I love SLA and I’ve been involved to various degrees in it, including writing CS1. I’ll be involved in this new outing as well so much as I can spare the time.
There’s a new forum open run by some of the old Nightfall crew and some new people and they’re releasing some of the stuff that was cut from Cannibal Sector One as well as previews, in-character stuff and so on.
Go, get involved.
So Grim, why are you making these 6-pack adventures?
Money I guess. Also spotted a bit of a gap in the market for quick, easy adventures that you can just get up and go with.
Wasn’t the point of the 100 Adventure Seeds that you can’t stand conventional adventures?
This is true, however, there is definitely a gap for this sort of short, snappy adventure for fill in games, convention scenarios and introductory games.
So these aren’t conventional adventures?
When it’s a one-off game you can do less conventional things. It’s less important if a character dies or there’s a total party wipe, it can still be fun. You can play around with the format and even have people within the group set up as spies, double agents or assassins without them being a total arsehole and spoiling the game.
So what really made you decide to do them?
I hit on a great way of cheaply producing battlemats, the covers of POD books, but needed something to fill in the middle since you can’t just print covers – unfortunately. An adventure seemed like the best option especially in this ‘takeaway’ format.
What games are you going to support?
Well, anything really, but obviously games that use battlemats are going to be more likely. That means Pathfinder, 4e and possibly Savage Worlds if they clear us for producing material (we have a game setting intended for SW at some point in the future). Otherwise if anyone else wants some adventure/setting support, we may well do that too. They just have to ask. Our own games don’t tend to be battlemat friendly, so that’s unlikely. If we can find other ways to fill out the content we might do some more generic battlemats for things like post apocalyptic or science fiction settings.
What about the counters?
At the moment the counters are on paper on the inside of the hardcopy versions so they’re black and white and paper, rather than card. It’s possible we might do counters by a similar production method but that’s something for the future. For the moment the paper ones will have to suffice.
Can I pitch ideas or maps?
Sure you can, I’ll pay £20 ($30) for a short 2-4 hour adventure – size is limited because these have to be saddle-stitched. Cartographers are welcome to offer their services but that’ll have to be negotiated. 6-Pack 2 I spent a lot on getting a custom map but it doesn’t look like that level of expenditure is going to be viable, so if you want work, I’m afraid you’re going to have to pitch low 😦
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Go stick your head in a pig.
What is it? It’s something Postmortem are calling a “6-Pack Adventure” and to quote from the book itself;
“6-Pack Adventures are ‘pick-up and play’ adventures. They have pregenerated characters, battlemats, tokens, all that just need to be printed out or, in the case of the print version – have the cover taken off to use as the mat and the tokens cut out.”
How much does it cost? The download will cost you the princely sum of £1.75 the print copy will set you back £3.50
What system is it for? Pathfinder.
My thoughts:
This public review of role playing products is a little new for me, we all like to read products and then declaim or evangelise wildly to our friends, but to actually go on record and state your thoughts in a public manner? That’s a totally different container of Pisceans. This brings me to the package of RPG goodness I have in front of me, it comes as an electronic download from RPGNow and there’s a print version out there too, available from LULU, I cannot review the actual print edition as it’s a little hard to get it to travel along the broadband link I have.
The story starts in an inn, but let me assure you now, even though there’s a ‘Mysterious Stranger’ in residence it is not that old hackneyed hook that awaits the valorous traveller, the characters are all taking refuge from the cold night in the inn and plan to move on in the morning. The shenanigans continue from there but I won’t go into further details to avoid spoilers.
I like it, it reads like something I might have put together and I think it could generate a reasonable amount of further adventures for a party who run through it. It’s playable with only the core rulebook knowledge of Pathfinder needed over and above the actual 6-Pack. There are a couple of areas that, knowing my players, I’d have to fill in but this will not present a problem to any but the newest of GMs.
No characters ready? No problem the ones at the back of the pack have enough characterisation to get your teeth into, my only complaint with these is I’d like to see the character art all done in the same style, it’s a personal preference more than a real dislike.
A good colour printer will provide the maps and tokens, if you need them.
This pack really does contain everything you need to play a shortish game of Pathfinder; I suspect my group would play through this in about 2 to 3 hours.
I’ve attached one of the pre-generated characters to this post, Torvel Darvassa – Level 3 Human Fighter (0), that should give you some idea of the characterisation in this module.
The overall rating I’m going to give it is 4.5 Buccaneers out of 5, losing 0.5 of a Buccaneer to my personal preference for a single art style in a module.
The first in a hopeful series of 6-Pack Adventures, pick-up-and-play adventures designed to fill 2-4 hours of play and containing everything you need.
For longevity you can use the tokens and the map for anything else you care to do and the adventures should be fairly easily adaptable to fit into your existing campaign if you want.
Battle’s End has a group of adventurers taking their rest from their individual wanderings in an inn, The Battle’s End. Their rest is due to be interrupted however as the village comes under a mysterious assault by the legions of the undead…
Pathfinder and associated marks and logos are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC, and are used under license. See paizo.com/pathfinderRPG for more information on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
You can buy Battle’s End on PDF HERE
Or in print at Lulu HERE
This is one where it is worth getting the print version as it’s designed so that the cover can be cut free to form the battle mat for the scenario or for future use.
Postmortem Studios 