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XP1: The Spider-God's Bride and Other Tales of Sword and Sorcery

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Sunken Temples and Serpent-Haunted Vaults

Enter the City of Stone and slay the high priest of Jul-Juggah! Plunder the ancient gold of Namthu! Seek the fabled jewel of Khadim Bey, but beware the nameless horrors of the Al-Khazi desert! Fight the dread adepts of the ape-god, or succumb to the pleasures of the Moon-Juice of Yaatana! Or perhaps you will perish by the curses of Ur-Kharra, the long-dead sorcerer-king of Elder Kuth?

Savage Swords and Sinister Sorcery

"The Spider-God's Bride and Other Tales" is a collection of ten blood-red sword and sorcery adventures, inspired by the pulp era tales of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Venture in the footsteps of Conan the Cimmerian, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, Imaro of Nyumbani, and other fabled thieves, reavers and slayers!

Based on the standard third edition (3E) rules and including new variant rules, the adventures in this book can be used in any sword and sorcery setting and be easily adapted to any fantasy roleplaying game ruleset or edition.

New release Also available for 5E: You can now buy the adventures in this collection as stand-alone products, revised and converted to fifth edition rules, with new maps and artwork! See the main page for an overview of individual adventure books.

Book features:

  • 10 fully detailed, stand-alone adventures for levels 1-10
  • More than 40 dungeon and city maps
  • Background information on the lands, races and gods of the World of Xoth
  • New core classes, feats and spells suited for swords and sorcery gaming
  • New monsters and creature templates
  • New weapons, armor, and herbal and alchemical items
  • Accompanied by a complimentary 66-page Conversion Booklet for the Conan RPG by Mongoose Publishing, including complete statistics for monsters and non-player characters

Download a preview

The free preview contains a sample of contents from various chapters in the book.

Get the PDF version

"The Spider-God's Bride and Other Tales" is available as a 200-page PDF, accompanied by a collection of maps in JPEG format, and a separate Conversion Booklet (also in PDF) for other gaming systems.

The price for the electronic version is USD 10. Please pay by PayPal using the link below, and remember to specify your email address. The files will be emailed to you within 24 hours (typically sooner) of receiving payment.

Important: Please make sure your email account has around 20 megabytes of free space to receive the files. If you are unable to receive files of this size, let me know and I will provide a temporary download link instead.

Get the print version

"The Spider-God's Bride and Other Tales" is available in print as a 200-page, perfect-bound softcover from https://www.lulu.com/shop/xothnet-publishing/the-spider-gods-bride/paperback/product-1p6gdpzd.html. The price for the printed version is USD 23.

Reviews

The book has been reviewed by James Maliszewski at the Grognardia blog, who writes that "The Spider-God's Bride is an inspiring product. The world of Xoth it presents is very well-done, recalling the Hyborian Age mixed with Lovecraftian weirdness but still very much its own creation. Each of its cultures, cities, and locations is lovingly presented and offers a lot of ideas to mine, even if you're not interested in using Xoth in toto. The entire product drips with swords-and-sorcery flavor and should easily function as a source of inspiration. (...) [It] shows just what swords-and-sorcery fantasy is all about and why it's so much fun".

There's another review by Steelcaress at the Roll'Em blog, which concludes that "This is a top-notch product, and I would recommend it to anyone who has read the tales that inspired it, and has wished, albeit briefly, that they could play a character in those worlds."

A very detailed review, by Endzeitgeist at the Paizo messageboards for D&D 3.5/d20/OGL games (WARNING: SPOILERS GALORE!). Endzeitgeist writes that "we get A LOT of adventure (in fact enough for half a campaign or even a year or two of play time) for a meagre 10 bucks (...) I only noticed 3 minor glitches in 200 pages - that's top quality! (...) for me as a huge fan of the S&S-genre, I loved this anthology. It provides a lot of material and some of the adventures genuinely provide a sense of antique dread and iconic locations that I loved from the stories I used to read all the time.".

Bill Webb, co-founder of Necromancer Games and founder of Frog God Games says here that "The Spider God's Bride gets a "10" from the Frog".

Steve Winter, who was involved with a lot of classic products from TSR, says that "I'm really enjoying The Spider God's Bride, and I've been touting its virtues to all my gaming groups and co-workers".

Bastien Pilon has a detailed video review of the Spider-God's Bride on his swords and sorcery YouTube channel, and summarizes by saying that "This is like a Motorhead album. There are certain tracks that you like better than others, but you can't deny there's a consistent level of quality throughout the entire set. That's just, you know... that's my seal of approval right there." and "If you're like me and more or less completely obsessed with swords and sorcery stuff, it's very much... it's among the highest quality stuff you're going to find out there really...".

And here are some comments from people who have purchased the book:

  • "I have downloaded the book. It looks fantastic! Looking forward to running the adventures with my group."
  • "It is a truly awesome product it looks like. Something I wished i found years ago."
  • "Thank you very much for your excellent job !"
  • "This looks cool!"
  • "That is awesome!"
  • "I just downloaded it, it's a thing of beauty. Congratulations!"
  • "it seems to be really a great work of love and research."
  • "thank you very much! it looks exceedingly cool."
  • "I read the preview and practically drooled about a week ago."
  • "I bought the Spider-God's Bride on a whim a while back and was blown away. It was [as] if the ghosts of Howard, Lovecraft, and especially Ashton Clark Smith were summoned together to co-write adventures for role-playing."

Supporting material

Conversion Booklet for the Conan RPG by Mongoose Publishing

All the maps below as a zipped file

World of Xoth (Campaign Map)

Adventure maps:

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