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Vornheim
Vast is Vornheim, the Grey Maze... Give somebody a floorplan and theyll GM for a day show them how to make 30 floorplans in 30 seconds and theyll GM forever. Need to know how to get from here to there even if neither here nor there are listed on a map? Even if there is no map? Need a random encounter? Need instant stats for that random encounter? Need to know why there was a random encounter? This book was designed to help you make a city happen now. In addition to details on Vornheim, adventure locations, and player commentary from the I Hit It With My Axe girls, every single surface below this jacket including the back of the jacket, the book covers underneath, and the inside covers has been crammed full of tools to help you build and run a city no matter what edition game you play.
64 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 12, 2015
Every spare inch of this slim hardcover volume is covered in role-playing goodness. Though slightly reminiscent (I use the term anachronistically - Vornheim came first) of the excellent Yoon-Suin, with it's varied tables of random fun, this supplement does not repeat anything from Yoon-Suin. I suspect, in fact, that they might both be used together to great effect.
Vornheim, The Gray Maze, is a hypermassive city in which characters can spend an entire campaign. Actually, given the random way in which the city can be generated on the fly (no, I'm not kidding), one could feasibly run an infinite number of campaigns in Vornheim. Yes, there are several brilliant and Vornheim-specific locales, including the house of the medusa, Eshrigel, the Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng, and the Library of Zorlac, the three of which are worth the cost of the book alone. But the real genius of the book lies in the plethora of random charts that one can use for such diverse tasks as generating NPCs from merchants to aristocrats, determining what adventurers might find while searching a library or a dead body, and generating tavern names and games. The most innovative section is in the urbancrawl rules, which allows for the creation of chunks of city at a time with great ease right there at the gaming table, along with optional chase rules, should the party find itself running through new neighborhoods at breakneck speed because they . . . well, you and your players get to determine the whys and wherefores of those situations!
My only complaint (and I almost dropped this to a four star rating because of this) is that every spare inch of this slim hardcover volume is covered in role-playing goodness. The inside dust jacket and overleafs, both covers of the book, the end pages - EVERYTHING is covered in tables, maps, or charts. Which makes for some squinting to those of us who have outlived the 20/20 vision of our youths. But if you can scrye it all . . . wow, what a vision! The Lamentations of the Flame Princess has struck gold, yet again!
Vornheim, The Gray Maze, is a hypermassive city in which characters can spend an entire campaign. Actually, given the random way in which the city can be generated on the fly (no, I'm not kidding), one could feasibly run an infinite number of campaigns in Vornheim. Yes, there are several brilliant and Vornheim-specific locales, including the house of the medusa, Eshrigel, the Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng, and the Library of Zorlac, the three of which are worth the cost of the book alone. But the real genius of the book lies in the plethora of random charts that one can use for such diverse tasks as generating NPCs from merchants to aristocrats, determining what adventurers might find while searching a library or a dead body, and generating tavern names and games. The most innovative section is in the urbancrawl rules, which allows for the creation of chunks of city at a time with great ease right there at the gaming table, along with optional chase rules, should the party find itself running through new neighborhoods at breakneck speed because they . . . well, you and your players get to determine the whys and wherefores of those situations!
My only complaint (and I almost dropped this to a four star rating because of this) is that every spare inch of this slim hardcover volume is covered in role-playing goodness. The inside dust jacket and overleafs, both covers of the book, the end pages - EVERYTHING is covered in tables, maps, or charts. Which makes for some squinting to those of us who have outlived the 20/20 vision of our youths. But if you can scrye it all . . . wow, what a vision! The Lamentations of the Flame Princess has struck gold, yet again!
November 14, 2018
Not as useful as a tool, on the table, as Zak claims it to be. Why would you run a city street encounter like a dungeon? That seems to make sense but it doesn't in actuality. There are many useful things inside, and the dungeons are very good (although the first map is confusing until you spend some times trying to figure it out, which you should anyway, in a more conventional map). Also, the graphic design and layout are awful; oh, yes, avant-garde and all, I get it... still ugly.
February 19, 2016
If ever there was a book that I thought a GM should read, it would be this one. While written for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess world, EVERYTHING in this can be easily modified for any system. This is primarily a guide to running a campaign - or section of a campaign - in a city, but a lot of it can be repurposed to ease any adventure campaign.
June 29, 2018
Excellent fantasy city generators, for when you want something done on the fly! Can heartily recommend Augmented Reality by Paul D Gallagher for those seeking something similar but for cyberpunk.
January 10, 2018
A massively useful toolkit for urban adventuring, especially within the OSR style. Complete with three mini-dungeons and instructions for how to make more. The best advice is hidden within the paragraph detailing that urban adventures should be consequence and scene based, as opposed to room and treasure based.
October 6, 2024
This book is revolutionary, an attempt to do something a bit different to the technical manual/clunky prose format that is all too common in the gaming field. It doesn't hurt that it's full of personality and Zak's wonderful dark, grunky fairy tale art.
May 5, 2019
This is a very strong supplement. Was looking for guides on how to run a city adventure on D&D after my Dungeon Heist game was becoming and feeling stale. I blame Wizards of the Coast for not putting enough effort in that volume on how to bring a city to life. Vornheim achieves that in a slim book of 70ish pages.
There are as well 3 unique mini-dungeons that could be used as plugs if one night I didn't prepare anything to run in the megadungeon. Vornheim has useful tables, down to earth advice on how to run a practical city adventure as a GM, and interesting flavor. There are ideas in here I hadn't seen before: dropping dice on a piece of paper (or the book) to look at the position where they fall to read something. Brilliant.
More than anything else, this book is a nice guide on how to build your own city where PCs can stay and explore for sessions. Make it your own, which is very easy if you regenerate the random tables and just follow the general/meta advice, from which there's spades.
Since I purchased this, I've been cracking the book open almost every session. That speaks for itself.
Only negative: personally I'm not a fan of the art style myself, but the black and white is original, and I can see it appealing to a different audience.
There are as well 3 unique mini-dungeons that could be used as plugs if one night I didn't prepare anything to run in the megadungeon. Vornheim has useful tables, down to earth advice on how to run a practical city adventure as a GM, and interesting flavor. There are ideas in here I hadn't seen before: dropping dice on a piece of paper (or the book) to look at the position where they fall to read something. Brilliant.
More than anything else, this book is a nice guide on how to build your own city where PCs can stay and explore for sessions. Make it your own, which is very easy if you regenerate the random tables and just follow the general/meta advice, from which there's spades.
Since I purchased this, I've been cracking the book open almost every session. That speaks for itself.
Only negative: personally I'm not a fan of the art style myself, but the black and white is original, and I can see it appealing to a different audience.
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August 29, 2021Just really fantastic tools for citycrawling: rules for that, procedures for coming up with neighborhoods and street plans and floor plans and NPCs and magical effects and libraries and taverns and tavern games on the fly, at the table, and I've probably missed a half-dozen things. And there's a few detailed adventuring locations already mapped out and described. All in 64 pages. If the players in my current Worlds Without Number (WWN) game go to a certain city, this book will be getting heavy use. And I didn't have to pore through it a million times and remember a bunch of names and districts and maps. Just A+
September 3, 2018
Una pasada. Un generador de ciudades muy completo con lugares y habitantes originales. La maquetación es fantástica, se aprovechan hasta la guardas para generadores también. De lo mejor de Lamentations.
May 11, 2019
The author is not a great person and I regretted giving him money once I learned the details but the book is tremendously helpful for running my games.
December 18, 2021
I’m unable to separate the art from the artist in this situation, Zak S, is bad people. A bully and a sexual predator, he and his book deserve to disappear
August 19, 2024
Some evocative oddities more fun to think about than they would be to make gameable, I expect.
January 31, 2017
I've never put a review for a tabletop RPG book on here before (probably some residual embarrassment floating around) but I thought I'd start. This is a really great book - it's short, but it's stuffed to the gills with great ideas about running adventures in cities to the point that other books/blogs I've read on similar topics feel pithy and bloated with useless stuff. Highly recommended if you can track down a copy (I got the only one Amazon had at the time, and the publisher seems to be in Finland?)
June 22, 2015
This is one of my favourite RPG supplements in a long time. I'm not an OSR fan, but this works for me. Not sure I'll ever use it directly, but I am using bits and pieces of it in planning an RPG campaign. Great artwork, evocative setting and all of it game-able. And it's short, so you can read it several times before you use it.
November 4, 2011
Old school RPG renaissance purchase. City is interesting, art is lovely and not fantasygamestandard, and gaming tricks (like scatter dice for random events & things on all surfaces of the book) awesome. High density.
January 22, 2012
Great, great book.
Read through it and loved all the ideas, and the peek inside Zak's head (which seems to be a very weird, disturbing and wonderful place).
Make me want to GM so I can try all the stuff out.
Ideas in the book will just randomly come back to me.
Read through it and loved all the ideas, and the peek inside Zak's head (which seems to be a very weird, disturbing and wonderful place).
Make me want to GM so I can try all the stuff out.
Ideas in the book will just randomly come back to me.
February 8, 2013
Slimmer than I expected, but full of good value nonetheless. Lots of tricks to help your tabletop game get to the fun parts fast.
April 23, 2016
Best city book I've read - wish I would have thought of it myself
August 7, 2016
I wish it were a little bigger, with more content, because all in it is really good.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews