Check out a 20 page preview of A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island.
Fewer than a hundred of the adventurers recruited to explore Hot Springs Island have made it back to us in one piece. However, every man and woman savvy enough to stay alive has returned with bags of treasure and a whole bard’s worth of stories. They spoke of steaming jungles filled with magical plants, lost ruins, ravenous creatures, and vengeful, feuding factions. We compiled their firsthand accounts, polished them off with a bit of wild assumption, and wrote it all down in this book—A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island—for people just like you.
Now, if you’re wondering why we’re giving you something so useful for so cheap, that’s good. Questions like that are why we picked you. Our angle is simple: The more you know about the island, the longer you stay alive. The longer you stay alive, the richer you’re going to get, and the richer you get, the richer we get because the guild always gets its cut. How rich can you get? Well, so far there have been ten fine fellows who have paid off all their bounties on the mainland and retired in as little as six months, and there’s at least one ex-marine who went on to buy herself a nice little kingdom in the Red Hills.
If you’re worried you’ll be at a disadvantage because you’re not clever enough to read, don’t be. There are drawings of every creature we know about, so you can flip through this guide and match our picture with whatever’s currently eating your companion. Then again, even if you can read, many of the things encountered here on Hot Springs have not been recorded elsewhere (that we know of), so the names of places and creatures have emerged over time. We’ve done our best to reference everything by its most popular name, but for every name we’ve written down, there are probably three others that didn’t make the cut.
Discoveries are being made daily here on Hot Springs Island, and if you find something new, or uncover something really old—especially if you see an ally die to it—let your guild representative know. We always pay handsomely for good information.
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240 pages. Fully illustrated. Contains 2 short stories, entries for 24 different magical and mundane plants, 34 monsters native to Hot Springs Island, and details about the 6 factions that can be found there.
The Field Guide is written "in character" for the world, and is an in game object. Players are encouraged to reference it at the table as it contains plenty of hooks and reasons to travel through the Hot Springs Island sandbox.
The Dark of Hot Springs Island is a companion book to the Field Guide, and contains everything a Game Master needs to run a game there (except stats) in the system of their choice.
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Ordering a physical copy of A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island will also get you a PDF of the book
11 Reviews Hide Reviews Show Reviews
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This was AWESOME.
Love this game!
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Interesting Addition
This is a great addendum to The Dark of Hot Springs Island, but the GM/DM should be careful before giving this to the players. That's the only piece that may need to be considered with this excellent product.
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A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island
Fantastic, in-character piece, that can serve as an excellent in-game artifact for your characters to find, buy or steal. I decided to hit this book first before looking through the Dark, and I'm pleased I did, it sets you up with the realization of what you will and will not be telling your players, which is a nice effect if you plan to run this. The book does all the heavy lifting of rumors for the perspective DM or referee. You set your players up nicely with some misleads, tons of hooks and as the reviewer Questing Beast pointed out in his youtube review, an enticing mini-game of sorts in trying to fill-in the blanks in the book. (I don't recommend you actually let your players write in this treasure)! Physically the book is as gorgeous as its companion work the Dark of Hot Springs Island. Well made, stitched bound, and unlike the DM book this one has a ribbon. I cannot recommend Hot Springs enough. Great system agnostic adventure that I am looking forward to running my players through.
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Oustanding quality
If you're a GM or happen to know one, I highly recommend getting at least one copy of this book and one of the Dark of Hot Springs Island. If you're a player and your GM is running Hot Springs Island, you should get a copy, too! The quality in the worldbuilding & storytelling tools/content is top-notch and the physical books themselves are beautifully well-made. The artwork is devastatingly cool. The creators are incredibly supportive of the community they've built and they're constantly churning out more and more excellent content. In my five years of tabletop gaming, this creator & RPG are my favorite and it's not even close.
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Awesome supplement or on it's own
This books is a great supplement to The Dark of Hot Springs Island. Perfect as an in world handout for the players. But even on its own it's a work of art. The writing and art draw you into the world and it looks great on the shelf. Highly recommended.
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great to just read
It's beautiful. Great content. Gorgeous on the bookshelf. A++
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Hot Springs is a spicy island
Not just a great companion to Hot Springs, the Field Guide is a cool book on it's own. Top quality, and interesting throughout. Of course the artwork is stunning.
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A marvelous supplement.
This book is a delightful in-universe supplement to a Hot Springs Island campaign. The quality of the printing is honestly a lot higher than I had expected. The only critique I could give about this book is that it's in some ways a bit too nice. I feel like I should take some sandpaper and mud to it to rough it up and make it look like it's been dragged through a jungle.
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Really cool book!
I bought this book on a whim and I was not disappointed! The cover of the book is really sturdy and very cool. The book itself is a fun read, not really what i expected but still cool with the journal entries and such. I plan on just reading this book just to read, not for the setting it takes place, but if you do this book is a great companion for players to read through!