Incredibly helpful and fun to use to prepare games and to improvise at the table. I use this book to create homebrewed adventures, to enrich details for the thin parts of published adventures, and to improvise locations and NPCs at the table when my players go in an unexpected direction.

During game prep, this book brings places to life quickly. For example, a table of features for a temple yielded: "Some gold and silver coins, stamped with the symbol of the order, lie at the bottom of an old, weathered fountain. The pipes are blocked." Ah ha! Now, I not only had the room description I needed--a dry fountain--but also how I was going to identify members of this temple--they carry special coins--and even a problem the monks might have that the characters could solve--something is blocking the fountain's pipes below the temple. All in a couple of minutes.

Using this book in game prep, especially with a bag of dice at my side to roll on random tables, can feel more like playing the game and discovering the world as I go and a lot less like work.

At the table, just one of the many pages of NPCs from this book can be a life saver. I might use the entire NPC description--appearance, personality, mannerisms--or just the list of names to fill out the corner of a busy marketplace. NPCs pulled randomly from these lists have become favored companions and foes in many of my campaigns.

I have enjoyed Raging Swan products for several years and have recommended them to all of my DMing friends. I purchased an early copy of The Dread Thingonomicon at cost in return for a fair and honest review.

This is a big honking book.

First to my one nitpick: It has a listing all of sections by subject (rather than title), but the references there are to the release number of the seperate supplements that make up the book, and not the page numbers. So, it becomes a two step process to use this as reference. 1. Find what you are looking for, 2. go find what page it is on by using the ToC.

That said, the content is amazing. No matter where your players find themselves there will be a list of cool items, NPCs and plot hooks waiting for them. The volume and desnity of great ideas, vivid descriptions and cool hooks is unbeliveable. If you feel stuck or need an idea for anything in yoru game, you will find one here. And it is way more than just a list, each entry will make an area come alive. You could easily use this book to run a giant hexcrawl or entire campaign, or use it as I do, as a reference when working on the next session. My game is peppered with NPCs, locations and plot hooks scraped from Raging Swam materials and they never let me down.

My thoughts are based on an advance copy of the PDF that I received from the publisher in return for an honest review. I’m a 5th Edition DM with 5 years of experience and a patron of the Raging Swan Press Patreon.

Dread Thingonomicon is a collection of useful ideas – organized in sets of 20 on specific and compelling topics such as alchemical mishaps and low morale challenges for siege defenders – that will bring verisimilitude to your fantasy RPG gaming table.

Similar collections exist but here are a few things that I think Dread Thingonomicon does exceedingly well:

1. ORGANIZATION: Its voluminous 8-page table of contents allows readers to search by general subject – mountains, war, or evil folk - or drill (way, way) down into specific topics such as “Abnormal Low-Level Undead”, “Noisome Sewer”, or “Odd, But Fun, Festivals”. Also, the document is hyperlinked for easy access to precise locations in the PDF. In a world where so many RPG books lack indexes (here’s looking at you WOTC adventure books. Ugh.), gamemasters will welcome a text that makes searching for content so effortless.

2. PTHINESS: This collection of brief descriptions is consistent with Einstein’s contention that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. Pieces probably average 40 words or so but the writing is vivid, powerful, and each blurb contains at least one or two elements to provoke reactions from and creative thinking in players.

3. VOLUME: The collection is massive. There are over 450 pages of rollable tables using 260,000 plus words. Chances are that somewhere in this book is an idea that you can use as is or adapt to suit your needs at the table. It’s reassuring to know that you won’t have to flip through multiple texts to find inspiration and descriptions when your party takes an unexpected turn in a session.

Ultimately, I’m very impressed with the comprehensiveness of the collection, the focused development of the ideas it contains, and the ease with which the content can be found within its pages. I think Dread Thingonomicon makes an excellent addition to a gamemasters library.

The Dread Thingonomicon - where bigger is abundantly better and more fun!

Do you want verisimilitude in your games? I do and I found it in this the latest tome from Raging Swan Press! This mighty tome has an abundance of easy-to-use tables to populate those empty parts of a dungeon or environment description. A room is just a boring room until you start adding the small pieces of description that fill the out mental picture your players are creating in their minds. What are those small pieces of description? Well, that all depends upon the room type! Maybe it’s an alchemists’ lab, or a library or even an underground cavern; the Dread Thingonomicon covers them all and lots of others too.

For example, do you want to be able to tell your players what they have just found and what happens after they stumble into an alchemists’ laboratory looking for a place to buy potions? Then use the tables contained in the book to describe what the players see in the room and what the occupants are doing. To aid this, there are half a dozen NPCs described that can be used for roleplay along with another table to enable further adventuring with possible side-quests. Easy to use and quickly found in the book.

Dragons, everyone’s favourite monster. Need to know the name of the white dragon that has just been discovered in its lair due to a random encounter? Roll for it or choose it from the table and while you are at it, fill out the lair details and then add some distinguishing marks to the beast. All these things are listed on the tables under the section devoted to the white dragon. There are likewise separate sections for black, blue, green and red dragons.

And then there is the section for undead! Who doesn’t enjoy an encounter with undead? Need somewhere for them to found? That could be a necropolis or even in a cultists lair and both of those have their own detailed sections.

This mighty tome covers many many more subjects, not just the three mentioned above, with excellent detailed descriptions that are concise and easy to read. The layout is cleverly done with a precise contents table detailing the book page by page allowing you to quickly find what you want. Also included is a concordance style index where you pick your subject and then find beneath it is shown all the pertinent sections that relate to that subject. I find this feature very useful to create a complete picture of what I want to share.

The book is enhanced with a good number of excellent subject-relevant illustrations and the occasional bonus map.

I highly recommend this book as it will definitely make your life easier as a DM when creating your adventure both beforehand and also on the fly. After all, who doesn’t want to know what is in that pouch the kobold was carrying or what the random passer-by on the road looks like before you start to interact…

Dread Thingonomicon is a weighty tome (470+ pages of weighty) that's been 6 years in the making. As a capstone publication, it pulls together 73 individual Raging Swan Press '20 Things' releases into one volume. And that makes for a wealth of well-refined Game Mastery gold.

What system is it for? It's System Neutral, so you can bring it to your 5e, OSR, Pathfinder 1e/2e game, etc with confidence that it's going to bring value. What kind of value? It's a dressings book that helps GMs add memorable color and character to their games either during session prep or on the fly at the table.

Pick the subject you're interested in, flip to the section, and roll dice on the tables provided for fresh details and inspiration. Want to spice up your Zombies, Alchemist Laboratory, Ancient Necropolis, Library, Bandits, Marketplace, Red Dragon's Lair, Windswept Moor, Fecund Jungle, Battle Field, or Wizard Tower? There's tables for all of that.

It's a toolkit to help bring your game world alive.

Example: I turn to Abnormal Ghouls, our first entry in the Dread Thingonomicon. There's three tables provided for Physical Description, Battle Tactics, and Treasure. I roll a d10 for each table (3, 10, 6) and the following ghoul appears:

"The hairless gaunt humanoid has broken claws on its left hand and is more emaciated than its fellows It wears a shredded shirt that was once finely made, a silver thread (worth 5 gp) decorating its collar and cuffs. The creature is a true rarity of its kind – a coward that will flee or bargain to preserve its existence."

That ghoul just became a whole lot more memorable than its Monster Manual entry. And it poses questions to me as the GM: Why is it emaciated? How did it lose its claws? (Maybe that answer explains why it's cowardly.) How did it get the shirt? The ghoul just gained potential narrative value from the alchemy of the dice.

While Dread Thingonomicon presents itself as useful for both in-game and pre-game work, I personally find the hardcover version of great value for campaign/session prep. The sheer volume of material has so much potential for deep design. Still, with the PDF, I can print out specific sections for smoother emergent play at the table, adding to the sense of discovery for Game Master and Players alike. This tome can work with whatever your style of play.

The PoD hardcover is both sturdy and lovely in its minimalistic old school style, and I'm pleased to have it in my physical library. I consider Dread Thingonomicon an essential volume for campaign design and session prep, and recommend it for any Game Master's library.

Random tables upon random tables upon random tables.... you get it.

The book kicks off with 5000 abnormal undeads, ghouls, mummies, skeletons, wights and zombies. Each type has 3 tables of d10 options, physical description to add alittle dressing ontop of your basic monster description, battle tactics to make it stand out and treassure coz everybody love loot right?

so lets roll up a Ghoul, 3d10: 10, 2, 5.

> This Ghoul has bizarrely elongated ears - perhaps reminiscent of an elf's - grow from this horrid creature's head. When in a scrap, the ghoul stays low and goes for its opponent's legs, in an attempt to trip its target. In life, this poor unfortunate had a penchant for piercings and wore four small silver bars (each worth 1gp) in each ear.

Well that makes something like a simple Ghoul quite interresting, perhaps there are engravings in the ear jewelry which identifies this long lost elf to his kin. Maybe they would reward any news of their lost one, handsomely?

The book has lots of things to find, from polished crystal rods in an alchemist lab to a book about the shimmering horror in the night to Graffiti on bookshelves to loot in a bandit camp to trinkets in dragon hoards to things in a hill giants bag to strange things behind the bar to trinkets in a vampire castle to thing to see during a siege and dressing for the battlefield, it even has TROUBLESOME treassure! and 4 differently themed chases!

Honestly i could go on listing all the many cool things you can find, like ever wonder what kind of strange things a wizard will use for an impromptu bookmark?!

And it's not just one word entries on the tables, lets take a look at a local landmark in the windswept moors.

> 9. a rusting iron ladder enables (increasingly perilous) access to Soul Tor's summit. A chasm pierces the tor, plunging deep into the moor's bedrock. Rumours speak of incomprehensibles runes cut into the rock at the base of the chasm and of strange sounds echoing across the moor when a gibbous moon hangs low in the sky.

That is a pretty standard entry for the things you can roll on these tables and on top of that, there are also at least 100 npc's.

This collection of random tables has so much packed into it and the PDF table of contents links to all the pages, which is something i really really like in a pdf that is just awesome.

It's easy to read, lots of black n white line art that doesnt interrupt the flow of words and the tables are simple black text in numbered bullet form.

It is a river of inspiration! Next time you are preparing a session consider flipping this book to page 410 and roll up some Bulky Treasure!

In case you havent noticed, i love it, i think its awesome. This book will deffinently compete with the likes of Ultimate Toolbox from AEG for my attention in the future. I really like it and will keep it handy for whenever i prep sessions in the future!

I was gifted the pdf for review purposes, but that was after i had already pre-ordered both pdf and book.

This book is an essential addition to any Game Master's tool kit! For starters, it's a MASSIVE 480 pages of gameable material. Everything is organized in a way that makes it easy to pick up a d10 or d20 and add instant flavor to your session. The charts range from general adventuring, like mountains or ruins, to specifics like a noble manner house or an orc village. There's something here for just about every concieveable situation that you might find yourself in, as a GM, and need that little bit of extra detail to make the scene pop. It's also super useful for the SOLO GAMER, providing tons of inspiration and direction.

I'm a fan of Raging Swan products in general, but this is the grand-daddy of all of their supliments. I can't recommend this product enough.

As essential as Matthew Finch’s Tome of Adventure Design, the Dread Thingonomican provides open-ended creative prompts neatly sorted by subject and setting that don’t merely do all the work of the Game Master, but are written to provide just the right amount of imagery and direction to get the creative juices flowing. This book has quickly become my go-to companion when designing adventures and is already littered with post-it notes, dog-eared pages, and marginalia. Well done!

If you are reading this you are probably already considering purchasing this. If that is the case, just do it. I don't use this book constantly through my rpg playthroughs, but I do reference consistently and often enough that I have certainly received my money's worth. When I do use it, I am always happy I did. This book's strength is the ability to add great flavor to the moments of an adventure that would otherwise be bland and skippable. If you feel like you want your adventures and travels to be more interesting, this book is for you. If you want there to be more unqiue rp-able moments in the downtime of your adventure and travels, this book is for you.\ Like I said, if you are the type of person already considering this, then it is a good purchase. It's exactly what you think it is. And it does exactly what you are hoping it will.

Great ideas and information. It definitely helped spur the creativity and creation of a fun chase.

Well Thilo G. aka Endzeitgeist hast already said what there is to say. So there is only few I can add but a sort of a life-report. Was a bit stressed last week because real life cut my GM prep time more down than ever. And I had this next stretch my players have to travel trough already fixed in my head, also to show them, that my world isn't all pleasentness. And here comes Raging Swan like the Knigh in Shining Armour to save my pour soul. So once more, when the play started without having noted anything more but only by reading this help I was ready to improvise and to really drag in my players once more.

And this is what it's als about, isn't it?

Cheers!

Retribution 2022 Edition (OSR)

I am a DM with 42 years of experience, and always enjoy a product that makes bringing an adventure alive for my gaming group.

Designed for low-level play, the adventure is an exceptional start for parties that leads to a fantastic location that can become a significant place for PCs enjoying long-term campaign play. Your Retribution purchase may be further enhanced with free downloadable maps, artwork, and compiled stat block listings directly from the publisher's website at [https://www.ragingswanpress.com/free/retribution-maps?rq=RETRIBUTION] so don’t miss them! :) Also, each GM map comes in tagged and untagged versions which are wonderful for printing or for importing into your favorite VTT game.

Useful tools abound in this product. Included is a convenient hyperlinked table of contents that moves you exactly where you want to go. There is a solid appendix section covering all the NPCs that you interface with throughout the adventure. Next, is an appendix for creatures and monsters, separated for the GM by the three major divisions of the story, so one does not need to flip back and forth to find stat blocks. Lastly, an appendix of Pre-Generated Characters for a quick play or to replace the fallen. Other tools provided are well-thought-out Adventure Hooks, background, and an optional broader geographical section with settlements of note and a beautifully drawn regional map, tools that fit well alongside any fantasy game world. Retribution provides many tools and loads of descriptive information the GM can utilize to make a highly engaging game.

The adventure is divided into three parts for easy grouping and play. Part one helps the setting come alive with a few well-placed encounters, not based on location but relatively on hours spent traveling, while the PCs push toward their intended destination, the Priory of Cymer. Each encounter is well thought out, enhances the setting, and is filled with details to make them unique and easy to run. Part two is the most free form and creative section of the adventure allowing the PCs to move about, interact with the NPCs, explore, and understand the setting rolling out over a few game days building towards a climatic massive event. It is here that the GM is encouraged to allow the NPCs and environment to play their part, feeling as though the environment itself conspires to hunt them, building tension as a string of events unfold each day which the PCs sew and piece together to learn from. Until the pace swiftly becomes one of reeling survival and rebuffing a serious assault of the Priory itself. With so many flexible possibilities open for the PCs, the designer provides timely, helpful, and brief suggestions, covering the most common and probable broad actions the PCs may take. But in the final section, part three, the players become the hunters, knowing their enemy they take the battle into secret places, as they chase down their quarry, to save their friends, and themselves. The final battle is extremely well crafted and filled with meaningful decisions and plot twists which leaves a wide array of final solutions the PCs can craft through the freedom of their choices.

A solidly crafted adventure touching all the senses, enveloping and engaging, packed with environmental danger, mystery, meaningful social interactions, exploration, and intrigue, deeply personal plot revelations climaxing in swift action and combat. Among the very best of adventures, Retribution slams story crafting squarely back onto the gaming table for new and old players to enjoy like never before. Don’t miss it!

I am a DM with 42 years of experience, playing primarily 1e and 2e D&D since 1979, (with only a little playtime in 3.5, Pathfinder, and 5e). Luckily I have enjoyed the same friends at my table for more than 40 years, and we continue to have great fun even today.

Retribution is a fantastic work, built for both beginner DMs and seasoned DMs alike. Set for low 1-2 level of play it has many carefully crafted tools to draw starting PCs into a fantastic adventure to cut their teeth on.

Part 1 allows several opportunities for PCs with a multi-step, escalating need to outrace and yet still experience what it is like to be caught out under a tremendous, looming storm which propels them forward (if they are wise) towards their objective, a small temple, a place of safety. This is a great opportunity for new players to get to know and work together while setting the stage for a cloistered snowed-in feeling which builds tension and great ambiance. For those DMs who prefer not to build setting ambiance or player companionship, setting specific tension or mystery, they may easily start at the door of the adventure proper as always.

Retribution heightens player agency, by enhancing the importance of active participation through the skillful crafting of NPCs, friends, and opponents who are “refreshingly” not in any way static like so many other adventures. The NPCs and opponents are constantly moving and accomplishing goals and objectives of their own, allowing the players to intercede, thwart, defeat, or even suffer the consequences of their own possible inactions in the event that they merely choose to cower and hide. The adventure is living and breathing, with NPCs that have their own objectives which enrich the DMs' ability to make the NPCs multi-dimensional and intriguing even as the adventure progresses.

Descriptions of events not only make the actions of the NPCs active and progressive, while descriptions of the locations in which these events transpire are both colorful and rich, providing players a robust idea of their surroundings and settings allowing for even greater imaginative play as players decide how to best handle each challenge.

This adventure holds a very rare quality found in so few adventures these days, an opportunity for the DM to enter the world along with his players through the play and movements of the NPCs. Each NPC has a rich motivation which allows the DM to enjoy the play by concentrating on the NPC(s) that best suit his style and vision of play along with his players.

Retribution is a fantastic, enjoyable, classic old-school, and richly described adventure tied to an interesting location, interesting NPCs, and an amazing final encounter that challenges the PC’s in several unique ways. One of the best beginning adventures I’ve seen. A solid 5-star adventure for anyone!

A nice follow up to the first book. It allows you to adjust your towns so that a port is distinct from a border town, etc. I don't think it is as useful as the original but it does suppliment it nicely.

One of the very best collection of random tables. The results are interesting, avoid being repetitive and well enough written that I find myself reading through the tables for the enjoyment of it. At 178 pages it manages to find the balance between being detailed enough that you have a table that fits the situation, while not so specific that you will only use the table once in an adventure. I keep coming back to this book and enjoying it.