This isn't actually the cover for this product; this is the cover for the pdf version of this product which was sold from the Team Frog store. The actual product basically looks like a comic book and has a red banner at the top that says:
And at the bottom:Requires the Dungeons & Dragons (R) Player's Handbook, Published by Wizards of the Coast (R) for use.
Which is as good a place as anywhere to begin the explanation: this is a book by Stuart & Brian Burke, known as the Brothers Grinn. These guys are perhaps best known as furry artists with a penchant for funny softcore well-endowed characters (male and female), and many references/much lampooning of science fiction and fantasy, often mixed together in a light-hearted but dirty-minded setting. Of course, they don't just do porn (and these days it's mainly Brian, the artist, who goes by the handle Drake Fenwick on DeviantArt and FurAffinity and whereever else). The Brothers Grinn have for example had a long-running feature in the back of Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine, mostly lampooning the non-D&D adventures of the main characters. Brian Burke has also lent some of his art to the Munchkin game. They've also occasionally dabbled in trying to get their comics, well, printed.A sourcebook for Fantasy Games. Due to mature content, this bok is recommended for players 13 and up.
They had two main goes at this, the first was Supermegatopia, a furry superhero setting with characters like Weasel Boy, Buxom Lass (a power girl expy whose bust increases as she absorbs energy), etc. The second was a generic D&D-ish setting about a thief with bad luck called Crushed. Both of these settings have had a couple of issues published - most lately by Angry Viking Press - but never seem to become "ongoing series."
(Yes, I have all the single issues. I like the Brothers Grinn. Shut up.)
Little kitty-girl go squish.
Anyway, around 2001 the Brothers Grinn and Team Frog/Rising Force got together and created a pair of d20 products for these settings, with Michael Nunn providing production and layout (according to the credits).
So yeah, this is kinda-sorta a joke sourcebook...in the way that DorkTower publishing a Kobold d20 supplement was a joke. Or that Randy Milholland stat'd out the Redneck Tree. Which is to say that third-party half-assed homebrew content was basically indistinguishable from a lot of the actual stuff that Wizards of the Coast (and its various licensees like Margaret Weis Productions) were making, and holy shit people were charging money for this. It was the D20 boom, and this "sourcebook" is 32 pages, printed as a black and white comic, and retailed for $8.95.
Amazing.
The book begins with "Introduction of Doom!", which is the opening story of the Crushed comic book. It's available to browse for free online, so go read it at your leisure.
Done? Good. Long story short: int he middle of the quiet city of Char-Mon is the Temple of Infinite Lives. When adventures in the realm die, they reappear moments later at the temple naked but resurrected. They lose their loot but keep their lives. Yay.
A bit like respawning in Worlds of Warcraft, which is another Brothers Grinn favorite - which you know if you've ever read "By Way of Booty Bay." If you actually read the Crushed comic, the goal of the Big Bad villain is to destroy the temple, thus putting the (actually easily-killed) PCs on the same footing as the monsters and NPCs of the setting.
The book is, basically, a light-hearted gazetteer of adventuring in the world of Crushed. This starts off with a survey of the Temple of Infinite Lives at Char-Mon; the names of the top gods in the setting, and how the temple works. Basically, it's a reset button: the PCs lose the gear they were carrying (including and particularly clothes). Whether they keep their XP depends on whether or not they died "heroically," die like a Klingon and you don't lose anything, "croak while running from the town guard after pillaging the local orphanage" and you lose all experience gained since your last level.It is a world of pain!
They also tend to pick up a phobia related to their first death (Fire bad!), and Mister Cavern is allowed (nay, sometimes encouraged) to heap on other penalties for "frequent flyers." Their dead body remains where it lay when they died, if nobody else has moved it in the meantime.
Next up is the comic "Signed Fur, Torn Flesh, and Zombie Party Games!", which basically takes the place of an introductory "how do I play Crushed!" section. Or, for rabid completionists, a Crushed! comic that isn't printed anywhere else. Crushed and her party go to loot an ancient evil tome from an old mansion.Here is the one hard and fast rule in this book: Whatever is funny or silly or stupid, that is the way to go in any situation.
Oh what a wacky game this should be!
(Did I really just say that? Oh Lord, I need a drink...)
Then we get NPC stats for the main characters in Crushed, including:
Crushed Dume (Female Cat, Rogue 4)
Red Stephie (Female Dog, Rogue 1/Wizard 3)
Knaw (Female Rat, Rogue 5/Assassin 1)
Purity Meadows (Female Bear, Cleric 3)
With character portraits. I'm glad they included the races because aside from ears and tails the girls all look like slightly fuzzy and well-endowed humans.
Non-Crushed comparison: their take on The Mighty Endowed.
Then we have a nice, rather generic two-page spread of a map of the fantasy world. Could probably use a few more "Pits of Eternal Darkness" and "Tower of the Necromancer," but it's not terrible. This is followed by layout of what I presume to be the mansion from the comic, complete with "Red Button?" and "Wall of Erotic Engravings" and "Odd Giant Statue" notations.
An Assortment of Fancy New Spells
This is followed by a selection of new and very silly spells, including Rain of Fish, Theme Music (the Evil version is "Porno Music"), Dramatic Storm, Metal to Mutton, and "David Caruso's Career Move."
A Bunch of Shiney New Magic Items"David Caruso's Career Move"
Enchantment (see text)
Level: Brd 5 Sor/Wiz 6
Components: V
Range: Short
Effect: See Text
Duration: One Combat Round
Saving Throw: N/A
Spell resistance: No
Named after a great warrior from the past, this spell has the potential to either help the group immensely or screw them over forever. The spell is cast upon any stat, skill, feat, ability or effect a character has *such as the bonus on a magical sword, etc.). It doubles the effect for one combat round (so a +4 sword will become +8, etc.) If the use of that item is successful that round, the bonus is permanent. If the use is not successful, the bonus goes away and their original stat is cut in half permanently (rounded down) (which means that the sword above would have its bonus cut to +2). This spell can only be cast on a given person once ever.
This is followed up by some magic items, such as the Boots of Love ("Nice boots wanna fuck?"), the Ring of the Squirrelly ("Created on a drunken bet, this brass band is imbued with the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a hyperactive common squirrel."), etc.
Off To The Races, Or I Wanna Be A Cat Girl...Or At Least Play One
The example race is, of course, Frog Ninja.All the characters in the world of Crushed are humanoid anthropomorphic. That means they are cats or dogs or other non-humanoid creatures, which have human features and walk up right on two legs. All of these creatures should be treated like any standard race, with hit dice appropriate to their class. Most of these creatures gain little or no racial bonuses for being their base race other than appearance. There are notable exceptions. Bears for example could get a bonus to strength, cats could have a bonus to Dex. We would be unable to cover every possible race here so we will create one new race as an example. In the future additional races may be covered on the Team Frog website.
Leaving aside the inherent silliness of playing a furry anthromorphic humanoid, and the sheer laziness of not giving out at least some basic guidelines for racial abilities, I have to say this isn't the worst way I've heard about doing it. I mean, it's better than having convoluted entries for every fucking critter or whatever JadeClaw does. You're basically trading your extra human feat and skill points to be the furry of your choice, with total freedom to decide what that means for your character's appearance and biology - magical tea party, sure, but if you've got one bastard at the table that refuses to play unless he's literally hung like a horse, at least it's a swift solution to shut him the fuck up and move on to the game.
Scary new Monsters
New criters. Dregs are CR8 unstable golems created from a mishmash of whatever the fuck was available; Spitters are small acid-spitting goblin-substitutes designed to clear vermin out of dungeons; Graplings are critters that begin life as little marble-like balls that expand into small vivacious critters when exposed to liquid...sort of like gremlins, only they only "live" for an hour before turning to dust.
C'mon, it's a little funny.
The Inferno Rock
This is an introductory module, of sorts. You're down at a pub when an elderly woodcutter comes in with a tale of magic and treasure and a map. The map leads to the dilapidated mansion mentioned in the comic and illustrated with a floorplan several pages ago, although it doesn't tell you this outright. No idea what the nominal level of this thing is supposed to be, since Rule of Funny applies, but it includes all the monsters and magic items in the book, so I'd say levels 4-6. Highlights include the Potion of Sexiness ("Potion of Sexiness causes the user to become very attractive (sexy) to members of the opposite sex, effect is +1d6 CHR."), the Brandy Goblet of Ultimate Intoxication ("anything poured in get +100 to proof"), Dire Hamsters ("Use stats for Dire Rats, but just make them sound so much cuter.")
Actually, you could probably use Crushed & crew as pre-generated PCs and have fun running running this as a beer & pretzels night game. Which is, really, what this is all about: the kind of silliness reminiscent of the more ludicrous oD&D and AD&D products, often lacking in the "serious" gaming products of today.
As a basic concept, the Temple of Infinite Lives is...well, pretty hand-wavy. The gods smile on you, death is cheap, try and make it back to your corpse before someone loots your stuff. It doesn't deal with the complexities of religion or the afterlife or how this works with resurrection or reincarnation spells, the animal humanoid races don't give you any serious guidelines for creating your favorite cat-taur critter or any of that shit...
I failed my saving throw to resist posting this.
...but at the end of the day, it's a bunch of silly items and a couple fun concepts you can run with...or not. Honestly, I wouldn't have put this out at a $9 + shipping "sourcebook," because honestly there's very little material in here and 6/32 pages are just comics, but I can't really be upset about it because...well...I can't imagine they made much money at it. I mean, certainly there were no sequels or supplements. It was really just a bit of fun. You could do this kind of thing back during the D20 boom and people just rolled with it; they just did not (for the most part) buy it - and why would you? There's more raw material in any issue of Dragon or Dungeon magazine, with higher quality paper and maps for less money. Which was true of a lot of indie d20 material back in the day, and is part of the reason the d20 boom became a d20 bust - the market was saturated with this crap and a lot of it just didn't sell...and not just the unofficial stuff, either. You had a lot of early D&D 3 "noncritical" products that just didn't shift.
Case in point.
So yeah, it's a little joke-supplement, and I bought it for the comics because I'm a rabid completionist. What the hell.
Page 32, the last page in the book, reprints the Open Game License Version 1.0. And has a shot of Crushed's ass. Which is about as perfect an end to this book as you can imagine.
