I would have given this scenario 5 stars, but there is text missing at the end of the pdf, including the crucial bounty to be awarded to the posse. In a pleasant change from most Deadlands scenarios, the challenge comes from trying to identify the murderers, rather than from being faced by hordes of tough monsters.

This scenario reminded me of a Shakespeare tragedy. The early parts are good, but at the end there seems to be an unfathomable need to kill everyone off. I will not be running the finale as written.

A nice micro setting. A short blurb that conveys the general idea (Dwarfen Town + Zombie Apokalypse + Mine Runner Vehicle treasure hunters). The Minerunner Deck is a tool to play a the descent in the ruins with the mine runner vehicle. Take some cards with a short scene sentence ("A Zombie leaps on the wagon....") and a Skill roll (Fighting-2). So you could create a nice narrative of the travel scene. I Refine the Rules a little bit (if you roll a raise you could discard on of the three cards, so you could help others when they have a really hard roll, but increase the dangers of a failed roll).

Its nice for a quick con adventure. By changing the end fight I manage to play it twice with partly the same players. Once it was a fight in a sort of lava forge/smithy against a forge spurned (from pathfinder)+hellhounds and once it was a quick retreat from a gigantic spider+brood up a shaft with a spiral ramp for the minerunner (using a sort of chase rules).

Probably THE best Setting in Savage Worlds. Ive been running an ETU campaign for over a year now and I gotta say the Urban Magic mixed with Horror works incredibly well in the setting of a college/university. Not just are there tons of interesting premade Onesheets and Savage Tales, but something about the setting makes it so easy to come up with your own stories.

The book itself is very good with tons of useful tables and putting twists on normal features of SW. The most prominent one is ritual magic, which is crazy cool to the point that one of my players has completely dived into ritual magic, making it more reliable and easier to use for her. Coming up with your own spells is also fun and as the GM you have basically full power over what Magic the players get, so you wont get in a situation where a mystery is immediately solved cause you forgot that a player chose a power that deals with specifically what you had in mind.

Pinebox in itself is very fun. There are tons of places that are unique and interesting. The environs and town are described in clear ways but leave more than enough wriggleroom to expand on it.

The only gripes I could name would be that the statblocks at the end also have information about the characters and spoiler a lot of things that happen in Degrees of Horror, so you should be able to trust your players that they dont read those.

The added Hindrances and Edges are also very fun and interesting, which makes Character Creation even more fun. Like I said before, great setting, great book, always recommend.

The system is very good. It's easy to learn, fast to play and the pdf is really Printer Friendly!
Efficient layers management and good chapter editing make it very easy to print exaclty what you want. Great work! If only other editors could do that. (which is still not the case in 2023).

Knowing the authors, I knew that I could expect good things in this product. And I was not disappointed! I really liked that even though this is a stand-alone adventure, it is versatile enough to be dropped into existing settings. For example, I will be using this in my Eberron campaign, set in Sharn. And the side bar on page 4 suggests as much. I also like the side bar making suggestions for use of the Fantasy Companion (my favorite Savage Worlds Companion). The rules for Guards are excellent and can be lifted from this to be used in a homebrew setting/adventure. The adventure itself has a nice setup, giving plenty of background information to the GM that leads up to the starting point. And then drops the "next move" in the story. The descriptions of the scenes as the story progresses are well detailed and give some great suggestions as to where clues and information might lead the players on their "possible next steps". And the epilogue provides some interesting hooks that a GM could develop into a continuing tale that springs from this adventure. Overall, a fantastic product and well worth the price tag!

Not only a fine adventure in its own right, but a great invesigatory framework to use for future stories. It's a real challenge to do these sorts of micro-settings that can fit everywhere, but these guys rise to that opportuniyt. I might have wanted a few more bits and bobs; maybe a Professional Edge or two for Arcane using guards or somesuch. But who am i to complete. Great product. And thanks to Jan for making my copy of the pdf to happen

City Guard Chronicles is an interesting kind of "meta-setting" that doesn’t have to be a setting on its own – although it can be –, but rather provides some essential setting information and makes it possible to integrate the adventures into other settings. We were able to put the adventure into another setting (which wasn’t mentioned as an example in the product) without problems and just needed to look up some names from the setting in question.

The micro-settings comes with a few new interesting Edges, a collection of Setting Rules (both from the core rulebook as well as new ones) and eight archetypes, which are well-made both mechanically as well as regarding their personality. I especially appreciate that it clearly says what their strengths are as well in case you’re new to the system and can’t tell by the first glance.

The product has a great-looking layout and illustrations that fit together well and support the content.

The adventure is on the whole an investigation, but has a fair mix between action-filled parts and time for searching clues and puzzling together information. It does not rely on the players to solve any riddles, but keeps the tension even when the player characters do very well in their rolls. I feel that this is where other published investigation adventures fail, so I’d like to emphasize how well this works out here.

There are a lot of information, hints and clues which make the investigation feel very convincing. Also, the adventure is not linear and can go in different directions – dependent on both the players’ decisions and rolls – which add to this impression. For the GM, it’s clearly labeled which clue is essential and which is just for the scenery, and it also includes an overview of possible scenes and their connections. Both are a huge help to running the adventure. The overview is even hyperlinked in the PDF.

Although the setting is presented as more gritty and noir-like, it does not try to express that in making the case unreasonably hard to solve. We intentionally played it with a player character group that did not contain only the pre-generated characters from the product and was (again, intentionally) rather bad at actual investigation, and we still managed to solve the case – but the adventure includes different ways of solving it and possible complications, so it did not feel like the success was given away for free.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of this line and can recommend the micro-setting and adventure to everyone looking for a fantasy investigation adventure.

Un très bon supplément, clair et bien structuré, qui amène une véritable plus-value d’atouts (tout particulièrement en Combat et Commandement) et autres petites règles qui permettent de parfaire le style que l’on veut donner à sa campagne fantasy (mais pas seulement) très personnelle. L’auteur est de plus facilement accessible (discord) et réponds aimablement aux interrogations diverses.

This is a great time saver for organizing one-shot adventures for new players at RPG days hosted by hobby shops! Can't wait to use them!

There is an error for the Monk's stat block, as his Parry score should be 8 (1) due to having a d10 in Fighting and the Block Edge only adding up to 7+1. That's the only error I found in this document.

Nice companion to have and a lot of good stuff inside. Species creation, new powers, new powers Hindrances and Edges to make several kind of magic-user. A lot of creatures and monsters to use, several new Setting rules and even some advices to "recreate" DnD classes with suggested Edges, Hindrances and Skills.

Why 4 out of 5 ? Well because two things : several nods to Savage Pathfinder I'm not interested in and several things which were already in the SWADE Super Powers Companion and adapted to fantasy: Strongholds for instance. I like the idea of Strongholds as I liked the Headquarters in the SWADE SPC but it's a bit of a skinned copy paste and it's kind of lazy.

Still 4/5 for me is a pretty good product and I'm waiting eagerly for a new Science-Fiction Companion.

This fits some many idea, and gives so much more. A great alternative "low power" street level supers system dressed up in Cyberpunk that Old Magic.....

Good quality with clear thought put into each dinosaur. My players hate the unhittable Compys and fear the spineosaurs that can swim like very large maneating fish. We're having an awesome time with it.

Nice, cool and simple tool. I was just toying with it, just to see how it works....i´ve "lost" and hour on it.... Creating these relics also work as prompts.

This bundle is chock full of good ideas that I've been learning to better my games with. Very satisfied because I had been doing everything guessing at what worked and what didn't. Now I see what works for other GMs and how I can use that as a template!