Savagery of the Spider Men aka All About Spiders and Poisons by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is a combination of generic and Legend Quest material. The supplement is part of the Small Bites series, and is the shorter, ‘World Walker’ version. Like Blood in the Slave Pits, the full version, which is nearly four times the length, can be purchased. This is because the full version is an adventure module.
The supplement is available for free from DriveThruRPG as an 18-page PDF. One page is the front cover, three pages are What’s Missing, In Conclusion and Patreon and links, one page is a player map handout and one page is a list of sample player characters.
The one page Introduction and Table of Contents explains that this is the second adventure from the Endless Dungeon series, and that it is statted for Legend Quest and d20, although the actual adventure is in the full version.
Fletnern Wiki contains articles from the wiki on races, cities/suburbs, legends, regions, continents, rivers and substances.
The Sounding Board contains reproduced blog articles. The first is The Theme of the Adventure, which has examples, including the previous module and this one.
Venomous vs. Poisonous is briefly on the differences between the two.
Poisons is just some thoughts on why poisons are dangerous to have around and those who use them regularly will likely end up poisoning themselves.
Monsters and Other Menaces has some monsters for Legend Quest. Each also has a suggestion on a suitable D&D replacement. The Anactaur is a spider beastman; they are similar to a drider in appearance and that’s all. They are suggested to be replaced with ettercaps. The Garuh is a dog-man; they can be replaced by gnolls but are not evil. The Quexitan Spider is used by Anactaurs and can be replaced with giant spiders.
Real Life Creatures has a collection of facts on spiders.
Campaign Starter Kit: Savagery of the Spider Men has some introductory material, some on Using this Adventure and But I Don’t Play Legend Quest, which is what to do in that case, and Where to Begin, which is in the Port of Brinston, a suburb of Brinston. It does not contain the actual adventure.
News of Fletnern has material related to places visited in the adventure.
Introducing the Mission is how to start it.
Small Towns and City Neighbourhoods goes into more detail about the region where the adventure takes place.
Pull Back the Curtain is the designer’s thoughts on updating the adventure from the original.
Savagery of the Spider Men aka All About Spiders and Poisons in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents is not as thorough but is hyperlinked. There are also some external hyperlinks. Navigation is good. The text maintains a two-column black and white format and appeared to be free of errors. There are some stock and public domain black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This edition is less eclectic than many of them, because although they all do tend to be on a loosely connected theme, in this edition the different material is connected to the adventure, which is available in the paid version. This does mean that all the material does tend to be related to content that isn’t included, making this less useful than others in the series. Savagery of the Spider Men aka All About Spiders and Poisons can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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