Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: NC2 – Kale Bay

NC2 – Kale Bay is a free role playing game supplement published by Adventures in Filbar. This is the second supplement in the Noteflame Coast series set in the Lands of Calentria. It is therefore most likely to be aimed at the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition game. This is not an adventure but instead covers an urban area, Kale Bay, rather like the FT series does. Kale Bay itself is a pirate haven, set in some rather desolate and hostile country.

NC2 - Kale BayThis is a twenty one page PDF which lacks bookmarks. The first page is the standard grey colour denoting a free supplement, and has a stock image of some sort of urban area. One page has a labelled map of the city, which would appear to have been done in Citypgrapher from Inkwell Ideas, one page has a Citizen Characteristics table, which is a collection of 8 d12 tables for determining characteristics of random NPCs and one page has another stock photo and a set of deck plans for a pirate vessel.

Around one and a half pages introduces Kale Bay, its government, the local area and the Corsair Council, which is responsible for pirate activity in the area as well as running the settlement. The remainder of the supplement describes the settlement itself, which is split into different regions. Each labelled building has a description of the business, a major non-player character there, as well as sometimes some more minor ones, and what the place does or provides. Each is covered in a decent level of detail.

A number of spelling and grammatical errors were noticed in the PDF, and the Citizen Characteristics table refers to Portlandia, rather than Kale Bay. The stock images do the usual adequate job.

Although Kale Bay may be intended for the D&D 5E game, there are no game stats, so it is effectively system-agnostic. Similarly, although there are references to a number of other areas in Calentria, such as the Duchy of Starryshade and the Port of Kak, these are quite minor. As a consequence, with only minor changes, the settlement could be dropped in as a pirate city in many settings, including on islands.

The settlement itself is well described; although there are no specific adventures, there are a number of things that could function as adventure hooks. There is a good level of detail provided on the described NPCs, making them decently fleshed out. Interestingly, the town itself apparently runs on a barter economy. NC2 – Kale Bay is a good, useful urban settlement with a bit of a twist that can easily be used in settings other than Filbar, and it’s free, so click here to get it.

 

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