Lives of Kos is a role playing game supplement published by Skirmisher Publishing and is part of the Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting. This is a generic collection of non player characters for use with the setting.
This is a 79 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $3.99 but was purchased at the greatly reduced price of $0.04 as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, two pages are the front matter, two pages are the Table of Contents and one page is an ad for other supplements in the Swords of Kos range.
The Introduction is five pages long and is standard for supplements in the Swords of Kos series, with only the opening paragraph being unique, explaining how the setting came to be as a way of playtesting supplements for use with playtest setting for D&D 3.x, Pathfinder and 5E, then expanded into a shared fictional universe which was then further developed into the current generic setting.
The next two pages of content have a map of Kos City with various areas and locations marked.
Lives of Kos starts with a brief introduction. It explains that each NPC detailed has the locations the NPCs may be found, which will have been covered in other volumes, and if they have had an appearance in any of the various pieces of fiction set in the Kos setting. If they NPCs did appear, details are given as to whether they are a Protagonist (or Antagonist), a main subject of the story, or a Character, who appeared in a minor or supporting role. Any characters who died are not detailed.
This is followed by the actual NPC descriptions, 118 in all. The NPC’s name is followed by the locations they can be encountered as well as any appearances in fiction, as mentioned previously, then their background and biography and associations with other NPCs, many of which are also included in the supplement. As the setting is system-neutral, there are no game stats but some mention is given of abilities and unusual or magical items possessed by the NPCs. Given the systems that were playtested in the setting, these items will probably be easiest to convert to D&D-based games. The actual stats for the NPCs themselves will need generating.
Lives of Kos in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked, with all the NPCs linked. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of detail and is also hyperlinked. Navigation is very good. The text maintains a two column format and quite a few minor errors were noticed. There are a variety of colour and black and white images, up to full page in size. Some of these would appear to be stock but others, such as of NPCs who have featured in fiction, would appear to have been specifically created for the NPC although reused here. The styles of image are often not that complimentary though.
The biographies for all the NPCs are nicely detailed and, if used in conjunction with the pieces of fiction that some of them appear in, provide a lot of background detail and interconnection for the Kos setting, making it appear much more like a living setting. The NPCs aren’t really of much use outside of that setting though; there are too many interconnections and references to easily drop them into another. However, the entire Island of Kos can be dropped into many settings fairly easily, which enables the NPCs to be used elsewhere; in this case some minor changes to the backgrounds of some of the NPCs is all that would need altering, to remove references to locations outside of Kos. The biggest change any GM will have to make will be to add stats for all of the characters. For some systems this will be easier than others, and various details in the biographies will help, but this will still be a substantial amount of work, so should perhaps only be done as and when an NPC is going to be needed. Lives of Kos is an interesting collection of well-detailed characters for the Swords of Kos setting and it can be found by clicking here.
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