The Stygian Library: Planar Library DnD Adventure Review

[@QuestingBeast]

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[@VermilionMage]

"I pull a book off the shelf!" *DM rolls* "You find a book entitled: 'The Stygian Library'."

[@ignacywinski192]

Looks like inspired not only by Prachett, but also by „Library of Babel” by Borges.

[@stopdropandroleplay754]

Yeah! Except for the Stygian Library being potentially infinite. The Library of Babel was specifically finite.

[@emmyallen4582]

I've actually never read it, but probably should...

[@ignacywinski192]

It’s really insightful short story, ideal for free afternoon.

[@andrewanderson1988]

Between this book, and Gardens of Ynn, you could easily find ways to get your players to Neverland.

[@emmyallen4582]

@@andrewanderson1988 he deleted all his posts lol

[@andrewanderson1988]

@@emmyallen4582 YAY! I will delete my replies now. Then go order Gardens of Ynn!

[@CrowePerch]

One of my favorite adventure locations. We used the Stygian Library recently to uncover a ritual to help us kill a lesser diety that had control over a Nile-like river.

[@danielrowan4716]

I love this kind of content. Can be dropped into any campaign and works for any level of player. Skeleton crew is brilliant

[@SAINTOTHEKID]

Oh, same Cavegirl from Gardens of Ynn? Nice! I love her work. And this looks amazing too!

[@charlessmith5465]

Yeah, the start of the introduction sums it up as "Ynn was outdoors, this is indoors." 🙂

[@papacthulhuspricht...5820]

Oh my god. The Questing Beast reviews a book that i already own. Hahaha. I feel almighty and Immortal xD

[@ferment4life]

same 😂

[@Bluecho4]

It's like dying and going to Nerd Heaven. In all seriousness, I've got my own homebrew character archetype, what I call the "Skull Scholar", that uses the spell Speak With Dead to interrogate skulls for information. They're scholars that "go right to the source", then write what they've learned down in books. I can see whole rooms of the Stygian Library devoted to row upon row of shelves, full of skulls. Skulls taken from various locations around the multiverse, or collected from the corpses of people who died in the library. Entire teams of skull scholars sitting around, interrogating skulls and then cross referencing what they've learned with books from around the library. Either for knowledge's sake, or for some more inscrutable end.

[@sportyeight7769]

it could be the start of a fetching quest : please, bring me the skull of X. He maybe be dead, maybe not.

[@damienfeymont3433]

I’ll use this for my SCP game for the Wanderer’s Library.

[@TheBardSM]

That's a genius use of this module

[@captainbloth]

Whenever one of your videos appears in my feed, my day instantly becomes better. Thank you for the wonderful content!

[@halflingshoard]

Updated Gardens of Ynn will be getting kickstarterd later this year. If I'm not mistaken the publisher is looking to make the new version of Ynn more like this!

[@ogreboy8843]

Me: I don't have to buy this. I don't have to buy this. Ben: There is a mind flayer PC character class. Me: ...

[@RedDiceDiaries]

Big fan of the first version and have just ordered a copy of the re-mastered version, thanks very much for highlighting it :)

[@Ubik_Bubik]

This adventure always felt to me like an SCP in the best way possible. Thanks for showing it!

[@morganhanam9522]

Love the idea of a randomly created world; playing Myst IV so this has a surprisingly similar feel. Nice.

[@al2642]

Arts is epic, here. Love it. Library theme is a must,but killing books is a bit uneducational XD

[@bryansmith844]

and THIS is how I run a Pagemaster game

[@HoundofOdin]

I am seriously jealous of how much cool OSR stuff you have.

[@DerHitsch]

That was fast! I checked this morning to see if Questing Beast had already posted a review of this book. When I didn't find one, I assumed he would surely upload one soon. But I didn't expect you to be so quick.

[@f.a.santiago1053]

I learn SO MUCH from your videos.

[@emarsk77]

Alec Sorenson's art style reminds me a lot of Corrado Roi, my favourite artist for Dylan Dog (very popular Italian comic in the '80s-'90s).

[@robertmoorhead2406]

Literally just picked this up, perfect timing

[@evilscientistrecords]

Having fun isn't hard, when you've got a library card!

[@davidsokolowski518]

I have run this multiple times for modern Call of Cthulhu. Fantastic experience!

[@recursivecoin359]

Whether you play OSR or 5e... This would be awesome to combine with the upcoming book Candle Keep Mysteries!

[@russelllong3561]

Ben does a review. Me: I'm not going to buy it. Ben: it's called the Stygian Library Me halfway through checkout: fuck

[@nihildomini]

I ran a planescape game where the players went to Toth's Library in The Outlands. I really wish I had used The Stygian Library for that part of the adventure.

[@OldSchoolGM94]

Are you going to do reviews of "Maze of the Blue Medusa" or "Stone hell" From what I understand those are both insanely popular modules

[@mattprice516]

I'd love to see a Questing Beast take on Stonehell.

[@qvatch]

I threw gardens of ynn into my renaissance fantasy homebrew version of world of darkness mage, went over amazingly well despite none of us having done anything remotely point-crawl like. I made a fairly extensive spreadsheet to do the generation and tracking though, I feel it would have been quite slow or required pregen otherwise. Should note (unless I missed you saying) that this and the rest is on sale for a few more days.

[@jimhavoc]

5 minutes in and I'm at their site to buy this product. Looks amazing! ** I'm getting more of a Hellraiser feeling than Alice in Wonderland.

[@AdolphusOfBlood]

the exploration rules in this reminds me of the endless IKEA from the SCP wiki.

[@TonyCrenshawsLatte]

And the PDF is on sale right now at DTRPG! QB continues to mount assaults on my wallet!

[@charlessmith5465]

_A pocket dimension appears in your billfold._

[@francoisdumont4105]

I'm writing a mini campaign set in Hell. This book sounds amazing!

[@JungleRice]

Thank you for this review. I have been on the fence on this book.

[@benjaminc2631]

How can you use different OSRs for this adventure ? For example into the odd and shadow dark are a bit different in the stats and all. I mostly wonder about balance in the stygian library. Won't your players be disadvantaged or advantaged depending on the OSR book your playing ?

[@GreylanderTV]

Funny thing, I bet most under age 30 have never been in "the stacks" of a large university or city library and don't have a sense of what they are like. They typically feel very "dungeon" like, with low ceilings and no windows (low ceilings means more floors in the same height of building for better access to the books). Often dimly lit with little shadow alcoves with chair & desk here and there. For some time I've had the idea percolating in the back of my mind for building a dungeon or adventure campaign around the stacks in a library, with hints even of an extra-dimensional concept like this (probably inspired by Gardens of Ynn). This is simply brilliant!

[@GreylanderTV]

@@richmcgee434 In short: the internet & google searches. It's not an insult, just an observation. Most in my gen have never ridden a horse or horse&buggy (outside of maybe touristy things), never sent a telegram, or used a phone where you don't dial but talk to the operator to connect your call. Most kids born today probably won't ever learn to drive because all the cars will drive themselves well before 2037. You can get the text of almost everything online, and if it is only in the stacks of some library, there's no need to dive into stacks yourself. You can find it online in the catalog, request it, pick it up at the checkout counter.

[@emmyallen4582]

when I was a student I spent a *lot* of time in my university's library. The atmosphere in there was rather wonderful, and their poetry section was extensive, and had a lot of stuff that wasn't really available online. Maybe that memory lingered and I was drawing off it.

[@GreylanderTV]

@@emmyallen4582 I did say "most" not all. :) Wait... I don't even know if you're one of the young'ns. lol Did you spend much time in the stacks?

[@emmyallen4582]

yeah my flatmates were kinda dreadful, so the library was somewhere peaceful I could go to relax.

[@messenger3478]

The print version isn't available right now. :( I cat do pdf, because it's hard for me to read. I hope the print is available soon!

[@docbrown7916]

Nice review, when I can I'll buy the hard copy, it is $35 in USD according to alexa's conversion from 25 lbs UK, bit out of budget right now but it'd be worth the $ for my entertainment. I haven't played D&D for about 30 yrs but find it fun to read the material still and sources for my short stories.

[@inuinuinuinuinu]

i really want a hard copy of this. someday!

[@sanroman3461]

Amazing book.

[@jacobfike3697]

Oh hey I follow CaveGirl on Twitter! Cool to see a review of her stuff!

[@TaberIV]

It's interesting that this seems very similar to the upcoming 5e book, Candlekeep Mysteries. I'd love to see you review that book when it comes out, it'll probably be much more fitting to this channel than any other 5e book.

[@misomiso8228]

Great adventure

[@el_tejon383]

I bought the Garden of Ynn a few weeks ago and it is amazing. I am buying this too for sure. Are there any other depth quest side quest time books out there that are 5e or easily adaptable like these? Edit: the price is 25 pounds, which is fine, but the shipping to the US is another 19 pounds, so the book comes to about $60. Boo. I bought the PDF on Drive Thru RPG but would have rather had the physical copy.

[@QuestingBeast]

Yeah, international shipping is crazy right now

[@andrewanderson1988]

It is up on Exalted Funeral now

[@bonbondurjdr6553]

Algo! Praise Algo!

[@MrHugoGrim]

Reminds me of A Short Stay in Hell

[@andrewrobinson4019]

My poor, poor Call of Cthulhu players...

[@benpuffer7891]

Can anyone help me find Logan Knights blog that was listed in the inspiration section?

[@QuestingBeast]

www.lastgaspgrimoire.com/in-corpathium/

[@benpuffer7891]

@@QuestingBeast thank you!

[@albertnorman4136]

Oh, the Gardens of Ys mechanic. It's functional, I suppose, but I think there's better out there waiting to be invented. Anyway, it's good to see people using rudimentary pie piece encounter design. Hopefully, we'll evolve functional 3-6 pie pieces design rules.

[@eskild9917]

This looks really cool, second btw

[@kellydavis3108]

A collection of random tables, locations and magic items gets called an adventure now

[@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbit]

I’m first! Haha!