Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: Blood in the Slave Pits aka All About Making Minor Monsters Fun Again

Blood in the Slave Pits aka All About Making Minor Monsters Fun Again by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is part of the Small Bites series and is the ‘World Walker’ version; the full version, which is available to Patreon supporters and, for the first time, for purchase, is more than double the length.

The supplement is available for free from DriveThruRPG as a 23-page PDF. One page is the front cover.

The Introduction states that the full version of the supplement contains a full adventure mission, the first from the Endless Dungeon. It explains that the mission is available for Legend Quest and with d20 stats, because most GMs know how to convert d20 to their preferred system. It also says that this version is essentially the Player’s edition, and everything for GMs has been removed.

The Fletnern Wiki extracts contain entries tagged Endless Dungeon and include families, groups, businesses, regions, tribes and legends.

The Sounding Board contains blog posts. The Killer Dungeon explains how the first such required an entry fee but had a, real, gem as a prize. The second one was designed to be self-contained; if something was found in the dungeon, there had to be someone there capable of making it. It also describes it as a complex.

The Endless Dungeon – GENCON explains that when Legend Quest was debuted a single dungeon-style adventure was run for the entire weekend, with players stepping in and out and taking over characters.

Nameless, Faceless Monsters is on making monsters more interesting, including a reference to using professional wrestlers to give them personalities.

Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane describes a region south of Brinston. Wet Behind the Ears is on incorporating rescued NPCs into a party.

Gold, Silver and What!?! is a three-page table of equipment, weapons and armour, which includes costs and different grades.

By the Numbers: Weapon Durability explains these grades of items. In Legend Quest, items have different qualities because they are designed for different uses, and these qualities and uses are explained.

Monsters and Other Menaces explains how some races came to be, such as hobgoblins. Chaos causes them to be born of goblins, and they are one of several offshoot races.

Blood in the Slave Pits: An Adventure Module has what is the player’s introduction to the adventure, including how to use it and using it with different systems.

Pull Back the Curtain is on economy, the supplement Grain Into Gold and how fantasy economies are different.

What’s Missing is one and a half pages long and lists what’s in the full supplement.

In Conclusion and Patreon wrap up the supplement with various links.

The last three pages are a player’s handout, player’s map of the region and some sample PCs.

Blood in the Slave Pits aka All About Making Minor Monsters Fun Again in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. There is a Table of Contents which is less thorough but is hyperlinked. There are also some external links to various supplements and wiki entries referenced. Navigation is very good. The text follows a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of stock black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.

As with all the other supplements in this series, this is a collection of roughly related articles and information bundled together, rather than a coherent whole. Possibly less is useful without the full supplement this time, because the introductory material for the adventure is less useful without an actual adventure to use it with. There is also more material included, the three-page table of items, that is specifically designed to be used with Legend Quest. As is also fairly typical for the series, some of the material goes into more depth than many would, examining the fundamentals of how the world works. Blood in the Slave Pits aka All About Making Minor Monsters Fun Again is another interesting collection of articles and it can be found by clicking here.