Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium for 5E D&D
When Nerdarchy went to GenCon 2018 I met some of the people over at Legendary Games and got a copy of their Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium for 5E D&D to check out. I am a huge fan of fey and forest games out in the wilderness and away from normal civilization. If you want to pick up the book on Amazon you can do so here. You can also head over to the Legendary Games site and check out this or other amazing products they offer.
5E D&D Forest Kingdom Campaign all-in-one
From the back cover
“Step into the shadowed boughs of the forest realm to find a wild world of magic, mystery, monsters, and more! From the misty boreal taiga of the cold northern reaches to the wondrous glades of enchanting fey beauty, the Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium from Legendary Games offers a wealth of amazing expansions for your wilderness campaign using the 5th edition of the world’s most famous RPG!”
Flipping through this, I’m impressed by the amazingly high quality. Gorgeous full color artwork is found throughout. You can see some of my favorite pieces in the slideshow below. Each page has a stripe of artwork on the left and right sides of each bi-folded page. It is a hard cover book and jam packed into over 350 pages of useful stuff. The back of the book contains 6 pages of maps you can use as references for your players as well as a page of paper-craft minis, if you are willing to cut your book. But you can save your book and pick it up as a PDF as well, so you can print as many of the paper-craft and map pages as you need.
But I am sure you are excited to know what else is inside. When I saw the table of contents I knew I needed to have a copy of this book for my gaming shelf as it has material designed for both the player and the Game Master.
Chapter 1 gives fey and forest options. You get 19 new subclasses for your typical classes: bard, cleric, druid, fighter, ranger, sorcerer, and warlock. You even get 6 new warlock Eldritch Invocations. You get a couple of new feats like Fairy Blessing and True Love’s Kiss that give fun roleplaying benefits. They really encourage the roleplaying in this game, which I love. I think these would make great rewards for quests or in-game actions, though that is just my call. I use mechanical rewards as well as story rewards in my games. There is also 18 new spells fit for your game in this setting.
Chapter 2 goes into new magic items. There are 40 new magic items going from common to artifact in power. Things like survivalist arrow all the way to fractured phylactery. Though I do have to say collecting owlbear dander might be a new thing in my game after reading this.
Chapter 3 and beyond starts going into the campaign portion of what the book is about. In case players out there are using this I am going to keep my information vague but hopefully helpful in your decision as to whether or not you are looking to pick this book up, Though my recommendation is certainly to do so.
Chapter 3 is about the Faerie Forests. We start off with a nice sidebar comparing east vs. west of mythology where fey are concerned. I am glad they have taken the time to go into this, as the Asian mythology has many useful aspects where fey are concerned and to have them incorporated is just awesome. The rest of the chapter goes on to influence, impulses, effects, rumors, bargains, and lore. This chapter is enough material for repeated use in your games. There is so much packed into these 50 pages that I marvel at how they did it. The bargains section is intense and, as it should, makes me want to revisit my fey game I played recently and enter in a lot of the great material found here. Come on, who goes to the fey wild without seeing a fey willing to make a bargain with the player characters?
Chapter 4 is worth a read for any GM as it does not necessarily have to do with fey and forests although it certainly could. It is about Royal Tournaments. You get rules for jousts and a number of other games as well as what rewards might be had by winning. Roughly 35 pages that are useful for GMs who want to have a nice relaxing session of fun revelry and games but are just not sure how to do so.
Chapter 5 is Countries and Characters. Here you get a more in-depth look at the places you could use in your game. It is useful to know about the places you will travel during your game, if you want to use their setting, and here is where you get a lot of that.
Chapter 6 is about some premade characters that you can use as fully fleshed out NPCs or as player characters. They have all the information there ready. I think this feature is really cool. You have full page art you can share with your players so they to take in the character they are meeting in full view.
Chapter 7 is another section that is useful for any GM. Here is a section of Monsters of the Forest. You have over 60 creatures designed as potential friend or foe depending on the type of game you are playing. There’s weak and tiny monsters all the way to incredibly large and powerful monsters. They posses a wide array of abilities and like I stated this is a section any GM can use. Because you can never have enough monsters, am I right?
Chapter 8 is an adventure.
“Cold Mountain is an adventure set in the back country of the rugged frontier lands that PCs are in the progress of exploring and perhaps even claiming as their own. It is designed for characters of 4th level who have begun to achieve some success with adventuring…”
Having all of the great information plus a fully incorporated adventure makes this book a total winner by my standards. You literally could take the 5E D&D PHB and this book and have enough stuff to run a large number of 5E D&D games.
Again if you want to pick this book up from Amazon you can do so here or if you want to check out the publisher you can do so at the Legendary Games site. There are awesome deals over on their main site including 20 PDFs for $20. These are very much worth checking out.
Thanks for reading and as always until next time, stay nerdy!
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