Bayhaven: Port on the Bay by Brian Benoit is a role playing game supplement published by Roving Band of Misfits Press for use with the Hero Kids system. This supplement covers the town of Bayhaven, the setting for the publisher’s Hero Kids adventures.
The supplement is available from RPGNow at the regular price of $5.99 but was purchased at the reduced price of $2.95 as part of the Adventures in Bayhaven Ultimate Bundle. Included in the purchase are the PDF and a 300 dpi black and white jpg of the town.
The supplement is described as an unfinished product and has been revised and expanded a number of times. The PDF reviewed is version 6. This is a 36 page PDF with one page being the front cover, one page the front matter, one page the change log, one page blank and one page mostly blank. There are also a number of full page maps or illustrations.
The first two pages are a black and white image of the town, identical to the jpg, and an unlabelled map. This is followed on the next page by the same map, but with labels and a key.
The City Overview gives a brief history of the town, several general locales – the city wall, Brecken Bay, the forest, the marshes, the Camarva River and the Druinhowe Mountains – industry and government. The locations in the town itself as labelled on the map are then covered, 35 in total. Each has a name of the location, a description and any NPCs who can be found at the location. Some also have adventure hooks. There are also a couple of locations that are not numbered.
Next is Non Player Characters. This section describes the various NPCs that were mentioned in the locations.
Optional Rules has a number of new rules that can be used to expand the game, which are as follows.
Time Units are used in the various adventures and, if players run out of time units, they either fail or only partly succeed.
Experience Tokens are gained after completing an adventure and can be used to either re-roll a dice pool or take an extra action during a turn (they resemble Fate Points and are similar to a degree).
Inventory has some expanded rules on managing inventory.
Combat Rules has a single new rule, for if characters are prone.
Apprenticeships has various different professions that characters could be learning. Each apprenticeship has a different game benefit.
Bayhaven Equipment Cards has the treasures unique to the series, seven in total. There are two pieces of Equipment, one Item, two Spell Bonus Abilities, an Equipment Upgrade and a treasure map fragment, which is none of these.
Bayhaven Monster Index starts with a blank title page and then has nine monsters, a page to a monster. Each monster has a monster card and a number of paper minis.
The final section is for players, and starts with a full page copy of the cover page with a blank space for a name.
This section has details on Apprenticeships, with reference cards, a blank map of the town and a journal page.
Bayhaven: Port on the Bay in Review
The supplement lacks bookmarks and, even though it isn’t huge, these would have been useful as the PDF is comprised of a number of different sections. Navigation is quite poor.
The text maintains a two column format and no errors were noticed. There are a couple of colour illustrations of NPCs, maps of the town, illustrations for the new monsters and items and apprenticeships. Presentation is on the whole quite decent.
This is not just a town description, but a bunch of new rules, items and monsters as well. There is a varied amount of content included in it, which makes it quite useful. With Bayhaven being the setting for various adventures, this is also useful, but not vital, for running them.
This supplement is a nice collection of material for Hero Kids, and it may well be expanded again in the future; if so, the price may increase. Bayhaven: Port on the Bay can be found by clicking here.
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