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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing $19.95
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Anders B. K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/01/2015 04:22:39

I wholeheartedly recommend this to GMs of ANY fantasy RPG! It is an excellent general-use GMs toolbox, both for preparing homebrew adventures, and for adding content to published adventures. It is also VERY useful while playing AT the table, where I use it a lot. To me it reminds me of the 1e AD&D DMG (all the charts at the back of the book), but Raging Swan Press' Dungeon Dressing book is just (to me) MUCH more directly useful, and it VERY well organized. Besides LOTS of random tables containing A LOT of solid and imaginative content, there is also a lot of very useful CRUNCH information in this book. For ANY Pathfinder GM I really would consider this a mandatory GM's ressource. It is so good, that I personally consider it the number 1 "DMG" for Pathfinder! (I almost wish that Paizo got to publish it as an "Gamemastery Guide 2", so that more people would get it!)

TLDR: Get it if you are a Pathfinder/D&D/any fantasy RPG GM! You won't regret it, I am sure!!

PS: I can also REALLY recommend that you look at the Wilderness Dressing book and Scions of Evil (superb NPC collection), also from Raging Swan Press.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Ismael A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/20/2015 22:38:34

For full disclosure, I did receive a digital copy of this product, though I am contemplating buying a print copy, as it is quite good.

Now, I have already reviewed the "GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing" product, and was quite impressed with that. I am equally impressed with this product, given that it is up to the same standards. I have not been able to pour through it, but I have the same glaring eye that most role players have towards grammar, and have yet to find an error. Moreover, this resource is packed to the gills with various resources that not only spruce up a dungeon, but keep players on their toes.

There are obvious dungeon staples such as trapped doors and diabolical devices that threaten to harm players. Of there there are plenty of top notch traps made to harry your players. But of further intrigue are the various tables to add devilish details to any dungeon. These details, or the dressing, beg the players, and perhaps even the game master to ask more questions. Why did someone leave macabre objects at the entrance to the dungeon? What does the dungeon's name mean?

These are all excellent hooks that may convince the players that there is added depth to the dungeon's purpose, and with some luck and a few percentile rolls, that will be true! I not only read through the book, but I was able to employ it in my current game, and it worked wonders! It really does do wonders for describing something more elaborate than a 20x20 ft stone room with no features, and in no time at all.

If I had one complaint about the book, it being a compilation and all, is that it did not somehow include a section on rooms. Granted, there were plenty of things that comprised rooms, ranging from floors, ceilings, altars, doors, archways, ceilings, captives, etc... but nothing to address a room unto itself. I understand that the point of the book is to add to a room through its component pieces. On the other hand, I would rather like a few tables for simple rooms that are themselves noteworthy not because of their walls or ceilings, but something that comprises the room itself. As an example, a room made of ice that refuses to melt, and so on. If Raging Swan were to do such a supplement, I think that I would be first in line for its purchase, especially given the quality of the product at hand.

Outside of the actual dressing, there are a number of impressive and useful tables and rules that do wonders for planning and running dungeons. Pre-generated treasure hoards are a life saver, and while such a thing is common on the internet, it is nice to have them included in this product. The riddles were amusing, and though I have yet to use any, I am eager to do so.

I also was very fond of the dungeon design section. Much of it was simply sound advice, though not as useful perhaps for veteran game masters. Despite that, I think all of the information on dungeon design and ecology were things that needed to be said, and not everyone is privy to the idea that a dungeon that makes sense is typically better than one that does not.

In closing, I was especially pleased by "GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing". I heartily endorse it, and my only complaint is that I want more of it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by James B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/18/2015 18:51:50

I like others received a full copy for an honest review, I think it is a great resource for both new GMs and experienced ones alike. I thought the tables were great because sometimes you get in a rut designing new dungeons and just a simple roll can get you out of that and thinking a new way. Sometimes answering what the walls look like for the 15th time that night you can have a new response.

If I had known about it before I was offered it I would have gladly purchased it. In fact I enjoy it so much I am considering having it printed myself so that I can have when I design dungeons as I still prefer to draw them by hand. The section on dungeon designing was very much needed as when I started 20 years ago, we did not think about the realities of how did monsters get there, we just created a dungeon and filled it with things to go boo. Now with this you think more about the ecology of how monsters and that river got there.

If you ever agonize about what to make the 5th room look like, or create a dungeon at the 11th hour pick this book up. If sometimes you need inspiration, pick this book up, I saw no cons with this book and have thoroughly enjoyed using this resource.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Veronica E. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/23/2015 21:38:03

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest and informative review.

At $19.99 for the pdf, this book may have a high asking price, but if you run games that venture into dungeons from time to time, it will be worth it. Just take a look at the product description, and see what you're getting here. Now consider this: every one of those headings, from doors to ceilings to trap doors to walls, has more information than you can shake a stick at. All the handy bits of information you may not be able to keep in your head (such as break DCs, hardness, and the DC of acrobatics checks to jump on an altar), two tables of dressing and features, and traps. Glorious, glorious traps!

Crushing ceiling trap? It's here. Illusory sarcophagus trap? Yep, that's here too. A portcullis with a banshee bound inside it? You better believe it's here!

Ever wanted to know what the goblin had in his pockets? Players asking what the ceiling looks like? Considering foreshadowing a trap or hazard with a doom panting? Looking for some prisoners to throw in, ready to be rescued? How about enough riddles to outwit a sphinx? Or some legends for the loose-lipped barkeep to tell, which may or may not be true? If you're feeling particularly creative, you may even find plot hooks - exactly why did the dungeon owner purchase this painting for over ten times its value?

All this glorious goodness is sandwiched between a chapter on dungeon design, and over two hundred treasure hoards of 1st to 20th level. These hoards are a real gem, too - full of quirky items, such as thousands of silver coins stored in woolen socks; an entire galley; a stool made of scrimshawed wyvern bones; even a gilded iron maiden - as well as enough jewellery and gems and coins to choke a dragon!

If you're a GM, pick this up. If you're a player, pick this up for your GM. It'll be well worth it!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Derek B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/17/2015 21:56:34

An Incredible Resource, and a Must Have for GMs

Full Disclosure: I was given a copy of this book for review purposes. I will review it fairly.

This book is amazing. It is 339 pages long, with a few pages dedicated to fluff, cover pages, and multiple elaborate Table of Contents for various content. When I first read this, I'll admit that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This book was everything I was expecting, and so much more. When I saw the number of pages I figured that there'd be more pages dedicated to fluff, OGL layouts, etc and only a moderate portion of content. I was very wrong. It's so much more than that. This is book is something every homebrew GM needs to have in their collection. Not only does it give you varied details on how to design a dungeon, it gives you subcategories on each of the designs. You don't just get dungeon layouts, you get the characteristics, the secrets within, the features, varied traps besides what you'd see in the core books, riddles, legends that go with the dungeons, smells, magical premises, extra dimensional portals, treasure hoards for all player levels, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. If nothing else, if your players are the overly questioning type of what the walls look like, how high the ceiling is, what's on the ceiling, what direction is the wind coming from and what odors come with it, this book can definitely help out with that.

Being a relatively seasoned GM and having read a number of "dungeon crawls" over the years, as well as adventure paths and scenarios run with groups, I have to say that this book is a love letter to all the old school dungeons of yesteryear that I wish had come out a decade earlier. I can't help but think that if this had been released sooner that I would have gotten so much more out of the other dungeon crawls I'd read. While reading this I had nothing but ideas of my own design, and how I could change or improve on the upcoming games I'll be running with my players. For me that really means something as I'm not very good at coming up with anything of my own. I usually borrow maps and just replace the encounters, but keep the write-ups. With this, I can come up with something much more original.

This book will help you design practically any dungeon your mind can think up. From the very simple to the overly elaborate. For me, the real selling point is the riddles. I suck at coming up with those, and personally hate them when I come across them as I'm not one to think outside the box that well. That said, I know a lot of players who feel that it's not a true dungeon crawl until they meet a sphinx with three riddles loaded. For them, this book will satisfy their need to answer the unanswerable.

The bookmarks take you to every possible location you need to go, as well as the Table of Contents is linked to each subject. This alone is a major selling point for someone like me as I do not always have to go back and forth as I'm not one for memorizing where I wanted to go. While a couple of them are somewhat broken, I've talked with the author, and this is getting rectified.

Along with the different Table of Contents on varied subjects, there are also random tables for encounters, smells, sounds, chest contents, dressings and features, characteristics and appearance, and statues. Not only that, but there's subtables for things like portcullises, statues, entrances, chests, and other things you didn't know you needed. The wealth of information is in overabundance, and as a GM you will never know how grateful you will be of such things.

Finally, the treasure hoards. The thing your players entered the dungeon for in the first place. Not only is there a hoard for each CR level a PC might face, but it's also got 12 variations of what they could find in the treasure pile. It can be anything from a mixture of gold and jewels and no magical items in sight to only magic items with a small amount of gold to round it out.

Conclusion: Get this book! This handy guide is an absolute must for any GM. Whether you've done is a million times, or you're not that great at it, this book can always give you something that you didn't think you needed to add in.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by William B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/13/2015 21:18:21

First and foremost I’d like to say that this is my first ever review of any gaming product, so in no way will it come close to that of the most prolific reviewer Endzeitgeist and will likely ramble. Secondly, I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review to be posted at Paizo, OBS and Amazon.

This GM Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is a compilation of a lot of material that Raging Swan had already produced, collected and compiled and I presume updated with any noted errata and it appears in many places may have had new material added that was not previously available in any other Raging Swan product.

The entire PDF is 339 pages long, with about 6 or 7 pages of covers, OGL and Table of Contents leaving a whopping 330+ pages of content to work with and explore. The PDF is divided into 4 major sections, including Dungeon Design, Dungeon Dressing, Riddles and Treasure Hoards.

The Dungeon Design section is all geared around thinking about why a dungeon might exist, who built it, why they built it, purpose, design, layout and history. It gives the GM things to consider if they are designing their own dungeon or mega dungeon. It also includes the Do’s and more importantly the Don’ts in many cases.

The next section contains the bulk of the material and I believe is all culled from the entirety of the Dungeon Dressing Line. Any set of features or object that player’s might encounter in a dungeon, altars, archways, traps, doors, fountains, floors and ceilings. Each section has a table or set of tables that the DM can utilize to spice up their dungeon, their keep, or abandoned guardhouse or any other constructed feature. Each table typically contains a d100 worth of options to explore. Many sections have pre-constructed options that allow you to just plug a really great option directly into your constructed building/dungeon. Two sections that I found particularly useful was the section on illumination and how far many of the core spells and core equipment cast their light. Nice set of summary tables as well for how the spells work. The other one that I really enjoyed was the table for graffiti and junk and rubbish. Your player’s certainly aren’t the first ones to go exploring the depths of the dungeon’s, why wouldn’t previous adventurers left behind, broken gear, notes for people coming after them and all manner of other detritus.

The next section is all about riddles, including guidelines for using them, placing them and designing them as well as many options pre-delivered from the ever classic walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three at night to riddles about ability types and different sources and types of riddles.

The final section is treasure hoards from CR1 to CR20 and an even dozen at each CR. Descriptions to each special item be it standard weapons, art works, gems and jewelry to magical weapons. Each item given description and characteristics to make the piece memorable for the characters and in many case, I thought, maybe a plot hook to find out why the object exists, was created, and maybe motivation to find the original source of the item.

Conclusion: While I have not read every single page and every single table of descriptions, I feel pretty confident that I can say that this is an extremely handy guide for any DM to add color and flavor to their world and their creations. The only thing that would make this material any better is if there was an electronic solution to plug all this into and have it generate the output. I’m certainly adding it to my list of tools to use in adventure preparation. I give it full marks for usefulness, organization and downright great stuff.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Chris Z. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/13/2015 10:38:51

An Amazing Compilation This book by Raging Swan Press, is incredible. It is a compilation of all things related to a Dungeon for Pathfinder RPG. It goes over numerous options available for: altars, archways, bridges, captives, ceilings, and on and on. I was shocked to see how much work actually went into this. It gives options for what you can find in a goblin’s pocket ranging from utterly worthless to yummy nibbles, to a goblin’s shiny treasures. How cool is that? It offers new options for traps, riddles, and treasure hoards.

I am a Game Master that normally runs pre-made adventures. This book increases my interest in writing my own dungeon crawling adventures. If I had this when I purchased my original core rulebook, I would have started my own dungeons that day.

This book is the Ultimate Toolkit to add to any Game Master who enjoys running dungeon crawls or ones that want to add something very interesting or unique to your already pre-made adventure.

This will be the NEXT Pathfinder book that I purchase in the future. It is a book that needs to be on my shelf next to the Core Rulebook, Game Mastery Guide, and the Bestiaries.

If I was able to give this more stars than 5 I would. It is that good.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/11/2015 12:58:17

Raging Swan Press has produced "GM's Miscellany: Dungoen Dressing." This is a book of advice, random tables and crunch to aid a GM in quickly customizing dungeons of any size. It is 339 pages including a front and back cover, several pages of credits, indices and tables of contents. It is not intended to help build the dungeon itself; rather this product helps to generate the details that define the setting. As with all products I've used from Raging Swan the book is well edited and laid out in an easy-to-use alphabetical format. The first chapter gives the prospective GM several bullet-pointed lists of advice and tips on considerations when designing their own dungeon. It goes on to detail dungeon features from "Altars" to "Wells" and ends with tables for generating riddles and treasure hoards. Each section from the features on includes unique details such as appearance, characteristics and suggestions of use. Most also include mechanics and "crunch" so that they can be seamlessly integrated into your design. This book will not generate a dungeon for you. I feel I need to make that clear as it was an assumption of mine when I first received it. The tables and aids in this book are only intended to build upon your own ideas and design. That being said many of the details depicted within can be used to create unique dungeon settings from an "inside-out" perspective. If you randomly generate the first door your PCs will see this might spark an idea for why its there and what's behind it. In this respect the first chapter is invaluable, giving the dungeon creator all manner of questions and concerns to think about while designing. Details such as food and water within the dungeon, why it was originally created and what function(s) it now serves in the game world help the prospective GM make a dungeon that makes sense in their intended setting. This is a hallmark of Raging Swan Press; helping GMs by challenging them to really think about the game they're creating. I would conclude that at the intended price point this is a fine addition to the modern GM's design arsenal. It contains just enough detail and character in each of the features to either drop them whole hog into any setting while still remaining vague enough for GMs to customize these details easily on the fly. I can confirm this through use as soon after I received this product it was employed in my own games to the delight and consternation of my players. This book is versatile and bountiful so it will serve its GM well for many dungeons to come.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by David S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/08/2015 08:24:52

(Disclaimer- I received a review copy of this pdf from Raging Swan.)

GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is a great OGL product all about adding cool features and details to either your custom dungeons or even just to add a bit more spice to a "purchase-and-play" lair. This massive pdf weighs in at over 300 pages, with a comprehensive bookmarked table of contents and lots of flavorful, invocative b&w artwork. The bookmarks really make navigating the pdf a breeze.

Be prepared for tons of tables and flavor text touching the many aspects of dungeon and lair delving, such as ecology, layout & design, traps chests, concealed and secret doors, illumination, stairs, riddles and even treasure! There is a TON of stuff to inspire even the most jaded DM's imagination and get those creative juices going!

Lastly, even though Dungeon Dressing is touted as a Pathfinder-compatible product, I would recommend it to anyone looking to add some jazz to their next dungeon or lair experience, no matter the rpg system they prefer.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by john s. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/06/2015 21:20:55

First of all, if your a veteran DM or new DM, this is just what you need to make your Dungeon setting a vibrant, colorful, intriguing, and makes your dungeon a pure visual joy for the players. GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing works from ODD to Pathfinder and into 5th edition all all in between, with a little tweaking, you could use it for most themed RPG's out there. The advice, tables, and optional ideas are to numerous to even think about counting. With that said, they are not overwhelming and easy to use and find for your situation or scenario. They are all broken down into categories and are easy to implement. Creighton Broadhurst and Raging Swan Press have really outdone themselves on this, matter of fact, I have yet to find any of there products to be anything but useful and great. My advice is, that if you can, buy the actual book of this and any product they sale in book form. Your library will be better off. Just want to say thank you to Raging Swan Press for this and all your other amazing resources. God Bless you on your further endeavors and I can not wait for Gloamhold!

Looking forward to reading more, John w. Smith



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Stipe K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/06/2015 05:02:40

This is a massive tome of details and ideas for fantasy adventures. It will serve anyone who needs fixture descriptions and assortments of traps, puzzles and treasure. Everything you need for dungeon design is in this book. Even casual reading breeds ideas for encounters, location details and even whole adventure ideas. It is perfect for DMs who (like me) don't have natural inclination for providing details, to enrich the locations and make adventures more memorable. Even for those who do it is very useful since it reduces the workload considerably. The dungeon design section, while I've seen better and more detailed books on the same topic, gives all the basics you need to pay attention to. Only negative thing about this book are the bookmarks, which need to be reorganized and reduced (I'm guessing they were for the most part ported from constituting pdfs) and some of them fixed (first few instances of nested bookmarks all send you to page 240 or so). And seriously, I need to get this book in print.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Andres B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/03/2015 11:10:14

This massive book is outstanding. The sheer amount of material this book have is huge, there are tables filled with description for basically everything you can find in a dungeon, from the basic (Walls, statues, gates), to the more unusual to be described (like tapestries, and graffities).

As a DM I tend ignore the little details that truly flesh out the dungeon. Well, never again. No more "it is a throne", instead

"A depiction of a large hooded snake forms the back of the throne, its fanged mouth wide in a silent hiss. The armrests end in angry carved viper heads".

Repeat for everything else in a dungeon.

5 stars.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Joshua B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/03/2015 10:54:57

Background for me: I’m a new-ish GM and one of my biggest struggles is creating a dungeon that’s more than “go here, kill monsters, and get loot”. It’s something I struggled with when I started to the point I avoided dungeons to begin with or just used ones from other sources (I’ve used a few from various pathfinder modules for example) and plopped them in my games and tweaked a few things.

But I don’t like doing that, I like creating my own things (I’m using my own homebrew world that I wrote up for my games). I like being creative and using cool things to keep my players on their toes and for them to have a good time.

This book is probably the perfect thing for that. It’s just above 300 pages and goes into depth about basically everything you could ever want in a dungeon. Ranging from general advice about dungeon design, to traps, magical fountains, portals, etc., this book has a huge amount of material to pick and choose from. The book itself is broken in a few main sections:

Dungeon Design – the basics of creating a dungeon that’s more than a loot cave. It’s all about fleshing out your ideas in a way that will excite your players. Dungeon Dressing – how to fluff up the dungeon. Your party is fighting a lich in his home? What sort of throne would he want to be sitting on, what sort of altars would be around, etc. Also traps. Lots and lots of traps. This is the main component of the book and it is incredibly in-depth with what you can use and choose from. Riddles – who doesn’t love these? I’m not great at coming up with them myself, but I do love throwing them at my players every now and then. Similar to traps, there’s a lot here on how to design them, and a lot of ones to choose from as well.

And then treasure hoards. One of the hallmarks of good dungeons: memorable loot. Rather than just dolling out hundreds of gold and calling it good, the book provides plenty of hoards of treasure for adventurers of all levels and also provides plenty of magical gear as well.

I’m going to be honest here, I haven’t read the entire thing. It’s huge. There’s a ton here. To me, this is going to be the book I turn to when I want to create a unique and interesting dungeon to my players. There’s so much here for any GM: whether it be a relative newcomer like me or a veteran looking to get some quick ideas, there’s something here for that.

5 / 5, no doubt.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Aaron T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/02/2015 21:10:57

A Very Useful GM Resource

Full Disclosure: I was given a copy of this book for review purposes. I strive to review thoroughly and fairly.

This book is over 300 pages of delightful tricks and tools for GM’s to use when building an adventure, or just trying to spice up their descriptions. The book is divided into 4 major sections: Dungeon Design, Dungeon Dressing, Riddles, and Treasure Hoards. There are tables in this book. LOTS of tables. Please note, this book is written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, but much of it is system neutral and could be used in ANY roleplaying game that has dungeon type features.

Dungeon Design is 9 pages long and contains entirely system neutral tips for building dungeons. This is VERY useful information for a GM designing their first dungeon, and good reminders for an older GM. Everything in this chapter is good info, it all is “take what you need and leave the rest,” type of information.

Dungeon Dressing is about 250 pages long. If you have purchased ANY of Raging Swan Press’ “Dressing” products, the format here will be very familiar to you. Each section contains a brief page of information about the dungeon feature you are putting in your dungeon, a table of different versions of that item, a table of characteristics, a table of dressing and features, and a few examples of trapped versions of that dungeon feature. For example: the section on arches starts with a page describing what arches are, different types of arches (inflexed, lancet, etc), and different materials you could make your arch out of (bone, glass, stone, etc). The next page is a percentile table that describes interesting characteristics for your archways (two statues facing one another support the archway). The next two pages are a table describing dressing and Features for your archway (a slight draft flows up from the tiles within the archway). The next two pages describe a few trapped archways. The traps are designed for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The idea is that you can either roll on the tables to generate random archways, or read through the tables for inspiration to build your own archways. This pattern is more or less repeated for the majority of this section and describes a multitude of dungeon features. The first major deviation is in the “Fiendish Traps” section. These are all designed for the PFRPG and they are amazing and challenging traps that far surpass a “roll a disable device check, you pass or fail” trap mechanic. Of note, the Illumination section starts with the most concise rendering of Pathfinder’s Light rules that I have ever seen.

Riddles is about 20 pages long and starts with two pages about designing riddles and using riddles in a RPG. This was interesting reading! The use of riddles essentially depends upon your group. You want to challenge them. You don’t want to frustrate them with riddles that they can’t figure out. You don’t want to give them riddles that are too easy and present no challenge either. The rest of the section consists of different riddles that you could use or use as examples to help you write your own.

Treasure Hoards is the last 40 pages or so and consists of 12 treasure hoards for each character level (assuming levels 1 through 20). This is the sort of thing that you could pull out if your players get a random encounter with an owlbear, then decide to go hunt down its lair for the loot (that you didn’t think to prepare ahead of time for a random encounter!). You can pull up one of these and just hand over an appropriate amount of loot.

Overall, this is a highly useful product for a GM that would use it. The evil GM in me loves the Fiendish Traps and the Riddles sections. Format is 2 column standard in Black and White. Are is black and white stock art and is good. There were very few editing errors at all in the whole document, which is impressive for a book this size from a small publisher. I’ll admit that this is a hard book to sit down and read cover to cover, but each section makes for interesting reading. I found myself either chuckling or commenting, “that’s a neat idea,” or, “Cool!” as I was reading individual tables. I cannot think of any justifiable reasons to take stars away from this stellar product. It’s a niche GM book, but for GM’s who could use it, it’s a very valuable resource. 5/5 stars.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you, Aaron. I\'m delighted you enjoyed the book so much!
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GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by JEROME M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/01/2015 19:58:25

GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is the GameMastery Guide to Dungeons!

I first discovered Raging Swan Press in a sort of reverse engineering sort of way. I was scanning through the third party publisher adventures available on One Book Shelf and spotted something called Shadowed Keep on the Borderland. Being a long time gamer that played through the original Keep on the Borderlands, this instantly caught my eye. Even better, you could download a free version to test run.

This introduced me to the world of Raging Swan Press and their detail oriented supplements and adventures. Time and again, I read "reviews" from what I deem lazy GMs complaining about a lack of detail in a module that requires them to fill in the blanks. Well this massive 339 page PDF is the perfect supplement for those lazy no good GMs because it gives them detail after detail after painstaking detail that can be added to any dungeon encounter.

Little did Creaighton Broadhurst (the mastermind behind Raging Swan Press) know that when he put out a call for reviews for Dungeon Dressing that he would get approached by a GM with this book sitting squarely at the top of his One Book Shelf wishlist of PDFs to purchase on the next go-round. I was offered a free copy in exchange for a review and leapt at the chance.

ENDZEITGEIST pretty much wrote the definitive reviews for the Dungeon Dressing line, so I recommend reading his reviews. For my part, this book is quickly becoming indispensable. I find that whenever I run a dungeon oriented module, that the players constantly ask questions.

"What kind of wall is it?" "What are the doors made of ?"
"What does the inscription say?"

So on and so forth. Despite the wealth of detail and backstory that is provided in the average Paizo module or adventure path, there are limits to what can be included in a 32 page module, so the details come to an end.

And this is where the GameMastery Guide to Dungeons, I mean the GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing comes into play. The wealth of information contained within this tome extends beyond mere dungeon dressing or contents to understanding why a dungeon would have been created in the first place, or explaining how to develop a megadungeon of your own.

This tome contains tables and suggestions to further develop anything your PCs find within a dungeon such as the doors, portcullises, ceilings, traps, chests, paintings, corpses, sarcophagi, treasure hoards, statues, thrones, walls, wells and even riddles!

The sheer wealth of details and information offered in this one product is nothing less than mind-boggling!

So lazy GM's rejoice! Never again will you have to leave one of your lazy whiny reviews complaining that a module didn't have enough detail for you and that you heaven forbid had to fill in the blanks, because Raging Swan Press' GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing has all the details that you need to add to your dungeon and make you a GM worth a darn.

Believe it or not, but Dungeon Dressing is still at the top of my wishlist - because I want the hardback physical copy to go on my shelf.

Highly recommended. Buy it today.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks very much for the review, Jerome. I much appreciate the effort and time.
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