When I first read the Player's guide for the Jade regent adventure path I immediately fell in love with the caravan rules provided there. The idea of developing and running your own caravan was original and a welcome diversion from the usual dungeon crawl, hack and slash kind of game-play which dominates most Campaigns.
When I first read about this product at the Paizo forums, I was thrilled. While the rules in the player's guide was more than enough to let you get started, there was to many more things to be explored in A caravan based game. I am not to familiar with LPJ design, as I usually don't use to much 3rd party material in my games, but this PDF seemed to fill a niche that no other product has done yet so I gave it a shot. I was not disappointed, this PDF has so many fun ideas and is a perfect companion to the rules written in the Jade regent player's guide. I could run entire Caravan based Campaigns with these rules.
The PDf has 18 pages. The cover depicts a group of Persian looking nomads with camels resting on a beach. The artwork is decent enough, but does not perhaps evoke the feel of a caravan as there is no wagons and little cargo to speak of. The first page has the OGL and LPJ contact information. The next three pages describes the new wagon types.
There are 13 new wagons;
• Bordello Wagon
• Chuck Wagon
• Conestoga Wagon
• Giant Beast Train
• Herbalist Wagon
• Mobile Stage
• Mule Team
• Nursery Wagon
• Passenger Carriage
• Penitentiary Wagon
• Reliquary
• Skeletal Horse Team
• Steam Engine
All the wagons have interesting and useful rules and allows you to create caravans with specific themes like a slave caravan or a performing caravan by focusing on or combining certain wagons.
The next two pages discuss new types of Caravan based equipment. here you find anything from caravan balloons used to lighten the load of wagons to new caravan weapons like the super heavy ballista or repeating crossbow turret. All of the new equipment looks useful and interesting.
Next up are the new caravan feats, there are 19 new feats to customize and enhance your caravan.
The feats are;
• Banker's caravan
• Desert nomads
• Decadent caravan
• Efficient packers
• Expert gunners
• Fighting beasts
• Friendly animals
• Find oasis
• Hair harvest
• Hard working caravan
• Latrines
• Phantom drivers
• Reputable mark
• Ride the sides
• Slave caravan
• Slave trader
• Storm tested
• Supply caches
• Vigilant lookouts
There is also a sidebar about including rules for slavery in your Campaign. The feats do everything from giving you bonuses to your caravans income to increasing it's defense or allowing you to have monsters fighting for your caravan. I didn't find any feat here that i thought was overpowered or boring.
The next part gives a short description on how caravans worked in the real world and a few plot hooks to get your caravan campaign going.
Next is a description of various new threats your caravan might face like avalanches, rampaging dragons and a necromantic horde.
The PDF rounds out with a few sample caravans.
The layout is Ok and it's not very hard to navigate the document. Some sort of index would have been useful, but the PDF is short enough that this isn't really a big issue. There is little artwork apart from the cover, and a few pictures of the new wagons and equipment would have been nice, but at this price it's not very important. All in all I think this product is great, and if you, like me, love the Caravan rules from the Jade regent player's guide, this product is a MUST HAVE.
I would vote 4.5 but given the price I will increase my vote to 5 stars. Good work LPJ
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