Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds is a role playing game supplement published by Kobold Press 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 supplement is available as a 25-page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $2.99 but was purchased at a reduced price during a sale. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Table of Contents and Planes of Wonder and one the Open Game License.
Planes of Wonder is the introduction and it explains that it contains material that didn’t fit in the main volume, Dark Roads & Golden Hells (that being the planar sourcebook for the Midgard setting).
Mora, the Children’s Table is essentially a demiplane, and not a pleasant one. It starts with planar traits and then gives a history of the realm. Mora is an island, and is sentient, and the main lifeforms are the she, aspects of the isle. Most of the article is taken up on describing the geography of the place, but sidebars also add more detail. Mora is a place where kidnapped children are sold to others.
Rusty Gears is a single page of prose about Ariadne and Charun.
Planar Traps, Hazards & Afflictions is just what it says. It starts out with a variety of hazards, some of which are general but others are specific to various rivers. Next are diseases, followed by drugs and poisons. There is a single trap, a pit trap with no bottom whose victims fall endlessly. Also in this section are some new magic items.
The Bestiary has two new templates, both for monsters found on Mora, and three NPCs that can be encountered, each of which is given a background, motivations and goals and schemes and plots.
Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and these would have been useful. The Table of Contents is not very thorough. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of illustrations, some of which appear to be custom, others may be stock. Presentation is decent.
First off; this is not the sort of supplement that might be expected from the title. It is not a collection of shadow planes and pocket worlds. It has a single demiplane, Mora, which should be easy to drop into any setting, but that’s it. If you get this expecting to find a supplement full of small planes and demiplanes, you are going to be disappointed. It does have a nice collection of new options for planar adventures – though the prose is a bit of an oddity – but it isn’t a supplement of planar locations. Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds is a nice little book, though not what it sounds to be, and it can be found by clicking here.
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