"If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything." ~ Count Rugen, The Princess Bride. Oh, friends, this is so very true. The last few days have been a bit rough, I will say, and much of what I am dealing with comes from failing to do the kinds of things I should for far too long. Ours is a very sedentary hobby (unless you're one of those magnificent maniacs that plays action/combat LARPS), and it's all-too-easy to let horrible habits settle in. Bad food, no exercise... trust me, this will catch up to you, as it has me. I am taking steps, but they are difficult and drastic, and you'd be much better off getting up once in a while, wandering around a bit, and substituting some healthy stuff for the pizza. OK, sermon over, on with the Picks!
Genius Guide to Variant Multiclassing Rules
Pathfinder fans enjoy a never-ending pipeline of cool material, including variant rules from Rogue Genius Games (which happens to have a particular inside track on getting stuff like this right).
The Genius Guide to Variant Multiclassing Rules lets any character add just a little of another classes’ ability, by sacrificing feats instead of losing crucial class levels. This tome covers variant mulcticlassing for every base, core, hybrid and alternate class, offers variant prestige class rules using the same system, and expands the rules into dedicated multiclassing, for characters willing to sacrifice nearly all their feats! Because sometimes, you need to add a little bard. Or cleric. Or eldritch knight…
Suzerain for Pathfinder
Two Pathfinder Picks in as many days? Well, I kind of had to with this one – it’s the Suzerain Continuum, now for Pathfinder! Take your PF campaign to the ends of every Earth, and walk the cosmos as demigods. Just don’t get cocky, because you can still get killed – and worse – out there.
So, you want to be a Demigod?
Choose a place, a cave, a town, a far-flung planet. Now choose a time, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, when aliens invaded our star sector… once again, anything goes. Now choose a genre, from horror to swashbuckling, steampunk to sci-fi, fantasy to fairytales….
Where your place, time and genre intersect, that’s Suzerain. Try it again tomorrow when you’re in a different mood and that’s still Suzerain. Past, present and all possible futures? Check. Every possible alternate reality? Check. Mortal realms and god realms? Check. Check. In the Suzerain Continuum your gaming group just became…
…a Pantheon in the making!
Inside these covers you’ll find:
Where most campaigns and adventure paths finish, Suzerain is just getting started. With Suzerain a starting character can expect to become true hero of the multiverse, meet the gods themselves, and become a Demigod!
Through the Breach RPG
We have a regular gaming night at the local shop (Total Escape Games), called “Monday Night Savages.” Despite the name, we’ve begun incorporating numerous other systems, and this past Monday had me playing in Daniel Wong’s personal world, but using these rules. Honestly, I was dubious, but there’s some very interesting stuff going on here. The personal fortune aspect (derived from the tarot-like card draws you use for character creation) really impressed me. The game mechanics for combat were a bit fiddly and took some getting used to, but I admit I am interested to see where the game goes.
Control your destiny.
Journey Through the Breach into the world of Malifaux where steam power collides with magic, monsters, and steel. This Fated Almanac is the essential tome for players of the Through the Breach roleplaying game. It includes the core rules, as well as equipment, magic, and background information. Everything you need to become a power-mad Arcanist, lethal gunslinger, or a ruthless mercenary lies in these pages.
Are you prepared to forge your own destiny as one of the Fated? It’s time to cheat fate, or lose your soul…
Island of the Lost
Haven’t done one of these in a while – here’s another fantastic, imminently useful and flexible map set from the good folks at Dramascape. Looking for a lost island for some adventure?
“This island seems to have everything from Greco-Roman ruins to a crashed ship. We aren’t the first people to be stranded on this island in any case. But why have all these people been lost here?”—Stranded Survivor
Island of the Lost is an exterior map of an oval-shaped island. The west part of the map has a mountain with a ruined structure at the top and several stone stairs built into the cliff faces to ascend the mountain. The mountain surrounds a small waterfall and pool in the west center of the island. The plains in the center have some additional ruins. There is a crashed and submerged sailing ship in the southeast.
Island of the Lost is intended for use in fantasy, pulp, and modern settings. The ruins make for an interesting location for relic hunters and archaeologists to investigate.
Adventure hook for use with this map:
Lost at Sea: Vacationers are enjoying a calm summer day onboard a modern sailing yacht when suddenly a storm roils through the area. The storm throws the vessel off course and they crash into a mysterious island covered in mist and fog. As the fog lifts, they see a partially submerged sailing ship and ruined structures scattered throughout the island. Stone stairs ascend to the top of the western mountain and a smaller stone stairway ascends to the top of an eastern hill. In the center of the mountain, rivulets of water form small waterfalls cascading down the cliff faces and aggregating into a small pool of fresh water.
Is there shelter somewhere inside the mountain? Is it possible to cut down the trees and fix the old sailing ship to escape?
After giving the group a chance to investigate the island and become familiar with the terrain, the sun sets and it becomes dusk. They hear bizarre howling noises coming from the wooded areas of the island on top of the plateaus. The group finds themselves hunted by barbaric creatures with the heads of bulls but walk upright with primate-like hands that have emerged from their caves. The creatures hold primitive rusted swords of varying types like spatha, gladius, rapier, cutlass, etc. The monsters try to kill all the survivors. A twist might be that the creature’s bite turns them into like creatures.
The Earth Codex
More source material from Ryan Chaddock for the Cypher System, and specifically for the Strange. Your heroes may gallivant all over potentiality, but it all starts on Earth, right?
EARTH IS DEADLY!
Create characters and discover intriguing story ideas for Earth-based campaigns in The Strange. The Earth Codex is a guide to player options and cyphers for games centering or beginning on Earth, as well as a useful resource for GMs looking for inspiration and guidance for starting stories back on Earth.
The Earth Codex Includes:
~~~~~
And thus, another week's Picks are known to you.
It looks like a week of mostly resting and recovering for me, but I hope to get some great gaming in at least on Sunday (Ross' regular 5e Birthright campaign, which has been truly fantastic). If I am feeling well enough tomorrow, it may be some laser tag at a friend's birthday party (we refuse to grow up, you see).
So I hope you all have a great weekend ahead, and until next time...
...The Adventure Continues!
~SPF
Genius Guide to Variant Multiclassing Rules
Pathfinder fans enjoy a never-ending pipeline of cool material, including variant rules from Rogue Genius Games (which happens to have a particular inside track on getting stuff like this right).
The Genius Guide to Variant Multiclassing Rules lets any character add just a little of another classes’ ability, by sacrificing feats instead of losing crucial class levels. This tome covers variant mulcticlassing for every base, core, hybrid and alternate class, offers variant prestige class rules using the same system, and expands the rules into dedicated multiclassing, for characters willing to sacrifice nearly all their feats! Because sometimes, you need to add a little bard. Or cleric. Or eldritch knight…
Suzerain for Pathfinder
Two Pathfinder Picks in as many days? Well, I kind of had to with this one – it’s the Suzerain Continuum, now for Pathfinder! Take your PF campaign to the ends of every Earth, and walk the cosmos as demigods. Just don’t get cocky, because you can still get killed – and worse – out there.
So, you want to be a Demigod?
Choose a place, a cave, a town, a far-flung planet. Now choose a time, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, when aliens invaded our star sector… once again, anything goes. Now choose a genre, from horror to swashbuckling, steampunk to sci-fi, fantasy to fairytales….
Where your place, time and genre intersect, that’s Suzerain. Try it again tomorrow when you’re in a different mood and that’s still Suzerain. Past, present and all possible futures? Check. Every possible alternate reality? Check. Mortal realms and god realms? Check. Check. In the Suzerain Continuum your gaming group just became…
…a Pantheon in the making!
Inside these covers you’ll find:
- All the background you’ll need to run games set in any time, and any place.
- 48 new Pulse feats, allowing you to tap into the life energy of the multiverse! .
- Telesmae – bonded, semi-intelligent items that grow with your character!
- Your Pocket Realm! An extradimensional hideaway that grows as your heroes grow in power!
- Flexing a Nexus – use your godlike powers to warp the nature of reality itself!
- 30 mini-scenarios including a campaign outline spanning the main eras of a character’s development from Neophyte to Demigod!
Where most campaigns and adventure paths finish, Suzerain is just getting started. With Suzerain a starting character can expect to become true hero of the multiverse, meet the gods themselves, and become a Demigod!
Through the Breach RPG
We have a regular gaming night at the local shop (Total Escape Games), called “Monday Night Savages.” Despite the name, we’ve begun incorporating numerous other systems, and this past Monday had me playing in Daniel Wong’s personal world, but using these rules. Honestly, I was dubious, but there’s some very interesting stuff going on here. The personal fortune aspect (derived from the tarot-like card draws you use for character creation) really impressed me. The game mechanics for combat were a bit fiddly and took some getting used to, but I admit I am interested to see where the game goes.
Control your destiny.
Journey Through the Breach into the world of Malifaux where steam power collides with magic, monsters, and steel. This Fated Almanac is the essential tome for players of the Through the Breach roleplaying game. It includes the core rules, as well as equipment, magic, and background information. Everything you need to become a power-mad Arcanist, lethal gunslinger, or a ruthless mercenary lies in these pages.
Are you prepared to forge your own destiny as one of the Fated? It’s time to cheat fate, or lose your soul…
Island of the Lost
Haven’t done one of these in a while – here’s another fantastic, imminently useful and flexible map set from the good folks at Dramascape. Looking for a lost island for some adventure?
“This island seems to have everything from Greco-Roman ruins to a crashed ship. We aren’t the first people to be stranded on this island in any case. But why have all these people been lost here?”—Stranded Survivor
Island of the Lost is an exterior map of an oval-shaped island. The west part of the map has a mountain with a ruined structure at the top and several stone stairs built into the cliff faces to ascend the mountain. The mountain surrounds a small waterfall and pool in the west center of the island. The plains in the center have some additional ruins. There is a crashed and submerged sailing ship in the southeast.
Island of the Lost is intended for use in fantasy, pulp, and modern settings. The ruins make for an interesting location for relic hunters and archaeologists to investigate.
Adventure hook for use with this map:
Lost at Sea: Vacationers are enjoying a calm summer day onboard a modern sailing yacht when suddenly a storm roils through the area. The storm throws the vessel off course and they crash into a mysterious island covered in mist and fog. As the fog lifts, they see a partially submerged sailing ship and ruined structures scattered throughout the island. Stone stairs ascend to the top of the western mountain and a smaller stone stairway ascends to the top of an eastern hill. In the center of the mountain, rivulets of water form small waterfalls cascading down the cliff faces and aggregating into a small pool of fresh water.
Is there shelter somewhere inside the mountain? Is it possible to cut down the trees and fix the old sailing ship to escape?
After giving the group a chance to investigate the island and become familiar with the terrain, the sun sets and it becomes dusk. They hear bizarre howling noises coming from the wooded areas of the island on top of the plateaus. The group finds themselves hunted by barbaric creatures with the heads of bulls but walk upright with primate-like hands that have emerged from their caves. The creatures hold primitive rusted swords of varying types like spatha, gladius, rapier, cutlass, etc. The monsters try to kill all the survivors. A twist might be that the creature’s bite turns them into like creatures.
The Earth Codex
More source material from Ryan Chaddock for the Cypher System, and specifically for the Strange. Your heroes may gallivant all over potentiality, but it all starts on Earth, right?
EARTH IS DEADLY!
Create characters and discover intriguing story ideas for Earth-based campaigns in The Strange. The Earth Codex is a guide to player options and cyphers for games centering or beginning on Earth, as well as a useful resource for GMs looking for inspiration and guidance for starting stories back on Earth.
The Earth Codex Includes:
- Progress and Innovation: A chapter on academic, industrial, and technological character concepts and games.
- International Affairs: Playing The Strange characters from battlefield and intelligence gatherine backgrounds.
- High Society: Character types and campaign ideas centering on politics and big business.
- Each chapter includes Foci, Descriptors, and 36 Cyphers customized to that particular style of play.
~~~~~
And thus, another week's Picks are known to you.
It looks like a week of mostly resting and recovering for me, but I hope to get some great gaming in at least on Sunday (Ross' regular 5e Birthright campaign, which has been truly fantastic). If I am feeling well enough tomorrow, it may be some laser tag at a friend's birthday party (we refuse to grow up, you see).
So I hope you all have a great weekend ahead, and until next time...
...The Adventure Continues!
~SPF
