I kindly received a copy of Cha'alt from Venger.  You can grab a copy here.

This is a BIG book.  It comes in at 218 pages!  I'm always amazed at his work ethic, inspiration just flows thru him.

Here's the elevator pitch:

Cha'alt is the beast of a book (218 pages) I've been working on for the past year.  It's a ruined world focusing on a couple of introductory dungeons before getting to the main event - the megadungeon known as The Black Pyramid.  

The Black Pyramid is like nothing you've ever seen before.  Unique design, purpose, feel, magic items, NPCs, monsters, factions, motives, agendas, strangeness, the works!

There's a decent amount of setting detail besides dungeoncrawling - space opera bar, domed city, mutants, weird ass elves, desert pirates, a city ruled by a gargantuan purple demon-worm, and much more!

Cha'alt is compatible with both old school and 5e D&D purposefully blended for maximum usability.  Full disclosure: aside from advantage/disadvantage and bounded accuracy, there isn't much in the way of 5th edition mechanics. It's predominantly OSR.

Venger has included his own rules Crimson Dragon Slayer D20 within the book.  As well there is a pdf for Pregens and old school feats / skill-sets and background details.

Knocking the layout out of the park is Mr. Glynn Seal From Monkeyblood Design (whose done a pile of work for Venger, and he's won an Ennie for his setting The Midderlands!)   Damn I love the map on page 65.

Interior Art by Monstark, Yannick Bouchard, Brent Schreiber, Dan Brown, Paul Carrick, Luke Oram,
Matthew Bailey, and Slappy.  Additional images licensed from Adobe Stock.  I gotta say the art is fantastic! And it's what you expect from Venger's releases.  Inspiring.

This book as the description states is a setting book/megadungeon.  There's a nice over view of the world, all of the strange factions, a cantina that's in the middle of a desert (filled with patrons).

Venger loves to include random tables into his books, there's a pile of them! Including a handy chart for ability scores, typical +/- found in different iterations of D&D.  I probably should have noted this earlier, this is a OSR/D&D book.  You could technically run it with other systems (most OSR stuff is pretty easy to convert).  Alternatively you could pull a pile of inspiration from this book, and run with your own version of the Black Pyramid and Cha'alt.

There are six awesome factions detailed in the book.  A crap ton of new monsters for your players to contend with.

Example:  A ga'athrul is what we on Earth would describe as an alien dinosaur. They are massive creatures living in the wasteland, vying for territory and resources…such as delicious humanoids.

Also Gigantic Spider-Droids!!!!!!!!

An incredibly detailed city, with lots of random tables! KBrae’andeuamthek City of the Purple Demon-Worm. (About the only thing that I`d really give Venger a dig at, is the names of things in his books.  I can`t pronounce em! That of course is not Venger`s fault.  And Honestly KBrae’andeuamthek sounds a lot cooler than Waddingtonsforth... or something).

Excerpt from the city details: Periodically, the Purple Demon-Worm priesthood imbibes hallucinogenic drugs. So,all but the High Priests and Ipsissumus are easily distracted and/or misled by a clever ruse.

The Black Pyramid:  There's so much going on within this pyramid! Each room is almost a vignette unto itself.  There's weirdness, there's fruit! there's death around pretty much every corner.  This place begs to be explored.

I really dig the map style.  It`s these oddly triangular rooms with passages between them.

Here`s a few excerpts from the dungeon. 

Videodrome:  Black robed humanoids are abusing and humiliating each other as cameras record the
degradation. The leader has black crosses drawn all over his face, neck, and hands.  There are certain individuals within the Sect of Kara'as who've been exiled to this room for worshiping Ara'ak-Zul. They call themselves The Order of The Black Trapezoid. This is where they live.

Chartreuse Sphere
The yellow-green line of illumination running along the top of this room perfectly matches the color of the glowing sphere that hovers in the center of this small room.

All told there`s a 111 rooms in this creepy assed pyramid!

This book will bring you years of craziness and gaming.

The book was printed at Friesens (which is super cool, as it's really close to my actual home, and they do really good work!).

Quoting Prince Of Nothing in the afterword: 

Running Cha'alt is not about control, accuracy, or preparation. It’s not a series of
encounters that requires a delicate balance of character classes, feats, and consumables to
circumnavigate successfully.

If you only ever buy one book of Venger's, buy this one!  - Shane 

(Note: it's a great idea to buy the others as well, there's some amazing wonderfully covered pages of purple slime, with strange androids and gonzo weirdness within Venger's catalog).  

First thing that came to my mind when I read the title was "Who in their right mind would want to dig up a dead God? 

Obviously +Venger Satanis!

Here's the publisher blurb: 

Yesterday when I got up I started thinking about D&D (like every friggin day).  In between coffee and skyrim I started re-reading the 5e DMG.  At some point in time I may have to take a turn DMing 5e again.  I started looking thru some of the options in the back, just to see what I could do.  My guess is that it would be a one shot, however it's always good to have a backup "campaign" outline just in case.  Considering we have 4 DMs in the group, this may not be an issue for me.

Campaign Ideas: 

Wuxia style campaign with Aliens.  I was skimming the Oriental adventures book at the same time.

Western Marshes style campaign:  Read more info here.  Using Blackmarsh.

Jakandor: Would be super nifty, however since we are running around an island currently it might be a bit too similar.

If we have to stick with Faerun, running Al Quadim or the wuxia thing in whatever part of Faerun that works might be an idea.

Alternatively (and what I will probably do) is not do any actual world building other than a brief sketch.  Create a small hex map with 3 or 4 adventure locations, plant a town on the border and leave it at that.  I really don't want to do typical high fantasy bs though.  There is a bit in the DMG about campaign styles, and the last paragraph is sort of "the whole kitchen sink", that's the most appealing to me.  Samuari's, Aliens, Flying airships, barbarians.

As I've said before I wouldn't mind creating new character classes, and races and or sticking with the basic ones.  The only issue is the players.  And I know it's "My campaign" but its still gotta be fun.  If someone gets annoyed because they can't play their fav tiefling warlock/warrior hybrid, that's no fun.

Whatever the case, what I end up with is going to be deadly.  I'm throwing CR's out the window for the most part.  You goto the hext with the big ugly dragon.  Good luck.

In one of +Samwise Seven RPG videos he talks about throwing out Charisma as a stat and using the sanity rules.  This seems like a wonderful idea.  I"m in agreement with him that making deception checks are boring with a dice roll.  I'd rather RP it out.

Event Based Adventures:

This whole idea seems very railroadey and not very O5R.  I'm sure when I was younger I was writing event based adventures, and it does seem to be a good idea for Fifth edition.  I may take a crack at it for the sake of argument.

Alright so obviously this is a whole bunch of random ADHD this morning.

This week i get to play in a blueholme game with +God Emperor Leto II which is going to be FUN!

The return of the blue baron is coming along! Check it out here:

Happy Gaming!

Full disclosure, I received a free copy of the pdf from +Venger Satanis

Alright, here is the pitch: 


This book is a solid effort, my only thought is that its not really a "players handbook" per se.  Well it is and it isn't.  If this book had a bunch of fucked up spells in it, maybe a table of "weird trainers and what they cost", proficiency's, etc (Your basic "player's handbook" that we have seen time and again).  Counter point, this is a cool fucking book that gives a player some inspiration, fuels the imagination and gets them ready to game.  That's a fucking handbook isn't it? 

As a somewhat side note, I really do like the idea of O5R.  I would be very curious to see the outcome of a book (set of rules) if someone locked Venger in a basement with the 5e SRD for a month.  His version of the game, would be super fucking cool! 

Player's handbook like a fucking boss is going to be sitting on my gaming table in the near future.  If you like weird things, random tables, excellent naming resources, interesting fucking mechanic ideas and you play elf games with fucked up dice, this book is for you! 

Get it here: