blog posts

Our thoughts on gaming, life with kids, and more.
What’s in the Bag?

Ah, that moment when your players take down an NPC wealthy enough to possess a bag of hold...

Travels in “Uncharted” Lands

So often we think of adventurers wandering vast swathes of unclaimed lands. They find some...

Kale Frumpus (A Micro Short)

This piece of microfiction is a follow up to Secret Santa.

Trefor’s face bla...

Secret Santa (A Short Story)

A vehicle pulled into the driveway. It was another SUV with roof racks and tinted windows....

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Houses and Heraldry II

Ten pre-built noble houses ready to insert into your campaign!

Each house is laid out on one page; the top half contains the house name, its motto, a representation of their heraldic device as it would appear on a shield, and an information block detailing important personages, numbers of troops, and vassal houses.

The lower portion provides enough detail about the interesting characters of the house to get the GM's imagination going, but leaves plenty of room for a GM to add their own details.

Pick it up on DriveThruRPG now

Tangible Taverns: The Bull & The Bear (5e)

An anniversary edition of Tangible Taverns: The Bull & The Bear is now available.

This is one of our best selling taverns, and we felt it deserved a bit of extra attention. This PDF includes rumour and event tables, a colour tavern map, and descriptions of the establishment's inhabitants (including names, physical features, personalities, and stat blocks). There is more original artwork, and a bit more about some of the characters.

Available in Pathfinder, 5e and system neutral compatible formats.

Pick it up on Drivethrurpg now

About Us

Dire Rugrat Publishing was born out of Kelly and Ken’s love of gaming. Many a session was spent on role-playing and world building; eventually the idea came to take some of these detailed pieces and share them with the rest of the world.

We are focused on creating easy to use GM tools, primarily drop in locations and NPCs. Dire Rugrat Publishing has created numerous products aimed to add a little role-playing to your evening.

From Tangible Taverns, to quick mini-adventures, to unique 5e resources, we've got you covered.

Our Products

Tangible Taverns

This series is dedicated to bringing life back to the local watering hole while making the GM's job a little easier.

5E NPCs

Each of these PDFs brings you ready-to-use NPCs with custom stat blocks, colour art, and detailed biographies.

Advantageous Abilities

Advantageous Abilities provides Game Masters a toolkit with which they can easily add feature abilities to monsters and NPCs, giving their NPCs an advantageous edge (or just a little role-playing fun).

Tavern Tales: Mini Adventures

Tavern Tales are super short adventures designed to accompany various Tangible Taverns by Dire Rugrat Publishing, but may be easily inserted into your own tavern or campaign.

Our team

The faces behind Dire Rugrat Publishing. (Click a name to see a list of works. )
Kelly Pawlik

Kelly Pawlik

Writing and Layout

Ken Pawlik

Ken Pawlik

Writing and Art

testimonials

What our customers say
I’ve really come to like Kelly and Ken Pawlik’s style. There is a positive core to their writing, something deeply human that manages to elicit a sense of joy without being naïve or bland.... It’s hard to properly describe, but it could boil down to a sense of empathy with their fictitious creations. You can relate, in some way or another, with quite a few of them, with their motivations and characters.

Thilo G.

Endzeitgeist

Props to Dire Rugrat for writing some creative characters with intriguing and easily-playable personalities.

Craig C.

[A]bove anything else is just having a nice tavern that players can actually interact with...I've awkwardly tried to make things more interesting by improvising but there can be a lot of inns and taverns in a campaign so its taxing to make one that your players are willing to blow time on. [Tangible Taverns] makes my job as a GM easier, it gives me NPCs I don't have to make up and can hook up to any kind of campaign.

Elexious C.

Malwing

Contact Us

You can get in touch with us using the form below.