By Leon Atkinson
Basic Fantasy Project
Basic Fantasy
Levels 3-5
What Secrets Lie Mouldering in the Estates of the Eliari? Long ago, the enigmatic Eliari merchants settled in these lands, raising peculiar estates to house their families and fortunes. Then, as suddenly as they arrived, a mysterious catastrophe called them home, leaving their holdings to crumble. Today, these forgotten estates are the subject of fearful local legends, whispered to be the dens of bandits or the haunts of restless spirits. Brave adventurers may seek the riches left behind, but few are prepared for what they will find.
This 46 page supplement is a site generator for estates. It presents a common map, and then a series of tables to describe the various locations, allowing a larger number of estates, all based on the same map/compound, with a somewhat samey vibe. It handles “on the fly” generation fairly well, being generally clear and easy to follow. It’s also somewhat generic in its feel, much like the third time to run through the Fallout Shelter section of GW1: Legion of Gold. As with most generators, it would have been better, I suspect, to just present a small handful already complete.
This is a random generator. You have a map. You roll on a table and it tells you what kind the encounter is in the kitchen. The idea being that there are A LOT of these estates in the region.
Pretty map. (Also, I’m rather fond of the title page art, for what it’s worth) So, anyway, Room 20 is the Lords bedroom. You roll a d6 to find the challenge in the bedroom, a table contained in the room 20 description and thus specific just to room 20, as well as another room 20 table for the treasure in the room and another d8 for the “extra detail” in the room. 25ish room keys, one to three tables per room, that’s a lot of tables! Plus, another one for the hut nearby, another one for the river nearby and so on. In addition, the manor, proper, can come in one of two varieties. Either the estate is infested with undead or the estate is the home to bandits. So, like, pages 18-20 are the rooms/tables for the undead estate generator and pages 21-40 are the rooms/tables for the bandit estate lair generator. Got it? Room 20 is always the Lords Bedroom, but it could be a bandit estate or an undead estate, and there are six or so possible encounters for each of those two major estate flavors.
And those encounters? “An [1d4: 1-2 Incubus, 3-4 Succubus] reclines on the bed.” or “A draugr sits motionless in an armchair, facing away from the door. It arrogantly asks intruders if they have any last words before turning and breathing out a cloud of frost.” So, pretty minimally described. How about the extra details? “A slash cuts across the portrait, in oil,
of a maiden beside a brook.” or “A vast quantity of bones are piled in the closet.” So, just some trivia to differentiate THIS random succubus in the Lords Bedroom roll from the next time you roll Succubus in the Lords Bedroom in the next estate you roll.
“A troll curls up in the corner” is not exactly the degree of adventure design I’m generally looking for. I can get behind a minimal encounter in an adventure, but it’s rather difficult to have one with ALL minimal encounters. Or, almost minimal, in the case of this adventure.
Basic Fantasy has a house style. You can see, I think , the issues with the HP tracker and stat block design. They seem committed to it. Would, I think, their commitment extended to “a trolls curls up in a corner.” Basic fantasy: producer of six word encounters with nine inch long stat blocks. Hmmm, probably not the best of marketing blurbs.
I’m only reviewing this because it’s not EXACTLY a random generator. A random generator inspires one to riff on what it produces. It helps you create, not to take, exactly, what comes out of it. Thusly, I don’t generally review them on purpose. You can get inspiration from many sources and who am I to say what can inspire you? This, however, promised a kind of series of pre-gen’d encounters in which to build the estate from and thus not a random generator and more of a dungeon geomorph type of thing.
And, in the end, no matter how much advice the designer gives us about “making sure things make sense with the rolls” and rolling ahead of time vs rolling at the table, etc, It’s still a substandard adventure. There’s no real continual theming here, beyond “bandits in Type B estates and undead in Type A estates.” A basic framing for the estate, unfolding over time, discoveries links one area to another and so on. And, thusly, is an adventure a series of isolated encounters? Can I just literally have a random map and roll on a random table and have the party do fight after fight? Or, is that extra framing and design worthwhile? To discover a clue in one room that opens up another? I think the answer is obvious. And, further, it asks, what value does this particular thing bring over just rolling on a table in the back of the DMG? I mean, if we can accept that “you need to roll to create the adventure and the results will be room independent with no linkage” then what’s this brining? “Curled up in a corner?” A map? That can also be generated online?
It’s just so hard to see the value in this. I think it’s pretty clear that would have been better if the tables had been left out and the designer just rolled themselves and built it in to four or so estates. The encounters linked. One estate revealing secrets in another. A more immersive play experience both in the individual estate and in the grouping as a whole. I understand the kind of a desire for an “estate generator” kind of thing, but I just don’t see how you can get GOOD adventure doing that. Are they “serviceable” adventures? Maybe, in that there is a room with something in it, but I’m not sure there’s a whole lot more here than a DMG table would provide, at least if you lean undead” on one and “bandits” on the other.
This is free at DriveThru.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540387/estates-of-the-eliari?1892600