I backed the Kickstarter for the remastered version which had the objective of a slight edit clean up and lots of new art. This was due in October and turned up on the last day of December which is pretty kick-ass given the hell-scape of a year it has been. You can get the pdf version of this fantastic "creepily genteel dungeon set in an infinite extradimensional library" by Cavegirl on Drivethrurpg.
Newly arrived hardcover of Stygian Library
So what is this? The Stygian Library is a generative dungeon that expresses the shifting and labyrinthine nature of the place through a depth-crawl mechanic making it a journey of discovery for both players and game master every time you venture within.
The book is an engine for on-the-fly creation of the library ahead of the players no matter where they might go. The famous "Grommit in a toy train" clip could well fit here. The front page bears the advice to read the whole book thoroughly a few times for familiarity and mark it up with book marks to ease moving too and fro. While a little cryptic to start, this soon becomes evident as wise advice and makes perfect sense. By sections we have:
14 page introduction to the library
10 pages main tables
38 pages of locations
26 pages details for locations
48 pages of monsters
20 pages of useful tables including rumours, treasure and search results
8 pages with a pair of NPCs
The core mechanic of the library is a three sided choice at each point; Stay Here, Go Deeper or Go Back. While staying in place may result in encounters, going deeper is what we are here for. A roll determines a location, adds details and checks for what might be there. Each location has its own page entry for any specials or additional roles. Grabbing some dice and giving it a try suddenly reveals the wisdom of bookmarking your most frequently used pages - you will be returning to the well named 'main tables' a lot. Fond memories of Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure books were brought back by the luxurious feel of flipping to and fro in this print edition.
The locations range from the relatively innocuous to the deeply strange. Each time the players go deeper, the level they are on is added to the random roll to see what they find. On a d20, at the start, you are only going to find the first 20 entries of the table - and some things they may seek may be much deeper. The library itself shifts over time so a repeated visit will require regenerating a new path through the extra-dimensional spaces of the library. All this gives plenty of opportunity to bring forth all the locations and content. The general threat level within the library is low if the players pass through carefully - all these books are flamable and wanton destruction can bring down a wrathful response but otherwise it is more of a wander through a labyrinth than a death-trap dungeon.
Between the shelves can be found many dwellers of the Library from the five orders of Librarians through to Paper Bees and Ink Elementals. I liked that it is possible to both move through the Library seeking answer to a question and getting help from phantoms, weird creatures, or other lost research expeditions and to hack through the place on a looting expedition which will prompt a fierce response from the many strange dwellers within.
The new art additions to the remaster have further reinforced the strange, timeless theme of this great library. The feel is of fairy tales and dream-sequences, eerie rather than threatening. The particular differentiator for bringing the Stygian Library to the table is the variability - no two times you enter are the same, making it a novel exercise for the GM too. The strong thematic consistency make it easier to do than it otherwise might by but this is definitely a flex for your improvisational muscles. I like this approach a lot and am looking forward to the chance to use this at my table.
If you want more reviews you can finds ones by My Terrible Sorcery is Without Equal in the West or by Slugs and Silver or even what the author has to say about it.
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