Monday, November 5, 2018

Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name Coming Soon

Proof copies of my next setting book, Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name, are currently en route to me. Which means that if everything looks right it will be on sale in a week or so.

Curious about Umberwell? Here's the blurb:

Discover Umberwell, a fantasy metropolis of stunning strangeness and decadent splendor. Explore a city of urban dungeons, encounter marvelous artifice, and hear the prayers offered to the six goddesses of the City of Exiles. Tour the city’s island sprawl, its underground warrens, its undersea domes, and the rusting towers that lead to its skyward reaches. Mingle with devious wizards, thieving gangs, and creatures drawn to the city from across the planar multiverse. All you have to do is learn to survive the streets, crypt-kicker! Beautiful fiends, deadly assassins, scheming secret societies, raucous cabarets, and horrid monsters await just beyond the harbors. Embark and taste the impossible fever dream.

Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name is a system-neutral city campaign setting for picaresque urban fantasy adventures inspired by New Weird fiction. The book includes:


  • Art by Tenebrous Kate.
  • Details on the city of Umberwell, including information on its demoness mayor, its worm trains, its dangerous gangs and cults, its interplanar zones, and much more.
  • Information on the myriad races who populate the city.
  • Ideas for genre-appropriate characters and the reasons that brought them to the metropolis.
  • Eleven factions and twenty-six NPCs to involve your players in intrigue.
  • Advice and tools for running a fantasy RPG in an urban setting.
  • Tools for use in game, such as copious adventure seeds, random tables, and a comprehensive adventure generator that gives you the basis of a scenario with little prep.
  • A full index of subjects, an index of adventure ideas, and an index of the book's random tables.
  • A design philosophy that prioritizes ease of use and speed of play. All "lore" entries are easy to scan, and make use of bullet points and bold text to draw your attention to the important bits so you can get on with your game.
* * *

So here's the thing, Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name has twenty-six NPCs in it for use as contacts, nemeses, or examples of "supporting cast" characters in your games. Originally, I had written fifty NPCs for the book, but that seemed excessive.

I cut twenty-four for the book, but...the write-ups are good. Good enough to form the core of the first supplement for Umberwell: Scardogs and Scapegraces

I've decided to bundle Scardogs and Scapegraces in with the pdf of the main book, free of charge. If you buy Umberwell, you'll get both. Enjoy!