100 Kingdoms
Every GM gets it from time to time: Writer's Block. They need to come up with a location that is different from the last 3. Lying awake at night, they finally just stare at a calendar and say the name of this country is Vonember, a farming country that is well known for their harvest celebration. For we all know that one of the harder part of running a role playing game is coming up with the ideas that are consistently original.
Enter 100 Kingdoms by Postmortem Studios. This fantasy supplement is not specific to any RPG system and contains no crunch. However it does the harder part of the two, gives the GM the basic idea for him or her to come up with their own crunch. Within it's 108 pages, 100 Kingdoms receive a 1 page write-up of the location's description as well as plot hooks for each location. Each location is described in 5 parts: Title, Description, Ruler, Geography, and Stories.
Title: The title is merely a one-liner to give the casual glancer an idea what they can expect to find on the page. Examples: "Wagon's Roll" is the title of a caravan people similar to the Roma of Europe, under "Eagle's Nest" you can find a nation of Eagle-men who live at the tops of mountains and tall trees, and if you looked under "You Can't See Me" you'd find the details of an invisible city filled with invisible people, invisible rodents, and produces invisible armor.
Description and Ruler: The description section (2-3 paragraphs long) and ruler section (1-2 paragraphs) contain enough detail to give the GM ideas to develop the location and ruler/ruling body further. Each of these sections are given a general overview as well as a peculiar quirk or two. An example of this is as follows:
Vendrikar is a city known across the realm for the beauty of its art, the quality of its crafts, the bravery of its knights ... Vendrikar doesn’t exist.
Geography: A two paragraph description of the landscape. While all of the writing in this resource is of good enough quality to be read straight off the page to the players, if needed, this section is generally the best for it. It gives a rich description of the location they find themselves in and, generally, a description of the unnamed NPC's that the players won't be interacting with much but help produce the feel the land they find themselves in.
Stories: In this 2-3 paragraph section is where the major plot hooks can be found. Bits juicy enough to leave any adventurer chomping at the bit to go treasuring hunting there or righting injustices here. And all with enough information to make the GM's job easier.
Style
The single biggest drawback to this resource is a complete lack of artwork, not even a border on the interior pages. The cover is the only artwork found here. This gives the feeling that this resource is more of a computer technical manual then a fantasy RPG resource. But the presentation of the material is simple, clean and very easy for a GM to quickly get an idea and develop it. I give it a 2.
Substance
The material presented here is well-written, well-edited, and makes for a fast read. This resource does what it sets out to do well, provide a springboard to GM's who need ideas for their games. As I said before, the material is clean enough to be read straight off the page to players if the GM uses it unaltered. I give it a 5.
Bottom Line
This is a quality product for any fantasy game. And at $6.50 for the PDF, it's worth buying the product instead of pirating it.
Review Summary