about

Frequently asked questions

Questions about our books, digital downloads, shipping, retailers, or using Tomb & Lantern adventures at your table? You’ll find the most common answers here.

  • Tomb & Lantern creates atmospheric tabletop roleplaying adventures centered on exploration, mystery, meaningful choices, memorable locations, and worlds that reward curiosity. Our goal is to create adventures that feel like places worth discovering—not simply a series of encounters.

  • Our adventures are written for fantasy tabletop roleplaying and include the rules, creatures, encounters, and guidance needed to run the material within many ttrpg game systems.

  • Yes. Our adventures are designed to provide clear locations, encounter guidance, NPC motivations, maps, creatures, and story support while still giving the Game Master room to adapt the adventure to their table. Experienced GMs will also find plenty of flexibility for customization and improvisation.

  • Absolutely. While our adventures can be run as complete experiences, Game Masters are welcome to adapt locations, characters, encounters, creatures, and story elements for use in their own campaigns. Some adjustment may be needed depending on your party, setting, and rules system.

  • Digital adventures are provided as downloadable PDF files. Some products may also include additional digital materials such as maps, handouts, or other game aids when listed on the product page.

  • Yes. You may print purchased digital products for your own personal tabletop use. Purchasing a PDF does not grant permission to redistribute, upload, resell, or reproduce the material for commercial purposes.

  • Yes. When purchased directly from Tomb & Lantern, eligible hardcover editions include a digital PDF copy of the adventure. Digital fulfillment details are provided with your order.

  • If your order arrives damaged, defective, or incorrect, please contact us as soon as possible through our Contact page. Include your order number, a brief description of the issue, and photographs of the damaged or incorrect item when possible so we can help resolve the problem.

Behind the lantern

Mark Czarnecki

Owner

I’m Mark Czarnecki, the founder and creator behind Tomb & Lantern.

My background has taken me through the Army, graphic design, hands-on creative work, and more hours around a tabletop than I’d care to calculate. Tomb & Lantern brings all of those pieces together: storytelling, visual design, problem-solving, worldbuilding, and the simple joy of putting something in front of a group of players and seeing what they do with it.

I started building The Tomb Beneath the Red Sands as an adventure for my own table. I wanted ancient places that felt genuinely old, mysteries that rewarded curiosity, dangerous roads worth exploring, and a world that existed beyond whatever direction the players happened to walk.

Somewhere along the way, it became more than a campaign.

Tomb & Lantern grew from the idea that tabletop adventures can be both beautiful objects and practical tools—books filled with atmosphere and artwork, but designed first and foremost to actually be used around a table.

This is an independent studio, and I’m still very much the person writing, designing, building, testing, revising, and occasionally staring at a map far longer than any reasonable adult should.

The Tomb Beneath the Red Sands is the first journey. It won’t be the last.

— Mark Czarnecki, Founder of Tomb & Lantern

“Somewhere along the way, it became more than a campaign.”

FROM THE TABLE TO THE PAGE

Built in play. Refined in the telling.

The Tomb Beneath the Red Sands didn’t begin as a publishing project.

I originally wrote it as a quick adventure to play with my brother and my son. I just wanted to put together something fun for us to sit down, roll some dice, and explore together.

Then we played it.

And it was way more fun than I expected.

The world started growing almost immediately. A simple desert adventure turned into towns, ruins, factions, strange creatures, hidden roads, old religions, and places we actually wanted to keep coming back to.

The more we played, the more ideas I had.

So I kept writing.

A short home game became a larger campaign. The campaign became a world. And eventually I realized I didn’t just want to keep it at our table—I wanted to turn it into something other families, friends, and gaming groups could explore too.

That decision became The Tomb Beneath the Red Sands, and ultimately, Tomb & Lantern.

The book still carries that original purpose with it. It was built first to be played, laughed through, argued over, explored, and remembered around a table with people you care about.

Everything else came after.

WHAT COMES NEXT

New worlds. New mechanics. Bigger possibilities.

The Tomb Beneath the Red Sands is only the beginning.

The next world I want to build moves in a completely different direction—away from endless dunes and buried ruins, and out onto open water.

I want to create a campaign built around islands, coastal cities, dangerous crossings, submerged ruins, storms, diving, depth, pressure, visibility, limited air, and the simple fact that the ocean itself can become part of the adventure.

Water shouldn’t just be scenery. I want it to matter.

Traveling across it should feel different from walking down a road. Going beneath it should change how players think about movement, equipment, combat, exploration, and risk. A storm should be more than flavor text, and diving into a ruin should feel fundamentally different from opening another dungeon door.

Just as important, I want the next book to be a step forward creatively.

If The Tomb Beneath the Red Sands finds the audience I’m hoping for, I want to reinvest that success back into Tomb & Lantern. My goal is to bring more artists into future projects—illustrators, cartographers, creature artists, and other specialists who can give these worlds perspectives and visual styles beyond what I can create alone.

I still want to remain at the center of the writing, worldbuilding, game design, layout, and overall creative direction. But having a larger group of artists involved would let me focus more deeply on building the adventure itself while giving each location, creature, character, and environment the artwork it deserves.

The goal isn’t simply to make another book.

It’s to make the next one better.

THE NEXT ADVENTURE WON’T BE BENEATH THE SANDS.
IT’LL BE BENEATH THE WAVES.