Hill Cantons Compendium II by Chris Kutalik is a role playing game supplement published by Hydra Cooperative for use with Labyrinth Lord. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 21 page Pay What You Want PDF. It is also available as a Pay What You Want softcover print on demand book; there will be a minimum price to pay for that. The PDF is the version reviewed. One page is the front cover, one the front matter and two the Open Game License.
Introduction to the Hill Cantons has details on the Corelands, Borderlands and the Weird, which has essentially been duplicated from The Hill Cantons Cosmology. Places of Note gives an overview of Kezmarok, with some details on a number of Great Hostels. This is followed by an overview of Marlinko, briefly covering sites of interest. Five other settlements are simply given a line or two in description. Finally, the Weird gives even less details on places such as Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Frog God Temple.
Next are New Character Classes. Black Hobbits are Chaos hobbits who can exhort others to perform acts of mischief. Chaos Monks are a subclass of monk, a weird class that appears to take a lot of inspiration from king fu films. Feral Dwarves, called Cave Dwarves in Slumbering Ursine Dunes, are deep-dwelling cousins of the regular dwarf. Half-Ogres are the offspring of humans and ogres. Mountebanks, introduced in Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, are a sub-class of thief who are grifters and con artists. Pantless Barbarians are a strange sect of barbarian that refuse to wear clothing on their lower body, apart from a short kilt in winter. Robo-Dwarves, also from Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, are creatures made from living stone, whirling gears and living tissue. War Bears, also from Slumbering Ursine Dunes, are intelligent bears. White Wizards specialise in benign, defensive spells. Most of the classes are pretty odd, and many don’t have high levels; the Mountebank goes up to 20 and the White Wizard to 21.
Next are a number of tables for an Alternate Character Generation System. A character’s birth order, parent occupation, with subtables, significant childhood events, with subtables for guardians, relatives, others and crimes and significant young adulthood events, with subtables. These tables refer to other tables and can have an effect on stats rolled and equipment; equipment tables following. Finally, there are some Zero Level Rules.
Hill Cantons Compendium II in Review
The PDF, as is common with those from Hydra Cooperative, lacks bookmarks, and there are enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is poor. The text follows a two-column format and appeared to be free of error. Bar the cover, there is a single illustration. Presentation is below average.
One of the first questions might be “Where is the first compendium?” The answer is that The Hill Cantons Compendium looks as if it might only be available in printed form from Lulu.
With this being a compendium, it contains material on a number of different topics. The first is setting information for the Hill Cantons, the second is a selection of new character classes, the third is the character creation riles and finally there are some zero level rules. Those who already own the existing Hill Cantons supplements will find they already own a significant portion of this supplement, making it less useful. However, collecting all the character classes together can still be helpful, even if the utility of some of those classes is rather debatable. Hill Cantons Compendium II is a collection of information of varying utility and it can be found by clicking here.
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