Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: An Adventurers’ Guide to Equipment aka All About Gear

An Adventurers’ Guide to Equipment aka All About Gear by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. Much of the supplement is generic but some parts do refer to Legend Quest. This is part of the Small Bites series and is the “World Walker” version. The full version is only available to Patreon supporters and is about double the length.

The supplement is available as a 20-page PDF for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover.

The Introduction explains that this supplement is all about equipment, whether for dungeon or wilderness use.

The Fletnern Wiki has a number of articles duplicated from the wiki. These are all on military units from different parts of the setting.

The Sounding Board duplicates several blog posts. What’s “Better” – Weapons consider what makes one weapon better than another of the same type, using hammers as a reference, and how weapons that are not designed to be combat ready will not fare as well in combat.

Looting considers the morality of looting – in the past it was essentially a perk of being a soldier – and what sorts of looting, as a world builder, are acceptable.

Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane talks about how a PC’s lifestyle can create adventure hooks, and how a calendar can affect what they can do.

Wet Behind the Ears extensively considers what a starting character might have, and what such as a lumberjack might have.

How to Play a… Properly Geared Adventurer considers the sort of equipment an adventurer might have or need.

The Good Life is Fist-Loaded Weapon; in other words, weapons designed to make hitting things with your fist far more effective.

Optional Rules covers the different qualities of weapons when it comes to using them as weapons; these are ornamental, standard, tool and combat. Items designed for combat work better in combat. Shields then covers proper shield manufacture.

The final pages are What’s Missing, which describes everything in the full version, and In Conclusion wraps things up and gives various links.

An Adventurers’ Guide to Equipment aka All About Gear in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents isn’t as thorough but is hyperlinked. There are also various external links to relevant articles and supplements. Navigation is good. The text maintains a two-column black and white format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of stock black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.

As is usual for this series, it’s a collection of articles roughly around a central theme rather than a coherent whole, though this one is better focussed than some, with the wiki entries being the most divergent, but still covering equipment to a degree. As is also quite common, the articles go into far more depth, and therefore probably realism, than is common in many role playing games. An Adventurers’ Guide to Equipment aka All About Gear is another collection of interesting articles and it can be found by clicking here.