A Red & Pleasant Land

A Red & Pleasant Land is a tabletop roleplaying game supplement that combines Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with vampire mythology. The book presents a complete setting where players can explore a war-torn realm inhabited by feuding vampire nobles and reality-bending magic. The system-neutral rules provide frameworks for running adventures in this dark wonderland, including character options, monster statistics, and tools for generating locations and encounters. The book contains maps, random tables, and original artwork throughout its pages. Players navigate a landscape of crumbling castles, mirror-worlds, and baroque gardens while interacting with the undead aristocracy and their servants. The setting incorporates elements from Eastern European folklore alongside Carroll's fantasy concepts. The work represents an examination of how children's literature can be transformed into horror through a lens of historical conflict and decay. Its marriage of whimsy and darkness creates space for both playful adventure and deeper themes of power and mortality.

Readers praise the book's surreal Alice in Wonderland-meets-vampires concept and its innovative layout with detailed cross-referencing. Many note the high quality art and maps that help visualize the setting. Reviews highlight the random tables and tools for running games. Common criticisms include the dense, sometimes confusing writing style and organization. Some readers found it hard to use the material directly at the table. A few mentioned the book works better as inspiration than as a ready-to-run setting. What Readers Liked: - Unique art style and presentation - Creative mashup of literary sources - Usable random tables and tools What Readers Disliked: - Complex, unclear organization - Challenging to implement in play - Dense writing style Ratings: Goodreads: 4.26/5 (165 ratings) DriveThruRPG: 4.5/5 (40 ratings) Amazon: 4.4/5 (31 ratings) "Beautiful but bewildering" summarizes many reviews. The book won three ENnie Awards in 2015 for Best Setting, Best Writing, and Best Art.

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🎲 A Red & Pleasant Land blends Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with vampire mythology, creating a unique RPG setting where the Red King and Red Queen wage an eternal war across surreal landscapes. 🎨 Author Zak Smith is also a visual artist whose work has been featured in the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, bringing his distinctive artistic style to the book's illustrations. 📖 The book won multiple ENnie Awards in 2015, including Gold for Best Writing, Best Setting, and Product of the Year. 🏰 The setting's main location, Voivodja, draws inspiration from Eastern European folklore and architecture, particularly the medieval castles of Romania and Hungary. 🎭 The game system introduces unique mechanics for dealing with time distortion and dream logic, allowing players to experience the same scene multiple times with different outcomes.