November 4, 2022: Nightmare Fuel: Three Themed Dungeon Fantasy RPG Bestiaries Crowdfunding At BackerKit

Nightmare Fuel, the latest crowdfunding effort for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, is coming to a close at 5 p.m. Central Time on November 6, 2022. If you are going to pledge to the campaign, it's time!

What's On Offer

The project features three new themed Dungeon Fantasy RPG bestiaries from three different authors.

Serpents of Legend features snake-themed creatures of all sorts, from the inscrutable coatl to the family of corrupted shadow-worms (myrkra ormur). Also included is a template for snake-folk (snákamaðr) as a playable ancestry module, as well as advice on snake cults and the nightmare corruption of the World Worm threatening to undo all creation. Meet Dulsa Thoom, the snake-cult leader who is absolutely not based in any way on a character from the first and best movie featuring a well-muscled barbarian with a thick Cimmerian accent. Also contains several creatures of myth and legend, including hydra variants and totally-not-Medusa creatures.

The Bugstiary is chock full of ants, beetles, bees, crabs, and of course, giant murder hornets. Because if Asian giant hornets are scary, a giant hornet the size of a full-grown person is just right for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Beetle-folk have playable ancestral modules, while one of the creatures – the giant hermit crab – makes "mobile home" a bit too literal. There's also an assortment of spiders and arthropods, such as scorpions of unusual size, and creatures that are absolutely not chuul or Mi-Go.

Garden of Evil gives you a bloody green thumb, with fighting and awakened trees, giant Venus flytraps (that sing!), vroom-hoom treeherders, and the terrible devil blossom, shown on the book's cover. Since some of the creatures have the mobility of, well, plants, they are shown as traps or environmental features rather than as creatures with agency.

Status, Stretch Goal, and Extras

The project met its substantial funding goal of $24,000 (custom art is expensive) and is now looking at whether or not it will hit the only stretch goal: compiling all three books into a single hardcover omnibus edition to be included as an extra volume with any pledge that includes the three softcovers. And in case it wasn't clear: You'll get those, too.

The stretch goal is at $48,000, so it's going to require about 550 backers to unlock it. Fortunately . . . the last bestiary (the Nordlond Ovinabokin, a 192-page hardcover monster manual with most of the usual suspects in it) had 685 backers. We don't need a record turnout to unlock the book, but we do need a few hundred more people!

Also available are two extras which were quite popular last time:

A module for Foundry VTT much like the existing one for the Nordlond Bestiary that allows dragging and dropping the creatures – with full stat sheets! – into your virtual environment.

A set of Quick-Reference cards you can place before you (physically or digitally) with the monster stats on one side and a scale reference of the creature on the other.

Sample Art and Monster Format

The artwork for the books is all in commission, and some of it has come in.

Covers

While placeholder covers are there to show something (and they've been popular/amusing enough that some want PDFs or hard copies with the cartoony covers in addition to the painted ones!), the real covers are being drawn, with Garden of Evil being farthest along:

Layout format will be similar to the Nordlond Bestiary, with the giant scorpion here as an example:

As always, each creature has an individual custom illustration, from beetle-folk (riding giant sunspiders!) to awakened shrubberies (Ni! Ni!) to the death-priest demon.

Please Pledge, Please Share!

With a few days left to go, the stretch goal is both within our reach (there are more than enough following the campaign who might pledge to get there with room to spare) – and yet still a hard lift. Pledging early in the week helps give the campaign momentum.

You can also help by expressing enthusiasm for the campaign on forums and social media. Say:

This ENWorld post
These posts on Reddit, on r/gurps and r/rpg
This post on RPG.net
Sharing on Twitter, Facebook and the like? Excellent.

So come join in! There are several dedicated pledge levels to help you catch up on things:

All the New Things for those who are current through the Nordlond Bestiary
Nightmare Fuel books plus the Bestiary hardback for those that aren't
New to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG? There's a starter set for you that includes the Boxed Set!
Finally, check out the add-ons, which include the three Dungeon Fantasy RPG Companions, the new Shields Up! book, and more
Finally, Gaming Ballistic is running a 10% off sale on Dungeon Fantasy RPG material with a coupon code that can be found on the campaign website under "Can't Find an Add-on?"

-- Douglas Cole

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