Veins of the Earth​
BUT PATRICK, WHAT IS 'VEINS OF THE EARTH?
It actually started off as an attempt to 'Vornheim' the Underdark; to provide a way to generate complex underground spaces during play, so that you could adventure in them, in the same way that Zak Sabbath's book Vornheim helped you to do that for cities.
It ended up encrusted with loads and loads and loads of extra stuff.
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(Reviews down below the description.)
Half of it is monsters, the other half mechanics and lists.
All of the monsters are individually illustrated by Scrap Princess. They are designed to be as original as possible, for a lot of things I drew on the Science of cave exploration and advancements in genetics that have taken place since the 1970's. The Archeans in particular are a race based upon Archean bacteria. The Knotsmen are based on my feelings about working as a call centre operator in the debt industry for several years. The empire of the Endoliths is based on taking train journeys to work in winter mornings where the whole world is dark but a lamp or a house-light burning in the distance encompasses a fragile globe of existance that seems to drift like a bubble on a dark sea, and on actual endoltihs.
The back end has rules for the creation of large scale underground maps, large cave complexes and smaller cave systems. There is a relatively novel and simple (once you do it a few times) method for creating small networks of caves as you play, for when players go off the map or just if you want to improv something.
There are rules for cannibalising your friends and a neat mechanic that unifies currency and light, giving you a sound reason to keep running around underground.
And of course there are extensive rules for going insane. Also for getting mutated or 'altered' by your time beneath the earth. Oh and insanity itself is an actual psychic monster that hunts you through the dark, that's on top of all the other kinds of insanity.
I'll just show the contents page again.
Bottom line: this is a good book. This is the weirdest, creepiest, most powerfully-imagined D&D Underdark yet, and Scrap Princess has done an outstanding job of illustrating it. Like all Patrick's stuff it's very grim and depressing and horrible, but the awfulness can easily be dialled up and down to fit individual campaigns; and if you've ever wanted your D&D underworlds to be ever weirder, then this is an excellent resource. I'd just suggest some caution about using the rules or statistics as written!
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Without being a full review of the thing, the book is wonderful. The game mechanisms presented are well thought out and work together in a variety of obvious and not-so-obvious-ways. The text is a joy to read in itself. [Lefties should know that this is from a rather right-wing site so of you don't want to give them the clicks you may wish to 'go around']
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this book is scary, b.c. the ideas are insane, and have merit, and it's all unique. I don't know if we're gonna run these in the future or not. It's kinda outside history-- although imagine what a (good) history it will be if we do run it!
Probably the scariest idea: navigating caves... it's hard to map let alone visually describe caves.
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Veins of the Earth, by the consistently excellent Patrick Stuart, introduces a natural - and surprisingly unexplored - wrinkle to this, presenting tools for building an underground setting inspired by real-world caves and - especially - caving. It isn’t a prepackaged setting, but it includes an extensive bestiary, a toolbox for generating cave systems (and their maps), and new rules systems for emphasizing the particular challenges of this environment.
And it’s pretty damn awesome.
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Its a good book, its the big black book that will be a major LotFP flagship for awhile. As big fans of both of them, it took some effort not to promote their work immediately and join the din (Its a good book from a company with high production values so go for it though), but I wanted to wait 6 weeks or so for the initial rush to die down and target a different group than those who love Scrap and Patrick's unique styles of art and writing (they collaborate frequently), to reach out to those who don't run games in their style.
You should really read their work BECAUSE it goes against the grain of your game.
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Veins of the Earth est une réussite totale, l'un des meilleurs témoignages actuels de la vivacité du mouvement Old School Renaissance. S'il est un peu difficile de rentrer dedans à la première lecture (d'autant que le niveau de langue est parfois soutenu), il révèle des propositions ludiques d'une grande richesse et s'avère finalement assez facile à exploiter autour de nos tables de jeu (pas besoin de lire ses 400 pages pour en tirer des éléments réutilisables).
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Veins of the Earth is a total success, one of the best testimonies of the liveliness of the Old School Renaissance movement. If it is a bit difficult to get in at first reading (especially as the level of language is sometimes supported), it reveals playful proposals of great wealth and is finally easy enough to exploit around our Game tables (no need to read 400 pages for reusable items).
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The prose is so purple it will give you a tan.
Veins of the Earth is one of the few tabletop products that I will undoubtedly use, not just to pull elements or ideas, but tables and content directly from its pages.
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I haven't even read a third of the thing, skipping around to find impressions of it and meeting amazing content at every turn. It's a monstrosity of a book, 375 pages of PDF. The book is the longest that LotFP has released. And from what I've read so far it may be the best.
My initial thoughts? Jesus. It's love at first sight.
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If you’re looking for an opinion from someone who doesn’t buy every LotFP thing there is (that’s me, I don’t care for the baked in setting but I do like the rules I guess) then here is my opinion: Veins is going to be a great read and a great visual experience.
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It’s a very good read, even on screen (which is something I seldom have any desire to do). The layout is lovely. The PDF proved to be well-crafted, bookmarked, and has a robust index. If you are interested in running games that extend below the surface, I’d put this on a must-have list for the sheer amount of inspiration and research it condenses alone. Your player’s will not crawl out the same way the marched in.ur audience's attention...
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Reviews
It's about 100,000 words over more than 350 pages of A5. Scrap has art on nearly every double-page spread so it's an art book as well, some of it in black and white, some of it in colour. A few of her 'Cave Scenes' are amongst some of my favourite works that she has ever done.Taken as a whole it's a pretty concentrated and intense wedge of culture. If it works it should be like a Stanley knife held to your eye.
Here is Ben Miltons Questing Beast review
The Undead Viking Review
And the Blog Reviews