Letters from the Flaming Crab: Hygiene (PFRPG) PDF

This installment of Flaming Crab Games' delightfully oddball Letters-series clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of SRD, leaving us with 24 pages of content, so let's take a look!

As always, we begin this installment with a nice letter from the planeshopping vessel, thankfully salvaged for our collective delights by J Gray.

Now we've all been there: The PCs have just battled through a horde of foes, are covered in blood and guts...and then, they walk into a tavern. As if that does not look weird. And no one cares. We begin this pdf thus, appropriately, with a nice and handy table pertaining social modifiers - these can be added or subtracted, depending on the context, from the respective social skills: A foppish Taldan dandy may indeed consider someone covered in gold dust to warrant +4...while the savage orc chieftain will be more inclined to hand an asswhooping to the pansy that came before him thus clad. This includes filth/bathed-status and perfumes, including race-specific ones as well as notes on hair/beard-care or the status of one's teeth...which were notoriously problematic before the advent of modern dentistry.

And indeed, hygiene may influence a lot: Disguises that do not correspond to expected hygiene levels may suffer from a penalty; whether fleas or bedbugs, lack of cleanliness may net you itching, annoying parasites. (Yep, provided as a nice infestation) and concise and simple dental cavity rules allow you to track bad breath et al. Similarly, a handy table pertaining body odor and how easily you may be tacked via scent etc. can be found. And yes, you may actually develop a disgusting stench aura!

Now, the medieval period had a significantly different concept pertaining hygiene than we do: Performing the act of love on piles of mist was not uncommon - the offal and straw kept heat pretty well. Similarly, throwing the bedpan on the streets was pretty much common practice prior to the advent of proper sewer systems. At the same time, though, this time wasn't as filthy (or prude!) as you'd imagine - in Nuremberg, for example, the existence of bath houses is well-documented. They were a space for citizens to relax, consume food...and yes, also indulge in more carnal activities, much to the chagrin of many a hardliner or prude. The exact structure and conventions of places related to bathing differ wildly amid cultures - and thus, much to my delight, we receive several fully mapped bathhouses: The Ishiyu Onsen hot spring with a feudal, Japanese touch; the quasi Greco-Roman Thermae of Pulsatilla and the White Blossom Bathhouse, which should make fans of WuXia or European bath culture both happy - the respective entries also feature notes on nomenclature, showing that the team did the research. Nice!

Obviously, though, hygiene on the road would be a slightly more difficult subject matter - and here, we receive the also fully mapped cascade pools, which may draw washers (or make for a phenomenal boss-fight arena). A barber shop and a salon further complement the ready to drop in locales (again, mapped) that are depicted within, all with adventure hooks...though frankly, I would have enjoyed an acknowledgment of barbers doubling as physicians and the type of "healing" they provided.

The pdf does provide concise lists of the services offered, all collected on one page in a handy GM cheat-sheet and similarly features a neat selection of associated mundane items - from the collapsible bathtub to alum, an oil that prevents you best suit from being spattered in blood and guts, shaving kits...and for the more magically-inclined actually working hair-growth tonics are included. And yes, singed hair may be regrown as well...and a collective sigh of relief went through the dwarven population...

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no grievous glitches. Layout adheres to Flaming Crab Games' two-column full-color standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Artwork is a mix of b/w-art and stock and manages to generate a concise visual identity. The maps provided for the locations are generally minimalistic and b/w with blue and green highlights - amazing, btw.: Flaming Crab Games listened - now, we get scales for the maps and the pdf also features player-friendly maps for each of the locations! Kudos for improving the book in this crucial way!! (Seriously, the cascades alone make for such a cool arena...)
Lukas Buergi's installment on hygiene can be a godsend for intrigue-heavy campaigns, particularly those favoring a simulationalist approach...like mine do. Personally, I enjoy this VERY much.
The component of magic in such a context deserved a bit more coverage in my opinion: While prestidigitation and the like are acknowledged and talked about, I wished that this took the fantastic angle up a slight notch. While I adore the sample bathhouses included, general toolkits for the design and development of hygiene traditions would have made more sense to me - you know, sand baths, cleaning by fire for fire resistant beings...the like. The bathhouses can be used once...a general toolkit could be used all the time. Similarly, suggestions for culturally specific social modifiers based on hygiene or uniquely elven/dwarven/weirdo race xyz-suggestions for traditions would have elevated this further.

The pdf, as a whole, is a more than fairly-priced, evocative file and deserves being bought, even if it does not reach the level of depth and coverage that the coin-installment offered. In the end, this is pretty much a good buy and should be considered, particularly in light of the topic not nearly being covered in its totality - and weird little books like this require and deserve support! With the integration and improvement of the maps, the book offers now some seriously fun set-pieces for a more than fair price-point, though - which is why my verdict for the revised version is upgraded to 5 stars, just short of my seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.

This is the first time I've checked out a letter from the flaming crab, so I'm going to be looking at this as something to enrich a game world that deals with these things. It's a topic I haven't expected to see covered like this, but that's what makes this line stand out.

What I liked

-While the intro letter is a bit hard to read due to the background, it does give us a nice and flavorful opening to this book.

-I appreciate the mutable nature of the social modifier chart, making it pretty useful and fun for its intended purpose.

-The body odor and scent chart was another fun and flavorful addition to help nail down just how important hygiene can be to an adventurer.

-There's maps of the locations. I have to admit, I skipped ahead to find out if there would be, I'm a stickler for having maps for locations given layouts, and there is. Touche, FC. I was not expecting maps after the last few products I read. They're bare bones, but they're there, which is all I really want.

-I appreciated the sidebar about words and their meaning, it help keep things authentic while still keeping me in the loop on the terminology being used.

-The high fantasy tweaks for Thermae of Pulsatilla were a very nice touch, they're small things but they really help give the situation a more vibrant feel for a setting that allows such things.

-Really the Thermae of Pulsatilla has been just very interesting thus far, a location that I could see throwing into a lot of games.

-Small point, but I enjoy the large amount of relevant female NPCs here. It's a minor plus, but a plus none the less.

-The A Cut Above barber shop is a fun location, and the adventure hooks are interesting, having more adventure flavor than the rest of the locations.

-Props for including feminine hygiene products, wasn't expecting it but it's appreciated when the vibe is hygiene.

What I disliked

-I really feel like the white blossom bathhouse could have received more detail, as it feels lacking compared to the previous two.

-Only some of the NPCs have alignments listed, which is something that I would have liked to see for all of them.

-It's clear that certain sections are written by different people, as there feels like different ideas are used for each section (some have adventure hooks, some have notable NPCs, etc), which can be jarring if one particularly likes one of those things and doesn't see it done in each section.

-There could have been more magic items, as there was only 1 here that wasn't particularly impactful.

Final Thoughts
As a whole I liked this book even if it felt disjointed at parts. It's the kind of thing that I could easily see throwing into my game to give players a chance to add a bit more verisimilitude into our games about hygiene and cleanliness. I'd probably give this a 4.5, but for the sake of this review and a few points that I particularly liked in here (mostly the small points I mentioned), I'm going to give this a 5 star review. I think a lot of the ideas here are going to help give people a much needed reason to include new concepts into their game, and to me, I feel like that's the goal of this line.