Mini Review - Tangents #1 - The Barrow Mound (Generic Fantasy)

I've noticed a recent spike in "generic" adventures and such recently. Maybe its the success (and frequent releases) of the Toys For the Sandbox series, but there is certainly a market for such. For one thing, you don't have to worry about abiding to the OGL or another license. For another, you aren't pinning yourself to a specific ruleset. LL, S&W, ACKS, RQ, Legend, the list goes on. Possibly just as important, you aren't locking yourself into a specific level or power range. Generic might just as well mean "flexible" in these cases.

The Barrow Mound is certainly "generic fantasy". It is systemless. It can work in just about any fantasy type system, and I think would make a sweet little DCC RPG adventure with some work. This is the point where we talk about The Barrow Mound's strength and weakness if you will. It isn't read and drop into play. It has a deep backstory. Deep enough that it should be reflected in the region's history. Which means this is more of a read, revise, tweak and plant sort of adventure. Actually, some of the encounters require fleshing out to tweak to the party you have, so there is prep needed before running this adventure in any case.

The strength of this is that your players will appreciate the depth of the story. Heck, the adventure even ends with a number stories seeds that can build of this one. There is a lot packed into 8 pages of adventure. I just don't see it as drop an play like the adventure states. It's good though. There's almost enough ideas here to flesh out the history of a corner of a sandbox, and isn't that what it's all about, great ideas? The Barrow Mound succeeds in providing the GM with some great ideas.

From the blurb:


Under a black, cloud-choked sky, something stirs near the hamlet of Elrin. Rumors of an unnatural blight, creatures of darkness and evil threatening the countryside abound. Brave souls are needed to dare the twisted forest, to find the heart of wickedness plaguing Elrin and defeat it forever...or be consumed by it.

Mini Review - Fistful of Fantasy: 01 (Generic)

Do you remember the Hook, Line and Sinker series from Knights of the Dinner Table? A Fistful of Fantasy is basically that, but with a higher standard of writing.

It's not a unique way to present plots with options - Toys for the Sandbox does something similar, but it is effective.

So, what do you get for your 69 cents? (James D, I'm going to have to summon my Research Assistant to handle your "in-joke ;)

You get 5 plot hooks or Legends, presented as a small piece of fiction that the players may overhear or have fed to them when appropriate. This is followed by The Truth behind the Legend - what actually happened. You are then presented 2 to 3 Stories. These are the seeds for the GM to work out further for the players to explore. Similar to TftSB, you don't need to waste Stories that you don't use immediately. There's enough here to use for inspiration later.

Each of these 5 plot hooks takes up a page, including a decent piece of art on each. Well, done James. I'll be looking forward to more in the series. (note, at $0.69, there is a $0.35 surcharge for orders under $0.99 - so buy this with something else on your list. It's certainly worth $1.04, but you might want to pad you order)

From the blurb:


From the author of the '100' series of Adventure Seeds books, a new, shorter form source of inspiration for Games Masters. They might be adventures, non-player-characters, monsters, places... all ready to be dropped into your fantasy campaign, regardless of system.

In this booklet:

The Dragon's Head Inn: Augury to the masses and site of the Blue Moon Festival. A wild stopover for travelling adventurers.

The Blackberry Wilder: A different kind of dryad with a thirst for blood and the thorns to get it.

The Shrieking Tomb: Not every vampire can escape its grave to bring terror, but then again, maybe it doesn't need to.

Fimble Finesmoke: Halfing tobacconist, herbalist and fan of experimenting with the inhalation of substances.

Elesha the Exotic: Immortal elven companion looking for interesting and exciting places to be to distract her from the boredom of centuries of life.

Mini Review - Toys For the Sandbox: Apothecary (Generic / Sandbox)

Toys For the Sandbox: Apothecary is another, short, sandbox scenario from Occult Moon.  Like Fairy Glade, it comes in at 4 pages for 99 cents.

As in Fairy Glade, it packs a lot into 3 pages (remove one for the cover).  Background and keyed map of the shop is one page, six different hooks each with three different ways to play them is another and the NPC write ups and encounter and rumor tables are the last page.

What I really like about this series so far is that most of the hooks and twists can be reused, or rather, used later.  If you're a GM that likes to work of the cuff, a sentence or two may be all you need to get your creative juices flowing in the right direction.  So yes, it's one adventure, but in reality it's at least 18 seeds for your imagination.  Well worth your 99 cents.

From the Blurb:


It is Game Night, you have spent the week developing an adventure for that will blow the party’s mind. Then it happens, they zig when you thought they would zag, and wind up traveling away from the dungeon you spent all week making.


Toys for the Sandbox is here to help. Each one contains a map, named NPCs, rumors, encounters and plot hooks all centered on a different location. With Toys for the Sandbox you can look prepared even when you are not. 

Mini Review - Toys For the Sandbox: Fairy Glade (Generic / Sandbox)

It is generally pretty hard to pull off a truly "generic" RPG scenario, as the underlying system often shows through somewhere.  That happens with Toys For the Sandbox: Fairy Glade.  It's not a bad thing, as it obviously draws upon the OGL/D&D as it's base.  There are no stats, but trust me, it's are in roots D&D (and not 4e, but I'm sure it would work there too).

That's not what you want to know.  What you want to know is if you get value for your 99 cents.  The answer is, yes, you do.  A map, 6 plot hooks, each with 3 possible twists, allows you to tailor this in the direction you want it to go.  It IS perfect for throwing in front of your party as they are exploring YOUR sandbox (and we all know how important the sandbox is in the OSR).

Color me impressed.  I wasn't expecting much in 4 pages, and what I got is a lot, and it's good.

From the blurb:


It is Game Night, you have spent the week developing an adventure for that will blow the party’s mind. Then it happens, they zig when you thought they would zag, and wind up traveling away from the dungeon you spent all week making.


Toys for the Sandbox is here to help. Each one contains a map, named NPCs, rumors, encounters and plot hooks all centered on a different location. With Toys for the Sandbox you can look prepared even when you are not

Mini Review - RPG Creatures: Bestiary 1 (Generic)

Generic used to mean something resembling "lowest common denominator".  That's certainly not true RPG Creatures - Bestiary 1.  Yeah, the title of the product is fairly lame, but the contents are second to none.  I love good artwork, and this PDF is somewhere between great and amazing in art quality.  This is a PDF full of framable fantasy art pieces - there is a market for these as prints.  Or just do this as a print on demand and I'll cut out my own prints ;)

The stats for the creatures that are illustrated are generic and will need a little conversion to stat it out for your system of choice.  That shouldn't be too hard, as many of "us old schoolers" are used to converting current RPG products for our sensibilities.

Bestiary 1 isn't bookmarked - it's full of hyperlinks instead, which works wonders.  Like the pog sized portrait the Nordjarimm?  Click it and go right to the page.  Greg Christopher himself would be proud ;)

I'm really stuck at what to say.  This should really speak for itself.  The artwork is extremely strong, the writing is good and the generic stats are very useful to tweaking the monsters to your own needs.

If nothing else, check out the free preview on the RPGNow page.  It will show you better then I can what it's all about.