A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Aquatics

Aquatics by Jonathan Davidson is a role playing game supplement published by Columbia Games Inc. for use with Hârn and HârnMaster. This is a bestiary article.

The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a six-page PDF for $2.99 but was purchased at a reduced price during a sale.

The opening paragraph says mariners talk about deadly marine beasts, and has a section on marine encounters, a table for river, coast and sea encounters together with what’s encountered and some rules on attacking ships. Most creatures will not attack humans, and will probably flee, but some are dangerous. Following the first page are details on different creatures, with stats accompanying them.

The Vorang is a giant squid, which doesn’t normally attack ships, other than heavily-laden fishing boats.

The Wrecan, or Elder’s Guard, is a huge beast that lives in coastal areas. They feed on large fish and sea mammals, and are aggressively territorial. They have also been known to attack ships.

Daranog is a water serpent, which is found in freshwater environments. This gives some details on where such have been seen in Hârn.

Whales has a sidebar on hunting the creatures and some introductory material on whales in general. Specific details are then given on sperm whales, killer whales and right whales, so-called because they are the “right whale” to hunt.

Aquatics in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and is short enough that these are not needed. Navigation is fine. The text maintains a single column with sidebar format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of colour and black and white images, some of which may be custom. Presentation is okay.

This is one in a series of HârnMaster bestiary articles that cover a limited number of creatures in detail. As with others in the range, the game stats take up only a portion of the supplement, and the main material could be used with other systems without too much trouble, though parts on ship attacks that have stats would also need altering. Primarily, this provides monster background material for Hârn. Aquatics is a decent bestiary supplement and it can be found by clicking here.