A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Secret of Vinsen’s Tomb: A Pugmire Quickstart

The Secret of Vinsen’s Tomb: A Pugmire Quickstart by Eddy Webb is a role playing game supplement published by Pugsteady through Onyx Path Publishing. This is a quickstart and adventure for the Pugmire rules and, as such, is covered by the Open Game License with some parts considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a PDF for $1.99, as a standard heavyweight softcover print on demand book for $7.99, as a premium heavyweight softcover print on demand book for $12.99, as the standard softcover and PDF for $7.99 or the premium softcover and PDF for $12.99. The PDF is the version reviewed although it was purchased for $0.53 as part of a special bundle. The PDF has 59 pages with two being the front and rear covers, two the front matter, one the Table of Contents and one the Open Game License.

Welcome to Pugmire! explains that the world is one countless centuries in the future. Man has gone, leaving behind technology so advanced it seems like magic, with intelligent and altered animals taking their place. This concentrates in dogs. There are explanations on using the book, which include sidebars and text to read aloud to players. Next characters are covered, with ability score, followed by The Rules. These cover such a s combat, different types of rolls, healing, resting and an overview of how spells work, although none are given in this section.

The Secret of Vinsen’s Tomb is the actual adventure. It starts with descriptions of various important non-player characters that PCs will interact with. The Synopsis explains how the adventure came about and what will happen in it. The Introduction has the characters contacted and asked to do a mission for the Royal Pioneers; to find a missing cat information broker who may have information that could lead to a cache of masterworks. Masterworks are the remnants of old technology – basically, they are magic items.

There are six scenes to the adventure, although it doesn’t appear that they will necessarily go in that order. Scene 3 follows after Scene 1 or Scene 2; after completing it the PCs can go back to complete whichever scene they missed. The characters search for the missing cat, get attacked by undead, head to the library for information, find the location of Vinsen’s Tomb – Vinsen is the first king and founder of Pugmire; he died before the city was completed and his bones moved from their original tomb – and there confront a dog who has been possessed by a demon. There is a brief section on Future Stories which could be used for further development.

Ready-To-Play Characters has six already generate characters to use. Each character has two pages of stats and descriptions – this is where the spells the characters know and their abilities are described – followed by a two page character sheet.

The Secret of Vinsen’s Tomb: A Pugmire Quickstart in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked with the major sections and sub-sections linked. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth and is also hyperlinked. Navigation is very good. The text follows a two column full colour format and appeared to be free of errors. It is extensively illustrated although these, whilst appropriate, would appear to have been reused from the core rulebook. Presentation is very good.

Welcome to Pugmire!, which is 14 pages long, has essentially been copied and pasted from the core rulebook. The introductory paragraphs are a bit condensed; otherwise the text is the same. Which does make sense, as these are rules needed to play.

The six ready-to-play characters are also duplicated from the core rulebook. The changes to them are the addition of character sheets and spell descriptions as well as details of their abilities, which are all available in the core rulebook but not with the characters. This means that a substantial amount of this supplement has been duplicated from the core book; admittedly, not a big surprise.

This is a quickstart and, like the typical quickstart, it will be necessary to buy the core rulebook to continue playing the game afterwards. However, unlike the typical quickstart, this one isn’t free; many companies are giving such as this away as a free sample, in order to get people interested in playing. This results in The Secret of Vinsen’s Tomb feeling a bit overpriced, even though it isn’t that expensive. What this effectively means is that, if the buyer wants to continue with the game, this is really just an adventure and it may not be worth getting at full price unless it’s being used as a one-off. It really doesn’t seem worth getting in printed form.

This is a decent enough and nicely presented quickstart; it just feels as if it should be free. The Secret of Vinsen’s Tomb: A Pugmire Quickstart can be found by clicking here.