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 12th-18th March 2022.
Defiant Sourcebook
By Game Machinery
Learn all about Defiant House Kamael and out your Characters in all manner of perilous situations!
Twelve Great Houses bound their fates to the Sephirot and forged the Defiant alliance. They remain the most powerful among the aristocrats ruling over the Domains. There are, however, many more supernatural bloodlines that have joined the Defiant cause. One of the most notable among them is the angelic House Kamael. Angels of Grace can be found in almost all Domains, making them one of the largest and most influential Houses outside the Twelve.
In this Defiant supplement, you will learn more about Angels of Grace, their history, and customs. Additionally, you’ll find rules and advice on creating Player Characters with preexisting dire problems and problematic situations.
About Defiant Role Playing Game
Defiant RPG is an urban fantasy game about the mighty, modern-day supernaturals, who rebelled against their destiny and, instead of destroying the world, decided to protect it. By enforcing a demanding set of rules, the Defiant aristocracy empowers protective seals around their cities, making them the only safe-havens in a world ravaged by the Apocalypse.
The Player Characters are the Defiant blue-bloods, leading the supernatural society of fallen angels, demons, ancient gods, and dragons. They are powerful rulers, with their own Holdings (like clubs or luxurious mansions) and faithful subjects.
Core Rulebook (d100 system)
By Red Plate Entertainment
Welcome to space, there’s plenty of it.
Grab your gun, hop a ride to the middle of danger, and start your legend. Whether it’s yourself, the gun in your hand, or the ship you’re holding together with tape and a prayer a story can be made.
Swords and Spaceships is a sci-fi roleplaying game focused on your character and your gear. It’s been designed with the intent to allow you to create customizable, unique equipment to carry you through whatever version of reality you may inhabit.
Play through the Cheeria Galaxy and Gale System written within the book or write a galaxy all your own. The rules are setting agnostic, though the sci-fi genre fits best.
Cthulhu Mythos Magazine
By Bayt al Azif
The magazine dedicated to adventuring against the Cthulhu Mythos continues!
Issue #4 includes:
- 3 adventures dual-statted for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition and GUMSHOE (Trail of Cthulhu)
- A group of strangers awakens in an unfamiliar place (Classic Era 1930s, 10 pages)
- A death sets off a search for an unorthodox architect (Classic Era 1930s, 15 pages)
- A mysterious ancient box leads into dark events (Classic Era 1920s, 15 pages)
- An overview of every Cthulhu Mythos RPG release of 2020
- A roundtable on streaming horror RPGs
- An interview with Mike Mason, the creative director for Call of Cthulhu
- Advice, history, comics, and more!
Shadowrun Sourcebook
By Catalyst Game Labs
The Shadow Capital
Join spies, smugglers, liars, cheats, killers, thieves, rebels, anarchists, gangers, thugs, hoods, outlaws, low-lifes, hackers, con artists, hustlers, and more as they gather and try to climb to the summit of the shadowrunning world. In Seattle, the gold glitters brighter and the dungeons are darker, meaning the shadows in between are the widest and most intense in the world.
As a newly free city, Seattle hovers lightly over a pit of ravening wolves, saved only by the fact that as much as one wolf would love to devour the sprawl whole, they equally don’t want any of their competitors to get it. Maintaining that balance is the core desire of city leaders; undoing it has become the obsession of the city’s enemies. Whether shadowrunners decide to pick a side or just play all sides against each other, there is plenty of work to be done and danger to avoid, all while showing they can run the shadows with the best of them.
Emerald City is a sourcebook for Shadowrun, Sixth World.
Core Rulebook
By Technical Grimoire Games
Bones Deep is a tabletop RPG of skeletons exploring the ocean floor.
Built for Troika, usable anywhere.
The Book Includes:
- 120 pages of underwater weirdness.
- 6 skeleton backgrounds, ranging from cute to creepy.
- 20 locations, each with a dozen encounters.
- 36 spells inspired by ocean phenomena.
- 50 creatures inspired by real deep-sea life.
- 5 adventures to kick off your campaign.
Straightforward underwater sandbox. No swimming allowed, no oxygen required, no extra math. As a skeleton, you can treat the ocean floor like an alien world and jump right in.
Emergent adventures. Every random encounter in Bones Deep aims to draw you deeper into the setting. Warring factions, clues to hidden treasure, terrible foes, cute pets, and nefarious mysteries all compete for your attention. The book includes 5 detailed quests to kick off your campaign.
More real than you’d imagine. It was written by a team of folks who were heavily inspired by real deep-sea life, including a boat captain and an underwater educator. We even wrote the real-world scientific names of creatures so players can marvel at the wonders of the deep.
MORK BORG Adventure
By Loot The Room
In The Bluelight is a frozen dungeon crawl adventure by Chris Bissette.
The days are fleeting out on the ice. The days are fleeting everywhere, now, but out on the barrens of Kergüs they are even further lessened. Time is thin here. It stretches, twists, freezes. Shatters.
Miseries grip the world, inevitable and unending. The Doomsayers scream that they can’t be stopped, that the end is nigh, that the seventh Misery will come and the world will burn. Verhu’s word has never yet been wrong.
And yet.
Yet.
Maybe there is hope out there in the ice, where time rolls like sludge. Where the end is, perhaps, not quite so inevitable.
In The Bluelight takes characters deep beneath the barren wastes of Kergüs, where an ancient artefact that holds the power to stop the Miseries afflicting the world lies buried beneath the ice. There is treasure frozen into the icy walls, too, and if you were to extract it you would return home rich. But the thaw that opened the Ice Vaults will not last forever, and if the characters tally too long they’ll find themselves trapped inside the glacier for the rest of their short, shivering lives.
The adventure itself is a sprawling dungeon over three levels packed full of NPCs, weird encounters, and a subterranean maze haunted by the oozing remnants of a third prophetic basilisk. It comes complete with encounter tables for the long trek across the ice fields of Kergüs, and new scriptures from the Arkhian Theurgy that replace the Calendar of Nechrubel while inside the dungeon, making the ice shift and change as the players spend more time in the Vaults.
The dungeon portion of the book mimics the layout of Rotblack Sludge, the introductory adventure found in MÖRK BORG, so it’s familiar and easy to use at the table.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Sourcebook
By Cubicle 7 Entertainment
The Old World is a dangerous place. With the Empire fractured within and threatened by enemies without, it is only wise to learn the skills of a soldier, or to employ those who already have. Some may say that to live by the sword is to die by the sword, and there is truth to this. But in the wilds of the Empire, to refuse to live by the sword is to die by the sword even sooner.
Up in Arms provides options and guidance for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Characters who follow warrior careers. It focuses on abilities that players and GMs can make use of to add variety and expertise to the fighting folk of the Old World.
This 144 page book contains:
- A discussion of the Cult of Myrmidia, giving the most comprehensive guide yet published to the beliefs and practices of those who worship the Goddess of Strategy.
- Soldiers of all Stripes, detailing the experience of the rank-and-file members of the Empire’s glorious state troops, and providing new careers such as the handgunner, halberdier, and greatsword.
- A history of the role of mercenaries in the wars of the Old World, including background and rules to support playing Tilean Characters and other dogs of war.
- A guide to the renowned knightly orders of the Empire, with options for joining secular orders, templar chapters, or going it alone as a freelance knight.
- An expanded list of weapons and armour, from basic arms such as swords and axes, to exotic specialised equipment such as weighted nets and pavises.
- Rules for taking cover within vehicles and buildings — and counterpart rules for blowing vehicles and buildings up with devastating artillery.
- Detail on the employment of hireling NPCs, including a system for generating individual quirks and work ethics.
- Optional and additional rules covering new Endeavours, alternative approaches to Critical Injury, mounted combat, uses of Advantage, Pursuits, and Talents.
Roman Empire-themed 5e Sourcebook
By RoleplayElixir
Carovea Victor is a sourcebook for the world’s greatest roleplaying game which offers you the means to tell stories and play games in a world inspired by the Roman Empire era. In Carovea Victor, we tell you about the Realms of Armyr, an epic-fantasy sword&sorcery setting, which has huge similarities with the Greco-Roman world and the Carovean Empire, a great power dominating large portions of the known realms, just like the Roman Empire did…
In this world, legionaries of the Carovean Empire march to battle against numerous enemies on all sides. They defend the vast borders of the empire against barbarians and conquer new territories, fighting under the proud dragon banner of their legions. Gladiators salute the emperor and people in the arena before the games begin; the crowd cheers with fascination as their gladius cuts wounds on their opponent and blood scatters on the sands of the arena.
Shrewd senators and corrupted patricians make secret plans behind the pillars of the senate, arguing how to influence the emperor and if they can’t, how to remove him from the throne. Bribes are offered to the praetorian guards, asking for them not to interfere when a group of senators shall meet the emperor with hidden blades on them. Only a handful of honest nobles and senators strive to defend the rights of the common folk but their efforts are nearly always overshadowed.
Core Rulebook
By Livres de l’Ours
INTO THE DARK is a science-fiction role-playing game inspired by books like Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Iain M. Bank’s Culture Cycle, or Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga.
At 66 pages, it allows you to explore complex science-fiction settings with a rules-lite 2D6-based system (the GM doesn’t roll the dice, focus on the setting, not the rules!).
Inside the book you’ll find character creation rules, equipment, antagonists and plenty of advice to let you create and run your own sci-fi campaign. Additional rules cover space battles, vehicles, mechas and psi powers. All this is done in a short and synthetic way, run the game, not the numbers.
INTO THE DARK focuses on change. How does a specific change affect Humanity and therefore the characters. The book gives you advice to define what that change is and how to build your game sessions around it.
5E Dungeons & Dragons Adventure
By Luke Hart
Seekers of dares, dazzlements, and delights!
Appearing before you for just one night
Presenting wonders so remarkable
Come, join us at the Crystal Carnival!
The Crystal Carnival appears only once a year, on the night the barrier between the material plane and the fey plane is at its weakest, and is filled with wonder for young and old. Those who have been to the carnival say the magical experience changes you, that you don’t walk out the same person who walked in. Literally.
Unbeknownst to carnival-goers, the location is a secret battleground for two nagas, who constantly fight for control and ownership of the carnival. One wishes to use the carnival as a means of harvesting flesh and followers, while the other wishes to use it as a gateway between worlds to promote communication and culture.
When an adventuring group in the area hears of the carnival, someone’s fate is about to change. Will they uncover the truth of the carnival and stop the nagas? Or will they, too, fall victim to its lures and attractions?
The Crystal Carnival is a fifth-edition compatible adventure for the world’s most popular roleplaying game designed for a party of four to six level-six characters. It features read-a-loud text for ease of use and digital maps designed for use on virtual tabletops, such as Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.
A Dark Streets & Darker Secrets Sourcebook
By Gallant Knight Games
What if sorcerers were real, and they were all around us? Would they hide their talents from us? Would they protect us or try to dominate us? Would they consider us equals or as lesser beings?
This book tries to answer those questions with a supplement for Dark Streets & Darker Secrets, an urban fantasy and action-horror game. Inspired by the sorcerer school series, the Highlander movies, and the World of Darkness games, War of the Magi focuses on sorcerous characters on the brink of war, dealing with supernatural threats and each other.
Talisman Adventures Fantasy RPG Sourcebook
By Pegasus Spiele
Delve into the Dark
Grab your torch and explore the dark and hidden places deep beneath the Realm with Tales of the Dungeon. From the Wraithlord’s Domain somewhere beneath the City to the Glittering Caverns of the Hollow Hills, you’ll find details on dungeons from one end of the Realm to the other. Within these pages, you’ll unlock a wealth of information to expand your Talisman Adventures Fantasy RPG campaign, including two new ancestries (minotaur and vampire), two new classes (necromancer and tomb robber), new rules for dungeon exploration, fiendish traps, dungeon-related gear and treatures, and new enemies, strangers, and followers. You’ll also find advice for designing your own dungeons and a complete three-level dungeon that brings the heroes face to face with the Lord of Darkness.
To play this game, you’ll need some friends, three six-sided dice, and the Core Rulebook.
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 