Play the Game. Lose Control. Feed the God.
What begins as a simple missing persons case quickly spirals into a descent through obsession, curses, and cult sacrifices. Ascendancy of Nur’Ry’Za is a one-shot adventure easy to slip into any campaign. Set in a monastery high atop a remote mountain, a cursed game is dominating minds and feeding the bottomless hunger of a dark eldritch entity.
This 50+ page adventure includes:
🔍 A narrative-rich mystery adventure with elements of horror and psychological tension
♟️ A Go/Chess-like game called Ascendancy that curses its players and enthralls them to a dark eldritch entity
⚠️ A climactic ritual encounter where timing and choices matter
🏰 A monastery dungeon with tactical encounters and dramatic set-pieces
🗺️ Three original full-color, highly-detailed hi-res maps (including player versions, GM versions, and a GM versions with creature placement)
⚔️ 3 original monk statblocks, inspired by Brazilian jiu-jitsu: Monk, Grappler Monk, and Grappling Master Monk
⚔️ 4 original “disciple” statblocks, designed to be warlock-monk cultists: Disciple Initiate, Zealous Disciple, Dark Disciple Priest, and Ardent Disciple
💀 Tokens for all creatures and NPCs
📖 Adventure text that uses special formatting conventions and hyperlinks to help GMs easily navigate the text while running the adventure
🖼️ Four player handouts
🤜 An original monk subclass, The Way of Control, inspired by Brazilian jiu-jitsu
Designed for 5 PCs of 5th level (Hard-Deadly) or 6th level (Medium-Hard), this adventure is perfect for groups who enjoy a mix of intrigue, combat, and unraveling ancient secrets.
About the Designer
ENNIE Award-winner John Joseph Adams is an editor and game designer who works in both fiction publishing and roleplaying games.
As a game designer, he’s written material for Kobold Press and Paizo, including contributions to Tome of Heroes and several forthcoming books That Cannot Yet Be Named. As a TTRPG editor, he’s worked on numerous projects for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games, such as: Planebreaker Character Options; the adventure books Tales from the Shadows, Tome of Beasts 3 Lairs, and Tales from the Wastes; and the essay anthologies The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding Vol. 2, The Kobold Guide to Dungeons, and The Kobold Guide to Roleplaying.
John is also a New York Times bestselling anthology editor and a winner of the Hugo, Stoker, Locus, and British Fantasy awards. His work as a short fiction editor includes more than forty anthologies, such as Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele), Press Start to Play, The Way of the Wizard, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, and the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series. He is also editor and publisher of the award-winning digital magazine Lightspeed, and, for five years, ran a science fiction and fantasy novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Learn more at johnjosephadams.com and/or subscribe to his Robot Wizard Zombie Crit! newsletter.
License: Roll20 End User License Agreement
(Personal Use Only, Do Not Distribute)
