Evocative City Sites: Bedlam Asylum (PFRPG) PDF

I bought this product wanting to expand on my detailed Site locations for individual flair in my cities, expecting to find within a detailed Asylum, ready to use. That's not quite what I found. The maps, and there are a few, have the look of hand drawn, and not in a good way. There are no keys to the map, and several areas don't make sense. Stairs seem to be going nowhere when you try and line up the floors with each other, there is a large blacked out area on two of the floors that seem to have a portcullis entrance, but no mention of what the area is, unless this is the "hand crank elevator" mentioned in passing. Again if this is the case, this is a further victim of a crudely drawn map. There also appears to be, and again I'm going off of the crudely drawn maps here, a "ladder" next to the previously mentioned blacked out area, at the top/bottom of a stair case...but nowhere on another floor do you see where that ladder led to. We're also given location fluff within the description of the Asylum, such as certain inmates being locked in cages upon the roof overnight where they are terrorized by gargoyles, although if those cages are represented upon the map, for that matter if the roof is even represented, I could not tell you. It's a shame to me how crude the maps are, and the complete lack of a key to try and translate what the map maker intended for certain areas, as the PDF includes battlemat sized sections for the maps to be printed for tabletop play.

As well as the confusion of the maps, the five NPC's presented to us feel like a very disjointed group. We have:
Mother Sharlene Murell Full statblock, secrets, background, enough fluff to work with her and understand why she's there, and how to work with her.
Tansy "chaos beast" 200lbs. looks like a cat You now know as much as I do...no stat block, no visual, not even a proper reference to which books template might have been inferred for this template. This disappointed me almost as much as the maps.
Brother Broomore Full statblock, secrets, background, and again enough fluff to figure out what I would do with him.
Railee McGee Full statblock. A two sentence background that is badly formatted into the end of Brother Broomore's statblock.
Doyenne Murell full statblock, and a short paragraph of fluff. Formatted to be after the statblock when the other NPC's had their details before their statblock, had me thinking there were no details for her for many minutes.

We're also given a few names of inmates worth noting for character flavor, and a few interesting details to turn them into background color.

In the statblock for Mother Murell you will find a nod to Mongoose Publishing, as they have reprinted a feat from their Quintessential series (Mongoose Publishing Quintessential Aristocrat), and this I did like, as I felt that was an excellent series of useful books, and it's nice to see folks still using them.

I was going to have to go with 2 stars for this product, between the maps, the lack of any stat's or place of reference for Tansy (quite possibly the most interesting NPC in here), the fact that we are only given a full fleshing out of 2 of the 5 NPC's, and the confusion of Mother Murell's story and connection to Doyenne, as we are told Sharlene grew up an orphan abandoned on the streets, but she just happens now to be an old lady running the asylum her mother haunts, having been a failed experiment of the very same type run by her daughter...We're not even told if it was Sharlene that experimented on her, or her mentor, let alone how they found her...just way to many holes with this.

But, with the addition of the web enhancement detailing the Medusa bloodline for sorcerers, I'm willing to take the product to a 3, but that is based solely on the fact that the web enhancement could of been released as it's own standalone product for a buck or so, and I probably would of bought it. The bloodline presented is a solid, well explained, and interesting addition to the game.

Evocative City Sites: Bedlam Asylum by Rite Publishing.

This product is 26 pages long. First two pages is cover and credits.

Chapter 1 - Bedlam Asylum (4 pages)
This section starts with a map of the Asylum and introduction. This is done IC from the point of view of someone looking into the Asylum. There is a short bit of IC information about Mother Sharlene Murrell and Brother Broomore, including a secret about each. It finishes with 4 short adventure hooks.

Chapter 2 – NPC's (6 pages)
"Mother Sharlene Murrell" and Tansy (her black “cat”(2 pages including 2 nice, social feats for aristocrats)
"Brother Broomore" (2 pages)
"Railee McGee" (half a page)
"Doyenne Murrell" (1 page)
It also mentions 4 notable inmates. (half a page)

It finishes with 1 page of OGL, final page is a ad for 101 1st level spells, and the rest of the pages are blown up maps for mini's for the rest of the product.

Closing thoughts. The art work is fair and all public domain. The writing is good, as is the editing and layout. Much as we have come to expect from Rite Publishing. It is a interesting location, but I felt this book has similar issues to the Warehouse. In that there is not enough advice given to GM's to use it. A page on the types of experiments being done would have went a long way. You can guess the goals of Mother Murrell but not how she is going about it. Which leaves the work up to the GM and if you have curious players something you will likely need to figure out first.

My final and biggest issue with this book is Tansy the cat. No stats are given for him. Only a name of what kind of creature it is, with no book or page number reference I could find. My guess is the Tome of Horrors as it is referenced in the OGL. Which would make it a Beast of Chaos template. But honestly that's only a guess. So I am giving this a 3.75, mostly because of Tansy and I felt it needed a bit more information before you could just drop it into a existing campaign.

Disclaimer:
I'm a sucker for asylums. My campaigns tend to often lead to these places and that's why I'm very glad, that this installment of ECS exists.

This pdf consists of 26 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page credits, 1page back cover/ad and 1 page OGL.

The excursion into the walls of the asylum begins with 4 pages containing high-quality IC prose, two key-less, player-friendly (YES!) maps of the asylum and its basement as well as information on two characters, including their secrets.

Next are the statblocks:
"Mother Sharlene Murrell" (2 pages including 2 nice, social feats for aristocrats)
"Brother Broomore" (2 pages)
"Railee McGee" (~half a page)
"Doyenne Murrell" (1 page)
It also mentions 4 notable inmates.

After that, we get 11 pages of inflated battle-maps.

The 2 A4-versions of the scale maps, included in separate pdfs (6 pages asylum + 3 pages basement) are a nice bonus for Europeans like yours truly.

Plus, sorcerors get a new bloodline for free, the Medusa bloodline, a 1 page web-enhancement.

Conclusion:
It's cool, cheap and include one new bloodline. While I feel that "Bedlam Asylum" is superior to "Kavit's Emporium" when it comes to fluff and a key-less map, ECS: Kavit has the upper hand on crunch and re-usability, in spite of the web-enhancement.
My main criticism is that I would have loved to see a list of 10 "treatments" in the cellar as the icing on the cake.

Due to the great production value and the fact that I'm a total sucker for asylums, I'll give it 5 stars. If you're not that into asylums, deduct one star. It's still a great deal for 2 bucks, but I nevertheless consider "Kavit" to be the superior by a sliver. I'd give this 4.5 stars, rounded up.

Edit: The first version had a problem with the scale maps, the new version has the medusa bloodline as a nice crunchy addendum. I modified my review according to the new files.