Facets of Wonder aka All About Precious Stones and their Magical Properties by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is primarily a generic supplement though there appear to be a couple of references 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 35-page PDF for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover.
The Introduction explains that this supplement covers gems in more detail than just giving a monetary value.
The Publisher’s Notice explains that this supplement could have been bigger.
The Fletnern Wiki has a number of articles duplicated from the setting. These are all described as being artefacts, and are all gems though many are not magical in nature, just impressive in other ways.
The Sounding Board duplicates several blog posts. How the Economy Grows aka how insane is Board Enterprises explains how Board Enterprises developed a fantasy economy, which led to supplements such as Grain into Gold.
Aldar Cartel Wars describes how a war between two cartels led to one of those fighting being nearly destroyed, a second greatly weakened and the position of another cartel, the preeminent one improved, as well as a variety of gems hitting the market.
How to GM… Gemstones has details on how you could make gemstones fit your own fantasy world, through different values and names.
News of Sylansse covers some of the World of Sylansse with the Janarron Guild and their association with gemstones.
A World of Differences explains a couple of differences between Fletnern and Sylansse; the latter has less iron for one.
News of Fletnern covers a jungle location and a gemstone and ornamental rock only found in the region.
Monsters and Other Menaces covers crystal riders, mentalists who can put their consciousness into specially constructed golems. Though this is more of a fad for them, others take them more seriously.
Characters with Character has the head of the aforementioned Janarron Guild and their wife.
Gemstones takes up a substantial portion of the supplement. They are divided into precious, greater, semi-precious, ornamental, organic ornamentals, decorative and magical. Most of these are laid out in the same way, with an overview of the type, then details on specific stones. The stones have facts, legends, magical use and Fletnern facts. The exceptions are with one stone which has Sylansse facts, the decorative stones, which are only broadly described not specifically, and magical stones, which have additional details, as they are fictional in nature.
The final pages are What’s Missing, which describes everything in the full version, and In Conclusion wraps things up and gives various links.
Facets of Wonder aka All About Precious Stones and their Magical Properties in Review
The PDF is bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents isn’t as thorough but is hyperlinked. There are also a number of external links. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of stock images, both black and white and, for many of the gems, in colour. Presentation is okay.
As should be recognised about this series by now, it is a collection of, sometimes loosely, connected articles on the same topic rather than a coherent whole. The articles in this one stay closer to the topic than in some of the editions, at least partly because such a large proportion on the supplement describes gems. Facets of Wonder aka All About Precious Stones and their Magical Properties has some interesting articles, especially when it considers the world-specific gem facts, and can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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