With 7 days to go, really need to start jumping from the rooftops. And honestly, if I had to give you the elevator pitch, it would be this.

Eldritch tells a story thousands of years in the making, where two cults - the minions of much darker powers - seek to feast on the mortal races. 

You can take these cults, their spells, or just a few aspects, and easily integrate them into your game. These cults are richly detailed, from their clothing to the mock-benevolent organisations they set up to fool the living.

Everything - and I mean every single sentence - has been considered to give you a book filled with menace. These cults are alive and operating in your world. They're hiding in plain sight behind the Veil, which makes them even more dangerous and unpredictable. And powerful.

This is not a mere sourcebook filled with half-detailed creatures. It's a rich setting where literally everything has a logical place. 

Nothing can be taken for granted. No one is who they say they are and even magical items are touched with shadow.

This is at the heart of Eldritch. A darkness is coming and nothing and no one will be left untouched.

This is just the start of the darkness.

I hope you will join me on this journey to experience it for yourself

Stewie

Part 3 is the fact that for the first time in history, a book is NOT for the players. The players shouldn't even know of this book's existence. The spells in it are NOT for the players; they're all for the dark cults that exist in this setting. The heroes have no way to get hold of these spells, so each one they encounter will be a new and horrific revelation...

Everything in Eldritch is a secret. It's all spoilers, from the <censored> to the <redacted>. 

See. It's so secret I can't even talk about it here. :D 

But the point is, the players shouldn't know what's going to happen to them (or have any of the answers). They should be drip-fed their sinister doses of darkness through the game, finding out about the new dark world they've found themselves in.

And that is what's most exciting (to me): telling a story of mystery where the players are struggling to keep their characters alive. I've made no secret that I think 5e is way too easy, and Eldritch adds a layer of difficulty never seen before.

Sure, they might be filled with bravado and unafraid of everything in the first session, but by the tenth (and each of them has five or six points of Dread); suddenly it's a whole new ball game (a game in the dark where they don't know the rules and the "ball" is probably a beholder).

And that's the crux of Eldritch. Mystery and a dark mystery. The more they discover, the more they will come to fear the night...

More tomorrow.

Stewie

Eldritch contains a fully-fledged campaign setting that you can add to any campaign, or just use the locations in your own game. From the Lonely Chapel filled with the final desperate clerics of a dead god to the Graveyard of the Lost, a place filled with vampires that just wish to slumber away the centuries.

There's so much here to inspire any DM and to terrify your players. 

I wanted to talk about why a DM would want to pledge to Eldritch. 

For me, it's a vibrant (and monstrous) setting with 240,000 words (huge) of atmospheric creatures, characters, and locations. Even if you don't want to use the majority of the book, there's so much here to spark your imagination.

There are the foundations for an ultra-rich setting filled with all manner of strange and terrible things. It's part of an 8 book series that creates a shadowy world of intrigue and danger that can be added to any 5e campaign. There is so very much here, and it's all one cohesive unit where everything makes sense and everything has its place. There's no room here for random things, it's wall-to-wall dark fantasy adventure.

I am so incredibly proud of it. I just wish more people knew of its existence. 

More tomorrow.
 

The newest rule in Eldritch is the Dread system. Where a hero gains Dread points by encountering the minions, spells, and powers of the Dark Place.

These points then are permanent, until they are removed (through various magical methods) or through a total avoidance of all things profane and wicked. 

When a hero encounters a minion of the Dark Place, that creature can use their Dread points to fuel their magical abilities (which are a little like legendary abilities). A creature cannot burn Dread from a hero whose Dread point total is 0.

Dread regenerates back to its maximum at dusk every night (it's like Hit Points, only rather than healing to full after a long rest) they are replenished when the sun goes down. 

And then the things that lurk in the night can prey on the living and their abilities make battle unpredictable, as a hero will never know what unique powers a monster of the Dark Place will have.

I'll talk more about Dread tomorrow :)

Stewie

Simple, let me know what you'd like to see. Is it monsters (the Grogre, perhaps), or maybe you want to see a few of the truly diabolical spells (that aren't for players).

Let me know :)

In addition to the cults in Eldritch, what would you say are the best-published cults out there?

With things like Ravenloft out there, what makes a D&D game scary?

Isolation, vulnerability, lots of fog?

Let me hear your answers below :D

Simple question. What do you think is the scariest monster in D&D?