Engine Publishing, owned by RPG blog legend Martin Ralya (creator of Gnome Stew and Treasure Tables) announced today the pre-launch of their first RPG publication: Eureka, 501 Adventure Plots. It is available as both a fully bookmarked and hyperlinked PDF and a soft cover book.
Engine Publishing announced today that everyone pre-ordering the book would get instant access to the PDF, weeks before the launch of the book.
Touted as a multi-genre adventure seed repository, Eureka offers GMs looking for adventure ideas that can be easily be fleshed out in full adventures. Each entry of the 312 pages book features:
- A plot outline detailing enough material for a complete adventure
- A hook to draw players in
- Summary descriptions of 3-5 encounters to run the adventure
- Game mastering notes
- Plot twists
- Advice to run the plot
The book is divided in 5 sections: Game Mastering Advice, Fantasy Plots, Sci-Fi plots, Horror plots and an index. The numerous, system neutral plots are presented as multi-paragraphs adventure summaries outlining the situation, the key scenes and the choices that PCs are to be presented with. The description ends with minor tweaks to the plot to change its flavor or function.
Each plot also features a list of genres into which the adventure can be adapted to. For example, an adventure about escorting a captive bandit lord through badlands with minions harrying the PCs to free their boss, is presented as a generic fantasy adventure. It is,. however, said to be adaptable to the following genre
Action Horror, Cyberpunk, Gothic Horror, Grim and Gritty Fantasy, Hard Sci-fi, High Fantasy, Horror, Post-Apocalyptic, Pulp, Sci-fi, Space Opera, Steampunk, Swashbuckling, Traditional Fantasy, Victim Horror, Western.
Finally, each plot presents a set of tags that can help game masters seek elements of interest while hunting for an adventure idea. In the above bandit example, the tags are featured as:
combat-heavy, escort mission, mass combat, sandbox, shady, travel, villain
This product is ideal for GMs that want to create their own adventures but need help to kick start their creative muscles.
For more details, including a cool dice contest, see Martin’s article and many preview links here.
You can pre-order the book here, for 34,95$ which will give you the hardcover as soon as it’s ready to ship AND a PDF copy as your order is confirmed.
Thanks for the article! We at Gnomestew loved working on Eureka, and we’re excited about it finally being in preorder!
Thank you for writing this piece, Chatty! This is an excellent overview of the book, and you nailed what we’re trying to do with Eureka.
One minor correction: You mention a hardcover, but Eureka is a softcover. I just don’t want anyone to be surprised if they preorder and get a softcover. 😉
It was my pleasure Martin. I’ll correct the post just now.
Thanks, Phil!