Purgatorium

Purgatorium – Seasons of the Soul. When a character dies, it is a monumental event. The sweep of a keenly honed blade or the fiery breath of a dragon can erase months or even years of playing and developing a character in an instant. Once the Games Master has made the prospect of death real to his player characters, it becomes a potent tool for creating fear, risk, terror, courage, motivations and even Challenge Ratings. Indeed, death is the universal quantifier against which all actions are weighted and measured. In relation to the player character, death is the ultimate nemesis and avoiding it is the true underlying challenge of every roleplaying game.

The bottom line is that death should never be trivialised. In a sense, this book is dedicated to death, not as a finality or end, but as a divine change that specifically concerns itself with the progression of a being’s soul. The realm of Purgatorium is offered to Games Masters and players alike so it might aid them in defining the experience of dying and being dead within the scope of a fantasy world. As a campaign setting, Purgatorium is designed to fit seamlessly into any existing game world. A world between worlds, it allows both the players and the Games Master to experience death first hand and roleplay through it. There are no prerequisites for using the Purgatorium setting and accessing the realm is as easy for a 1st-level character as it is for a 20th-level one. Almost all the DCs for any saving throws that involve entering and exiting the realm are scaled according to a character’s level. Within these pages are dozens of options to help diversify the way you handle a player character’s death in your campaign.

Purgatorium: Seasons of the Soul is Mongoose Publishing’s most extensive and ambitious PDF product to date. Coming in at a thumping 96 pages, it is a text-dominant product absolutely jam-packed with information detailing the land between life and death. There are only three ways to get to Purgatorium: through a frost tide, finding it in the Astral Plane. . . or death.