A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Fronds of Benevolence

Fronds of Benevolence by Andrew Walter is a role playing game supplement published by Melsonian Arts Council for use with Troika! Numinous Edition. This is a chapbook adventure suitable for 4-6 characters.

The supplement is available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $14 and is also available in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed, although it was purchased at a reduced price thanks to a special bundle. The PDF has 48 pages with two being the front and rear covers, one the front matter and one the Contents.

Four pages of the content would be inside the front and back covers of a printed book. At the front, there are two d6 rumour tables and a pointcrawl map. At the back are more tables for randomly determining NPC names and occupations and meals on the Golden Barge.

The Introduction briefly mentions the pointcrawl concept – this is like a hexcrawl, but with every extraneous location removed – and gives a URL to find out more. It then gives an overview of the adventure; the plant creature Duke DeCorticus needs a substance called Rare Earths and the characters are recruited to fix the supply, which has been cut off, at the same time as pamphlets started appearing proselytising against plant creatures ruling over humans.

Advice for GMs covers plotting, pace, more details on pointcrawls, pursuers and epilogues, with a chart to be used to mark off time. The adventure has a definite deadline, though this deadline is determined by rolling dice.

Getting Started & Plandra Metropolis has the beginning of the adventure and two types of transport, the Golden Barge or the Stilt Loper. These transport methods are described next, with NPCs and events.

Following this, the various other locations on the pointcrawl are described. These follow similar methods of description to the two methods of transport, giving overviews, NPCs and possible events.

Finally, Enemies has some new creatures.

Fronds of Benevolence in Review

The PDF has the major sections bookmarked, though not the front and back papers. The Contents are to a similar level of depth and are hyperlinked, and there are some hyperlinks within the text itself. Presentation is okay. There are a number of illustrations, both black and white and colour up to full page in size, and these appear to be custom; it is highly unlikely they are stock. Presentation is good, for Troika! levels of good (in other words, weird).

This is a somewhat bizarre adventure to say the least, but Troika! is a somewhat bizarre system, so it fits. In overall style, it’s reminiscent of Hill Cantons material such as Slumbering Ursine Dunes; those who like that type of adventure will probably enjoy this one. The time limit could well be a problem, especially as it’s randomly determined, and some of the encounters are dependent on the transport method chose. Fronds of Benevolence is a definitely strange adventure and it can be found by clicking here.