A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Genius Loci

Genius Loci by Robert J. Schwalb is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is part of the Monstrous Pages series that provides further details on monsters; in this case, genies.

The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 21-page PDF for $3.99 although it was purchased at a reduced price during a sale. Half a page is the cover illustration, a quarter of a page is the Credits and one page is ads.

The opening paragraphs explain that there are unsettling places in the world called “genius loci” but, unknown to most, is that these places are where the genies who created the world rest, powerful beings who are now insane.

Plunderers of the Divine recaps material from The Hunger in the Void; how God created the Demiurge, how the Demiurge, feeling the same creative need created the genies and how they, too, urged to create, formed all the universes, resulting in God and the Demiurge being torn apart, with the residue being the Demon Lord and the demons.

The genies formed the elemental races to help them; salamanders, gnomes, undines and sylphs, though they never treated them well. Genies did not like the immortal races; the faeries, trolls and the like. So, they took demons from the Void and created humans. This drove the genies mad; those that still had some sanity realised they had created a crack that would let the Void through and surrendered their essence to strengthen the boundaries of reality.

Genius Loci explains that some genies wound up being worshipped as gods. Four are described, one for each element. He Who Slumbers of the gnomes, the Face in the Fire of the salamanders, the King Under the Waves, or Oceanus, of the undines and the Storm Lord of the sylphs. What priests of these deities are granted is covered, although Oceanus is covered in more detail in Uncertain Faith. Genies can also become small gods.

Genies do not possess physical forms, so they are not perceived. However, they can take on form, either voluntarily or if bound. Spirits of Place has the effects on a place that a genie inhabits, how they behave and offerings they demand from petitioners.

Wrath of the Genies says that an angry genie may merge itself with other substances. There is a d6 table of environmental effects from genies.

Bound Genie Forms provides new options for genies. The core four, earth, flame, water and wind are in the Core Rulebook, A Glorious Death introduces the ice genie and Occult Philosophy the storm genie. Here are stats for twelve new types of genies, ash, blood, corpse, dust, magma, metal, mineral, mud, pitch, salt, smoke and steam, together with how a caster can bind them to each form.

Incarnations are genies from the barrier preventing the Void from gaining access who take an existing physical body as a means to deal with demons. An example of one such is given.

Servants of the Genies are the four elemental races that are available as character ancestries. Gnomes, from Children of the Restless Earth, salamanders, from Tombs of the Desolation, sylphs, from Demon Lord’s Companion 2, and undines, from the Freeport Companion. Each elemental has the stats for three new types.

Genius Loci in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a two-column full colour format and appeared to be free of error. There are a few full colour illustrations, many if not all of them custom. Presentation is very good.

The aim of the supplement is to provide new options for genies, and related creatures, and that it does. The extensive section on new types of genie provides many new, and possibly unexpected, creatures that characters can encounter, and that for the elementals provides new potential opponents for those ancestries. Some of the introductory material on the genies and their origin is paraphrased from The Hunger in the Void though; perhaps useful to have it in this place as well, but less useful for those who already own that supplement. Other than that, this is a nice, useful supplement. Genius Loci can be found by clicking here.