by Cain.rpgorg in Jan 14,2012

  The #30 Haunts for Kaidan, released by Rite Publishing is an expansion for two of the publisher's successfull Pathfinder product lines in a single book. While it's expand upon the lore regarding Kaidan, their Oriental themed game setting, it's also continues their successful #30 series. The #30 series already contain several books about haunts, based on if they delve in houses, objects or ships and shores.

  Written by the same T. H. Gulliver who designed the previous haunt related expansions, including the award-winning #30 Haunts for Objects (DieHard GameFan's best supplement for 2011), as well as such gems as #30 Fleshgrafts the new book is right on target.

The content

  As the title implies, we receive 30 new haunts for the Kaidan setting. But for me the most interesting thing was not the question what was delivered, but how ? The book is organized in nine creepy and evil storyline, and they place every single haunt in the book into content. If you meet a ghostly apparition of a samurai who try to kill you with his entrails you could bet he has a name and a dark history detailed in the book. I consider this as a big plus, as all nine stories could serve as an adventure idea in themselves !

 The new haunts themselves are all very well made, well thought and nicely detailed both in game statistics and in a flavor perspective. They raging from general nuisance to highly life threatening and they are both delivered with a dark story about hopeless victims and evil deeds. Overall this evil ghost stories involving evil oni, envy and cruelty are perfectly fitting to the ghost-story setting of Kaidan.

  The #30 Haunts for Kaidan book also contain a new magic item (to locate undead), some new rules, including gaze-triggered haunts, as well as some new monsters connected to the story. The monsters include a now vampire tengu-ranger, as well as a special variant for the revenants, which is also very fitting to the story and the setting.

Final words

I think #30 Haunts for Kaidan is a very well-made book, from it's stories to it's arts and down to the game mechanics everything is right on it's place. I think most Game Masters could draw inspiration for multiple creepy ghost-story adventures based on this book alone. I also have to note that while the book heavily involves it's game setting, most of it's content is usable for other Pathfinder campaigns without much problem.

Looking on all of these deciding factors, I cannot help but give 5/5 stars for this excellent product.

You may purchase the #30 Haunts for Kaidan book on DriveThruRPG here.

The complete #30 series (including this book) as also available as a bundle. It's also available as a part of the Kaidan product bundle.

Zoltán "Cain" Mészáros

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