"I am an explorer, a man of action, and foiler of nefarious plots. Come read my book, Evocative City Sites, and I, Owain Northway, will regale you with a tale of a den of iniquity. I will tell you of the Rogue's Gallery Tavern."
Evocative City Sites is a modular systemless supplement detailing small locations that you could find in any urban campaign setting. Each site is detailed with its own cartography, a 1"=1 square scale map pack, two unique npcs, 5 adventure seeds, all presented in the unique, useful, and entertaining form of Owain Northway's first person point-of-view guidebook.
The Rogue's Gallery Tavern is the place where bad guys hangout, plotting disreputable deeds or drowning the sorrows of defeat. You will find only scum and villainy here, yet neutrality reigns, allowing friend and foe to enjoy a pint and relax... usually.
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This Tavern bucks the standard trope of meeting in a bar. From an atypical circular structure, to secret escape hatches to special “quiet booths,” to removable partitions for accommodating larger than average patrons this place seems absolutely perfect for planning criminal activity or relaxing with a drink afterwards. For those seeking to bring said criminals to justice, however, this is a very dangerous place. The bartender is particularly good at his profession and the waitress is even better at hers. Fair warning, bringing a paladin into this tavern will demonstrate why being a paladin is such a challenge.
This Evocative City Site is definitely evocative. Numerous adventure ideas spring up unbidden, though there is a list of adventure hooks should a GM need them. The bartender and the waitress have full stat blocks with background, motivations, in fact everything a GM needs to run these two. There is also a full size 1” = five foot scale map to piece together so that the drafting impaired GM doesn’t have to try to redraw this circular tavern. There is a GMs map showing anything that is hidden to PCs as well.
The bartender has a few unique items and brewing techniques as well as a couple of feats that help him do his job. His brewing skills are unsurpassed. Crossing him is a dangerous enterprise within his domain. It is even more dangerous to break a deal with the waitress. Suffice it to say that she is fully capable of taking care of herself. The mysterious owners are never detailed. I happen to like this, because I know exactly where this tavern is going to be in my campaign and who the owners are. Adding something that may or may not fit in a particular GMs campaign would have been a waste of valuable space in this truly excellent supplement. It would have allotted less space to detail the bartender and waitress, a crime in itself.
No matter what campaign world is used any GM can likely find a suitable place for this tavern. Now I just need to locate a few villainous patrons for this tavern and perhaps some appropriate music from the cantina of Mos Eisley.
Unique Tavern, Good map, fun characters, good value
I picked this up based on the other reviews and I have to say that it's an excellent value.
Fisrt of all, this isn't a square building, it's a round Tavern, and the authors make good use of the different shape to make an interesting tavern...lots of places for people to meet and discuss...whatever.
Second, the use of three maps (as mentioned: 1 keyed for the GM, 1 without the key for the players, and a 9 page minis map) give a lot of flexibility on how this is used.
Third, the hooks and characters are interesting. I could easily see this being used as the heroes' favorite watering hole..which could lead to all sorts of fun. (Don't want to give any spoilers).
And of course, as a prop whore, I LOVE detailed 25mm/30mm maps. Even in black and white. And this one is good.
My only complaint, the "old style painting" artwork. I'd almost rather see no art than the victorian/whatever paintings. They look horrible and don't bring a feel of fantasy adventure to the product. Even stock art would be better than this. the pic for the maid does NOT make me think of her as attractive or a seductriss, and is not someting I'd show to the players to make them think so. So, for me, that's wasted art.
Other than that, great supplement. And for $1.99! A lot of playability out of a quick Tavern. (And now I gotta look at getting the rest....)
This pdf is 21 pages long, 1 page advertisement, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover.
The first page, apart from the credits, contains 4 adventure hooks.
3 Pages contain the map of the tavern as well as a concise and flavorful text describing the tavern as well as its staff Venn "the Vulture" (barkeeper) and Liseli (serving maid), both with secrets to center one or more adventures around.
It should be noted that one map does not feature a key while the other one does, which is very important if you are like me and hate drawing maps and like to print them out without much fuss.
The second one features a well-arranged key and shows the secret compartments. It should also be noted that there is a drawing depicting a secret door and HOW it is hidden.
The next 2 pages are taken up by Venn's Statblock, a neat minor magic item and my favorite part of the book: Magical "upgrade" poisons for poison, to improve or delay it, to keep those pesky clerics from easily dispelling it etc. If you're like me and love poisoning your PCs, these alone are worth the price. Neatly designed, easy to implement and well-thought out. There are also two new feats: One that lets an alchemist really be about skill when making potions and one to create aforementioned poison-upgrades. Both are easy to implement in any given setting.
The next 2 pages are taken up with Liseli's statblock, which is a beauty to behold. You can take a look at the statblock in the FREE "Rite Review" E-zine that can be downloaded here.
(What are you waiting for? There's all kinds of goodies in there!)
Then we have 1 page OGL and after that a 9 page map of the tavern, for use with miniatures, if you're so inclined.
The prose, written as an account of a visit, is a fun and engaging read and puts one in the appropriate mindset to use the tavern right now (or read some of the classic "Thieves World" books).
The art is nice for this low price.
If I had to find something to nitpick, it would be that there is no secret escape route behind the bar, but that's more than nitpicking.
I got a nice location, a good read, some nice ideas and the poison upgrades for 2 bucks.
If you need some inspiration for poisons or an additional edge for a planned poison-murder-mystery, pick this up now.
It's awesome.
Rogue’s Gallery is an interesting and original scenario for those moments in which you need a quick way into the dark and seedy side of society, and still have some kind of net under their feet… at least until they anger someone important.
Maybe the most attractive feature of the Tavern would be the fact that it offers the possibility for a lot of interesting open options and alternatives beyond the hooks presented in the document… from patrons you can add… to the mystery behind the owners of the place.
Something open to debate would be the narrative perspective, since it’s the 1st person of an adventurer, it lets us understand and feel the place much better, but others would complain for the lack of objectivity of the narrator.
The map makes for an interesting place with lots of opportunities for cloak & dagger encounter or a noir scene.
My only personal critic would be for part of the art, that while good… some of it is entirely unoriginal.
Yeah actually helpful, detailed reviews tend to help a lot when trying to decide whether or not to buy a book/pdf or not. It would be awesome if we managed to start a trend there! ^^
