A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Instant Towns I: Madun

Instant Towns I: Madun is a role playing game supplement published by Art of War Games. The supplement is available as a PDF from RPGNow for $0.50. The PDF lacks bookmarks, but doesn’t need any really for its length. Of the three pages, one page is the cover and the remainder is the content. There is only one illustration, and that is the one on the colour cover.

The supplement describes the town of Madun, although calling it a town is an exaggeration; with a population of only 60, it’s barely even a village. There is a brief overview of how it is governed, but no details on the people in charge. There are a couple of local rumours that could be used as adventure hooks, followed by a description of three businesses, a tavern, a general store and a brothel.

The tavern describes the innkeeper and several NPCs who can be found there, along with a price list and three more rumours. The general store details the storekeeper and several magic items. The brothel details the madam and a list of services provided.

Madun is stated as being compatible with Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons d20/3.x, but really it is more of a system agnostic supplement than one for any particular game system. There are several references to magical items in Alin’s Emporium with “dmg” and a number following them. These are presumably references to pages in a Dungeon Master’s Guide, but which one isn’t stated. These could be clearer, but the items should be easy enough to trace. None of the NPCs have stats, just brief descriptions of their alignment, race and profession, and shouldn’t be difficult to use with most systems.

One spelling mistake was noticed and the tavern was referred to by a different name in one place. Other than that, no errors were noticed. A bigger annoyance is that the PDF isn’t searchable and copy and paste appears to have been disabled.

The location has an unusual amount of businesses for its size; it’s possibly on a caravan route, given that there are several references to caravans, which could account for this. Instant Towns I: Madun is nothing special, and will require some further attention to properly flesh it out, especially as there is no map, but at $0.50 it’s a useful small village if one is needed in a hurry. Click here to get it.