Real Scrolls 3: Fire Under the Tongue (PFRPG) PDF

And now for something completely different - today I'll take a look at Kobold Press' Real Scroll-series, which portrays one spell per installment in a lavish, hand-crafted calligraphy.

Each of these pdf is 4 pages long - 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD/editorial, 1 page regular text of the spell and 1 page for the real scroll calligraphy version of the spell.

These reviews are not about content - they are about aesthetics and as such, much more so than my regular reviews, I invite you, the reader, to take these as just that - my personal preference and opinion regarding these. Got that?

Great! It should be noted, that the scrolls don't contain arcane gibberish, strange runes or glyphs or the like - they contain the spell's description and rules, rendered in lavish calligraphy - and that's it. whether these are worth it for you as a customer depends very much on how excited you can get about beautiful calligraphy, here rendered by Kathy Barker.

#3 portrays Fire Under the Tongue, with somewhat organic/leaf (or flame)-like embroideries to the side of the spell. As an awesome touch, several of the letters feature flame-like extensions and the penultimate "f" of fire in the line that includes the mythic and augmentation options rounds perfectly the space of the page. The scroll comes with a fitting, red border and, as with the previous installments, the ligatures deserve special mentioning for their aesthetic value. Instead of one-letter initials, we have bolded letters in this case and personally, I prefer lavish initials over the (comparatively) common bolding of first words in a paragraph. 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

Now If you enjoy artfully crafted calligraphy or have tried your hand with it yourself, if you're an aesthete, then these will be worth the asking price indeed. If you're just out there for the crunch, then you might want to skip these. Personally, I hope the series continues - for I'm convinced that RPGs ARE art and crossovers/crosspollinations of different types of artistry tend to result in favorites of mine. I know I'm looking forward to when I can hand out a scroll of fireball to my players and watch their astonished faces!

Endzeitgeist out.