Welcome back to the Role Playing Games PDF Spotlights column, where we look at some of the PDF’s that have been released in the past week that have caught my eye.
All of the below were released in PDF between 26th-4th March 2022.
Core Rulebook
By Gallant Knight Games
There are no stars in the sky.
The world’s civilization has collapsed into tiny pockets of societies separated by wilderness overcome with decay and corruption. But in this darkness, there is hope.
Highcaster is a game about creating legends. It is the story of a civilization rising from the ashes, reaching out into the vast unknown to create a new world and destroy the decay and corruption that threatens it. Featuring the unique Caster system, Highcaster helps you create long-lasting tales of legend, courage, and hope.
The System
The Caster System uses a d20 as its core randomizer that must meet or exceed a target number to achieve a spectrum of success, but includes a pool of dice built based upon their stats, talents, or disciplines to serve as modifier. The highest result from the dice pool is added to the d20 result.
Players are rolling against “threats,” which may occur in multiple stages and with each success or failure, cause the story to change. Their stats and moves are based in their motivation, not necessarily in their ability, so the mechanics focus more on the story rather than beat-by-beat tactical action.
Additionally, players are given levers with which they can control the narrative, creating a collaborative experience at the table and a highly emergent story. Character advancement is simple, but expansive and can yield very long-term campaign play.
Player Options
- Seven in-depth cultures player groups can choose to be a part of that provide the tone and type of game play the players will experience
- Nine heritages to choose from including in-setting versions of once-immortal creatures like demons, angels, fay, and unicorns.
- Eight character paths that will determine their role in the story, background, and disciplines.
Core Book Includes
- Game rules and player options for Highcaster
- In-depth cultural descriptions to help provide details for your campaign, without the constraints of an established world or map–cultures are a tool to build out your own Highcaster unique to your group
- Extensive world-building tools and tables
- Rules for solo play
- Conversion rules so you can use the Caster System on any fantasy RPG module, setting, or adventure path.
- Complete SRD so the rules can be used in your own fantasy settings.
Blue Rose 5E Dungeons & Dragons Adventure
By Green Ronin Publishing
The heroes are dispatched into the snowy Ice Binder Mountains to meet a mysterious contact and escort them back to safety in Aldis. Who is “the Snow Pearl” and why must they now flee from the dark and deadly Kingdom of Kern? Moreover, what dangers pursue them and can the envoys overcome them to make it back home? A Blue Rose adventure for 5e / Fifth Edition for 4 to 6 characters, levels 2 to 4.
For Aldis and the Queen!
Aldis, the Sovereignty of the Blue Rose, shines as a new light in the world after the dark age of the Shadow Lords. Envoys of the Sovereign’s Finest strive to protect Aldis from threats like the Shadow-dominated land of Kern and the fanatical Theocracy of Jarzon, as well as corrupt monsters and artifacts left over from the devastating Shadow Wars. The peoples of Aldis—human, sea-folk, arcane vata, the doughty night people, and psychic, intelligent beasts known as the rhydan—unite in common cause.
The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide opens up the award-winning romantic fantasy world of Aldea for players of the Fifth Edition of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game. It comes complete with all of the ancestries, class options, feats, and more you need to create your own Blue Rose adventurers, and details on the unique arcana, magic items, and creatures of Aldea.
The Sovereignty and its people need heroes! Will you answer the call and become one of the Sovereign’s Finest? Swear your allegiance to the light and to the rightful Sovereign—adventure and romance await!
Awfully Cheerful Engine Adventure
By EN Publishing
DARKNESS BITES!
Prep your mystery wagon, sharpen your stakes and ready your UV flashlight. Creatures of the night stalk the darkness and only you have the knowledge and bravery to face the danger head on. News of strange occurrences at a rundown amusement park are making news in the press and someone has asked the Heroes to investigate. The sinister haunting soon reveal occult connections and a trail that leads to direct confrontation with a monster of legend. Our team of monster hunters will need to call on every trick in the paranormal investigators handbook as they delve deeper into the shadows only to find the darkness bites back.
This fast, fun, tongue-in-cheek adventure for the ACE! roleplaying system includes all the material you need to run your own mystery-solving and vampire-slaying caper.
Powered by The Awfully Cheerful Engine. To use this adventure, you will need a copy of A.C.E. #1: The Awfully Cheerful Engine!
Dark Places & Demogorgons Supplement
By Bloat Games
SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons Class Compendium compiles all of the previously released classes from the Dark Places & Demogorgons Core Book and the many Sourcebooks, 56 in all! Additionally, there is 10 brand new classes exclusive to the Class Compendium. Each class is expanded to level 10, with each new level, characters will gain new bonuses, abilities, skills and more depth. The classes have also streamlined for easier creation.
A ton of player options have been added to the Class Compendium as well, including 30 new 1980s-themed spells! There is also Potions, Curses, and the ominous rules for Crossing Over. An expanded and updated Skills section and Gear list is also included.
Dark Places & Demogorgons Class Compendium is stuffed with over 200 pages of content for your DP&D games! This supplement is a must have for fans of Dark Places & Demogorgons.
Gregor’s Guide to Gates, for Use With Fantasy RPGs
Systemless Sourcebook
By Philip Reed Games
Use these unusual gates to travel between worlds, demiplanes, and dimensions.
This systemless work includes 28 different planar gates, each presented as freeform and ready-to-go as possible. Use these gates as springboards to adventures of your own design. For use with most fantasy RPGs that are in some way related to that RPG . . . or any system you wish!
Welcome, gamemasters! Within the pages of this slim hardcover are magic portals, gateways to other worlds that are useable in most fantasy roleplaying games.
Each gate detailed within is more descriptive in nature than mechanical, making it easy for GMs to incorporate these ideas into their games with as few headaches as possible.
Sprinkle these gates across your campaign and watch as the player characters stumble their way into endless adventure.
Super Action Role-Play Supplement
By Four-Color Studios
Now you can weave solo or cooperative RPG tales using this supplement for the Super Action Role-Play RPG! Filled with random goodness, use this plug-in to quickly build storylines and characters for your own super world, or your favorite established universe. Focusing on some of the most timeless themes and tales of the genre, take your very own super team through different story arcs and build their legend one victory (or defeat) at a time! While this set of solo campaign rules has been written for Super Action Role-Play, we’ve also included rough guidelines for converting the content to your own super system of choice. You can play these adventures out in the theater of the mind style, or use maps, counters, and miniatures. Whether you play through solo or with friends, super action and super storytelling will be yours with this great new supplement!
This module works best with the Super Action Role-Play rules (also from Four-Color Studios), but you can adapt the material to other super systems.
A Solo TTRPG Rulebook
By Deeply Dapper Games
The plan was simple. Well… maybe it was a bit convoluted but the goal was simple:
Convince the rubes of the town that the carnival was haunted so that you could execute your brilliant schemes undisturbed.
It would have been perfect, despite a few minor setbacks and incompetent henchmen.
If it wasn’t for one thing…
That group of accursed teenagers!
Those Wretched Kids! is a solo journaling/roleplaying game played with a deck of cards, one D6, a tumbling block tower, and a journal or recording method. The game is based on Loot The Room’s excellent Wretched & Alone system.
In Those Wretched Kids! you play a brilliant if somewhat unsuccessful entrepreneur that has developed a vaguely nefarious plan centered around an old abandoned amusement park. In order to have your plans go off without a hitch, you have to balance the artificial legend you created to scare off interlopers, develop your main scheme, reflect on your career that keeps getting labeled as “villainous” for some reason and stop Those Wretched Kids! from interfering!
Those Wretched Kids! was inspired by the classic “Kid Sleuth” books and shows I loved as a kid – Scooby Doo, (and the dozen other Hanna-Barbera cartoons that used the same format) Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, Lewis Barnavelt and the Three Investigators as well as more modern twists on the genre like Stranger Things.
But I thought it would be fun to scurry around in that world from the point of view of the hapless villain. That one schemer with an overly elaborate plan to get rich, create a mighty weapon, uncover treasure or whatever other mad plot you devise, only to have it inevitably foiled 99.9% of the time by a group of snooping kids and novelty sidekick animal/robot.
And of course, what better place to set this adventure than a creepy abandoned amusement park?
As you play, you’ll attempt to thwart their investigations, perpetuate the legend, progress the plans and examine who you really are. Are you actually the villain after all? Record your thoughts in the Monologue stage, an essential in every evil genius’ toolkit.
Can you ever defeat Those Wretched Kids?
A game of Those Wretched Kids! can be played in a single sitting or as a creativity and journaling exercise over the course of days.
5E Dungeons & Dragons Adventure
By Menagerie Press
An original D&D 5e adventure for level 3-4 characters
The heroes discover legends of an enchanted fruit growing in the hanging gardens of an ancient pyramid. The pyramid is not only a den of ancient traps and dangerous plants, but fiendish spirits nurture the magical fruit cultivated within.
Battle Map Deck Plans
By Loke BattleMats
Includes –
- VTT Ready digital files
- Print Ready digital files
- Gridded and non gridded versions
- [100×40] 1xExterior, 1xDeckplan, 1xDeckplan-unfurnished
- Furnished and unfurnished versions included
Architects of the Deep: Kingdom of Death
5E Dungeons & Dragons Campaign
By Architects of the Deep
A campaign designed using the 5e system rules.
What happens when we die? Well, your players can find out in this new campaign which will begin with them dying, and take them on a long journey through the Kingdom of Death.
Based on a mixture of mythologies, including Ancient Greek myths, Dante’s Inferno, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, this campaign will take your players through the bowels of Hell itself and have them emerge on the other side. Will your players be able to fight their way back to the world of the living? Or will they remain in the Underworld for all eternity?
So, what’s the catch? Well, of course in order to start this campaign, you’ll have to kill all your players. Sounds like fun, right?
Please note: Some of the links in the post above may be “affiliate links”. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item the author of this post will receive an affiliate commission.
Voices From The Pulpit 