The Many Sourcebooks for D&D 5E That Are Luring Me Back: Arcana of the Ancients, Alien Bestiary, Alien Codex, Cthulhu Mythos

In 2013 when Dungeons & Dragons was moving from "next" to 5E, a common complaint among fans was the general dearth of content. Wizards of the Coast had moved to a more austere and careful release schedule, with a limited range of products year over year. So far they've stuck pretty close to this strategy, releasing at most about 5 notable products per year, and until quite recently had avoided any significant new campaign settings aside from Forgotten Realms. Instead, all of the "fluff" content that old school gamers are used to seeing and choosing from migrated to the DMs Guild store, or through other third party content. Over time, the third party content became so enormously prolific that here in 2020 we have an almost overwhelming array of products to choose from for our own curated D&D experience.

Recently I've picked up an array of books which have been filling some really interesting niches in D&D  and providing an array of tools for really interesting gaming concepts, especially if you want to try a genre mashup. For example:

If you want to really make your game Legendary, there's no easier way to do it than to look at Legendary games' Alien Codex. The Alien Codex comes in several flavors, for Starfinder, Pathfinder 1E, and 5th edition (so far; I'm hoping one day we see a PF 2E version but I'm not holding my breath). The book is sufficiently good that I grabbed the 5E edition for sure, and will likely grab the Starfinder editions soon as well.

For those interested, as with many Legendary Games products, Alien Codex is a potpourri of stats, rules,  ideas, equipment and generally useful content to let you populate a setting filled with a future-themes science fantasy campaign. Using this with D&D 5E is almost (not quite, but almost) as robust as grabbing Starfinder. If you're a dedicated fan of the 5E mechanics and like the idea of science-fantasy space adventures this is an extremely useful book.

Alien Bestiary, also from Legendary Games, is a natural compliment to Alien Codex. You get hundreds of pages of 5E adapted monsters with a science fiction space-fantasy theme, from old OGL favorites to mythos monsters to completely new things. It's got content designed to tie in to the default settings Legendary Game offers, but the book is primarily a toolkit for your own games. Like Alien Codex the Bestiary is full of goodness, with hundreds of monsters as well as some SF spot rules and equipment in the back. I have both the 5E and Starfinder version, as it fills a much needed roll for both game systems.

Arcana of the Ancients is a Kickstarted experiment from Monte Cook Games aimed at bringing Numenera concepts and content into line with 5th edition mechanics. It, like the other books on this list, has some content with an implied setting but is primarily aimed at being a toolkit to inspire the DM and allow for the population of your own setting with unique monsters, items and ideas. Because it is deriving this content from Numenera, the mechanics include ideas unique the the Cypher System, such as actual cyphers, rule concepts such as the GM intrusion mechanic, lots of monsters and some new special rules introducing distinct traits and mutations for characters. Future books in this series will focus on Numenera proper, but this one is an excellent stand-alone product for adding far-future "technology indistinguishable from magic" concepts to your campaign.

Last but not least is Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos, an enormous adaptation of the Cthulhu Mythos to D&D 5E. Originally released for Pathfinder 1E, this tome adapts to 5E quite well, providing a strange array of options for adding Lovecraftian themes and elements to a D&D game, including lots of Dreamlands concepts that mesh better with fantasy and weird fiction than the horror elements. That said, the many monsters of Lovecraftian lore and pastiche are well represented here, and the book, like the rest on this list, provides an implied setting while primarily offering you an array of toolkit options to customize to taste. The net result is a book that lets you skew as faithfully or deviate as much as you want to the core conceits of the Cthulhu Mythos. I have enmeshed the Cthulhu Mythos a lot in my own Pergerron campaign, which should I revisit one day will be greatly served by this book, as an example.

All of these tomes as presented allow you to expand your D&D 5E campaigns in strange and interesting directions. For bonus points you can take all four and imagine what sort of strange universe you can devise with them. I've been toying with ideas on this, using Alien Codex to establish a post-Spelljammer future universe in which technology and magic have intersected, and with the future civilizations of this setting exploring a universe populated by the denizens of the Cthulhu Mythos and Alien Bestiary. Meanwhile, traces of lost civilizations across the sci-fi fantasy galaxy suggest that "the ancients" colonized and then abandoned countless worlds for mysterious (and probably Mythos related reasons), leaving these colonies to degenerate back to fantasy worlds populated by the material of the Arcana of the Ancients.

Such a setting, a kitchen sink of space fantasy and weird horror, would provide more than enough gaming content to last decades, I imagine. The four books above would each individually provide enough such content on their own as it is! Anyway.....A+ from the Death Bat for each of these tomes, check them out if the idea of 5E with sci-fi fantasy and weird horror thematics intrigues you.

Cypher System Revised Is Out!!! - Best Game Ever

Yesterday I got my notice that Cypher System Revised was being released and my Kickstarter claim was ready, so I now have the PDF and am waiting for my physical shipment. A few comments for those interested in what this new edition brings to the game:

Same System, New Look

It's the same game system. Much like with Numenera, the revised edition is more complimentary to what has come before. Nothing about Cypher Revised will negate your current collection. I intend to keep my 1st edition book for the game table as it will still be fully functional for players who need to roll characters or rules reference. Monte Cook Games needs to be commended for this practice, it is very much appreciated.

Additional Core Content

I'm still parsing through it all (though I spent most of last night reading this monstrous tome), but so far I have noticed that some content previously reserved for expansions is incorporated into this new tome: post-apocalypse and fairy tale genres are now in the mix, existing genres such as horror get an extra boost on ideas and rules, as well as additional creatures and options. The rules on cyphers are discussed in a bit more depth and some of the "how to implement" ideas are expanded upon in interesting ways. Additional GM content on how to run games is quite welcome. Some of the new rules options which were introduced in the revised Numenera core books are now also available here. The art is a mix of classic and new. Slidikin are in the Cypher bestiary (yay! I have them as recurring major foes in one campaign). Lots of good tweaks and changes.

Clarifications Abound

This rewrite, much like the Numenera rewrite, has given MCG a chance to revise how some rules are explained, aiding in clarification on those moments when it maybe not 100% clear what the rules intent is. Anyone who has played Cypher for a while knows what I am talking about; the adjudication process is very simple so it rarely causes issues, but lots of specific exceptions occasionally give one pause for thought on deciding how best to handle a given situation mechanically; the revised rules so far seem to be cleaning up these odd spots.

So...if you are like me and love Cypher System, this purchase is a no-brainer. If you have been on the fence, I suggest you start with this book. If you own the old book and wonder if you need to upgrade.....well I am a bit biased but I feel it is worth the purchase; that said, if you're only occasionally playing Cypher System, have limited funds, or just want to know if a table using this book will let you use the old book instead, I think you'll still be just fine.

A+++! I love Cypher System, it is the first game system I have ever encountered that feels like it was specifically designed for my GM play style, and I cannot get enough of it.

Invisible Sun's Black Cube - Prestige Gaming and Glorious Excess

I actually picked this up. Not through the Kickstarter, but after reading a great many "we're playing this and it's fun" posts around the internet, followed by asking my local game shop owner if she could secure a copy. Unexpectedly two weeks later there it was, and another two weeks later I scraped up the $250-odd dollars less discount for the monster.

First, it's so large and heavy that when I stuck it in the front seat my car complained I needed to buckle it in.

Second, it really is heavy. According to Amazon it's almost 29 pounds.

Third, when I got home and tried to unfold the monstrous box, which is designed to be a permanent storage unit with a thematic element tied to the game, I realized I didn't have enough free table space for the endeavour and had to make some serious room.

The contents look like this:

That includes four hard cover tomes, a soft cover art book, 1,000 cards, a withered claw, a bunch of round cards and a ton of tokens. There's numerous envelopes filled with props and other things, cloth fold outs, maps, stuff I haven't quite realized the purpose of yet. The only item missing was a metal medallion but I think, near as I can tell, that it was a Kickstarter exclusive.

Reading the game is exactly like reading any other fine Monte Cook produced product: fun and engaging, with a good deal of expository world building, but it does this in a manner I would characterize as being distinct to Monte Cook's style and less like other comparable products in the broad genre of "modern weird RPGs" such as World of Darkness or Unknown Armies....this is a more readable, engaging product, essentially, one that will look familiar to any fan of MCG's other product lines.

A lot of the content of this book....the props....really are props, designed to enhance game play but not necessarily required for gaming. I have never been much of a prop person at the table, but the Black Cube makes adding them in easy. If you're a fan of the deluxe products released for Call of Cthulhu with lots of handouts, you'll like this.

Mechanically I can see the underlying skeleton of the Cypher System, but grown in new and different ways. I am intrigued to see how this plays, and how it integrates the core conceits of the parent system in new directions for the theme of the product.

I'll write more about this soon.....lots of reading to do! But on the surface it looks like a weird and intriguing dive into surrealist gaming with magic that walks a line between Salvador Dali and Guillermo del Toro, and I am kind of hoping I can squeeze some Twin Peaks David Lynch style inspiration out of it, too.

Cypher System and "Your Best Game Ever" Kickstarter nears closing

If you're like me and love this game, or want to check it out, head to the Kickstarter and back it!



I'm in at the "I Want it All" level and I really hope they hit the stretch goal for the Fairy Tale sourcebook. As it stands, the package offer includes the GM book "Your Best Game Ever," Cypher System second edition, a SF sourcebook, Horror sourcebook, Fantasy sourcebook, and a mess of character folios....already worth price of admission by cost alone, so with any luck they'll hit the final goal for the Fairy Tales sourcebook, too.