Adventure Anthology 1
86 pages (including 3 blank and 1 OGL)
Price: Download it for free here or roughly $3.75 on Amazon.com
his is a review of Version 10, 1st edition, which is what I got when I ordered it from Amazon.com in the past few days. Version 12 is the most current version available for free on the website.
Adventure Anthology 1 is a collection of short adventures written for the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game.
It includes 14 adventures ranging from a few pages all the way up to 9 pages by a variety of authors, including the author of the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Chris Gonnerman. Because this an anthology, the writing style and layout varies from adventure to adventure. This can be a bit distracting. Although all of them adhere to the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing statblock (and check-boxes to mark off foes and/or HP), and all of them have some form of boxed text, what you get in each case varies. One adventure has a whole NPC roster up front and the adventure tells you where they are; another has each monster individually listed.
That means you need to approach each adventure on its own - they don't mesh together, they don't have a unified style, and they don't always hand the GM information in the same order. As a plus, however, they are all fairly short and generally are playable after a very quick but thorough reading. This makes the book valuable for pick-up play or for holding onto for those last-minute "Wait, what do you mean I'm reffing the game tonight?" moments. The play levels range from beginning characters up to 8th level, so there is an adventure ready for low to barely sub-name level PCs.
The art is fine - simple, generally attractive, and doesn't detract from the book. the maps are clear and easy to read. A couple are very reminiscent of B2 Keep on the Borderlands and of the village of Orlane from N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Because this is a retro-clone, I'm sure this isn't accidental but is deliberate homage.
Like the other Basic Fantasy books, the font is large and clear, and there is enough whitespace and headings to break up large blocks of text. This makes it easy to scan the adventures for the section you are looking for. That adds considerably to my appreciation of the book.
Overall: For the price, 8 adventures in print - it's not a bad deal at all. There is a bit of an uneven nature of the adventures, in terms of writing and style. But overall, it's a good deal, the adventures are fast and ready to go, and you could do a lot worse than having this on your shelf for last-minute game play. The price can't be beat - it's either free, or less than $4 in print. I'm happy to have it in my Basic Fantasy collection.
I thought this was a review for Basic Roleplaying System from Chaosium. I will check it out however. I was excited though because, I thought there was a secret stash of Chaosium Dungeon Fantasy adventures. In Search of the Trollslayer was a cool adventure from them.
ReplyDeleteSorry man. The name is very similar, which is why I said "Basic Fantasy" and not "Basic Roleplaying." It's tough to tell the names apart without always using the complete name in both cases.
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