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. Hopefully you’ll spot a game or two of interest! I’m playing catch-up this week so all of the below were released in PDF between 22nd October – 28th October 2022.
Core Rulebook
By Penny for a Tale
The dead walk among us. It was we who put them back on their feet. We needed someone to cultivate our fields and sweep our streets; do all the heavy lifting for us.
The world as e knew it is long gone. We all expected a nuclear war, an epidemic, or even an apocalypse to be the end of us.
They never came. Rather, for reasons still uncertain, our population shrunk.
Suddenly fewer and fewer births, paired with higher and higher death rates brought our population to its knees.
No simple answer to our population decay. We simply began to shrink. All as a new order of constructs was made.
Here behind the walls protecting Florence from the outside world and under the leadership of the Citadel of Science we persist.
This is Necrobiotic.
—
In a broken world where the dead are machines that do the heavy lifting for us, we are just a cog in the social engine, alive at first and forever once dead. The greatest good is to protect human life, at any cost. Nothing is worth more: not the body’s sanctity, nor mental sanity.
In Necrobiotic, you can taste the whole spectrum of emotions, from the deepest horror and the bitterest melancholy to the most moving compassion and the lightest laughter, in a continuous celebration of life and a rediscovery of its fragile uniqueness. The original illustrations will drag you into the alleys of a wounded Florence, among human corpses with tanned leather hides, eternal monuments, and coarse foggy streets.
The original game system is based on deck-building mechanics with a standard deck of playing cards, though Tarot cards cam also be used. Players will always know what they can do alone or together, and the game’s mechanics will easily push the player’s roleplay towards the character’s features, highlighting everyone’s specialties.
Necrobiotic is a dark celebration of life where survival is paramount. It features unique and emotional art along with a new card system that will draw your players into our grim future.
Core Rulebook
By Magpie Games
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game brings you and your friends into the beloved setting of Avatar Legends – as new heroes of your own stories! Weave tales of self-discovery and action with your team of friends, and go penguin-sledding while you’re at it!
In this RPG, you might face off with the Triple Threat Triad in Republic City, travel through a spirit portal to rescue a missing child, negotiate peace between Earth Kingdom outlaws, pursue enemies through the Four Nations, and even learn a thing or two from beloved Avatar Legends characters.
- Choose a setting amid the ears if Kyoshi, Roku, the Hundred Year War, Aang, and Korra.
- Create your heroes from 10 playbooks – archetypes that help you play compelling protagonists.
- Master an element, weaponry, or technology to rise and meet your destiny.
- Pursue balance by learning from great mentors and getting into trouble across the Four Nations.
Delta Green Sourcebook
By Arc Dream Publishing
It’s been twenty-four years, a month, and two days since the bastards brought us down.
In that time we’ve come back strong, doing things they couldn’t conceive of. They think they understand us, those who know we’re still around. They think we’re cowboys, meddlers…. They think we’re just too pig-headed and selfish and old to let go of what we once were.
They know nothing.
In Delta Green, cosmic terror meets modern conspiracy. Delta Green is a secret group dedicated to protecting humanity from unnatural horrors, misappropriating the resources of the U.S. government to wage a war that they must at all costs keep hidden.
The Conspiracy is a 1990s sourcebook for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game: An updated, rearranged version of the original, 1997 Delta Green sourcebook with new art and graphic design, new appendices by Shane Ivey, editing by Shane Ivey and Caleb Stokes, and a foreword by Ray Winninger. Delta Green won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement. The Delta Green line has consistently been some of the highest-rated RPG books of all time. The Conspiracy brings those original, infamous horrors to the light of a new age.
The Conspiracy includes:
- Agents & Friendlies
- The Delta Green Campaign
- Delta Green
- The Fungi From Yuggoth
- Majestic
- The Karotechia
- Saucerwatch
- The Fate
- Feds in the Nineties
- Security Classifications
- Glossary
- Mysterious Manuscripts
- New Rituals
- Bibliography
- Index
Entry One has been breached. Time to get this show on the road. They have no idea the kind of Hell I’ve prepared for them. May God have mercy on my soul.
Grizelda’s Guide to Ghost Hunting
5E Dungeons & Dragons Sourcebook
By Scoundrel Game Labs
Grizelda’s Guide to Ghost Hunting is a hardcover tome packed with content that brings the incorporeal undead to life in your next 5E campaign. Discover a haunted bestiary, loads of player options, new magic items, tools for building ghost hunting guilds, and DM tools for immersing your players in ghostly adventures and investigations.
The book includes:
- 12 new subclasses
- 20+ Fully-illustrated monsters and NPCs
- 5 ghost hunting guilds
- DM tips for haunted campaigns
- New mechanics for seances, mediums, and haunts
- New magic items, sidekicks, feats, spells, and more
Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland
Core Rulebook
By Handiwork Games
Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland is a psychedelic imaginary Mesolithic setting, placing your stories in Forgotten Doggerland – the land that lies drowned beneath the North Sea.
After the end of the last ice age, when the earth warmed and tides began to rise, the place we now call Doggerland was subject to an unimaginably vast tidal wave, and was lost forever. We know precious little about this place, and as such it makes a marvellous location to set the weird tales of the now-forgotten witches.
Written by Jon Hodgson, this standalone RPG is illustrated in conversation with the Midjourney AI. Rather than using Midjourney as some cheap artist replacement or page filler, Maskwitches explores what this strange tool can do in partnership with an artist. The artist prompts, and then responds to the results, and gradually a whole world unfolds.
We have created hundreds of evocative and unusual art pieces giving us a glimpse through the keyhole of time into a distant past imagined by a piece of very 21st century technology. The process of creating Maskwitches was an art piece in and of itself.
In The Silver Road each character has two things they’re good at and two things they are bad at. In Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland, these take the form of the masks the witches wear, and amulets they carry. Witches are able to trade and change their masks, making their characters’ identities extremely fluid.
Players take the role of witches who respond to the problems of the hunter gatherer communities of Forgotten Doggerland. Problems which frequently manifest into strange and horrific creatures which much be defeated in ritualised magical warfare.
Dune Campaign
By Modiphius
The Battle for Arrakis Begins
Your House has claimed the wealth of Arrakis but can they hold onto that power when so many want to take it from them? You have already uncovered a deadly enemy, but plenty more covet what you have worked so hard to control. You are going to need allies, but who can you trust? The mysterious Bene Gesserit, the elusive Spacing Guild, or perhaps even the Emperor himself. But each faction has their own agenda, and a knife in the shadows lies behind every smile.
Continuing the alternate “What if?” scenario begun in Agents of Dune, the stakes become higher as deadly enemies seek the downfall of your House to claim Arrakis and the power of spice for themselves. The player characters must leave the desert world of Arrakis and travel across the Imperium to get the support they need to fight their enemies. As each section of the campaign can be played through in any order, it is very much up to the players to decide on the best plan of action and lead their House into glory or destruction.
Masters of Dune is an epic 166 page campaign that can be run on its own or as a continuation of the Agents of Dune boxed set. Play as the renowned House Nagara or create a new House of your own to tame Arrakis. Over the campaign’s nine explosive chapters your characters will:
- Seek out the elusive Fremen to gain their trust and allegiance, if you can navigate their mysterious customs and rituals.
- Engage in exciting space battles on behalf of the mysterious Guild, taking on lethal pirates in the void between worlds.
- Visit the deadly House Harkonnen on the industrial hellscape of Giedi Prime where poison and treachery lie behind every corner.
- Mine spice on Arrakis to quench the insatiable need of the Imperium, even though it can never be enough to satisfy the hunger of the Known Universe.
- Discover the wisdom of the secretive Bene Gesserit if you can pass their deadly tests and prove yourself worthy of the Sisterhood’s trust.
- Politic on Kaitain against the Emperor and the Landsraad council, where you might play one side against another if you have the cunning and skill for such deceit in the ultimate game.
- Travel from Arrakis across the Imperium to seek new allies, resources and favors that might tip the balance of power in the universe.
The wealth of Arrakis may be yours, but you are going to have to fight to keep it. Every choice you make will determine the future of your House, for good or ill. Will you fall to ruin on the sands of Arrakis, or are you strong enough to survive and become true Masters of Dune?
Doctor Who 2nd Edition Adventure Anthology
By Cubicle 7 Entertainment
Showcasing some of the newest talent, this PDF collection presents ten short adventures for your TARDIS team, taking them across space and time to distant, Dalek-scoured worlds, mysterious hotels, futuristic game reserves, and invaded virtual cities. Each ‘episode’ can be played as a quick one-shot, or as inspiration for a longer adventure. You could even run all of them to create your own Doctor Who series!
The Beast of the New Forest sends the characters to 1100 CE into the New Forest, where they may accidentally prevent a historical assassination. The Appliances of Auttley Isle is a festive tale of migrating aliens and tiny burglars, while Do Androids Dream of Electric Antelopes? presents the characters with a moral dilemma on a robotic big-game hunt. Flesh of the Vampire finds the group visiting a theme park where the ‘vampire’ hosts are more realistic than they seem, while Ground Strike unearths an old Dalek mining operation that is mysteriously still active.
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon attempts to resolve the classic mystery of people being tranquilised in 1944’s Illinois, and The Night Terrors takes the TARDIS to Rookholme in England, 1976, where the villagers’ nightmares are coming to life. A hotel in London where various rooms are trapped in different time-periods finds itself with some Unwelcome Guests, while a strange stone seems to feed off of a village’s potential in Endless Summer. Finally, in Time and Time Again, the characters find themselves trapped in a time-loop on a damaged starship.
Cypher System Adventure
By Monte Cook Games
It is 1921. Three young men have disappeared from a rural village in Devon. Authorities are called in, but the villagers have their own theory: a local myth tells of a vampire that, every few decades, steals away three young people. Is there any truth to the myth, or is something more mundane at work? And what does it all have to do with Creston Grange, the local manor house, now standing derelict and rumored to be one of the most haunted sites in England?
This 32-page adventure was run in official 2022 Cypher System events at Gen Con and Gamehole Con, and was specifically designed to give the GM a range of encounters that allow the adventure to play out differently each time it’s run. It’s a great stand-alone scenario, or launch point of an ongoing horror campaign, for new or experienced Cypher System players. Six pre-generated characters are included, so you have everything you need to play!
Horror Adventure
By Yeti Spaghetti and Friends
Countess Elizabeth Bathory is known as one of the worst serial killers of all time. She now prowls the streets of the city, preying upon the young and beautiful in order to retain her infamous allure.
The Blood Countess is a chilling adventure in the FRIGHT NIGHT CLASSICS roleplaying game module series where players face off against the evil Elizabeth Bathory. Inside you’ll find character cards, handouts, McMansion maps, and a fun night of terrifying gaming.
FRIGHT NIGHT CLASSICS adventures are designed to be compatable with percentile horror roleplaying game systems of yesterday and today. Rules-light, follow-along instructions also allow our modules to be played on their own without the need for additional rulebooks.
Wendy’s Guide to the Fleets of Earth Sector, Volume 4
Traveller/Cepheus Engine Sourcebook
By Independence Games
Incoming intelligence!
Ship captains need information about the systems to which they are traveling. These captains depend on Wendy’s Naval Weekly as their primary source of naval fleet information. It is rare to find a ship captain that doesn’t have Wendy’s Naval Weekly on their handcomps or mindcomps.
Wendy’s Guide to the Fleets of Earth Sector Volume 4 is the fourth and final entry of a series which will collate all the available information to provide a complete overview of the fleets of the nations of Earth Sector. Each of these books will briefly outline a nation’s spacegoing navy as well as provide some insight as to how that organization functions and provide a list of the ships reported to be in commission.
This book provides information on the space navies of the Austria, Greece, the Philippines, Portugal, Kenya, South Africa, Italy, Poland, and Spain. In addition, this volume contains information concerning the fleets held by the British Interstellar Company and Interstellar Special Survey Group (InstarSpec). The book covers every ship currently operated in those fleets, their doctrines, and even their uniforms. The book also contains an in-depth discussion of the Pulsar-class Survey and Exploration Vessel and the Wilkes-class Long Range Scout used by the Pulsar as a parasite craft.
They Came From Beneath My Bed!
“They Came From…” Series Sourcebook
By Onyx Path Publishing
Whether Goosebumps or Point Horror, Resident Evil or Silent Hill, many of us discover horror young, as teens hiding under duvets with a flashlight, or joking with friends about the most extreme movie, novel, or game we can get access to. They Came from Beneath My Bed! is a sourcebook for They Came from Beyond the Grave! and Camp Murder Lake!, which caters to the young adult horror experience. From camp and colorful to screaming and covered in blood splatter, Beneath My Bed! has everything you need to play your They Came From games in the style of teen horror from the 1990s and beyond.
They Came from Beneath My Bed! includes:
- Two new Archetypes, the BFF and the Queen Bee.
- New monsters, the Ooze and the Living Veg.
- Full story ideas and hooks for your own tales, including Clock Mansion, Escape from Myrrdah Lake!, and Wrong Turn in a Silent Town, among many more.
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 