the minions but no really suggestions for what creatures might work well together. There is some advice for adding levels to creatures, but I feel the book needed to go into a few more specifics and examples.

The pdf does similar things with mapping the lair, and placing traps and obstacles. There is some advice like making sure the traps are in positions as to not hinder the creatures that live there, but I just feel that all these sections do not go far enough or in depth enough to really make it that useful. This covers the first twenty two pages of the PDF

The remaining sections of the PDF do have some lairs as examples. These lairs are fully mapped out and described. Each lair has a small section on the history of the occupants and can easily be prepped and used in a game in a very short amount of time.

Overall I found that the product did not do what it tried to set out to do and that is help DM’s create lairs. IT has some great examples of lairs and I found the options, advice, and ways to fit it all together a little lacking. The book is a good start and will set the groundwork to create a lair, but it left me wanting more detail and more explanations.

 

[sbarrie]

L-A-I-R-S

Or is this an Arduin Grimoire product?

 

[dungeondweller]

*Comment deleted at request of user*

 

[Messageboard Golem]

2 is not abysmal.

3 is the average product, which is pretty darn good these days.

2 is something that doesn't measure up

1 is abysmal.

Just an opinion of another reviewer.

 

[dungeondweller]

*Comment deleted at request of user*