#splatbook

A picture of a PC from our old Pathfinder game before moving to 5th Edition, Soteria Whisper, Sylph Souls/Protection Domain Cleric to Selket, turned into a Grave Domain Cleric/Bard to the same goddess

Sand and Dust: The Arrakis Sourcebook (Mōdiphiüs Entertainment, forthcoming December 2021).

This is the Death Star Technical Companion, a meticulous examination of the Death Star in RPG terms, published in 1991. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: books like this are almost entirely useless in any practical sense for someone running a roleplaying game, but damn, I love them.

The DSTC is useless for one major reason: the Death Star is operational for a tiny amount of time covered in the original Star Wars movie and explodes at the end of it. There is not a lot of time to get your characters in and out of it, especially without the gigantic problem of encountering or otherwise messing up the events of the movie. Further: most West End Star Wars material takes place after A New Hope, so the designers likely never seriously intended this to be a much-used book.

Still, for you continuity brains out there, this is probably a dream come true. Whatever questions you might have about the logistics and operation of a planet-sized laser cannon, they are likely answered within, in pretty tedious detail.

Let’s be honest: this was likely designed as a moneymaker with the RPG elements really an afterthought required by the licensing agreement. This sort of book, in the form of Technical Manuals filled with plausible blueprints, had been feeding the appetites of Star Trek fans since 1975. Following suit for Star Wars was a no-brainer. In fact, Starlog would publish several volumes of technical journals dedicated to both Star Wars and Star Trek, starting in 1995. I have the collected Star Wars one – if you’d like to see it, let me know in the comments and I’ll dig it out.

Cults of Prax, by Steve Perrin and Greg Stafford, is a book of deities and, since the RuneQuest system and the world of Glorantha are both intimately connected to the many religions contained within, it is one of the game’s most important books. Prax is both a melting pot and the site of a clash of cultures on an epic scale, so the gods detailed in the book are a cross-section of deities found throughout Glorantha. Several pantheons – those of the native nomad tribes, the invading Lunar Empire, the neighboring Kingdom of Sartar, the city of Pavis and more – all compete for influence in the region. If you play RuneQuest, you will know the names of gods like Orlanth, Humakt, Storm Bull, the Seven Mothers, Lhankor Mhy and Yelmalio very, very well.

Unlike D&D, which features endless deities but few doctrines that matter in terms of the game’s mechanics, the cults are RuneQuest’s foundation. Membership in one of more cults determines not just a character’s culture and beliefs, but many also function as a more organic sort of character class.

In D&D, a book like this would only be of use to Clerics and Paladins, and probably only in expanding the available spells. In RuneQuest, religion IS roleplaying – Cults of Prax is a handbook for how all characters (player and non-player) act, both with members of their own cults and outsiders. Learning these customs and how to navigate them is the soul of the game.

this itself isn’t an art post, but a dnd splatbook I contributed some illustrations to just came out today! there’s a lot of fun, very unique content in it and all the art from all the different artists that worked on it is just phenomenal, it’s really worth a look if you can afford it!