Evocative City Sites: The Lost Laboratory 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. The Evocative City Sites series details locations in the publisher’s setting of Questhaven.
This is a 21 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.99 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one page is the front matter and two pages are ads.
The Lost Laboratory of Boutin Piddu starts with some in-character narration about the alchemist Boutin Piddu and the author’s quest to find his lost laboratories. There is also a labelled black and white map of the laboratory and a secondary map that labels part of the laboratory in more detail. Also in this section are colour maps of the laboratory; these lack labels and are larger versions of the black and white maps.
The Abandoned Lab has suggestions as to how the characters could come across the laboratory. The lab is then detailed, along with various experiments that can be used or completed and two new wondrous items, silversheen and ghost writing pens. Four adventure seeds follow this.
The Golem Trio describes the three golems that can be found in the lab. Phlogiston-powered golems, one of them has basically gone insane due to a phlogiston leak. Essentially steampunk golems. Aware Arcana is a new type of monster with one described. The Thaumaturgic Swarm is yet another construct.
The remaining eight pages of content are a large map of the facility suitable for use with miniatures. Rather sadly, this map is in black and white- it could easily have been in colour, given that there is a colour version.
Evocative City Sites: The Lost Laboratory in Review
The PDF is reasonably bookmarked, given its length. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two column colour format and appeared to be free of errors. Most of the illustrations are the maps; others are stock but appropriate. Presentation is okay.
Although the laboratory is theoretically located in Questhaven, there is absolutely nothing tying it to there and it can easily be dropped into another suitable city and setting.
The laboratory has a lot of knowledge that could prove useful, and valuable, as well as some useful items. The amount of material present is stated to be worth several hundred thousand gp – although it’s also said that after the PCs sell a few thousand, the city government should step in, take over the site and clamp down on sales before the economy is unbalanced. The information on the research notes could easily occupy the right type of character for some time, for it will need interpretation.
This, for all intents and purposes, is a mad scientist’s laboratory run by a crazed robot – but the fantasy version. The problem is, it doesn’t feel that mad. There are some notes on environmental hazards in battle from partially-completed experiments, but these could have been gone into in more detail. A fantasy version of the classic mad scientist’s laboratory from old films would have been more interesting; this is interesting, but not as much as it could be. Evocative City Sites: The Lost Laboratory is nice, but there’s a feeling it could have been better, and it can be found by clicking here.
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