A Pathfinder Roleplaying Game supplement for PCs level 1-5 by Creighton Broadhurst
The village of Swallowfeld stands hard against the turbulent waters of the Lonely Coast and the forbidding depths of a trackless, primeval forest. A hard, frontier place hemmed in by danger without and threatened by a lurking darkness within the village is in dire need of doughty protectors.
This 37-page, extensively bookmarked PDF presents detailed information on village life as well as ten locations and twelve NPCs of note. A GM can use the village as the perfect base from which neophyte adventurers can explore the surrounding area or as a waystop on the road to adventure. Although Swallowfeld’s default location is the Lonely Coast (a free 30-page, extensively bookmarked PDF) it is easy to include in any GM’s campaign.
This ZIP file now includes two versions of Swallowfeld, one optimised for printing and use on a normal computer and one optimised for use on a mobile device such as an iPad. You can learn more about Raging Swan's Dual Format PDF initiative at ragingswan.com
Product Availability
Will be added to
your downloads
immediately upon purchase of
PDF.
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
webmaster@paizo.com.
And a village is what you get with this product! Swallowfled is a great launching pad for your PFRPG campaigns. The publisher has tons of downloadable content to boost this products value at RangingSwan.com where you can also find the free downloadable campaign setting Swallowfeld is set in.
Swallowfeld is a village that could be dropped in to just about any campaign setting you can think of with minimal modification if any needed. There are tons of NPCs, adventure and encounter ideas, and more.
The pdf is printer friendly and features black and white art by Elmore.
I have purchased several Raging Swan products and they all fit together well. I whole heartedly recommend this product.
The Pdf for the rural village Swallowfield consists of 37 pages: 1 page front cover, 1 blank page on the inside of the cover, 3 pages credits, 1 page OGL and 1 page back cover.
The formatting is concise, the editing top-notch (I didn't find a single mistake/typo) and the pdf is printer-friendly. The artwork is b/w and very nice to look at and serves to underline the old-school & old-world-feel of the supplement.
Following in line with the mood of the remote and ancient-feeling area of The Lonely Coast, Swallowfield describes the little village in excruciating and atmospheric detail.
The pdf can be split in two major parts:
The first one consisting of 12 pages, including a b/w map that thankfully lacks annoying letters.
The village also contains evocative details like local diet, a paragraph on social order and law, passing seasons, festivals and traditions (quite cool and reminiscent of old pagan customs) and a table of local events to kick off sessions and moods. Be warned, though. The mood may get grim and is mature, but I personally like it that way.
The second major part of the adventure consists of 12 pages of NPC-stats as well as descriptions of the characters. Every one of them comes with his/her own picture, quality b/w artwork. Best of all, each entry has a paragraph on mannerisms, distinguishing features and hooks that makes it easy for the DM to make this place come to life.
After that, the pdf concludes with a 3 page player's guide to Swallowfield including 1 page of player's map.
Conclusion:
While this pdf is high quality, is very detailed and evokes the awesome old-world-atmosphere we already had in The Lonely Coast, the prose somewhere falls short of the high standards set by other pdfs of Raging Swan. It's still top-notch, just not as awesome. I'd give 4.25 Stars.
However, Raging Swan Press gives you more bang for buck:
As either free previews or supplements for the product, you can download 3 free web-enhancements on the homepage:
- One containing collated statblocks for the NPCs
- One containing the player's guide so you can mail it to your players/print it separately for them.
- One containing all of the artworks of the NPCs to show of to your players, with blank space for notes.
That is superb service and eases the workload for any DM trying to run the village or use it as an entry-point.
For this service, I'd upgrade the rating to 4.5 stars, but not quite 5.