He sat tall in the saddle. His eyes, shadowed by a dusty wide brimmed hat, scanned the buildings in the valley.  His features were rugged and handsome, and he had the look of a man who had seen more hardship than one his age should have.  He was wide of shoulders and narrow at the waist where the gun hung loosely in its holster.  The Colt was old, but well tended, with a worn grip that was the telltale sign of much use.

Shotguns & Saddles (S-n-S) is a cinematic role playing game set in the American wild west.  The player characters take the role of cowboys, drifters, the town sheriff, or other desperados.  The referee creates adventures for these characters full of fast paced action, nail biting showdowns, and barroom shootouts! 

S-n-S takes its cue from the movies, books, and TV shows that dramatized this period.  It downplays the importance of specific dates and continuity while focusing on the romance, drama, action, and adventure of a good western tale.  This allows the referee to include any of the trappings of the genre, whether historically accurate or not.

S-n-S uses old school type mechanics inspired by the earliest role playing game.  The goal was to develop a familiar, simple, yet comprehensive set of rules that can be learned very quickly.  While concise, you will find them extremely versatile and able to satisfactorily handle most situations with a minimum of confusion or guesswork.

A 300 DPI image for you to use in your publications or for your pleasure. 

A set of miniatures for use with Chicken Heroics, or any other chicken based use you might have for paper miniatures.

• All 20 minis from the Chicken Heroics book, including Wizard, Warrior, Zombie, and the Cluckthuloid
• 10 more specially made for this release, including Ninja, Martial Artist, Tattered Cloak and the pretty Barhen

Included with this release is a zip of the black and white lineart miniatures and several color versions of each. Also included is a single sheet to print the full black and white set from.

Get Out of Your 'Mech and into the Action!

These A Time of War Quick-Start Rules will have you and your friends adventuring in the BattleTech universe in no time! A part of Free RPG Day 2013, these rule are the perfect way to get starting roleplaying BattleTech.

 Character Workbook: Monk for PFRPG
 Regular price: $2.50
 Bundle price: $2.00

Character creation and leveling up can be confusing, even for experienced players. There’s a lot of keep track of, including abilities to choose and statistics to be recalculated. Character Workbook: Monk for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a game aid designed to walk you through the process and help you keep track of all those changes. It’s not a character sheet – you’ll still need one of those – but it will help you make sure you’ve filled out your character sheet completely and correctly. You’ll never have to worry that your character has been short-changed. If you gamemaster asks how and when your character gained a certain ability, or how you calculated a certain bonus, you can show them!Character Workbook: Monk contains a skills workshe...

	Character Workbook: Ninja for PFRPG  Regular price: $2.50  Bundle price: $2.00	Character creation and leveling up can be confusing, even for experienced players. There’s a lot of keep track of, including abilities to choose and statistics to be recalculated. Character Workbook: Ninja for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a game aid designed to walk you through the process and help you keep track of all those changes. It’s not a character sheet – you’ll still need one of those – but it will help you make sure you’ve filled out your character sheet completely and correctly. You’ll never have to worry that your character has been short-changed. If you gamemaster asks how and when your character gained a certain ability, or how you calculated a certain bonus, you can show them!Character Workbook: Ninja contains a ninja tricks...
	Character Workbook: Samurai for PFRPG  Regular price: $2.50  Bundle price: $2.00	Character creation and leveling up can be confusing, even for experienced players. There’s a lot of keep track of, including abilities to choose and statistics to be recalculated. Character Workbook: Samurai for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a game aid designed to walk you through the process and help you keep track of all those changes. It’s not a character sheet – you’ll still need one of those – but it will help you make sure you’ve filled out your character sheet completely and correctly. You’ll never have to worry that your character has been short-changed. If you gamemaster asks how and when your character gained a certain ability, or how you calculated a certain bonus, you can show them!Character Workbook: Samurai contains a samurai ...
	Eastern Weapons for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game  Regular price: $3.00  Bundle price: $2.40	For the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. A collection of 63 new and magical weapons inspired by Eastern cultures. Requires the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Combat. Written by RPGNow bestselling author Gary Weller! ...

by Eric Chaussin 


Dungeons Tiles puzzle 1 is designed to add ease, detail and excitement to your campaign; never worry about mapping on the spot again! Dungeons Tiles puzzle 1 contains everything you need to print out and construct a sprawling network of rooms and passages. 

Dungeons Tiles puzzle 1 contains 20 four by four inch square tiles, for over four square feet of adaptable, interchangeable, and ready-to-use adventure terrain (and that is only counting each tile once - you can print them as much as you like)! 

Dungeons Tiles puzzle 1 feature the artwork of RPG cartographer Eric Chaussin and is designed for use with your favorite miniatures.

Welcome to the World of Darkness.

A world like our own, but glitzier, sexier, and much, much bloodier. You are one of the Kindred, the immortal predators that stalk the world between the streetlights.

You are also a vampire, a junkie. Every night, you beg and you borrow and you steal just a little more life, just a few more sweet moments. But there's a guy at the top. The Prince. He's got everything. The money, the secrets, the blood.

Tonight, you're going to take it from him. Tomorrow, there'll be hell to pay.

Reap the Whirlwind includes:

• Rules for creating and playing vampires in the World of Darkness
• The first two levels of every clan Discipline, the dark powers of the dead
• A complete adventure by noted horror author Chuck Wendig

This book previews rules from The God-Machine Chronicle and Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle, coming summer 2013 from Onyx Path Publishing.

Heroes traversing the Coral Sea either by boat or seaplane are spotted and pursued by the Hokoko Maru, a Japanese commerce raider. Tamakua, in the Duff Island chain, has a shallow harbor—too shallow for the Japanese cruiser to risk. The single native village on the island seems like a welcome refuge...

Author H. M. ‘Dain’ Lybarger brings you a sinister tale of serpents and cargo cults, perfect for a South Pacific interlude.

This Savage Worlds One-Sheet for The Day After Ragnarok contains everything you need for a quick and easy adventure for your party in the World after Serpentfall.

Gods are for wimps.

The spiritualist is a divine caster who summons and manipulates their own spirit, rather than call down power from on-high. Through monk-like training, inherent second-sight, and great meditation, these combatants learn to enact rituals that delve the future, raise the dead, transform their bodies, and enact blasts of pure energy to shatter the mountains themselves.

The 5th installment in the Summer Class Blitz, the spiritualist brings a Japanese bend to the Asian warrior, allowing characters to tap into stories such as Inu Yasha, Naruto, and Dragon Ball to empower their Pathfinder characters.

Also includes a small selection of custom spiritualist extras (spells, feats, magic items,) and like all Summer Class Blitz products, is fully linked to the D20pfsrd.

Have you ever read a story and asked yourself how it would have turned out if you had been the protagonist? Pen-and-paper role-playing games spirit you away into your favorite stories and let you choose the path. And Destiny Beginner will get you started in no time at all!

• Create your very own character in less than five minutes!
• Embark on quests with sword, magic and your brains!
• Equip your character with fantastic abilities that spark your imagination!
• Destiny Beginner‘s intuitive mechanics and versatile dice system can be effortlessly adapted to your own adventures!

This book is for beginners as well as experienced players who appreciate freedom in their gameplay. It is for those who want to explore a world of fantasy and imagination or want to lead their friends there. In this book, you‘ll find everything you need: rules and advice, a detailed description of the exciting city of LYS MARRAH, scenarios and characters to get you started immediately and even a solo tutorial for game masters!

Enter a world of fantasy and imagination!

Vile Vermin to Plague your Players

With Plague & Shadow: Wererats, you can offer new challenges to the players in your old-school fantasy role-playing game. A brief overview of wererat culture and motives, new subraces of wererats, and new magic items will give the enterprising game master a few surprises for players in their Labyrinth Lord or other old school fantasy role-playing games.

Dragons & Monsters Set 3 - Forest Beasts

This set contains 11 pages with total 26 color two sided detailed fantasy figurines: Raptors, Dragons and Giant Lizards including giant and normal size versions and some pose variations. Figurines are available in 4 basic colour versions (green and dark green, bluish, brown, gold, pale and dark red). All minis are 300dpi 30mm front and back full color artwork suitable both for RPG and wargaming.

DEADLY MISSIONS: Tomb of the Spider God is the first expansion for the hit adventure game that features randomly generated floor tiles, creature tiles and equipment tokens each in a stack, or deck, that you flip and bring into play.  This unique and original set of creatures is a different game each time you play.

NOTE:  This set contains the Expansion Rules, Character Card and Creature Tokens ONLY!  You need the main DEADLY MISSIONS: Fantasy Dungeon rulebook in order to play the game.  This game expansion is designed to be used with the following products (sold separately):

• Human Adventurers by Reivaj Minis
• Elven Adventurere by Reivaj Minis

This set includes:

• 18 page rulebook
• 24 Character Cards featurng the characters from the Adventurers sets from Reivaj Minis
• 63 Creature Tiles (featuring 30 different creatures)

This release is exciting because it allows us to work with REIVAJ MINIS and IMMORTAL NIGHTS again.

Keep your eyes open for what is lurking in the dark... and more upcoming expansions for DEADLY MISSIONS:  Fantasy Dungeon.

Sometimes, all you need to have fun with a class for another few months is a few new ideas to tinker around with. Class Expansions is a series of lightweight supplements for The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game that takes a base class and offers alternative class features that, handily enough, each fit on one page or less.

Following in this vein, Class Expansions: Achievement Unlocked! introduces 40 new achievement feats, including a subset of six feats that are compatible with the new Ultimate Campaign downtime system!

Sample Feats

Felineus Interruptus - Whenever a creature with the pounce ability charges you, it provokes an attack of opportunity from you.

Snake Oil Salesman - Once per day, you can offer an ally a flask of ordinary water. If you successfully Bluff, the water grants the ally temporary hit points.

Thick-skinned - Reduce bleed damage dealt to you by 1.

Triple Threat - Whenever you cast a spell, you get +1 to hit and damage for 1 round. Whenever you deal damage with a martial weapon, you can cast a cantrip or orison as an immediate action.

This was once a happy home a very long time ago. Whatever happened to change that has scarred this place and trapped the dead. Combine it with more MP3s to score your entire adventure. Check out our other MP3s and PDFs by simply searching Plate Mail Games. This MP3 was not part of the Kickstarter campaign.

This was once a happy home a very long time ago. Whatever happened to change that has scarred this place and trapped the dead. Combine it with more MP3s to score your entire adventure. Check out our other MP3s and PDFs by simply searching Plate Mail Games. This MP3 was not part of the Kickstarter campaign.

Professional Golden Reel and Emmy nominated sound designer and editor Wes Otis brings you great background loops for your tabletop RPG. Each MP3 is 10 minutes long and loops perfectly. They are mixed to be played in the background, adding ambience to your storytelling without being a distraction. Wes has taken his 30 years of game mastering experience and 14 years of post production experience to craft each location.

Landscape: The Acrid Well is a tool containing two versions of a detailed map: one of them pre-marked and the other blank.

The first version is marked with six locations (tube, meanders, slip, shrine, chambers and shore), each given a table of six possible encounters or discoveries. The map is also marked with six access points and the page has six possible rumour seeds.

The second version has no lettering or numbering, to make it easier for you to adapt it to the circumstances in your world.

Each map can be used as it is, possibly in conjunction with 1:285 (6mm) scale miniatures, or redrawn as required in play.

The tool is compatible with various genres and systems and suitable for use in roleplaying and beyond. It can be used as all or part of an adventure site, or the basis for one, as well as to inspire events at the site, even at the table in the course of games.

The two pages are arranged for ease of use on screen or printed, the key features occupying a single page. The tool includes:

• two versions of a detailed map - one of them pre-marked, the other blank

• six marked locations - tube, meanders, slip, shrine, chambers and shore

• six tables, one per marked location, each with six encounters or discoveries

• six possible rumour seeds relating to the map, for expansion or inspiration

The tool can be used with Narrative: Abandoned Space, the map elements acting as a setting or structure for development. It can also be used in representing the kind of subterranean space suggested in World: Shale or a section of the tunnels running through the weird mountainous shore of Screeside, as featured in Abandoned Space and Events: Screeside - The Gloaming.

It is the second entry in an ongoing series which so far includes Landscape: The Lost Dig.

Both of the entries in the series are also part of the all current items bundle.

Transylvanian Adventures is a supplement for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is heavily influenced by Gothic Horror and the Hammer Films of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

"The Winter Home" is an introductory adventure designed for the 5 pre-generated characters included in the back. The characters in The Winter Home include 5 of the 8 new classes from  Transylvanian Adventures: the Valiant, Exotic, Half-Breed, Hunter and Reaver.

The adventure is also suitable for a party of 3rd or 4th level Dungeon Crawl Classics characters.

Running this adventure will require a copy of Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. It is assumed the reader is familiar with DCC’s rules and conventions.

The Wildstar Class Corvette is the perfect ship for a crew of trained veterans and experienced explorers. Room for over forty supporting crew and even a few passengers; every station on board is detailed. In an emergency, the shuttles and esacpe pods cover all crew members in need of escape. With two Dual Plasma Cannons as the main armament, the Wildstar is capable in any space battle. New technology includes advanced medical and science bays, as well as a holographic survival suite. And of course there is a mess hall.

Incuded:
Basic ship statistics
Deckplan and key
Battle maps (one deck, 48" x 70" assembled)
Bonus cargo crates

A career in ruins…

Welcome to The Archaeologist's Handbook, a handy tome for all armchair adventurers who want to know more about playing characters who delve into the past and discover ancient treasures (or fascinating insights).

This book provides a firm framework for archaeology-based adventures and characters. Inside these pages you will find a trove of knowledge about the history of archaeology, field and laboratory techniques, famous sites, museums and more. Spiced with a few devious suggestions for play, this handy-sized volume will prove a boon to player and game master alike.

The Archaeologist's Handbook is written by a professional archaeologist with more than a decade of experience in both archaeology and roleplaying games.

Hell Beach

DramaScape Battlemaps Volume 03

This product is designed for use with 15mm miniatures and is a 48 inch x 30 inch Battlemap and has no overlay.

“You are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hell Beach is a single large map of a French beachhead defended by Germans on the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion done on a 15 mm scale for miniature war gaming. The German defenses include obstacles built of timber and steel to impale and sink Allied ships placed on the beach and in the water on the coastal shelf, mines hidden in the water and in the sands of the beach, two sets of barbed wire, two sandbag bunker positions for MG42s and mortars, and three pillbox casemate bunkers placed on top of a cliff looking down on the beach. 

Will the Allies again prove victorious on D-Day? Or will the German defenses defeat them this time creating an alternative history?

Beyond a war gaming reenactment, this could also be used for some interesting alternative role playing or war gaming. For example, the player characters are super soldiers for the allies (super powers or greatly improved physical and mental attributes), and are sent in during the invasion to deal with new German threats, everything from German soldiers that revive as zombies when slain but only once to German soldiers that transform into monsters to German super soldiers that could have abilities similar to their own. Their ultimate mission goal is to enter a French town and gain access to the main chateau where the experiments are being performed by a mad German scientist (or even a collaborating French scientist who derives a sadistic pleasure from turning Germans into monsters). Where the most powerful German super soldiers guard their creator (or they even turn on their creator as a twist).

A 300 DPI .tiff file for you to use in your personal and professional publications. 

A paranoid warlord, a bitter drow priestess, a power-mad archmage, a sly dwarven assassin - not all the characters in the AD&D game went the way of the heroes.

Villains (beings dedicated to committing evil) are the most dangerous of all foes, and thus the most useful of tools a Dungeon Master has to create a memorable campaign. This book presents the most complete guidelines ever offered on creating villains for role-playing games. Miss this advice at your own peril!

*****

Product History

DMGR6: The Complete Book of Villains (1994), by Kirk Botula, is the sixth book in the series of Dungeon Master Guide Rules (DMGR) supplements. It was published in May 1994.

Continuing with the DMGRs. Though its name suggests that The Complete Book of Villains might be a "Rogues Gallery"-type of book, nothing could be further from the truth. Villains instead is a book of GM advice, all about creating and running great villains in FRPGs. As such, it nicely complements the other "DM Advice" books in the DMGR series: DMGR1: Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide (1990) and DMGR5: Creative Campaigning (1993).

As with the entire DMGR series, Villains is a prestige-format blue leatherette book that's meant to supplement the second edition Dungeon Master's Guide (1989). Unlike the previous books in this series, there's no actual "DMGR" code on Villains, for TSR stopped using that code in 1994; nonetheless, the book is widely accepted to be DMGR6.

Widely Applicable. Villains is sold as an AD&D book and has stats for a few AD&D characters here and there. However, the advice it contains is quite generic, and thus GMs have used it widely for all sorts of fantasy roleplaying games. Despite its focus on RPGs, multiple authors have even talked about using Villains to create characters for their fantasy novels.

Producing a largely system-independent GM book wasn't a first for TSR; in fact, DMGR1: The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide was also mostly free of mechanics. That's probably why it and Villains are two of the DMGR sourcebooks that remain both well-lauded and widely appreciated even today.

Monsters as Villains. Chapter 6 of Villains covers an interesting topic: turning "monsters" into villains. The idea of using unique and individualized monsters as villains in adventures dates all the way back to TSR's first published adventures. Thus, the stone giant Chief Nonsra and his wife, who appear on the third page of G1: "The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief" (1978) are differentiated from standard monsters by their fighting capacity: "he fights as frost giant, she as a male hill giant." Similarly, D3: "Vault of the Drow" (1978) is filled with dark elves who have either character class levels or special fighting ability. However, the most famous monster-as-villain probably appeared a few years later: When Count Strahd von Zarovich shows up in I6: "Ravenloft" (1983), he gets a full page of stats.

For all of that, support for individualized monsters evolved quite slowly in the D&D books. The first edition Dungeon Master's Guide (1979) offers just a page on the subject; it focuses on monsters as PCs and concludes, "you are virtually on your own with regard to monsters as player characters." Basic D&D provided some rules for specific races in GAZ10: "The Orcs of Thar" (1988) and the "Creature Crucible" series (1989-1992). This might have encouraged second edition AD&D to provide better guidelines, which were expanded into rules for 30 humanoid races in PHBR10: The Complete Book of Humanoids (1993).

That was pretty much the state of the art for monstrous characters in 1994, when Villains was published: rules were limited, but extant. Mind you, Villains' suggestions are still ad hoc, related more to background than to mechanics. D&D would have to wait until 3e (2000) for monstrous villains to receive full mechanics. 

About the Creators. Botula wrote a handful of books for TSR in the 90s; his others focused on the settings of Dark Sun and Jakandor.

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.

Come, let us explore the art of necromancy together.

     - Arch-Necromancer Kazerabet

Necromancers like Kazerabet and their priestly counterparts have mastered many dark, forbidden secrets. This tome reveals these mysteries to the Dungeon Master, who will find new NPC kits and volumes of necromancer's minions, familiars, secret societies, poisons, magical items, enchanted tomes, and dozens of new wizard and priest spells, plus the deadly Isle of the Necromancers, a portable setting which can be placed into any existing campaign.

*****

Product History

DMGR7: The Complete Book of Necromancers (1995) is the seventh book in the Dungeon Master Guide Rules (DMGR) supplement series for AD&D 2e. It was published in March 1995.

Continuing the DMGRs. As with its predecessors in the DMGR series, the Book of Necromancers is a prestige-format squarebound book with a blue leatherette cover. Though it doesn't feature a "DMGR" code, it's widely accepted as being DMGR7. Unlike its predecessors, Necromancers covers a totally new topic: character classes.

Continuing the PHBRs. By the end of 1994, TSR had published thirteen PHBR books - covering all of the major classes for AD&D 2e, most of the subclasses, and most of the major races. The series would end later in 1995, following the publication on two final books on barbarians and ninjas. Each of the PHBR books tended to follow the same format, usually including background notes for the class (or race), character kits, and, where appropriate, equipment, special powers, and spells.

The Complete Book of Necromancers thus looks remarkably like a PHBR release, but rather than covering a class or a race, it details two closely related subclasses: the necromancer specialization for wizards, and those priests who worship death in some form. The discussion of these two subclasses includes background notes, character kits, new spells, and equipment.

Not for Players. Despite looking a lot like a PHBR release, Necromancers fits into the DMGR series because it's specifically not intended for players, instead offering up rules only for NPC necromancers. The introduction thus clearly states that the book is "for the Dungeon Master's eyes only."

This restriction is due to the fact that necromancers are generally evil, which would offer grave "moral" problems to players. It also suggests that the animate dead spell is a game breaker in the hands of PCs, with the result being that "half of the adventure will be reduced to the necromancer sending minions into the dungeon."

We can probably qualify these claims with the fact that TSR of the 90s was deathly afraid of the religious right and "angry mothers" criticizing D&D for being satanic. It's actually quite remarkable that Lorraine Williams' TSR was willing to produce a book about necromancers at all; it's certainly no surprise that the TSR of this era also claimed that necromancers shouldn't be played by PCs.

About NPC Classes. Over the years, there's been a genuine need for NPC classes in the D&D game, for people like sages and aristocrats are necessary to most game settings, but they generally aren't that interesting to players. However, D&D also started using "NPC character classes" for wider purposes, beginning in the late 70s.

Some of the earliest character classes published in Dragon for use with D&D were just labeled as "unofficial." That was the case with the healer and the samurai that appeared in The Dragon #3 (October 1976). However, shortly thereafter - and throughout the reign of AD&D 1e (1977-89) - new classes published in Dragon for AD&D tended to instead be labeled as "NPC classes," only usable by the GM. The first of these was the ninja, published in The Dragon #16 (July 1978).

It's most likely that this was done to maintain game balance: classes didn't have to be carefully playtested if they were just going to be used by an GM. Dragon editor Jake Jaquet explained the matter succinctly in issue #43 (November 1980), when writing about the witch NPC: "Dragon's responsibility, as we see it, is not to set forth major rule changes or additions to the already complex D&D and AD&D game." Using NPC classes also let Dragon publish bizarre classes like the timelord (1982) that simply wouldn't be appropriate in most AD&D games.

Although some of the Dragon NPC classes such as the anti-paladin (1980) and the bandit (1982) were evil, their alignment probably wasn't why they were offered for use by GMs only. Evil was much more accepted as a fun alternative for playing AD&D in the 70s and early 80s. While Gygax said in The Dragon #9 (September 1977) that "the Greyhawk Campaign is built around the precept that 'good' is the desired end sought by the majority of humanity and its allied races," he also stated, "Players can assume the role of a good or an evil character without undue difficulty" a few years later, in The Dragon #29 (August 1979). D&D started coming under media (and religious) scrutiny only in the mid- to late-80s, following the James Egbert affair, which changed TSR's stance on evil, on demons, devils, assassins, and other "undesirable" elements in AD&D 2e (1989).

Whatever the reason, Dragon's decision to publish new character classes for AD&D 1e as "NPC only" was largely a matter of convenience. All of the NPC classes came with complete level and XP tables, which are only necessary for PC classes, and the text of the articles often suggested that the authors thought that PCs might be using the classes.

That brings us to The Complete Book of Necromancers. Although NPC classes had become a rarity by 2e days, TSR was willing to roll out the old idea, probably for some or all of the reasons stated above. Meanwhile, the reaction of players to a new character class was probably no different than it would have been in the 80s - which is to say that these new necromancers surely ended up as PCs.

A History of Roleplaying Necromancers. A necromancer appears in "Shadow of a Demon," the Niall of the Far Travels short story from The Dragon #2 (August 1976). However, it took quite a bit longer for the character class to appear in D&D.

Unofficially, necromancers appeared in some early D&D knock-offs such as Beasts, Men & Gods (1980). Lewis Pulsipher wrote up a necromancer class for AD&D in White Dwarf #35 (November 1982), and shortly afterward Lenard Lakofka detailed the AD&D "death master" in Dragon #76 (August 1983) - though the latter was, again, officially an "NPC class."

Meanwhile, in official AD&D publications, some characters self-identified as necromancers, such as the famous magic-user Bigby, who is said to be a necromancer in WG5: "Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure" (1984). However, those publications didn't include any rules to back up their characters' claims of necromancy.

Official AD&D rules for necromancers didn't appear until AD&D 2e (1989). Here, necromancers were described as a mage specialization. This also marked a sea change in how necromancers were described in TSR's publications. Prior to 2e, necromancers were always referred to as "evil" or "vile"; afterward, they were just one subclass among many.

About the Creators. Steve Kurtz wrote a handful of supplements for TSR in the mid-90s. Many of them, like Necromancers, were a bit dark, including Cities of Bone (1994) and Ruined Kingdoms (1994) for Al-Qadim, and The Evil Eye (1995) for Ravenloft.

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.