I wanted to make an informative post about system neutral materials. System neutral materials regarding RPGs means that the material in question can be used for any RPG system that you wish to play. In my case, I usually play Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. However, I am always on the lookout for printed resource materials that can be used in other games. Why, you may ask? Well, what if I want to use them in Call of Cthulhu or Hyperborea or any number of other great systems out there. Why print when digital is easier and cheaper to obtain? I personally prefer my source books to be in print. I like being able to thumb through source books to find information quickly. Technology just hasn't quite caught up to good old paper in that regard. Now please don't misunderstand me, I love and support digital source books. I have bought my fair share from places like Drive Thru RPG. But I usually end up printing it off and putting it into a notebook or I forget that I even bought it. So that leads us to this list. I have not yet been a dungeon master. I do believe in being prepared though.
Here are some System Neutral Materials that I have in print:
LoreSmyth's Ultimate Guide to: Remarkable Cults & Their Followers
Remarkable Cults & Their Followers is the ultimate GM guide on roleplaying evil fantasy factions. This system-neutral sourcebook is compatible with any fantasy roleplaying game ruleset and contains everything you need to create and roleplay your own unique villainous guilds.
This brand-new book brings you exciting, intriguing, and complex evil factions, as well the tools to create your own. This includes villainous leaders and their cronies, rumors, new gameplay ideas, services, information on working for and against cults, gaining ranks and followers, and much, much more. This system-neutral book is not just about religious cults, but instead delights the imagination with a wide range of sinister organizations and factions to add to your game.
LoreSmyth's Ultimate Guide to: Remarkable Shops & Their Wares
Turn ordinary shop visits into memorable roleplaying experiences. Remarkable Shops & Their Wares is the ultimate inspirational sourcebook to create and roleplay fantastical shops. From numerous shop types and wares to unique shopkeepers, currencies, items, exotic mounts, and crafting custom wares. You can even let your players build and operate a store. With dozens of random generation tables, roleplaying game masters can now construct the most detailed shops ever to grace a fantasy world...
- 112 pages, illustrated, full-color maps
Remarkable Inns & Their Drinks is the best-selling, definitive guide to roleplaying taverns and inns. This richly detailed 84-page tome offers a wealth of new gameplay options, 8 ready-made taverns, NPC’s, rumors, secrets and over 1.000 random list options.
Every story has a beginning, and more often than not they start in a tavern! Now you can turn boring tavern visits into memorable, exciting roleplaying events. Populate your world with taverns and NPC's your players are wanting to return to... for another drink!
Turn ordinary tavern visit into remarkable, exciting roleplaying experiences. Need some inspiration for bar brawls? Peculiar games of chance? Innkeeper mannerisms? This book has it all, and more. Chronicled by famous adventurer Quilla Bladesong, you will discover famous places such as The North Call Inn, Fizzlenozzle's Hall of Wonders and The King's Coin. Each includes relevant NPC's and a number of secrets and rumors that provide story hooks for many new adventures. Each tavern is written so that it can easily be dropped into your existing campaign world and become a place your players love returning to, time and again!- 84 pages of rich, inspirational content
- Compatible with any tabletop RPG system*
- 8 ready-made famous taverns & their history
- NPC's, story hooks, rumors, foods & drinks
- Optional new gameplay rules
- Entire section about creating your own taverns
- Over 1.000 options through random generation tables
Do you play Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder or some other obscure brand of fantasy tabletop role-playing game? Do you enjoy lists of magical items, fantastical weapons, dubious potions and fascinating books? Do you tire of your players asking difficult questions such as ‘what is in the dead guy’s pocket?’ or ‘what is on this tavern’s menu?’ or other such wearisome inquiries concerning details you had no time to prepare for? Well, then this is the book for you.
Table Fables is filled over eighty illustrated pages of tables and generators designed to be useful to all DMs, old and new alike.
Table Fables II: The world-builder's handbook by Madeline Hale
Tabletop RPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder are amazing things, but no matter which edition you play, the characters always need an interesting world to explore. Building these unique, colorful, vibrant worlds can be a heavy burden to bear.
Table Fables II: The World-Builder's Handbook is a labor of love – over 100 illustrated pages of tables and generators designed to make the burden of being a world-builder a little easier. Every table is focused on creating unique lands and filling them with adventures and encounters for your players. Just a few of the tables include: a full dungeon generator, quest generators, loot tables, villain motives, planet builders and god generators, all compiled to help you create an interesting and memorable world. Whether you are new to the world of tabletop gaming or a veteran, Table Fables II: The World-Builder’s Handbook will help you uncover a unique world of magic for you and your players. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.
You’ve chosen your class, bought your weapons, and rolled for your stats, and you’re now the proud owner of your own RPG (role-playing game) avatar. But before you begin your adventure, there’s so much more you can do with your character to make him or her your own! Just how evil is she? What does his dating profile look like? Where did she get that scar? What does he want for his birthday? With fill-in-the blank narratives, prompts, and fun activities to help you customize your character at the start of the game, or build out your backstory as you play, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Book will help you fully imagine your character and bring them to life for the ultimate gaming experience!
The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2, features 15 stars of tabletop roleplaying games and fantasy fiction, such as Gail Simone, Keith Baker, Veronica Roth, Ken Liu, Kate Elliott, Mike Shea, Tobias S. Buckell, Shanna Germain, Gabe Hicks, the Dungeon Dudes (Monty Martin & Kelly McLaughlin), Jeff Grubb, and more.
Middle-Earth, Faerûn, Westeros, Eberron, The World of the Wheel, Exandria … these richly-detailed fantasy worlds have captured the imaginations of legions of fans worldwide. These settings offer worldbuilding that launched a thousand—or a thousand thousand—dreams.
Whether you’re worldbuilding because you want to write the next Game of Thrones, intend to build a rich, vibrant world to enthrall the players of an upcoming tabletop RPG campaign, or you’re just curious to find out how all these creators did it, the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2, puts a team of master world-architects at your side.
Featuring practical essays and roadmaps for the intrepid worldbuilder to follow, this anthology shows you how to: create a pantheon of gods, incorporate technology into your fantastical environments, build great settings that look beyond our own history and cultural expectations,
design a world in just 30 minutes and leave space when building a world so the characters can help bring it alive.
"Flash Lingo: A Thieves Cant Dictionary" is the most comprehensive Thieves Cant glossary ever assembled. With over 2,200 entries, this volume has been compiled from historical resources and edited to specifically support fantasy role-playing games. More importantly, it is designed to bring the lexicon of Thieves Cant to life in your campaign world, as an aid for both players and DMs alike. It’s also just a damn enjoyable read!
What is the Palladium Weapon Series?
It is a series of small sourcebooks that presents historically accurate data and information about ancient weapons from around the world.
For use with ANY game system. You heard right. The statistical information is designed and set up in such a way that it can be applied to virtually any game system that uses dice.
Much of the information in the series has been compiled in Palladium’s Compendium of Weapon, Armor and Castles, but gamers continue to ask for the “Small weapon books”.
One reason, I think, is that the books are small, but packed with a ton of information. Thus, a player or G.M. needs to only grab whichever book in the series he needs for reference, and he’s ready to go.
Another reason is that there is simply something convenient and appealing about this size and format.
Ideal for fantasy and historical games, as well as, modern games that use ancient melee weapons (knives, swords, axes, maces, ball and chain, picks, spears, pole arms, etc.).
What is the Palladium Weapon Series?
It is a series of small sourcebooks that presents historically accurate data and information about ancient weapons from around the world.
For use with ANY game system. You heard right. The statistical information is designed and set up in such a way that it can be applied to virtually any game system that uses dice.
Much of the information in the series has been compiled in Palladium's Compendium of Weapon, Armor and Castles, but gamers continue to ask for the "Small weapon books".
One reason, I think, is that the books are small, but packed with a ton of information. Thus, a player or G.M. needs to only grab whichever book in the series he needs for reference, and he's ready to go.
Another reason is that there is simply something convenient and appealing about this size and format.
Ideal for fantasy and historical games, as well as, modern games that use ancient melee weapons (knives, swords, axes, maces, ball and chain, picks, spears, pole arms, etc.).
* The bow and arrow, and crossbow weapons from around the world
* Castle and design features.
* 15 different, real world castles. Each illustrated for a castle under siege.
* Historically accurate.
* For use with any game system. Some adaptation required.
* Compiled by Matthew Balent.
* Color cover by Scott Johnson
The Book of Random Tables: Fantasy Shops
Players will often want to explore cities as much as they want to explore the wilderness. Not only do shops offer goods and services for the player characters, but they can also be a valuable resource in handing out quests or building story hooks.
Twenty Shop types with myriads of combinations: Armor, Barber, Books, Bowyer, Brewery, Divination, Fletcher, General Store, Macabre & Oddities, Magic Pets, Medicine, Music, Potions, Robes, Tack, Tailor, Toys & Tinkers, Wands, Weapons, and Writing Supplies.
Each shop has naming options plus special and mundane wares. Also, DMs or GMs can assume the shops have a selection of ordinary goods if desired. All are arranged in random tables, so they can be generated quickly.
Flesh out stores with Years in Business, Number of Employees, Shop Appearance tables, Person Descriptors tables, Desk and Storeroom tables, Shopkeeper Rumors, and a Secrets table.
Never tell your players there are no shops on the street. Use this resource to create a shop on the fly and populate your worlds with interesting items and non-player characters. Good luck and good shopping.
The Book of Random Tables: Inns & Taverns
Generate an inn or a tavern using random tables.
Create and populate an inn or tavern on the fly. Find random tables like Bards, Carousing, Exterior Appearance descriptors, Inn Encounters, Inn/Tavern Names, Interior Appearance descriptors, Items in an Inn Room, Meals, Owners, Patrons, Rumors and Odd Jobs, Secret Rooms, Servers, and more.
Magic Items, Rituals, Potions, and Poisons for Game Masters
Features:
- Over 400 magic items of various types. From miscellaneous weird items,(some are alive), and tools to weapons, armor, keys, paintings, instruments, wands, and magic orbs. Over 70 of the items are cursed and they are quite dangerous. All of the magic items are also indexed in the back.
- 61 various potions.
- 20 devious poisons.
- 35 dangerous ritual ideas.
- 2 D100 random tables of magic item side effects, 100 ideas each.
- 2 creepy entities.
- 12 bonus NPCs who have connections to some of the magic items. 11 of which have portraits.
- 7 bonus secret societies, cults, that revolve around the capture, use, procurement, study, or worship of magic items.
- 2 bonus monsters.
- Over 60 grayscale pieces of art.
- 8.5 x 11 book size, 115 pages
- High quality glossy cover.
Marvelous and Arcane Magic Items For The Busy Game Master by Steven Chabotte
(I know that this one says it's for 5E but it could be used for others as well.)
Are your players tired of getting the same old magic items?
Are you looking for interesting and unique magical items to reward your adventurers?
Marvelous and Arcane Magic Items for the Busy Game Master gives you a vast list of fantastic enchanted items offering a wide array of powers and abilities for your adventurers – 1,000 in total! You will find tons of new swords, bows, hammers, armor, books, scrolls, inks, potions, musical instruments, clothing, household items, and many other odd, unusual and interesting items to spice up your treasure hordes.
All items are written for the 5th edition of your favorite TTRPG and broken down into easy-to-research chapters, each containing 100 items to choose. Chapters include:
- Bows, Axes, Clubs, Daggers, and More
- Armor and Shields
- Jewelry
- Potions and Consumables
- Books, Scrolls, and Inks
- Clothing
- Musical Instruments
- Household Items
- Odd and Unusual Items
Add in a little creativity, and you can easily customize any item to make it a perfect fit for that special member of your adventuring party.
May your next adventure be spectacular!
Tavern Tables by Steven Chabotte
Quickly build fascinating taverns for your fantasy role playing game!
One of the greatest memes in tabletop fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder and many, many others that are played by millions every year is the tavern encounter. No matter the game or group of players, the Game Master will soon be faced with bringing the adventurers to town and inevitably to the tavern in that town.
Tavern Tables: The Game Master’s Tavern Builder Handbook is the definitive guide to creating and running taverns in your role playing game. Combine bits and pieces from its 30+ tables and you will soon have a fully fleshed out tavern for your players to explore. From food to drink to song to atmosphere, this guide has everything you could ever look for. It even has fully fleshed out taverns for an even quicker start.
Tavern Tables is your opportunity to rapidly turn a blah tavern encounter into an exciting adventure for your players and a night that will be remembered long after the game has ended. Make your tavern encounter be all it was meant to be. Tavern table offers all these tools to help you design your ultimate tavern encounter quickly and easily:
- Over 100 pages of tables to help you design fascinating taverns, complete with its workers, visitors and rumors.
- Compatible with all tabletop fantasy role playing games
- 10 ready made taverns complete with history, neighborhood description and an adventure seed.
- Dozens of NPCs from owners to wait staff to patrons
- Hundreds of colorful food and drink options to offer your guests
- Drinking songs that you and your players can sing if the mood strikes you
- Dozens of quick build tables to generate a fascinating tavern on the fly.
- And much more…
What are you waiting for? Start designing your greatest tavern encounter right now with Tavern Tables.
May all your adventures be grand!
The Gamemaster's Worldbuilding Journal
The Gamemaster's Worldbuilding Journal is perfect for game designers, novelists, and especially gamemasters. Build nations, design kingdoms, and explore the geography of your realms with this collection of forms, documents, and sheets created to cover all aspects of world design. Use this tome to nicely print your notes and ideas in a clean compilation, or treat the journal as a scrapbook and write in the margins, glue in pictures, etc. It's perfect for any type of world building.
Sly Flourish's The Lazy Dungeonmaster by Michael E. Shea
You love Dungeons and Dragons. As an experienced dungeon master you've run dozens, if not hundreds of games. You put a lot of work into making your games great. What if there's another way to look at how you prepare your game? What if it turned out you could spend less time, less energy, and have a better game as a result? It's time to unleash the Lazy Dungeon Master. Written in the style of Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games, The Lazy Dungeon Master shows a new approach to game preparation, one that takes less time and gives your game the freedom to grow at the table. This book will help dungeon master prepare awesome games for any version of D&D. Based on the real-world experiences of hundreds of dungeon masters and dozens of professional game designers, the Lazy Dungeon Master includes interviews with veteran D&D DMs and a complete toolkit to help you improvise an entire game. Whether you play 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Pathfinder, or the D&D Next playtest; The Lazy Dungeon Master has tips, techniques, and advice to make preparation easier and help you run a flexible and entertaining game.
Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael E. Shea
Winner of the 2019 Gold ENnies!
Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is an award-winning and best-selling book designed to help roleplaying game masters get more out of our RPGs by preparing less. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master uses the experiences of thousands of GMs to help us focus on how we prepare our games, how we run our games, and how we think about our games. It includes practical steps for focusing our preparation activities on those things that will bring the biggest impact to our game.
This full color illustrated book includes an eight-step guide for lightweight game preparation and focuses on how we prepare for our games, how we run our games, and how we think about our games.
Sly Flourish's Fantastic Locations by Michael Shea, Brian Patterson, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, and Erik Nowak
The Game Master's Terrain Guide by Matt Davids
Do you play Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or another fantasy role-playing game?
This guide quickly outlines the different types of wetlands, forests, and mountains. Then gives you ideas and situations to use them as you are running your game. Never have a boring landscape again.
Learn the difference between an elder forest and an enchanted forest, or a bog and fen, or a lonely or a living mountain.
Add details and fresh perspectives to long journeys during your RPG sessions. Create unique challenges and adventures based on the landscape. Use various terrains to build atmosphere.
- Scenario Ideas
- Possible Encounters
- Possible NPCs
- Bonus Random Tables
- And More
Masks by the authors of Gnomestew.com
Written by the award-winning authors of the GMing blog Gnome Stew, Masks is now available in print and PDF! Just got done looking at a preview of @gnomestew's new book, Masks, filled with cool NPCs for any game or genre. Looks great! - Game designer Monte Cook (via Twitter) Playing a character is like putting on a mask: Slip on a mask, and you become someone else. This book presents 1,000 masks - non-player characters that are fun to play, and that your players will never forget. Featuring a foreword by gaming industry legend Wolfgang Baur, Masks is the ultimate NPC resource. Think of your favorite character from a game, book, or movie. What makes them memorable? It's not their Strength score, or how many hit points they have - it's who they are as a person: what they look like, how they act, their personality, and what drives them. Using a simple but powerful template that features Appearance, Roleplaying, Personality, Motivation, Background, and Traits, Masks provides the core elements of a thousand great characters. Masks NPCs are designed to be used on the fly, no prep required - but with enough depth to be used when planning adventures, as well. Within this massive collection you'll find the resources you need to portray vivid NPCs in your games: Fantasy, science fiction, and modern NPCs: 333 of each (334 in fantasy), all easily adaptable to any genre and any RPG Roles and traits: Every NPC has a role - villain, ally, or neutral - and is categorized by traits like famous, criminal, and warrior Clear, useful game mastering advice: Masks covers re-skinning NPCs to fit other genres, making your portrayals memorable, and more Handy tools: NPCs are indexed by trait, name, and author; an appendix lists groups like Tavern Patrons and Spaceport Denizens; and Masks provides over 1,900 names in an easy-to-use format No game mechanics: These system-neutral NPCs can be used in any RPG Masks is a standalone volume - you don't have to own our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, to enjoy it, although they go great together. Masks is designed to be used both as a table book and as a prep book. At the table, it gives GMs a tool for portraying vivid, memorable NPCs on the fly - if your players show sudden interest in that bartender, you can flip to just about any page and find a suitable personality, backstory, and roleplaying cues to flesh out that NPC. During prep, Masks provides a solid foundation for everything from signature villains to steadfast allies, as well as neutral characters you can use as everyone else - or tip one way or the other and use as a villain or ally.
Dungeons for the Master by Matt Davids
Never Get Caught without a Dungeon Map
Your players now want to explore the ruins you mentioned in an offhand remark. Don't worry. With this book of maps, you'll have an exciting dungeon ready to go before your players can open the Doritos bag or check Facebook.
D&D Dungeon Masters and Pathfinder Game Masters never get caught without a dungeon map ever again. Never worry about your players straying from the main adventure. Always have a dungeon ready to go.
This book includes:
100 hand-drawn original dungeon maps. These maps will only be available in this book. Unique dungeon names to get your creativity flowing. A comprehensive 1D100 table of dungeon encounters. Have characters fall into fiery pits, not cliches. Plus, all the maps I have ever posted on my blog or included in free products. The total number of dungeon maps is 177!
Treasure Vault by Steven D. Howard
"You've trudged through miles of wilderness, crossed the swamp to end all swamps, fought creatures of night and monsters of madness - and you still have a light purse? Then unlock the doors to Treasure Vault! These unique items, magical and otherwise, provide a fresh lure to exciting adventure for the most jaded character's spirit. The unusual personalities and tantalizing scenarios make this book a genuine treasure trove of ideas for the game master of any role playing system!"
The Basic Fantasy Equipment Emporium
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