Gods of the Shroud is a new GSL product from One Bad Egg. It retails for $5.99 and is available at Rpgnow and One Bad Egg. This product was written by a handful of OBE’s writers including Cam Banks, Adam Dray, Lee Hammock, Fred Hicks and Justin D. Jacobson. Going into this review I would like to make it clear that I never would have picked up a book called “Gods of the Shroud” and had I not received it for review I would have missed out on a gem of the 3PP products.
Gods of the Shroud is a product that provides you with the thirteen deity who have influence over the One Bad Egg setting of the Shroud. Each entry includes information about the deity’s background and more importantly the beliefs or teachings or behaviours of their followers. All contain a deity specific Channel Divinity feat and at least two adventure ideas. I really liked the inclusion of follower’s beliefs and the adventure ideas because they will help me as a GM quickly integrate the faiths within my existing campaign. There is additional supportive material such as henchmonsters and magic items. To make the use of this product easier there are reference tables for the gods, monsters and magic items plus power charts for all the new Channel Divinity options.
There are many things I love about the Gods of the Shroud. The first thing is the interrelatedness of the gods themselves. There are clear interactions between the faiths of the Shroud with overlapping and contradictory myths (intentional) that form a realistic basis for a functional polytheistic system. The designers are clear about their design decisions and provide allowances to restrict or discard some of their riskier choices. This gives the product a sense of engagement with the reader and a respect for their game. Another strength is the uniqueness of the gods in this setting. Many of the gods initially seem to fit traditional roles on first glance like The Root but always have a minor or more serious variation that pulls them from the traditional D&D model. The Root is a nature deity that is believed to be the first god and teaches his followers to deny the faith of all others. The Salt Prince is a mummified god of protection that teaches his followers that water brings corruption and temptation.
One of my favourite gods in the book is The Gleaming Eye, a vengeful and evil deity that demands that no secrets exist in the world and whose channel divinity power disrupts illusions (though I suspect when WOTC releases Illusion powers they won’t actually cause misdirection but instead deal damage under a presumption of misdirection). The harsh light of truthfulness is the work of an evil deity in the lands of the Shroud. Another favourite, The Silent Maw is a predator god that destroys the hunts resurrected and brings the gift of death to the living. Outside the dominion of evil, The Bone Witch is deity that protects the world from undeath (even if it means killing people save them from rising as the dead), encourages communities to learn from the teachings of their ancestors and gain strength from suffering.
In truth, there really isn’t any of the gods that I felt missed the mark. If the next campaign I run isn’t within the shroud, the Gods of the Shroud will still come with us.
At 30 pages this is one of the longer books from One Bad Egg and as they are approaching larger product sizes they should start to consider linked table of contents or bookmarks to ease the navigation within the PDF. Gods of the Shroud is definitely worth the price if you are looking for more information on the Shroud or an alternate set of gods for your campaign, or even additional gods (and their minions) for your campaign.
