Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book Review

RPG Crawler posted a very extensive and favorable review for Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book as part of his new series, Shelf of Many Things:


If you're into gaming check out his channel (covers a variety of content and also does let's plays), and sub if you like what you see.

To clarify a few things from the review:

While this whole thing started as a 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons hack, over time we stripped out and changed so much that there's virtually nothing of it left; so if you don't like 4th Edition don't let that stop you from giving it a look. Someone else said that it reminds them of B/X or Rules Cyclopedia, though personally I think crunch/rules-wise it's more like 5th Edition with some 3rd Edition-isms (like the saving throws).

I suppose the use of levels instead of Hit Dice for monsters, and skill list is very close to 4E, though I swapped out Heal for Medicine, and instead of "training" in a skill and getting a +5 mod to it right away, you start with +1 and as you level up can gradually scale it up to +5. There's also no universal half-level bonus, or universal level-bonus for monsters. Oh and skill DCs don't continue to scale by level.

Buying the PDF gets you every PDF version available: black and white (with no background at all), color with no background, color with a parchment background, color with a lightened parchment background (in case you like a parchment background but think that the original version is just too dark). You don't have to choose (or, more accurately, you can't choose: you just get everything automatically).

If you want to buy a physical book, definitely choose an option that comes with the PDFs at no added cost, because you also get a bunch of extra content that isn't in the core book (nearly a hundred pages worth). This includes more races and classes (including racial classes and more talents), core classes with 20 levels, some advice on using monster parts, more monsters, magic items, a Vancian spellcaster, a primer for A Sundered World with Black Book rules, and so on.

If you just buy a physical book and want the PDFs, let us know and we'll set you up. We also keep adding more free PDFs to the core product over time: if you buy it and feel something is missing or just want to see how we'd handle something, email us: we might end up adding it to a future Appendix D issue.

Not really a clarification, but usually people mention Mike Mignola when talking about the art, so it was refreshing to see RPG Crawler compare it to Darkest Dungeon.

Announcements
You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want!

It look a lot longer than expected, but we finally released The Jinni. As with our other monstrous classes, this one is more faithful to the mythology (so don't go in expecting elemental-themed jinn).

After putting it to a vote, the next couple of classes on the docket are the warden (think 4E D&D warden) and apothecary (gotta go see what they're all about).

Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!

Just released our second adventure for A Sundered World, The Golden Spiral. If a snail-themed dungeon crawl is your oddly-specific thing, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).

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