Eldritch: The Book of Madness is a beautifully written 348-page hardcover tome featuring an all-new setting for your 5e campaign. It’s filled with new monsters, spells, cults, dark magic, locations, and a horde of otherworldly adventure ideas.
Eldritch is a dark, high fantasy sourcebook for D&D 5e. It's a book about the rise of a terrible evil, and the dark powers that surround it.
It's about necromancy, demons, eldritch terrors from beyond the dark mirror.
It's not a book about HP Lovecraft's works, and nor should it be (there are other companies doing that).
Why Should I Buy This Book?
Because, like my previous releases of 2000 to 2003, there's nothing like this out there. It's full of plot ideas, creepy characters, killer creatures, and a whole new fear and dread mechanic like NOTHING that exists (there's nothing out there like this, it's not like the Cthulhu fear mechanic (or other Dread mechanics doing the rounds), this is a book filled with ideas, concepts and monsters.
A lot of love and care has gone into this book to make everything feel real and rounded, and carefully crafted with elaborate descriptions and DM's notes designed to supercharge your imagination. It's NOT a randomly designed series of monsters and spells that could fit any setting; it's specifically designed to all become one coherent part of a much bigger setting (but you can use in any setting).
Ultimately, you should pick up Eldritch if you want a dark horror edge to your game that's filled with rich and evocative opponents. If you want to challenge your players with new monsters and horrific creatures, then this is definitely the book for you!
By far the most popular part of the book is Dread. Whenever your heroes encounter the power of the profane, they are tainted by it, gaining Dread, which is not so easy to remove. This Dread can be burned by the creatures of the Dark Place to give them an advantage over your heroes. For instance, it might give them the power to deal extra damage, disadvantage on a certain saving throw, or a much nastier ability. Dread adds a monstrous element to battle and a random factor that makes each fight unexpected and far more deadly.
Eldritch can be easily inserted into your game. Want two cults of the most monstrous types? They're all here. Along with examples of other cults and how they fit into the game.
But there's also a campaign setting, filled with 90 pages of locations, characters, and yet more monsters... You can use this content in a single session, or you can spread it out and drag your players into the Wastes, where every night is a torment and even finding a place to have a short rest is a nightmare.
It's NOT for the faint of heart!
Here's a spoiler-free look at the map of the Wastes. I've removed all of the locations and most of the pertinent information as the map is very spoilery and finding some of the key locations is part of the main quest.
Players Look Away! There is nothing in Eldritch for you! This is a DM's only tome filled with monsters, madness, and corruption. There are many perils in this book, and the greatest conflict awaits - the battle with your own mind!
Gorgeousart - evocative of the madness-inducing mythology of an alien universe.
Beautifully written - the Book of Madness is filled with plot hooks and adventure ideas to stir the imagination.
New Dreadrules - wrapped up in an ultra-high fantasy D&D setting. These monsters will fit right in with any setting, from fantasy to sci-fi.
Monster tactics - gain an insight into how to use these monsters to take your players by surprise. They will never see it coming!
Unique game mechanics - so secret we can't reveal them here, but they will fit seamlessly in with any game version allowing you to strike fear into the hearts of your players!
It'sfinished! - barring a little more editing, the 348+ page book is finished. We go to print week commencing Monday 31st July 2023 and the book ships end September / early October 2023.
Of the hundreds that replied anonymously to the survey, 85% of readers said they were very happy (70%) or moderately happy (15%) with the content. Of those readers, a whopping 93% said they were eager to see the next project (75.1% saying they intend to pledge to the next book, and a further 18.1% saying they would be interested, but would like to more about the book first. This is a fabulous response and I could not be happier.
Here are some of the comments I’ve received anonymously (sorry, there are a lot of these).
“The layout and art are great. I like the dread and corruption rules.”
“It’s a completely unique type of book.”
"The Dread Insanities are by far the best part of the book, and perhaps the best done in any non-Call of Cthulhu setting. Ever."
"I love the tone, feeling, and the mechanics and ingenuity of how the whole place/setting comes together through all its component parts. The Monstruum really works here! And I also love the corruptions and how that adds flavour from the setting but with a mechanical effect too that allows for clear roleplaying."
"I can't wait to use these rules with my Ravenloft campaign already in progress, I've been trying to find a good way to include short- and long-term madness and such."
“I love the ideas Eldritch gives me.”
"The dread system allows you to add a new level of challenge to players, making survival much harder than before."
"I love all the dread insanities, items, cults, profane creatures + burning dread."
"The Dread!! The Corruptions!!! the new creatures and spells."
"Evocative art, cool new rules, and nice cult info."
"I think the actual content of Eldritch (characters, monsters, locations, etc) is really high quality."
"The dread mechanic is amazing."
"The setting is so unique!"
"Besides the amazing creatures, dread, madness/corruption, I've been looking for good mechanics like this but stuff like that is hard to come by."
"It’s so dark!!!"
"The Dread mechanic and the monsters."
"It’s filled with creepy things."
"The Dread rules and Addictions are really atmospheric and adds another element to role-playing."
"I love that it lends itself to be modular. I can take the cults to help build a world early on. And then later after the world has been played in for a bit, slowly start pulling the curtain back on the players. Showing that while they thought the big bad was just some human bloke, it is in fact much worse, unfathomably worse."
"Honestly the art is well done and the writing is easily seen as a labor of love."
"Mostly as described above. It is consistently thematic, it speaks to the GM to help them get the most out of the world, story, rules, monsters, classes etc, it is bloody beautiful. And the writing (particularly writing that is set in the game world) is always atmospheric. I also appreciate that the new rule elements build nicely on each other, but can be scaled or in some cases even used on their own to suit the needs of the GM."
"The author has clearly spent a long time thinking about the theme and has forged mechanisms to make it work. Not only that, the author had done their best to step back and look at the project from 360 degrees, offering some great advice on playability."
"The Dread mechanic hands down. But the setting is pretty fantastic too."
And I've had a few not so positive comments:
"It's not for new DMs. There's a lot to process here."
"It's terrifying. I can't read more than a few pages at bedtime."
Where Are The Reviews?
If you knew how hard it was to get reviews from any of the main influencers with a first book. They won’t even reply to my emails. So pick up Eldritch and tell everyone!!!
