20 Things: Farming Village (system neutral)
20 Things: Farming Village (system neutral)
This installment of Raging Swan Press’ system-neutral #20-series clocks in at 11 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!
The first tables of dressing herein features 20 entries of village sights and sounds during the daytime, including shy kids running around, villagers motioning for help, roars in the distance – I generally liked this table, but no less than 5 (!!) entries feature children running around in some way That kinda got redundant. At night, we have 12 dressing entries, which include darting cats, hooting owls, sounds of revelry from the tavern, and lovers meeting for a roll in the hay. This table is thankfully more diverse and interesting than the daytime table.
12 sample villagers are presented next, with their alignments, race and gender noted, as well as class levels, where applicable. This table surprised me, in that it features quite a few interesting characters, in the sense that there are plenty of memorable personality quirks on display here. 8 travelers follow the same presentation paradigm, but have a slightly higher amount of classed individuals among their ranks. Down on their luck merchants, thieves looking for easy marks, a questing knight – a solid cadre here, if one that focuses less on personality, and more on the usefulness for adventurers. These folks are essentially hooks in disguise.
20 entries of pretty detailed dressing represent one of my favorite tables herein: From lover’s hangouts to rainwater-filled wheel ruts in the road, from ponds flanked by weeping willows to trees that recently fell on homes, the dressing here is diverse and interesting, ending the pdf on a high note.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to Raging Swan Press’ elegant two-column b/w-standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Additionally, the pdf comes in two versions, one optimized for the printer and one for screen-use – kudos for going the extra mile there!
Creighton Broadhurst’s farming village dressing is a good file – particular the dressing that actually deals with the village is interesting. While I did like the villagers and travelers, I couldn’t help but feel that e.g. tables for crops grown/local produce etc. would have been a more welcome sight than the pretty significant space devoted to the NPCs, which are, for the most part, rural, granted, but also less focused on the farming angle. Add to that the slightly weaker than usual first table, and we have a final verdict of 4 stars.
You can get this inexpensive dressing file here on OBS!
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Endzeitgeist out.
