Chapter One: Boston (27 pages) does a good job describing the city. The history of the city is covered, locations are given a bit of detail, adventure ideas are offered at numerous points, and a (somewhat hard to read) map of the city is provided. There are some supernatural elements provided, but they’re all in the form of tacked on adventure ideas. I’m guessing the authors would rather offer a strongly historical and detailed setting for GMs to customize to their tastes, than integrate cabals of omnipresent monsters and villains into the default setting. But that’s pure speculation on my part.
HERE BE SPOILERS Well, some spoilers at least. Unfortunately, I don’t want to give away a lot of the plot for fear that players might read it. At the same time, I want GMs to have a good idea what they’re getting in for should they pick this up. So please bear with me.
The rest of the book (almost three-quarters of it) is devoted to the first major part of the Flames of Freedom campaign. In it, the heroes will rescue pretty damsels, fight horrible monsters, take part in helping to ensure magic is used to free Boston from the British, and uncover an ancient conspiracy. The adventure can be played up as a swashbuckling action adventure or menacing horror exercise with little effort by the GM; the mood is really pretty flexible. The adventure itself ends on a solid note. While there are some loose ends and potential future exploits to be had, there’s no cliffhanger forcing GMs to go buy another book to see what happens to the PCs next. Probably because of its clean ending, I’m also left wondering just how important this part of the campaign really was; sure Boston is freed, but there’s little to make me think the PCs had to play a role in freeing it.
A lot of times I feel that Colonial Gothic emphasizes history at the cost of the supernatural elements, to the point that the monsters and magic and such feels tacked on. Here however, they are important and vital elements to the plot, integrated into the larger story. While I’m sure this is a flaw for a lot of people, I found it a well done and welcome addition to the game. It doesn’t “undo” any of the historical information in earlier books, but it gives me an idea where the authors are trying to take the game.
Style: “Copy/Paste” functions are a great ally when used correctly, and a bad mark when they refer to stuff incorrectly. Guess which one I found this book doing. There’s also two different sections describing Small Pox differently (they should’ve been combined into one), and a character using magical skills without any hint as to where the skills are covered (and they’re not covered in the main book). None of it is as bad as the editing in the core book, where things were so contradictory and confusing that game play was negatively impacted, but it’s still pretty sloppy. That said, there’s maps, more cool clip art, and the layout looks as good as always. It’s right on the cusp of a 2 or a 3, so I’ll give it a just over the line 3. If the editing were better, I’d probably raise it a whole point, but as is I don’t think its errors are bad enough to merit a 2. Almost bad enough, but not quite.
Substance: The Boston sourcebook is decent, and the material should still be at least somewhat useful even after the adventure ends (although a few adventure hooks would need some tweaking once the British are gone). The adventure itself is really good, reminding me of one of the better “Call of Cthulhu adventures without the Mythos” style adventures out there. Plus there’s lots of NPCs that GMs may want to work into future adventures as well. That said, unless you’re really interested in the campaign or extremely interested in colonial Boston, I’m afraid there may not be much here for you. The adventure’s good, but it might be hard to break the adventure into independent pieces. I’ll go with a solid 4 though, because I’m assuming that if you buy it you want the Boston information and the campaign adventure. Those looking for an “idea mine” would probably find it a low to solid 3 I’m guessing.
Conclusion: By now you should know the drill. Colonial Gothic products are well researched, are very evocative of the setting, and emphasize history over zombies. That said, this book breaks things up a bit and offers a story that can be either scary or adventurous (or both) along with a decent (if somewhat short) overview of the Boston region. It’s not necessary by any means, but it’s a good book anyway.
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