Savage_ScreenMonkey's page

Hi I'm Jason Wiebe host of the Dungeon Plunger Podcast. I interviewed author Greg Vaughan for the show and we talked about his love of Pathfinder 1, all the games he's currently running and his work on the Old Dungeon Magazines, Paizo Adventure Paths and his mega tome The Slumbering Tsar for Frog God Games.

Here's the link to the Podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/the-dungeon-plunger/2254155

Here's the link to the YouTube version: https://youtu.be/FJZnBqJg_Bw?si=Mbi4KWeWUmJYovcE

Hi everybody, not sure if this is allowed so I apologize in advance but I host a podcast and YouTube channel called The Dungeon Plunger podcast. I talk about how to become a better GM and general roleplaying stuff. My most recent episode is an interview with Jason Bulmahn on Hellfinder. I posted the links below.

YouTube:https://youtu.be/KIn-IB4AsPo?si=hLCMx1EbQappopm8

Podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/the-dungeon-plunger/2113041/

If it is still available I would love to see a copy of the STAP conversion documents as well. My email is jason.c.wiebe@gmail.com

Hey James! I'm super stoked about the Sandpoint, Light of the Lost Coast source book. I had a few questions regarding it and the Midnight Milk Campaign:

1) Where did the clockwork bird that Vorvashali come from and how did it get separated into pieces and its parts get so spread out?

2) Am I correct in assuming that the platinum key etched with the sihedron rune Ilsoari has is meant to open a rekinned Maure Castle levels in the Pit?

3) Im confused by the connection between the Red Bishop and Uvaglor. If the Red Bishop is a priest of Pazuzu then why is it trying to attract Uvalgor?

4) What's Uvaglor's plane in the abyss called? Is he presently there or on Golarion somewhere?

5) What's Lamashtu and Pazuzu's plan in the Sandpoint area, and how does Uvaglor fit in? Is he an independent entity or is he aligned with one or both of them?

6) On page 65 of Sandpoint, LotLC it states that Rifza's body is in the Temple to Pazuzu under Chopper's Isle. How did it get there if the PC's had to first dig up an entrance into the complex?

7) Where does the tunnel that Kanker uses to visit Pillbug connect in The Pit? Similarly, where is the the connection from the Gremlins to Valdemar Manor?

8) in an earlier post you stated that there are other Dream Lens, where are they?

9) What sources can I use to detail the city of Umberweb? There seems to be almost no info on this place.

Thanks in advance and great job on such an amazing book. It has reignited my love for the Pathfinder setting and I am planning a new campaign as we speak.

All I can say is that I had one in my last campaign and he was clearly over powered when compared to the rest of the party. Now I cant say for sure why this was because the guy never actually gave me a copy of his character to look at. So it could be we were doing it wrong. Also I would add that he did say he had found a forum explaining how to optimize this class and that he took full advantage of that. Either way the next time I let someone play this class I will be much harder on them in terms of what they can and can not take. In the end though I feel as if I dropped the ball as the DM. I should have been a lot tighter with what the player was doing. By the end I did just want to see his character blown to smithereens. In fact that was exactly how the campaign ended!

Good to hear that your campaign is still going on strongly. I ll try to get chance to get back to your journal soon.

My campaign will have the 5th session soon and we will probably make it to Thistletop. I have enjoyed the campaign greatly and have been adding whole lot additional details and roleplaying encounters. Sadly the PC journal hasnt progressed much and I will loose one player at least partially. The remaining three players will get chance to add second PC (this is how we have played our homebrew campaign for years). Lots of fun to come!

Thanks Laerlorn, its nice to know that I'm not the only one whose campaign is dragging its feet a little. Good luck to your players at Thistletop, the thistle patch was a little tough for my players.

So after a little bit of a break, the shenanigins continue. We are now at session 8. The Company of the Hunt has just begun the Skinsaw Murders. Check out that and the rest of my blog here.

Heres a link to some variant monsters I made on the these message boards.

I never got to run this AP in the end. One day, one day it will be mine. Oh yes it will be mine.

I wrote this a looong time ago. I dont know if I still have the file but I will look around for it. If it does still exist it would be need to be converted to the PFRPG rules, if thats the rule set your using. It probably has a lot of mistakes in it since it needed to be looked over and edited again. The biggest thing is finding a place to host it. I really have no desire of having to constantly email it to intrested parties or of having WotC come down on my ass with a C&D order. I'll post again if I find it or not.

Hmm,I like the aid another idea. Simple and gives the character a better chance of escaping without making it too easy.Thanks I talk it over with my group.

Session 6 is now posted on my blog. Click the link above.

My guess is that the fast xp progression would be the expected progression for the AP's prior to the publication of the PFRPG.

But thats is a good question.

I've been thinking about creating an additional house rule for grappling, and I would like to get some advice or suggestions on what the community thinks about it before I actually implement it in my PFRPG campaign, if at all.

The rule is this:

Whenever a creature is grappling a target and takes damage it must immediately roll a combat maneuver check to maintain the grapple.

I’m also considering that the grappling creature must make this roll with a penalty equal to the damage it takes, or possibly some flat penalty like a standard –4. Should I bother with a penalty at all?

In addition I was thinking that any creature immune to feeling pain is not subject to this effect.

The goal is to make grappling less of a threat to characters, as I feel grappling seems to still be a tough situation to deal with.

So how does that sound?

Thanks DmRrostarr, I'll check that link out.

Yeah silly me, I forgot to mention I got those as well!

Savage_ScreenMonkey wrote:

So my characters are behind a level. Currently they are assaulting the Thistletop goblin fort, and I have a feeling that they will only make it to level 3 by the end of it.

The Skinsaw Murders says its for 4th level characters so I was thinking of running a short side adventure to advance them a level.I wanted to get some advice on what might be some good published adventures from either Dungeon, Pathfinder, or some other source I could adapt with little work to fit the AP.

Thanks!

How about a Sandpoint Devil sidequest? There are a number of things you can do. Perhaps a rival group of hunters or adventurers might give your group some problems as well.

Thanks for the response Professor. While the Sandpoint Devil is a good thought, and it is something that I'd like to use later on, its a CR 8 monster. So a little beyound group character capabilities right now.

What I'm really looking for is something published, and in the range for 3rd level characters. That way I only need to do minor conversions to the PFRPG rules, and not spend to much time adapting the fluff to fit the Golarion setting.

My group and I love these mini's! So please, please continue the line! You can be certain that this DM will be picking them up as they become available. Our group is almost finished Burnt Offerings so the timing for this set is perfect. I cant wait to see some giant paper mini's!

So my characters are behind a level. Currently they are assaulting the Thistletop goblin fort, and I have a feeling that they will only make it to level 3 by the end of it.

The Skinsaw Murders says its for 4th level characters so I was thinking of running a short side adventure to advance them a level.I wanted to get some advice on what might be some good published adventures from either Dungeon, Pathfinder, or some other source I could adapt with little work to fit the AP.

Thanks!

Session 5 of my RotRl campaign journal is now posted on my blog Zombie World.

I look forward to any comments or feedback any one has to offer.

Enjoy!

Savage_ScreenMonkey wrote:

How have you simplified acrobatics and tumbling rules?

-one Acrobatics (tumble) roll per move action (not per threatened squares and again per threatening targets)

-whole movement is done with half speed (unless the tumblieer [is that a word?] wants to rise the DC for greater movement speed)
-the single roll counters threatening enemies CMD separately (either none or all enemies gain chance for AoO, unless the enemies have varying CMD:s)

I am not making actual campaign journal. Instead, I am feeding my players clues and NPC:s info in forums. I have suggested that players should be doing the actual journal themselves, and it has had a promising start. It is nice to read the PC:s side of things written (for a change!).

Cool.

I know what you mean about getting the players perspectives on what they perceive as what happens in the campaign. The subtle differences can speak volumes sometimes.

Its a good read, it sounds similar to mine.

I had the problem that none of my group wanted to keep a journal, and knowing them, they'd quickly forget what they were supposed to be doing and why. NPC names would be instantly forgotten.

So I did it, but we're halfway through the campaign and the webspace I had it stored on is no longer available, so I've lost the lot. It might not be so bad as the second half of the campaign is a bit more focused.

Cool, and thanks for reading it. We play again hopefully in two weeks so you can expect another up date around then. In the mean time you can read my other posts on whatever strikes my fancy.

Thank you for sharing the journal. It was interesting thing to be read.

I am myself DM:ing RotR as my first campaign. After 2 sessions we are about in same stage with your group. Sadly my notes are written in Finnish, so no use sharing em here. I used my GM powers to promote the melee threat and iniative with some houserules:
-no AoO free 5 foot steps
-simplified acrobatics & tumbling rules
-Casting Defencively DC will go +2 up per threatening opponent after the first

I started with maximum hitpoints (10+Con mod.) at level 1. Few of the PC:s decide to take Toughness feat for additional hitpoints. Goblins have have had hard time hitting em (AC:s between 12-20), so I dont feel any HitPoint bumb would have been needed. The group has also pretty limited healing, I think they will need to sweat a little in coming battles.

I may have over boosted the PCs hit points a little, but Im pretty sure that things will quickly even out in the long run.

Im glad you found it a good read.

How have you simplified acrobatics and tumbling rules?

I have started blogging about my Pathfinder RPG, RotRL campaign. So far we are three sessions into Burnt Offerings, with the PC's having just entered into the Catacombs of Wrath. In addition to logging what happens in the campaign I give a little DM overview of my thoughts on the game and about the homebrew rules Im using and how they seem to be working. If your interested you can find find my blog here: http://zombiecowboy.type-100.com/

I look forward to reading and responding to any comments and suggestions anyone has about the campaign or any thing else I blog about.

Wow!

That sounds great! Excellent job on the campaign, it sounds like you and your group are having a great time.

Allot of what your talking about in terms of monsters, reskinning and the lowering or raising of levels is excatly what I'd liked to try to do as well.

In my Underdark campaign http://theheroesofhollowearth.wikidot.com/ I have been doing the same thineg you have and printing out all my monsters on one page. Everything is neat and organized.

Keep us informed how things progress!

FYI, my 4e Eberron STAP campaign is now getting near the end of "Tides of Dread", with the PC's just getting the last bits of preparation completed before the invasion of Farshore. If anyone's interested in any details, I'm happy to share here (or anywhere else - I haven't really found a better place to share!)

How you been doing Hastur? My conversion work took a breif hiatus for a few months but Im back to work on my conversion. Id love to hear the low down on your own STAP campaign!

This is a big thread!Wait...that sounded a little dirty...

I just picked up my Bestiary about an hour ago and I have to say great job Paizo! If you guys know how to do one thing wicked good its AP's, but a very close second is how you guys do monsters!Thanks for all the hard work! I look forward to future installements in the series. In particular I hope to see a fully Golarionized version of the Tome of Horrors.

While not the same, I feel as if gugs sort of filled the role of fomorians. Granted there are diffrences, but I think the gugs are much cooler than fomorians anyday.

If your interested in 4e Ive started my own conversion blog here at The Chronicles of Abysm.

Seems pragmatic and sensible response re Greyhawk.

OK, here come some numbers which may or may not appal you with the sheer gaminess.

If you are looking for 2.5 levels and you use quests/higher level encounters/something else to reduce to 20 encounters it's still not that easy. Stewart Perkins’ excellent overview ended up with not enough “heroic” encounters, and he only had 14 encounters for the first section.

Some of the stuff in the other “conversion of STAP to 4E” thread is really helpful.

** spoiler omitted **...

Well as I see it I have about 20 actual encounters. This includes combat, skill challenges, and a puzzle. Then if you add in the 5 minor quests and the major quests of the adventure that makes 2 more XP rewards for a total of 22. This should bring the PC's over 3rd level by the end of the adventure which roughly hits the goal Im looking for. Ideally I would like to add in some more skill challenges somehow. Addtionally, Some of the encounter areas like parrot island and the theives guidhall could be padded out with a few more encounters. This would make it a solid 3.5 levels. From what I saw in the AP in 3.5 typically the low level adventures had more encounters and as the adventures reached higher levels the encounters became fewer.So I think things mat balance out in the end.

As far as the encounters go themselves, I feel that this is where allot of judgment calls need to be made to try and present a encounter as its expected in 4e, but at the same time balance that with what the original intention of the encounter was in 3.5.

Well then, I'm happy to share my initial thoughts as long as you are absolutely clear that they are only my thoughts, that I would be personally insulted if you didn't throw at least 90% aside as not being suitable for your campaign/players, and with an apology before I even start for being a bit left brained and obsessed with numbers...

Hokay, first off, the choice of campaign setting and the decision to convert Greyhawk to 4th ed AT THE SAME TIME as the adventure path. You are clearly a dedicated purist, and if you will actually have enough time to do this than massive respect to you. I don't think it's completely necessary (unless you want to do it for your campaign, obviously). I worked on the first four scenarios to 3.5 Iron Kingdoms with little difficulty and that's a quite different setting.

Sticking with Forgotten Realms is easy and (virtually) the generic option - most DMs are used to converting away from this. I do understand your anxieties about the big changes in FR, but given the new magic system/character classes/races etc, etc you would have to come up with some pretty big changes to Greyhawk to explain them. Now, what has been done with FR is (understandably) stressful to us fanboys, if you don't like it and would like to come up with some more personal changes to Greyhawk, that's AOK. Or you can just let Wizards take the heat for RUNING TEH FORGTTEN REALMS WAT WERE TEHY THINKING ILL NEVER PLAY D&D AGAIN!!!!?!, and use what they have already done:-)

Well the more I look at it, the more it seems to me that I dont need to worry to much about making actual big changes to Greyhawk.Because the STAP is not centered on Greyhawk lore as AoW is it means I can ignore allot of stuff. In terms of actual conversion work Im also thinking of taking the path of least resistance. Meaning Im mostly going to try and figure out the easyist way of looking at things that still fits the flavour of 4e.

Hi Andrew

I have no problem discussing stuff here. Honestly I look forward to any kind of discussion that leads to a better conversion. In part I was hoping that the blog was going to help organize my thoughts about the conversion work,and allow others to share their thoughts and possibly providing me with an alternative solution or diffrent way of looking at how to go about doing the actual conversion work, and lastly help keep me motivated to see this huge project through.

Hey Scott,
I really love your site! Its beautiful and well organized. Additionally your conversion pdfs are of the same high quality. I was wondering if you could give me some pointers or direct me towards the appropriate sites that would enable me to format my own site and/or documents once I get to that point. For instance how can I get my own unique bullets like the arrows on you site or the nifty flower ones used on Craig’s blog Under a Wanderin' Star? I’m not really a tech savvy person but recently I’ve been trying to learn about how to efficiently and properly use the tools at my disposal for blogging and wiki’s. I’ve also never used and don’t really understand how the document-sharing site you use works but would like to know more. Anyway I don’t want to take up too much of your time but if you feel up to it you and you would like to you can email me at zombiecowboy@hotmail.com.

Cool Hastur!

You have some good ideas there. Your thoughts parallel a lot of mine in terms of issues about converting Greyhawk to 4e. I plan on addressing this issue in an upcoming blog post so I don’t want to go into to much detail now but here’s my thoughts as it stands now:

Concerning the STAP as you’ve stated isn’t strongly tied to Greyhawk, and more material is now available, which makes the conversions minimal for myself and actually encouraged me to go the distance and do the work and thus also allowed me to use more of the handouts and pictures (mostly the maps) from the magazines. As I see it there are three areas of concern that need to be addressed: Races, Deities, and the Planes. I was also thinking it would be cool to allow PC’s to have Dragonmarks or Spellscars (I’m not sure how different these two are from each other so it may be just one or the other).

I’ve been considering that the Spellplague was not an isolated incident and that it also affected Greyhawk through not to the extent that the FR was. Even if it was its not something that I would spend much time detailing. I was also considering advancing time 50 – 100 years but I’m not even sure if that’s needed.

Anyway stay tuned to my blog and I will discuss this topic more, as this is a many faceted topic.

Savage_ScreenMonkey wrote:

Im cross posting this from the section on 4e.

Theres some good stuff on this thread.Particularly by Stewart Perkins.Using some of this material I decided to start a 4e conversion blog for STAP.

My blog was inspired by Scott Betts 4e Rise of the Runelords Tales from the Rusty Dragon Blog.

Theres not much content there yet, but I hope to fix that soon. I look forward to any comments or critisims anyone may have about my posts or conversions.

You can find my blog The Chronicles of Abysm here.

Cool, Good luck. I hope you eventually get a chance to make a compiled documents similar to the ones Scott makes when he finishes a section. Those really show off the conversions and make running the adventure for anyone that wants to a snap. Not that there is anything wrong with a Blog, its a great way to do the adventure in chunks but a good looking final product is a good looking final product after all.

I hadnt considered that, but it stands to reason that a compiled document would be helpful to everyone who decides that they want to use the material for their own game.

I'll be following the project closely!

Cool!

Youve done an excellent job, hopefully I can pull this off as well as you have.

So far, whenever I consider converting a 3.5e adventure to 4e, I usually multiply the 3.5e encounter level by 1.5 to get the equivalent 4e encounter level. I noticed this actually puts a number of creatures in the 4e monster manual pretty close to where they need to be for the conversion.

So an EL 12 becomes an EL 18 for 4e, etc.

Watch out for the differing formulas between the editions though. In 3.5e, a single CR 5 is an EL 5 encounter. In 4e, an EL 5 encounter is FIVE level 5 creatures (or 4 if you only have 4 PCs).

Good luck in your endeavor!

Since 4e has a slightly faster leveling curve, you might get the 2.5 level gain per adventure that you need.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind as I go along. This is my first real blog /conversion so well see how things progress.

Im cross posting this from the section on 4e.

Theres some good stuff on this thread.Particularly by Stewart Perkins.Using some of this material I decided to start a 4e conversion blog for STAP.

My blog was inspired by Scott Betts 4e Rise of the Runelords Tales from the Rusty Dragon Blog.

Theres not much content there yet, but I hope to fix that soon. I look forward to any comments or critisims anyone may have about my posts or conversions.

You can find my blog The Chronicles of Abysm here.

After doing a search for conversion notes for Savage Tides and coming to the conclusion that there was very little to go on, I decided to start a 4e conversion blog for STAP.

My blog was inspired by Scott Betts 4e Rise of the Runelords Tales from the Rusty Dragon Blog.

Theres not much content there yet, but I hope to fix that soon. I look forward to any comments or critisims anyone may have about my posts or conversions.

You can find my blog The Chronicles of Abysm here.

Thers a new thread discussing RotRL set in Greyhawk here.

I actually think I came up with a cool idea for really grounding the campaign in Greyhawk! So check it out if your interested.

Im glad to hear your excited PoB. In many ways tweaking the APs can be almost as much fun as world building, or even running them.

Its weird I tried searching myself and couldnt find anything. I know that this was discussed before so maybe it has been erased for some reason.

In this thread there is some discussion about adapting the three Pathfinder AP's to Greyhawk

Peruhain of Brithondy wrote:
"You could set the Runelords up as a cabal of Suel mages, perhaps closely involved in the Twin Cataclysms. That would work out quite nicely, with the Sea of Dust (former Suel Empire) right on the other side of the Crystalmists."

This idea could be used even if the action takes place in another area. For instance what if you changed the Runelords around a little and made them members of the Maure family. Now you could add connections to Maure Castle. In addition think about what it would mean if you changed the the Sihedron rune to the 8 pointed star symbol of the Seekers organization.

Thats all I got for now.

If I was to run RotRL in Greyhawk I would totally place it in Sterich. Im pretty sure if you do a search you can dig up an old post from here that discusses this a little more.

I wonder how well the filters would work if you decided to start cursing in dutch. That would be cool.

Savage_ScreenMonkey wrote:

As for Rise of the Runelords I totally would set it in Sterich. Magnimar would be Istivin, and I would totally run the Dungeon adventure Istivin trilogy arc as part of it.

And "Headless" as well!

For Sure! Theres alot of possibilities with that one.

I think that if your going to go that route then I would swap out the orcs for yuan-ti. Or even say tribes of lizard folk, though I think snake dudes would be more fun.

I liked this proposal from the begining and I like it even more now!

I guess thats the real catch with trying to fit Pathfinder stuff in the WoG. It can be done, it just depends on how messy you want to get with the conversion work.

I guess if I was going to run CotCT in the WoG I would take the path of least resistance. Thus I would try and set it in an area with the least amount of detail and then just fill in all that white space if you will with the AP.

Inevitably tho you will have to make some changes in order to complete the AP. I find that the Pathfinder APs are more tied to the campaign setting than the previous Dungeon APs were.

As for Rise of the Runelords I totally would set it in Sterich. Magnimar would be Istivin, and I would totally run the Dungeon adventure Istivin trilogy arc as part of it.

For Second Darkness Im not as sure what I would do but I could totally see the Dim Forest in Geoff making a good replacment for Celwynvian and the forest its in. Riddleport could be located near or in the Hold of the Sea Princes.

I think part of me really has a soft spot for the Sheldomar valley area.

A really cool way of using the Octychs in the campaign could be if say Kyuss manageges to win and the Age of Worms actually comes to pass. Either as a continuation of the AP or as a new campaign altogether the PC's need to hunt down all the Octychs in order to finally defeat Kyuss for good.

The campaign would involve finding the Octychs, traveling to strange places and deadly dungeons. They would be constantly at odds with various factions competing for the Octychs themselves for lots of diffrent reasons some good and some bad.

That would be wicked cool.

Dude I think you have the bases covered pretty well.

I love the idea of a branch of Hextorians called the Order of the Nail. It totally fits and really gives some detail that makes worshipers of Hextor seem cool and not so plain.

I think the Red Mantis could be a heretical splinter group of the SB. This way you could allow players to be SB characters whose mission in addition to regaining SB control of the city is to crush this up start order.

I think in order to keep things as simple as possible I would leave Vudra and the Rakshasa's the way they are. Like you mentioned having Vudra be across the Solnor Ocean and off the map if you will.

The only really tricky situation I see is the Shoanti and the Cinderlands portion of the adventure. I don’t really know enough about this area and in particular the barbarian tribes that call it home. At worst I suggest you just use the Shoanti as is and say they’ve always been there but the rest of the world hasn’t really heard of them before, or something to that effect.

While I really like the idea of setting this in the great kingdom what about this idea.

What if you substituted Hardby for Korvosa. The Bright Desert for the Cinderlands. And either the Mistmarsh or Gnatmarsh for the Mushfens? I’m not super familiar with GH lore so maybe that won’t work.

Another area to consider could be setting it near Keoland, the Principality of Ulek, or an independent city on the Wild Coast. I mention this just because every time I read about the Hold of Belkzen I totally think of the Pomarj.

I guess the question that need to ask your self is how tied to GH do you want this to be? For instance Shackled City was only minimally connected to Greyhawk and was pretty much able to be transplanted in any setting. As opposed to AoW which was much more tied to GH though still adaptable with a little modification on the DMs part.

One of the appealing things about setting this in the great kingdom would be that you have allot of room to do your own thing and not really mess with canon to much. This is also one of the strengths of a GH campaign is that its quite flexible as a whole for coming up with new material and plugging it in.

Another thing you might want to consider is if you later wanted to run Rise of the Runelords or Second Darkness. Both of these APs are also set in Varisia, while they aren’t connected you might want to have the events that occurred in CotCT be felt or talked about later when and if you decided to run those.

That’s all I got right now. If I think of more ill let you know.

Since its already been written for some time now at least the conversion work to Pathfinder will be minimal. Or at least not as crazy as it would be if it was released as 4e.

On a brighter note Im sure the wait will have been worth it.

Thanks.

This is one of the many many campaigns that I would love to do. But alas still has not, nor will it in the near future get off the ground.

My goal for the Whispering Carin would be to have a good incentive to get the players to get together. I would also want to find a way to encourage them to investigate,explore and interact with Diamond Lake a bit more.

Its wierd. The town is a major set piece to the campaign and theres alot going on, but the adventures tend to gloss over this. I chalk this up to lack of space in the magazine, and that the DM is resposible to a degree on how much or little to use Diamond Lake.

So after thinking about it a little, and spending some time looking on google maps of the world, I’ve decided that Mogadishu the capital of Somalia might make a good location for Korvosa.

I decided to forget trying to find a city that resembles the city of Korvosa, specifically the Old Korvosa area and work around that section of the campaign a little. I still wanted to retain the port status of the city.

I like the state of conflict that the city represents and it seems like it would be a place ripe for a mega corporation to take over for its own ends displacing many of the native population. That and the number of warlord’s inherent to the area means that they could become the defacto Shoanti replacements.

I also like that the harshness of the area would make a great place for a replacement of the Cinderlands.

I was also thinking that Kazavon would also fit very well as written in the AP as a now forgotten warlord that was taken out in a coup some time ago. Possibly even sometime during the last time magic had empowered the earth.

While I’m not to worried about messing with the cannon of the world, does anyone know if there are any SR source books past or present that discuss this area of the world?