A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Arcane Quarter

Arcane Quarter by Andrew Hand and Michael Johnson is a role playing game supplement published by Limitless Adventures for use with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. 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 collection of 10 locations in a city’s arcane quarter, including a map of the quarter itself.

This is a fourteen page PDF which is available from RPGNow for $1.99 but which was received for free with a special voucher. One page is the front cover, one page the front matter and one page the Open Game License.

The ten locations are covered at one per page. Each has a description, stats for relevant NPCs and adventure hooks. Other information that may be included, depending on the location, is gameplay information, history, treasure and available merchandise, for those that sell it.

First up is The Reticent Garden, a pleasant and safe park maintained by a powerful mage (not a druid).

Babbling Bumbles’s Baubles is a magic item shop although all the items sold have a side effect, possibly due to a curse on the maker.

The Sanctum is a bar used as a lich’s information source.

Arcanist’s Accoutrements sells various items used by spellcasters.

The Itchy Wizard Inn is, as the name suggests, an inn.

Limestone Tower is a residence used by diviners.

Oliver the Sage is, naturally, a sage.

Greycloak Keep is the former home of a deceased wizard which now serves as a location for the quarter’s guards.

Brimstone Club is a private club and library and a source of many esoteric books.

Finally, the Library of the Dead is a library whose sources of information are various corpses.

The last page of content is a labelled map of the quarter.

Arcane Quarter in Review

The PDF, although short, is extremely well bookmarked. All the major and minor sections are linked. Navigation is excellent for the supplement’s size.

The text maintains a single column format and no errors were noticed. There are black and, well, parchment, illustrations, one for the page background, one for the front cover and the map. Presentation is good.

With the map, the locations in the supplement are intended to be used together. This map could perhaps be dropped into an existing town. However, the locations themselves do not have connections, so for most users the various locations could simply be lifted from the supplement and dropped in other settlements as wished. Some could even be dropped in the countryside.

Arcane Quarter is a nice and surprisingly useful short supplement of different locations and it can be found by clicking here.