Penumbra: Backdrops

We're the stagehands so you can focus on being the director. Backdrops presents a collection of ready-to-use locations for your OGL fantasy campaign. Each location, or "backdrop," is detailed in a two-page spread including a scale map and descriptive text to enrich your adventures – wherever they take place. Backdrops is like paying a set designer to build a few stock sets on your campaign's back lot. Penumbra: Backdrops features fourteen set scenes, including: The bath house is a place of whispers, threats, lies, and scheming. Beneath its tranquility is a tense scene, where enemies face each other without swords or shields. An urban stable breeds noble horses in which the wisdom of ancient tribal kings is scattered as a blessed reincarnation. In the secret smithy, three burning golden dwarves arrive from within the forge at the stroke of midnight to craft wondrous items. Small, fortified caravanserai offer protection and company to travelers and traders . . . though bandits know that the most valuable thing in any caravanserai is the caravan visiting it. Narrow alleyways wind like veins through the city . . . but only three sorts of souls walk these streets at night: lantern-bearing guards, cutthroats, and the undead. In the thick of the city are the public cages where burglars, cutpurses, housebreakers, and felons are jailed; those souls who cannot pay their fine in coin will pay it with time. Link the sets to detail a single city, or scatter them across your campaign world. Use them as a foundation for more exotic travels for your PCs, or to fill in the dark corners of your characters' hometown. It's your game, after all; Backdrops just gives you more time to play it! Written by Will Hindmarch