As an OSR fantasy horrors game, The Nightmares Underneath comes at me from two different angles. As I recently explained, OSR has never really been my thing, but I do love horror games…
Ok, I’ll bite.
This bundle is a 2-tier offer. The first tier costs $9.95 and contains three items:
- The Nightmares Underneath
- Dungeon Full of Monsters
- City of Poison
The bundle is a mix of The Nightmares Underneath-specific items and more generic OSR resources. The central item of this tier is the core rulebook for The Nightmares Underneath. This 400-page tome includes rules that are in line with the wider OSR movement and builds in loads of cool horror-themed elements. There seems to be a lot of cool nightmarish themes, and some real focus on players experiencing consequences for their actions. If you want a wee peek at the rules before buying, there’s a free version available on DTPRG.
The rest of this tier consists of a couple of settings. Dungeon Full of Monsters contains a dungeon. It is, indeed, full of monsters.
Sorry.
It’s a megadungeon with a ton of content, spread over 198 pages. There are 50 sections across 5 levels. There’s a lot to get through, but then that’s rather the point of OSR, innit? This can be use used with any OSR game, and isn’t specifically tied to The Nightmares Underneath. There’s also a bestiary in here. We love bestiaries.
City of Poison is a smaller book, weighing in at only 36 pages. It’s very closely themed to The Nightmares Underneath, being an example Dream Kingdom incursion; a central thematic element of the core game. This is intended to be used as a low-level adventure, with a pair of level 1 lairs and a level 2 one. There are some new monsters and spells, too.
This tier is, all in all, pretty solid. It should be picked up by all potential players due to the inclusion of the core book. The rest of the tier is quite GM-focused, with adventures and monsters that they will need for their games, but which it would actually be better if the players never saw.
Tier 2 is priced at a threshold ($23.04 at the time of writing) and contains everything from the first tier, plus an additional trio of items:
- The Nameless Grimoire
- Only Monsters Here
- The Metamorphica
This tier consists of three decently chunky supplements, weighing in at 400, 227, and 270 pages, respectively. The largest of these items, The Nameless Grimoire, has a ton of magic-related content. It has 666 spell (edgy!), some modified casting rules, new character types, new backgrounds and other features, some equipment, and more. This is just a really fantastic and extensive magic supplement for The Nightmares Underneath and, really, any OSR game.
Only Monsters Here is a setting supplement. It provides an exploration-based game; a big hexcrawl with a load of cool features. It also has random generators for dungeons, encounters, settlements, and the like. There are playable monsters, which is something I always love to see. There’s bestiary content, which is another big plus to me. Finally,. there are also tools to use this with other games. I can’t say this is one of the more interesting items in this bundle, but I’m sure there are plenty of folk to whom this supplement will appeal.
The Metamorphica is interesting. It’s all about mutants and demons, abominations and aliens. It’s all about bringing strange, scary creatures into your games. It’s heavily based on randomised tables, but that’s fine; you know what you’re getting.
This tier is also strong. The thing is, the bundle is pretty spread out. Both tiers have player-centric and GM-centric items, so it’s not as easy as picking out one tier of players and one for GMs, as we’ve seen in previous bundles. Instead, I’m just going to recommend the whole thing. The price isn’t bad, and you get a ton of content. If you’re into OSR then you’ll find plenty that can be ported between games. Yeah, it’s a good bundle!
You can click here to visit the bundle page over at Bundle of Holding.
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