Once Upon an Encounter: The Scorpion and the Frog

The second installment of Flaming Crab Games’ “Once Upon an Encounter”-series clocks in at 11 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 8 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This being a review of an encounter-set-up, the following has SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.

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Only GMs left? All right! So, the PCs head towards one big stream – thankfully, an innovative, oxen-powered paddle-barge is offering cost-efficient means to cross the river – it should be noted that the barge is fully mapped. The set-up is as follows: We have Captain Ty, two ox-drivers, oxen, a guard and one other passenger, a man named Silus, who is sea-sick….or not. You see, Silus is pretty much an insane alchemist trying to blow the vessel up…while on it.

Two variants of the set-up are provided…and then, the encounter becomes awesome: With a 10-round spanning, round-by-round breakdown of what’s happening, strange slugs that breed bomb-like larvae (full stats provided) and a fully mapped vessel (including a handy sinking-version that shows the level of water per round – this is pretty much the definition of going the extra-mile…even before the inclusion of the paper tokens handily provided. Obviously, the vessel also sports full stats!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no glitches. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly twp-column full-color standard. The cartography is more than serviceable for the low price point and the pdf comes fully bookmarked in spite of its brevity – nice!

The first “Once Upon an Encounter” already showed promise…and here, Alex Abel and J Gray deliver on that promise, in spades. The unique, interesting twist on the classic tale, the cool variants, the awesome new animal provided – this oozes creativity and heart’s blood. It is one great encounter-pdf that is definitely worth the fair asking price. fun, uncommon, evocative and with some very nice supplemental material, I have nothing to complain here. My final verdict will clock in at 5 stars + seal of approval.

You can get this evocative, cool encounter here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop!
Endzeitgeist out.

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