My roleplaying game adventure, The Hell House Beckons, is now On SALE!
It’s $9.99 USD and is a hyperlinked PDF for easy reference. Visit the site to see screenshots!
It works with any game system (All editions of D&D, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Dungeon World, Labyrinth Lord, and many others).
“In the middle of a barren dustbowl is a manor. Tall and grey, it juts out of the infertile earth like a tombstone, marking the grave of hundreds. This manor is a place of evil. A place where tortured ghosts stalk the halls, and beneath its floorboards are the remnants of atrocities committed in the name of the Devil.
It is a place from Hell, and it must be cleansed”
The Hell House Beckons provides a tense and haunting adventure for d20-based roleplaying games, as well as all the random tables and tools for Game Masters to make their own haunted houses. It’s inspired by films like The Frighteners, Hausu, The Legend of Hell House, The Conjuring, Insidious, and countless others.
Just like those films, it’s a decidedly mature book. The Hell House Beckons contains blood, some nudity, and horrific themes. 18+ purchases only, please.
Features:
Procedurally generated content ensures the adventure is different every time you play it.
Over 16 random tables of items, events, and oddities to fill your haunted house with.
4 ready to play NPCs with stats and character traits.
17 unique ghosts and monsters that put the usual clichéd banshees and poltergeists to shame.
Over 50 rooms of spine-tingling terror to explore.
30 custom illustrations.
System and level agnostic rules that are compatible with most d20-based roleplaying games.
Sales are going really well so far, but if you’re still on the fence here’s some exclusive details about the adventure:
All the women characters! The Hell House Beckons has a lot of varied female characters as both protagonists, friendly NPCs, and villains. Some are dour and reserved, some are flirty, some are shy, some are muscular, some are fat, some are petite, some are monstrous. I did what I could to provide a wide variety of female characters for this adventure.
You can come back as a ghost! Death is not the end in The Hell House Beckons. If your character dies inside the manor, you come back as a ghost, and can interact with a parallel Ghost World (Think of ‘the Further’ in Insidious, or the third act of The Frighteners).
Three big high-res maps! This adventure is about exploring a three-floor haunted manor. It includes detailed maps of each floor with a grid outline, as well as blank unnumbered versions that are easy to print out and use at the table.
#IndieCade15 Official Nominee: Red & Pleasant Land
Red & Pleasant Land, an IndieCade Festival 2015 Official Award Nominee, will be featured among 110+ of the best indie games of the year at #IndieCade15 this October 23-25. Discover the talks, events, and games at the Festival & get your tickets before they sell out: http://www.indiecade.com/2015/tickets
About Red & Pleasant Land by Zak S
Red & Pleasant Land is a supplement for old school pen & paper role-playing games that allows you to play in a distorted world inspired by Lewis Carroll and inhabited by warring vampire lords, or any other place that might require intrigue, hidden gardens, inside-out-rooms, scheming monarchs, puzzles or beasts, liquid floors, labyrinths, growing, shrinking, duelling, broken time, Mome Raths, blasphemy, croquet, explanations for where players who missed sessions were, or the rotting arcades and parlors of a palace that was once the size of a nation.
Learn more about Red & Pleasant Land and Zak S: http://www.indiecade.com/games/selected/red-pleasant-land
#IndieCade15 Award Winners will be announced at our pre-Festival Red Carpet Awards on October 22nd! See all our nominees: http://www.indiecade.com/2015/nominees
I made this character sheet for the super cool event Trident Con. If you’re living in or near Baltimore, you should definitely check it out.
If you want me to make a character sheet for YOUR super cool event/gaming group, hit me up.
Another peek into an artist, Richard Whitters’ sketchpad reveals the making of the most maniacal myconid in the Underdark. We mean that in the nicest possible way.
I can’t take credit for the first three categories that Red & Pleasant Land picked up two golds and a silver for at the ENnies today, that’s all Zak Smith’s glory, but for a three man team to come in second behind the D&D juggernaut in Product of the Year…. FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!
One of the isometric maps from RPL that I worked on along with the graphic design. Brainbleeder but worth it.
The Gatekeepers Are Dead Now that it's morning, and I've somewhat recovered from the massive amounts of adrenaline that rushed through me five times last… - Stacy Dellorfano - Google+
Friend of the blog Stacy Dellorfano, head honcho over at Contessa, says a few brief things about how DIY publishing is open to all…and if A Red & Pleasant Land can beat out books put out by Wizards of the Coast and Paizo and other big companies, then there’s hope for your dream project as well.
Comparing Books: A Red & Pleasant Land is different, doesn’t waste your time
dungeonsdonuts has inspired me to purchase and read Zak Smith’s A Red and Pleasant Land and wow wow wow. This setting plus China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station are exactly the inspiration I need to start adventure-writing.
jamesjhaeck is a cool guy. But lemme tell you a thing. It’s kind of a long thing, so buckle up.
A Red & Pleasant Land is a big deal. A really big deal.
This is an adventure that challenges what a RPG adventure can and should be. Specifically what a published D&D adventure should be. It challenges a great deal of adventure concepts that a lot of us have just…accepted…over the years. It looks different, it feels different, and most of all it provides an example of intuitive adventure design that most closely resembles something someone would use at the table.
A pretty epic review of Red and Pleasant Land, Yoon-Suin, and Princes of the Apocalypse in terms of the graphic and information design. Important stuff, and of course DIY D&D is crushing it.
This volume is a quarter-page size book containing every item from Treasure Chest v.1. Two color risographed cover, 72 black and white risographed interior pages on nice off-white paper.
So, I’ve been gushing a lot about Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures ever since I became aware of it. It’s definitely my favorite game that carries the DNA of old-school D&D mainly because it does something different with it instead of just being another game of orcs and elves and shit.
Hence, Further Afield, the first supplement for Beyond the Wall. Whereas Beyond the Wall is very much a game of local heroes fixing local problems in their little home village, Further Afield expands the game into the wider world. Beyond the Wall already did something novel with the idea of playbooks and scenario packs as a means of making the process of creating the player characters’ home town an engaging and collaborative process, and Further Afield expands these ideas into the campaign map.
Red and Pleasant Land is up for several awards at the Ennies, which honestly seem like a half baked popularity contest, but who doesn't love winning a popularity contest? Let's make sure DIY D&D gets some love.
romaincrisis
2087
origamiaround
amandla
gracieabrams
