Shadowdark - Cursed Scroll Zine, Vol. 2: Red Sands

Above the Djurum, the sun hangs high and unforgiving. Below it, caravans pick their way between fragile oases, bandits watch from the ridgelines, and ras-godai assassin-sorcerers train in hidden monasteries among the canyons. Cursed Scroll 2: Red Sands carries this scorched, shimmering world to your Shadowdark table - or to any old-school fantasy system that calls for a desert.

Across 68 pages, you get a full expansion for the wastelands of the Djurum. The adventure Fortress of the Burning Brothers sends 4th- to 6th-level characters into a grim iron stronghold ruled by two warring efreet. Around it stretches a hex crawl rife with sandstorms, lost treasures and desert sorcerers, paired with rules for pit fighting, mounts, poisons and enduring wounds. Three new classes - desert rider, pit fighter and ras-godai - widen the table's choices, and fourteen new monsters wait for a wrong step. One of them is The Scourge, a mad dragon circling above the dunes.

Kelsey Dionne (Shadowdark RPG) keeps the tone tight and table-ready: everything is built to be used tonight.

Fill your waterskins.