Minor Adventuring Parties – Jigsaw Fantasy by Ste Coffey is a free generic role playing game supplement published by Artemis Games. This supplements details two adventuring parties that characters can meet.
This is an eleven page supplement with one page being the front cover, one page the Credits and one page essentially an ad.
It starts with a brief paragraph on the supplement – these parties may bite off more than they can chew and may need bailing out – before going into the first party, Elderly Adventurers. This is a group of four adventurers who are past their prime (or really in middle age for the elf) but are still going out of boredom. There is a mage who powers spells using his own life energy, but who has less energy than he used to, an elven cleric who has largely lost her faith, and therefore much of her spellcasting ability and twin brothers, now no longer identical, whose skills are in melee.
The second group, The Party of Prophecy, all hail from the same woodland kingdom; they are all young, children in human terms really. The leader, who is training with both bow and blades, is a half-elf who has been sent out to gain experience due to a prophecy about her, an elven member of the royal family who provides muscle by hiring it and a brother and a sister, the sister having fae blood and control over illusions and the brother, the youngest at 13, might become a mage at some point.
As with all these supplements, there are a number of Jigsaw links, footnotes on using the supplement in various settings and elaborations on some items. Gods for the cleric from the first party are suggested in the Warhammer and Forgotten Realms settings, and how the brothers could have gained experience in Eberron, Planescape or Azeroth. There is a potential taboo for the elven prince and how he might be a source of adventure hooks due to his obscure knowledge. Finally, there is mention of a creature from Concept Cards: Epic Creatures and of some scrolls the potential mage has discovered.
The PDF is bookmarked with the major sections linked, although each individual party member is not. Navigation is okay but it could be better. The text maintains a single column format, in Artemis Games’ slightly hard to read font, and no errors were noticed. There are four colour illustrations of different party members. Presentation is okay.
Each of the NPCs is described in a fair amount of detail, with different strengths and weaknesses, although, with this being a generic supplement, stats will need developing for them. Neither party is likely to become a foe for characters, but they could quite easily be people who need rescuing or helping at some point, as one is past its prime and the other is nowhere near close to achieving it yet. Both can also be a source of adventure hooks.
Minor Adventuring Parties – Jigsaw Fantasy is an interesting collection of well described NPCs and it can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
Leave a Reply