A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Two Dozen Dangers: Haunts

Two Dozen Dangers: Haunts by Chris Field is a role playing game supplement published by LPJ Design. The supplement is for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game; as such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content. This entry in the two dozen dangers series is on haunts; the strange trap-like undead creations that were originally introduced in Rise of the Runelords and covered in more detail in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GameMastery Guide.

This is a twelve page bookmarked PDF which is available from RPGNow at the regular price of $2.99 but which was purchased at the reduced price of $2.09. Of the twelve pages, one page is the Open Game License leaving the rest as content; the front matter and title are in the margins of the first page.

The supplement starts with a brief couple of paragraphs on haunts before diving into the haunts themselves. The 24 haunts are arranged in alphabetical order. They range from CR 1 to CR 13, some of which are quite lethal. Each haunt follows a standard format: name, description, mechanics and game stats followed by effect and destruction.

Two Dozen Dangers: Haunts in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked with links to every haunt and there is also a contents on the first page, listing all the haunts and their page numbers. Navigation is well above average for a supplement of this length. The text maintains a two column format and a lot of errors were noticed. These include missing caster level for the first haunt, missing means of destruction for the last haunt (the most significant error) and quite a few typos, formatting errors and missing words throughout. There are a number of black and white stock illustrations.

In terms of fluff, these haunts are all very evocative. There are wonderful descriptions and the majority have specific names after specific people or events (these may need changing to adapt to a GM’s own world, but this is really minor). These are by far some of the best haunt descriptions around – effort has been put into making these have feeling. The descriptions also provide potential adventure hooks, especially when the means of destruction is also taken into consideration. The haunts are not all evil in nature either; in fact, one is actually lawful good. This may seem odd but there are reasons in the text as to why not all of these would be evil.

The first haunt, Arcane Rift, is something different. It is described as being a flaw in the structure of the universe, rather than an undead force, and it targets magic items, being a form of mage’s disjunction. This is quite a powerful haunt in its specific field, as it can, like the spell, affect artefacts. It’s also the haunt missing the caster level.

The methods of ending the haunts vary widely, from fairly simple and easy to accomplish tasks all the way through to basically murdering people. Which means those haunts are the least likely to be destroyed.

This has some lovely haunt write-ups, although the haunts themselves are nothing really standout – they are decently constructed uses of the standard format that have been well described, but they don’t push the boundaries with anything new. What really lets the supplement down is the number of errors. Two Dozen Dangers: Haunts is, even so, quite a nice collection of haunts and it can be found by clicking here.