Publisher: Uncaged Authors at Dungeon Masters Guild
Authors: Ally Sulentic, Amy and Tim Dziewit, Ashley Warren, Arras Wiedorn, Benjamin L. Eastman, Blinne Emersyn, Chai Power, Christine Prevas, CJ Oliver, Colleen A Taylor, David G. Harris, David Markiwsky, Dimitri Lambermont, Eleanor Hingley, Insha Fitzpatrick, Jazz Eisinger, Jess Waters, Kelly Mangerino, Leon Barillaro, Maggie Harbison, Margaret Mae, Matt Dunn, Miranda Mels, Monica Evans, Paige Ford, Remko van der Heul, Samantha Lavender, Tera Hooper, Tim Christopher, Xan Larson
Illustrators: Alison Huang, Anthony Alipio, Charles Van Slambrouck, D.W. Dagon, David Markiwsky, Gwen Bassett, Jennifer Peig, Kayla Cline, Liz Gist, Luciella Elisabeth Scarlett, Ma’at Crook, Samantha Darcy, Sammy Ward, Sandy Jacobs-Tolle, Wouter Florusse
Year: 2019
Genre: Fantasy adventure supplement for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons
Pages: 238
Price: $14.95 PDF/$35.95 Print-On-Demand from DM’s Guild
Uncaged Volume III continues a tradition of excellence, even as it ventures into brave new territory.
If this is your first time hearing about the series, here’s a quick introduction: Uncaged takes the traditional D&D paradigms and flips them on their head, usually through a feminist re-imagining of classic Monster Manual baddies. Though excitement and adventures are in no short supply, players are as likely to be confronted with puzzles, social maneuvering, and mystery-solving as they are with combat or dungeon crawls. While Volumes 1 and 2 focused primarily on adventures for lower tier characters, Volume 3 offers a greater variety of challenges for those ready for higher stakes storytelling.
The third volume contains adventures for characters up to sixteenth level. Nagas, medusas, mariliths and more await, but not everything is as it seems. While combat appears with greater regularity in these higher level tales, there still often remains more than one way to solve a problem; words carry weight — and stand to wield as much damage as any bow or sword.
True to form for the series, the stories in Uncaged manage to escape some of tabletop roleplaying’s more problematic history. For example, “Something This Way Slithers” could have been an orientalist mess, but instead interests itself in questions of personal agency in the face of familial expectations. Yes, there is a caste system; no, it is not exoticized; and no, it is not the root of all problems.
This still won’t be a book for lore purists. For players who enjoy the classic interpretation of the game or are uncomfortable with seeing a monster type classified as “Lawful Evil” demonstrate remorse and find subsequent redemption, Uncaged will be a frustrating experience. The series is explicitly interested in countering —in the words of contributor Morgan Geiss— a system that reduces “ostensibly powerful women” into “types and functions” and is willing to break with a strict interpretation in order to accomplish that. It’s a philosophy that suffuses its storytelling and design choices and allows for novel reimaginings; it also may be a deal-breaker for some.
As with its predecessors, Uncaged Volume III benefits from a beautiful, easy-to-read layout and an abundance of full-color illustrations. Navigation for those reading on screen is made simple by a clear, two-column layout and print-on-demand editions are available for those who prefer a physical copy.
Though they aren’t serious impediments in readability or comprehension, a few errors have slipped through the crack and made it into the final edition. Given the size of this project and the number of contributors involved, it’s sometimes inevitable and is no serious ding to the quality of the final product.
Uncaged Volume III brings the series into new territory without sacrificing its core storytelling principles. The inclusion of higher-tier adventures opens the book to groups with more experienced characters, a welcome expansion of possibility. While it may not feel quite as fresh or as innovative as its debut —perhaps due to the relatively rapid release period— this is still a book well worth reading, savoring, and playing.
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