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In Short

Legendaria Geographica provides a collection of short stories each of which is centered around a piece of artwork. These twenty five stories involve an adventurer of some sort narrating their tale of adventure or woe to you, the reader. The stories even include imagined responses from you at times. On the whole, each of these stories provides a good adventure hook and may serve to entertain the reader.

Unfortunately, there are several problems here. First, all of these plot hooks could be broken down to a single paragraph and included over two pages of text. Second, the writing tends to be poor. Some of the breaks, pauses, and responses meant to simulate conversation are placed at the most frustrating times. They’re likely meant to build drama, but all they do is annoy. Finally, many of the hooks just aren’t that interesting.

The Physical Thing

This 102 page black and white softcover showcases significantly below average production values. The very best stuff here are the 25 full page pieces of artwork, all of which are very nice. Being able to hold one up and show it off during a game session would be very helpful. However, there are only 64 pages of text here and they’re all short stories. This results in very little useful material for most readers.

On the plus side, there are maps at the beginning of the product that show where each short story takes place in Ramlar.

The Ideas

The twenty five stories presented here take place all over the world of Ramlar. Each one can serve as an adventure hook or a legend to share with the player characters. They’re all high fantasy sorts of stuff, often involving ghosts, demons, and strange magical places – just the sort of thing an adventuring group might seek out. These entries are very generic, and could easily be placed in any other fantasy world.

My Take

I didn’t enjoy reading this product and really can’t recommend it. While a lot of the locations are neat, the descriptions are too long winded and, frankly, frustrating for what you get. All of the story tellers are very well educated, and there is no variance in their dialect – something that could have added a lot of flavor to the product. Often they respond to things the reader has “said,” and they also pause and lose their train of thought at times. Far from adding to the product, it makes reading the entries much less enjoyable.

The art is quite nice, and it certainly would help to bring an adventure to life. For the same price, however, a consumer could get a larger hardcover with substantially more content. Still, if you want a collection of twenty five fantasy short stories, averaging three pages in length, each with a full page picture, then you may enjoy this product.