Evocative City Sites: The Crossroads by Rob Manning 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 15 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.96 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Open Game License and two pages are ads.
Like with the other supplements in this series, this starts with in-character narration about the crossroads in question (unlike other supplements, this is not a building, but “site” does not necessarily mean “building”). There are two colour maps in this section, one of the crossroads and one of their astral version.
The crossroads are the “home” of a night hag, the former leader of a witch’s coven who died destroying a demon. She has been given certain powers by Baba Yaga’s sister. She is not the only creature who lives there; she has a servitor and there is also a dwarf serial killer. The crossroads are an uncomfortable place to dwell in and most businesses shut down. This is followed by some adventure seeds.
Next is the stat block of the hag, but there are more details. The hag will offer a clue to a puzzle in exchange for a small errand, ten of which are described. Each errand is small, and seemingly inconsequential. All lead to bad consequences – a murderer going free, a laundrywomen becoming a slave, holy water not becoming holy and more in that vein. One of them is also connected to another site, Lorn’s Entrepot. Do enough of these errands and the characters’ reputations will start to suffer. As an alternative to giving them information, the hag will offer them magical candles. Sadly, no construction details are provided for the candles.
After the hag are stats for the dwarf serial killer and the Divine Guardian Creature Template, which the hag’s servitor possesses. There is a reference to the Book of Monster Templates for two of the templates but it’s stated that everything needed is in this supplement.
Evocative City Sites: The Crossroads in Review
The PDF is decently bookmarked with the various sections linked. Navigation is decent. The text maintains a two column full colour format and appeared to be almost error free. There are a number of stock black and white illustrations, custom black and white portraits and the colour maps. Presentation is decent.
Even though this lacks the buildings seen in other supplements in the series, there is a goodly amount of usable content here. Characters can end up at the crossroads for several reasons, and should they get addicted to the hag’s information – or candles – they could really start to make a mess of their reputations and people’s lives in the city. As always, the theoretical setting is Questhaven, but there is once again little difficulty in dropping the crossroads down pretty much anywhere else. Evocative City Sites: The Crossroads is a good location with a lot of content and it can be found by clicking here.
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