The Necromancer's Game Expansion 2

The Necromancer's Game Expansion Pack #2 is a full-color, class-focused magic item compendium written for The Necromancer’s Game and other OSR systems. This book is packed with flavorful, dangerous, story-driving relics that actually change how you play.

Every item is designed for a specific class. Every item has teeth, temptation, and built-in adventure hooks. If you love OSR-style magic that whispers, bargains, judges, and occasionally ruins your day in the most memorable way possible, then this is your book.

What Is This?

Estimated at 120 full color, perfect-bound, offset print pages, this book will provide a creative and in-depth magic item supplement for all 11 classes from The Necromancer’s Game, containing:

• 12 Bard items
• 12 Cleric items
• 12 Druid items
• 12 Dwarven items
• 12 Elven items
• 12 Fighter items
• 12 Halfling items
• 12 Magic-User items
• 12 Paladin items
• 12 Ranger items
• 12 Thief items

That’s 132 unique, class-bound magic items, each with:

• A vivid description dripping with old-school flavor
• Concrete mechanics written in Necromancer’s Game terms (BaB, Saves, Lore/Parley/Thievery, class abilities, etc.)
• A meaningful benefit that reinforces class identity
• A flavorful drawback that creates tension and choices
• A built-in rumor or adventure hook to drop straight into your campaign

Why Class-Bound Magic?

Old-school fantasy always hinted that magic items had opinions. They were forged for saints, murderers, kings, and fools, not “any adventurer with the right slot.”

This book embraces that philosophy. Bard items push you toward risky performances, borrowed memories, haunting songs, and deals with stories that talk back. Cleric items embody sacrifice, doctrine, liturgy, and the cost of mercy. Druid items bloom, rot, weep sap, and sulk in blighted lands. Dwarven relics are carved from stone, fire, and ancestral grudges. Elven treasures shine with moonlight, sorrow, and impossible ages. Fighter tools reward courage at the front line and punish cowardice. Halfling items are clever, cozy, mischievous, and quietly powerful. Magic-User artifacts are volatile engines of knowledge and madness. Paladin relics literally hurt if you betray your code. Ranger gear smells like pine, blood, and cold night air. Thief tools are sly, treacherous, and full of “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Each collection makes its class feel more itself. Your Bard won’t just “have a magic cloak.” They’ll have the Cloak of Borrowed Stories that steals their memories when they lean too hard on it.

Magic That Actually Drives Story

Every item in this book is built to do something at the table besides fudge a die roll. You’ll see things like:

• A Bard’s cloak that grants bonus Lore and Parley rolls… at the cost of their own memories.
• A Cleric’s censer that buffs allies and burns undead… but makes the whole party easier to ambush afterward.
• A Druid’s staff that empowers nature… but falters and weeps sap in polluted lands.
• A Dwarven helm that sees in the dark… but blinds its wearer in daylight.
• A Paladin’s shield that lets you protect the weak twice per round… and bleeds you for the privilege.
• A Halfling teapot that heals and restores morale… but scalds you if used in anger.
• A Magic-User’s wand that echoes spells… but might stun you as the magic reverberates.
• A Thief’s rope that climbs itself… and occasionally decides you are what needs tying 

Rumors, Hooks, and Built-In Quests

Each item comes with a Rumor & Hook. This is a short, punchy text seed that you can drop straight into play. Things like:

• “Some say the Bard’s cloak still hides its original owner’s final memory, and he wants it back.”
• “The Paladin’s sword will not rest until it has slain a chaotic creature each day.”
• “The Druid’s staff was stolen from the roots of the First Tree. Some beings remember that theft.”
• “The Thief’s lockpicks opened the first vault ever sealed by mortal hands. That vault has never been found.”
• “The Halfling’s lantern might contain a gossiping firefly spirit that knows every scandal in town.”
• These aren’t just flavor lines. They’re adventure seeds. You can build side quests, full arcs, or entire campaigns around them.

Need tonight’s hook? Roll on a table of items your players already know. Let the rumor attached to that item drag them into something bigger.

Additional material includes: 

• 20+ pre-generated treasure hoards for use in your game
• Rules on vampires, mummies, and disease effects from monster attacks
• Called shots and effects
• Item damage and saving throws
• Expanded rules on building strongholds and hirelings
• A treatise on running small groups of players in an OSR campaign
• The often-requested stat and monster write-ups of the tentacled beasts from our art.
• Finally, the book contains additional City quests and encounters from the Elise area in the Lost Lands!

How It Plays at the Table

For Game Masters:

Drop these items via story, not random tables: in shrines, tombs, dueling grounds, guild halls, old battlefields, saintly graves, haunted theaters, and ruined courts.

• Make the drawback matter. If a Fighter’s cloak draws all missiles, enemies learn quickly. If a Magic-User’s item pings demons for miles, something might start hunting.
• Treat the rumors as promises. If the book says a staff came from the First Tree, decide where that tree is, who cares, and why the original owners might want it back.
• Reward creativity. These items are weird on purpose. Let players solve problems with them in clever, lateral ways.
• Clarifying rules. Additional rules make some of the most difficult-to-adjudicate issues (like giant rat bites and mummy rot) easy to include in your game.
• More monsters. 8 new tentacled horrors to terrify your players!

For Players:

This book gives you magic with personality. Your class doesn’t just hit harder; it feels more defined in the world. Bards who trade pieces of their past for legends. Clerics whose relics test their devotion constantly. Druids who feel sick in tainted lands. Fighters who literally become a mobile wall for their allies. Halflings who talk their way out of trouble over tea and pie. Magic-Users whose gear whispers in the night. Thieves whose tools pull stunts even they didn’t plan.

You will earn these relics. You will argue with them. You will pay for them, and you will remember them.

The additional rules provide clarity that has often been left out of OSR games, especially on how monster bites affect you, how to handle vampires with mirrors and silver holy symbols, and what happens if you smack a stone golem with a sword!

In the endgame, you can build a castle, hire retainers, and retire and rule your kingdom!

Why Back This?

If you’re already playing or planning to play The Necromancer’s Game or any other OSR fantasy game, then this is a book that:

• Speaks your system’s language
• Honors OSR sensibilities of high risk, high flavor, rulings over rules
• Makes every class feel mythic, flawed, dangerous, and interesting
• Gives GMs ready-made hooks and complications for months of play
• Ensures magic is never just “+1 more”

Join the Relic Hunt

Back this project and help bring this expansion to life for The Necromancer’s Game.

A Web of Mini-Adventures in a City

Set in the Lost Lands City of Elise, but easily transportable to any City in your campaign, these adventures range from:

• Murder mysteries with magical compulsions
• Smuggling rings and merchant sabotage
• Arcane accidents and forbidden research
• Haunted objects and fae bargains
• Sewer-born horrors and whispering skulls
• Supernatural events tied to Elise’s past
• Rival guild conspiracies
• Political maneuvers within the Tower
• Planar breaches, cursed tomes, and monstrous eggs
• Ancient artifacts hidden in mausoleums

Players may chase one rumor and discover it leads to a deeper plot. A strange humming object in the market may tie back to the library vault. A runaway guard with secret magic may reveal tensions between the Watch and the Wizard-Judges. A burned wagon may trace back to a smuggling cartel or magical sabotage by political rivals. And seemingly minor events, like a missing ledger or an odd clay jar, may pull the characters into a criminal underbelly or forgotten cult chambers.

This style of design means:

• You can drop adventures in anytime: between wilderness crawls, after a major quest, or as standalone sessions.
• You can run a city sandbox, letting players chase whatever rumors intrigue them.
• Or you can run an entire campaign set solely within the city, with escalating tensions, political consequences, and connected storylines.

Elise is built for months of urban intrigue, where every location has an encounter, every NPC has a goal, and every choice tips the balance.

Ten Complete Mini-Adventures (up to 25 if stretch goals are achieved)

This book includes 10+ fully playable mini-adventures, each with clear hooks, locations, clues, and NPCs, conflicts and twists, tactical notes, reputation consequences and rewards, and new lore.  Each of these is intended to take 1-3 hours (can be expanded into more) and is linked to the city and the nearby wilderness areas.

Each is written to be dropped into play as:

• A one-night side quest
• A strong narrative arc
• A lead-in to a larger campaign
• Or a story thread that grows over time

The adventures interconnect subtly, forming a cohesive tapestry of city intrigue.

Pledge Levels

We estimate the book to be 120+ pages full-color and will not increase the cost based on page count as stretch goals are achieved. We have already written another 40 pages of material for the stretch goals that have been edited and converted to both systems.

• PDF version is $22
• PDF and perfect-bound offset print softcovers are $35 each
• POD and PDF copies are available for $36 each

Stretch Goals and Add-Ons 

• $750-Funded!
• $2000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $3000-Add one mini adventure
• $4000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $5000-Add one mini adventure
• $6000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $7000-Add one mini adventure
• $8000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $9000-Add one mini adventure
• $10,000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $11,000-Add one mini adventure
• $12,000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $13,000-dd one mini adventure
• $14,000-Add ten treasure hoards
• $15,000-Add one mini adventure

Any add-ons will be added during BackerKit.

Backer Fulfillment

You will receive an email when the Backerkit site is ready, which will include a link to select your perks. Please note that this is separate from the Kickstarter survey. In Backerkit, you can choose your titles, systems, and add-ons, as well as verify your shipping information and pay for shipping, which is not included in your Kickstarter pledge.

At fulfillment, all Digital PDF files will be delivered via DriveThruRPG.

• You will need an existing customer account on DriveThruRPG.com to receive your digital PDF rewards. Using their site allows us to keep track of all reward options and ensures backers have long-term access to digital rewards.
• Your rewards will be added to your DTRPG account library.
• If you need assistance with your digital rewards, please email Customer Service at froggodgameswarehouse@gmail.com with your backer information.

NOTE: We release fulfillment emails and surveys in batches. Once fulfillment begins, we appreciate your patience, as it may take a few days to complete digital fulfillments for all backers.

Tariffs, Printers, and the Old-School Way

Alright, folks, time for a straight-up talk from behind the screen. As you know, we’ve run into a nasty little beast that no fireball can fix — a tariff on games printed and shipped from overseas.

Which means if we printed books overseas, we’d be paying over double the (quite large) print cost just to get the thing into the country. That’s just not sustainable — for you or for us!

So, here is what we are doing.

We’re using U.S.-based printers, using American-made paper, right here at home. We’ve worked with these shops before. They’re pros. Heck, they did all of our printing for several years. They deliver top-notch quality, and they are clean, sharp, and dependable. Now, yeah, it’ll cost more. And yeah, it’ll cut into our margins. But we’re ready to eat most of that difference if it means you don’t get stuck footing the bill.

Bottom line—we’re working hard to make this book (and its entire line) awesome, affordable, and in your hands without delay. We appreciate every one of you for supporting us in this difficult time in the industry.

We are not charging for shipping DURING the Kickstarter. As shipping costs have been fluctuating so much over the last few years, we are unable to accurately estimate what shipping will cost at this time. During Backerkit fulfillment, we will add shipping once we are certain of the weights and locations.

We usually strongly recommend that customers outside of the United States select a Print-on-Demand or Digital PDF reward level.  Print-on-Demand books will be available on DriveThruRPG after Backerkit is complete.

If you would like to receive the offset print physical books from Washington, international postage rates will be high (as is all international shipping, and it will be based on actual shipping rates at the time of shipment). This matches the rates charged by the U.S. Postal Service for international shipping plus packaging. If you would like a quote, message us at froggodgameswarehouse@gmail.com with your mailing address and reward tier you would like to pledge.

Import Duties, Tariffs, and Value-Added Taxes (VAT)

Furthermore, please be aware that your country may charge a Tariff, VAT tax, or other fees upon customer receipt. We have no control over this, either. We cannot fraudulently lie about the value of the materials we ship. We have considered not even selling books overseas due to the complaints about postage. That said, we have several long-term customers to whom we want to be able to get our stuff. But this postage stuff is not for the faint of heart. Due to the handling of our products when we mail them tens of thousands of miles, we have noted a significant increase in damage as well. One package sent overseas can cost $50, $70, or even $100 to reship. We discussed this internally after spending several thousand dollars in excess postage over the past year. While we take great care in packing, about 2% of our shipments are damaged en route. We decided that we would start double boxing overseas shipments, and also that we needed to charge insurance costs on the postal service. We will continue to honor our policy of 100% resending damaged books.

Replacements

No matter what we do, the post office seems to desire to drop, kick, throw, or even drive over some packages with trucks (yes, it has happened). In the unlikely event that you are one of the lucky folks and this happens to you, we will, of course, send you a new book. All you need to do is send photos of the damage in an email to froggodgameswarehouse@gmail.com so we can set you up with a replacement book. Please do not send multiple emails through different platforms, as it confuses the process and may cause a delay. 

We have a 100% delivery promise on our books. You are the reason we can make cool products, and your satisfaction matters to us.

Replacing damaged or missing books for backers outside of the United States may require an additional shipping charge.

Refunds

If, for some reason, you need a refund post-Kickstarter, we are happy to oblige, less platform fees that we pay to Kickstarter, Backerkit, and PayPal.