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New 5e RPG Roundup: Mechs, Mechs, and a Giant Straw Goat

4 Minute Read
Dec 29 2023
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This week we’re making mechanical monsters, controlling machinery, and getting the last bit of the holiday season out of our system.

It’s time to roll the dice on new 5E-compatible releases! Come check out this week’s batch of brand-new tabletop role-playing games.

Mechromancer

In the Grand Duchy of Geoff at the heart of the Barrier Peaks rests a craft that fell from the stars. Recently discovered when an earthquake revealed its resting place high in the mountains. Though how long it had lain there no one rightly knows. Many adventurers have entered that strange place in the last 35 years but few have returned. No one has completely plumbed its depths yet and lived to enjoy the spoils.

However, those that do return bring back treasures that match the power of the greatest archmages but that any commoner can use. Over the years certain families, usually trading families but sometimes noble houses, have collected and studied these artifacts and come to understand them as a strange type of magic. You are a scion of one of these families and seek to one day mount an expedition to the Barrier Peaks to retrieve more treasures for your House but also to satiate your curiosity.

Mechromancer is a new ranger archetype. The mechromancer archetype embodies a love (obsession?) between the locals and the artificial denizens of the crashed starcraft.

Island of Zaerth

The Island of Zaerth hosts countless creations of an evil corporation known as Chrysalis. This corporation reigned worldwide long ago, but after centuries of war and turmoil against a self-made plague of Wraiths, it has been forced to dwell on the Island of Zaerth. While in hiding on the island, Chrysalis used the island to its advantage to create more and more abominations, each of which with the intention of combating the Wraiths and the rebellious factions. Unfortunately for the corporation, its creations managed to rebel and escape, resulting in newly formed factions on the island.

The island exists in a dystopian future wrought with Chrysalis’s creations and the heavy politics between would-be leaders among the various factions. The four stable modifications of humankind—Androids, Druids, Magi, and Vampires—all stand at odds, separated across the island; but are united in taking down Chrysalis at all costs.

The party awakens together with amnesia in a foreign facility under duress. Together, their travels

The Gävle Goat: Defend & Destroy

Every year in December, the Swedish town of Gävle erects a massive straw replica of a Swedish Yule goat. It would be otherwise unremarkable among similar jumbo-sized installations, save one fact. Since it was first built in 1966, almost every year, someone has attempted to burn it down. You might assume this is a charming Christmas tradition—the world’s largest Yule log—however, the town of Gävle emphatically does not want this goat burned down.

Thus, an arms race has developed between the town council and any would-be goat burners, with security measures increasing every year as arsonists grow ever bolder. It is now your turn to take part in this time-honored Christmas tradition as an inhabitant of Gävle, either as a Guard defending the goat or as a Burner, attempting to raze it to the ground.

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The Gävle Goat: Defend & Destroy is a PvP TTRPG module created by Linnie Schell for Fifth Edition. Players work in teams to Guard or Burn the Gävle Goat over the course of one night, using found objects from around the town to create their attacks or defenses. Perfect for a low-prep Christmas one-shot, the fate of the Gävle Goat is yours to decide. Rally your troops!

Mechanical Monsters

Mechanical Monsters features over 140 incredible creatures for DnD 5E born from mad scientists and magitech, clockworks, and cybernetics. Sci-fi elements have been a part of the RPG landscape from its earliest days, infusing fantasy with elements of future tech from far realms beyond the stars, ancient empires with lost technology, or curious artificers and alchemists working together to blend science and sorcery. Mechanical Monsters delivers an incredible collection of these creatures for your campaign!

The Art of Dying

“A dangerous war sweeps across the nation, with agents on both sides vying for control over the jewel of the region, the City of Death. Within its walls lurks a parasite, a necromancer who preys on the refugees and victims of the current war, taking their limbs to fuel both the war and his own blooming business of building flesh golems. A crime against more than the people of the City of Death, unless stopped, Radomil’s continued murders could turn the tide of the war and spell doom for thousands”

The Art of Dying is a 2-3 session module for 5th level characters built for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, complete with new rules for vampirism and therianthropy, 3 gothic-horror themed magic items, 3 maps, and 7 creature stat blocks.

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