Village Backdrops: Prayer’s Point

This Village Backdrop clocks in at 10 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This village is named after the legendary meditation spot of a powerful paladin of yore, and its idyllic waters glow like gold in the new rays of the sun – and even law and order is enforced by an aasimar paladin – the village sports a population of more than 1/3 of the total villagers sporting this exalted bloodline. As a nice piece of crunch, we get said paladin’s full stats, though the statblock faultily denotes his alignment as LN, when it should be LG. The village comes with full-blown rumors, sample events etc. and provides some cool components for low level adventure – animals start to vanish from the nearby forests and there have been sightings of werefoxes.

Whoever knows Alexander Augunas might suspect the true culprits here and their rather harmless nature, but in fact, the secret history of this blessed place might yet prove to be its downfall, sporting a secret history most foul that may well result in a terrible identity crisis for the community once exposed. Settlement statblock, customs, trade and industry – all is provided in the usual depth and quality.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, though not as flawless as usual for RSP. Layout adheres to RSP’s superb, streamlined and printer-friendly 2-column b/w-standard. The pdf’s b/w-cartography deserves mention here – while by now means bad, it is not the hand-drawn, cool map you’d see in other installments and feels a bit inorganic and generic to me – it’s not bad or ugly, jus not as beautiful as the maps of other Village Backdrops. The pdf comes fully bookmarked and in two versions, one optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out.

Alexander Augunas delivers a cool module that has an actually heart-warming, positive low-level module (or an example of bigotry, depending on your tastes) written into its structure, just as it offers ample fodder for mid to high-level adventuring. The village’s nature and inhabitants should make sure that PCs want this place as a resort, a base, to remain as idyllic as it seems…alas, we don’t always get what we want.

Now writing-wise, this pdf is great and formally, it isn’t bad either, if not as flawlessly polished as most RSP-titles. The map, to me is a minor step down when compared to other installments, but not enough to truly deter one from this cool village. My final verdict will hence clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform.

You can get this cool village here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop.

Endzeitgeist out.

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