10 Kingdom Seeds: Hills by Liz Smith is a role playing game supplement published by Rite Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a nine page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.49 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter and one the Open Game License.
Rather than being a collection of kingdoms, this is actually a collection of villages and smaller. Each village has a typical Pathfinder statblock followed by a description of the village, an overview of one or two locations and three rumours.
Appleton is a fairly pleasant location known for its gins. Borley is a salt mining town run by the priest of an evil god. Deepmarble has a couple of marble quarries. Eastdeer is overrun by snakes and makes use of this by catching, taming and selling the snakes. Lorhayven is based around hot springs, obsidian mining and an academy. Redhurst has a shrine to the goddess of agriculture. Seahollow is based around sheep. Starrywyn has a gem mine. Summercrest is a village made of mobile huts. Swynford is a pony-breeding village that also mines substances useful for alchemists.
10 Kingdom Seeds: Hills in Review
The PDF is extensively bookmarked, with the villages, locations and rumours all linked. Navigation is excellent. The text maintains a two column full colour format and one rather large error was noticed – the flavour and part of the location description in Seahollow is in the middle of the stat block. There are also a number of full colour illustrations of villages and similar. Presentation is good.
As stated, this isn’t really what might be expected by the title of “Kingdom Seeds.” There’s nothing kingdom-related here. What there is, is a brief overview of ten villages and thorps that can be dropped into a location. Although not as thoroughly detailed as, say, Raging Swan Press‘s Village Backdrops series, these are detailed enough to be useful in most instances, as somewhere to be placed in a hurry to flesh out a location or as a source of adventure hooks.
The villages themselves range from what could be considered to be solid, workaday villages to more interesting ones – the village of Summercrest that constantly moves around as it’s made from wheeled huts is a definite example of this. At full price, this is still a pretty solid product; at the price paid it was a bargain. Just don’t be misled by the title. 10 Kingdom Seeds: Hills is a useful collection of villages and thorps and can be found by clicking here.
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