The Folio #8 – The Patina Court

By Scott Taylor
Art of the Genre
1e/5e
Levels 1-3

Valoria, jewel of the world of Mythras…  This ancient and fabled city is home to more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but little does that matter to the downtrodden who find refuge in the Patina Court.  Once a place of high magic, now little more than a forgotten slum, this neighborhood holds more adventure and mystery than one might think.  Can your players discover all its secrets?  Will they be able to face the challenges of refuse strewn cellars, newly haunted crypts, and enchanted wizard towers?  Only time, ingenuity, and dice will tell.

This 32 page adventure presents a small district in a town, a kind of home base district, and three short adventures in it. The few short building descriptions aren’t too bad, but the adventures are almost generic and lack any sort of depth or interest to them. 

We’re going for a Starting Home Base vibe here, except its in one district of a larger city. You’re advised to start the characters off almost broke, with just like 2gp each, in order to prompt them to adventure. The designer explicitly invokes the old Conan is Always Broke theme, and it’s not bad as a starting gimmick. The starting district has a few interesting quirks to it, the exact thing it should have, for a DM to use to leverage during their game. We’ve got a low-rent hostel, run by an ex-guardman, who carries around a cudgel and isn’t afraid to use it. Great! Thats the kind of flophouse I want in my game for my first levels! Lots of good ways to improve little scenes; maybe he’s a cheery guy to the paying guests but the party sees him kicking out someone who hasn’t paid, as their introduction. A juxtaposition! And there’s a tavern that serves the leftovers from a nicer place … and a popular outhouse out back where you can return their somewhat rancid fare. And, we’ve even got an nic little built in enemy, The Teller Gang, These are the local toughs, there to cause trouble, do a protection racket, and generally be foils for your beginning characters. Again, great opportunities here for inserting little scenes and interactions with the party. They are all written, relatively terse, and in such as way that they are an inspiration to a DM. And this is what you want with these kind of NPC’s and locales in town, things that inspire the DM to drop in little bits and pieces and interactions. This is one of the stronger parts of the booklet. I would say Not So Strong To Warrant A Purchase On This Alone … except … I love stealing shit for my cities and the hostel, tavern and maybe even the gang are stealable. So, sure, I might buy it just because I want to steal those parts for my game, without the district as a whole. 

We then start to fall down. A lot. The three little adventure provided are meant to be used with Dwarven Forge, which alone implies they will not be too large. And they are not, just a coupe of rooms in each, maybe seven or so at most. We get an adventure in the basement of the tavern, hunting rats, errr, giant ants. A trope so tropey as to be a meme. And really perfunctory. There’s almost not detail down there. Oh, there’s read-aloud, in the much hated and should never be used second-person format. But the rooms proper are really just an excuse, in each, to fight a giant ant or two. Nothing more. “Your light source bounces oddly off heaps and stacks Almost inch by inch, you plow, pull, tumble, and climb farther back into the monstrosity that is the Rancid Cellar.” Ok sure. 

And the treasure provided is NOT 1e. The final boss in one of them, a 6HD (!) crypt thing, has 47 silver pieces. In another place you find a single gold and pearl earring. There is almost n treasure at all in this, which begs the question: how do you level? Or, even, pay the rent in the hostel for another night. 

There are skill checks, like making four charisma checks to get some rumors to find out where to go next. Blech! I hate it when the roleplaying elements are reduced to simple die rolls. This is the heart of the game! Not cool man.

In the Crypt adventure you know that two gravediggers went missing. In one room you find two fresh zombies. But there are not details given. Just two fresh zombies and some advice to conduct a jump scare. This is a MAJOR missed opportunity. Those dudes should have names. They were the Maltese Falcon f the adventure. But, we’re not even really told it IS the two gravediggers, there’s just the implication that they are since the zombies are fresh. We really need a beter description of them, other than “fresh zombie” and something else. A family, or some mystery or something to springboard more play off of. It’s like the adventures, proper, are divorced from the town above them, as if they have no relation to them. Instead they should be integrated in to the town, and used to bolster, further, the town play.  

Obviously, I’m not a fan of the adventures, although some of the town locations are decent for stealing. (And, as always, I’m enamored with town play, so keep that in mind.) And, not really a 1e adventure but a 5e, I’d say.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. That’s not much, but you do get to see the hostel and a couple of NPC’s. Check em out!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/188423/The-Folio-8-1E–5E-Format-DF1?1892600

Hey, yo, I also snagged Highdark Hall. It’s not an adventure, but rather a manor home/estate for a gothic roleplaying game. Think Jane Eyre the RPG … except this is just a location to use in any period RPG. It’s got a GRET floorplan, lots of people, including the servants, an estate to go with the hall, and a lot of rumours. It could be used either for more fantastic games, with some spell slinging occults, or cultists, or in a more mundane fashion as well. If you wanted a supplement that detailed a country manor for a period game then I’d give it a look. It’s pretty well done, as a resource for a a place to run adventures IN.