by Jason Campbell
NOTE: A copy of Harrow: the Blighted Plane was provided to Shadomain by Underground Oracle, but no other compensation was provided for this review.
Today we look at the latest releases and news from Underground Oracle – a TTRPG publisher creating products for many game systems. Keeping up with their releases can be challenging as the company is incredibly prolific, putting out quality content all the time. All of the products are available at their site https://undergroundoracle.com/
and you can follow them on social media at @undergroundoracle.com.
Harrow the Blighted Plane
Harrow the Blighted Plane is a crystal punk campaign setting for the Cypher System. This is an epic campaign, available at the Underground Oracle store or from Drive-Thru RPG. It’s available as a 312 page full color PDF or as a 8.5″ x 11″ harcover or softbound printed version. Harrow the Blighted Plane is a setting for the Cypher System from Monte Cook Games. The book includes character creation, details of the setting, rules and an adventure.
The book details the setting and explains how this post-apocalyptic world came to be. The book details species such as the Crysallis, one of the five species player characters can be in Harrow. There are new Types such as the Blightslinger and new abilities for each of the Types. The book then goes on to describe sandships, one of the cooler features of the setting. These could be comparable to anything from landspeeders to pirate ships.
The book also discusses the four nations – key parts of the lands of Harrow.
Harrow the Blighted Plane is a very deep setting which shows the heroic effort the development team of Jess Pendley, Keith Pendley and Kayla Bayens put into this project.
No Mercy For Monsters
No Mercy for Monsters is a solo journaling game where you play a Woodsman pitted against a legendary adversary known as The Beast. It uses two sex-sided dice, a deck of cards and a few tokens (of any type). The PDF is available for $10 and is 34 digest sized pages. The book was written by Jess Pendley and Keith Pendley, and is in a black and white format with great (human created) artwork by Tasca Skelton and Arcus Masmeyer. The book starts with a content warning, which is a great idea as the game deals with horrors both internal and external.
The game cycles the protagonist through trials as you deal with the forces of the Pull of the Moon, always hunting for The Beast.
As the protagonist goes through the trials on their journey the odds stack up making the end of the story more likely all the time. You narrate the end of the story, whenever the game determines that is.
More From Underground Oracle
The folks at Underground Oracle began by creating adventures for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition, but for the past few years they’ve been producing a lot of supplements for the Cypher System. I’m a particular fan of their shorts series – collections of mini-adventures in PDF in many different formats. The shorts are really affordable and easy to drop them into any campaign or run as a one-shot when you haven’t prepared anything.
Underground Oracle has recently announced that going forward they’ll be producing supplements for Daggerheart and Black Flag (Kobold Press’s 5e system) as well as the Cypher System. You can read more information in the statement on Underground Oracle’s site.
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