A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Grave-Wights

Grave-Wights by John Sgammato is a role playing game supplement published by Columbia Games Inc. This is a bestiary article set in the world of Hârn. With this supplement having game stats, it is designed for use with HârnMaster rather than being generic.

This is a four page PDF that is available for $1.98 from RPGNow but was received for free due to an offer. All of it is content.

The first page has a description of the grave-wights, humanoid creatures that feed on corpses, preferably human although they will eat animals. Ecology gives the living conditions and pack size of the creatures. Unlike similar creatures in other settings, grave-wights are not actually undead. Sidebars on this page cover the stench of grave-wights and a disease they can cause.

The second page describes two related species, sea-devils and sand-ghouls, with a sidebar on how some cultures try to protect their dead from predation by grave-wights and related creatures. Cremation is the most effective method.

The final two pages each have game descriptions, the first for male grave-wights and the second for female. Each describes the creature, has a black and white sketch of it and the sidebar provides the actual stats.

Grave-Wights in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and doesn’t need them at this length. The text follows a single primary column layout, with a sidebar of supplemental information, and no errors were noticed. There are several colour and black and white illustrations; quite a lot for a supplement of this length. Presentation is very good.

This is a single article that essentially describes two creatures. There are no definite stats provided for the two related species, but those for the standard one could perhaps be adapted. The treatment of the grave-wights is pretty thorough, and they could be dropped into various places in a campaign. As a sample of HârnMaster bestiary articles, it works very well, but is rather expensive at full price for what you get. Normally these articles are comparatively expensive. Grave-Wights is a useful bestiary supplement for HârnMaster and it can be downloaded by clicking here.