Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: The Communist Clans of Rock Cove – aka All About Dwarves

The Communist Clans of Rock Cove – aka All About Dwarves by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is part of the Small Bites series and is a “World Walker” edition, one approximately half the size of the full edition which is only available to Patreon supporters. This is largely a generic supplement but some parts do refer to the publisher’s Legend Quest system.

This is a seventeen page PDF which is available for free from RPGNow. One page is the front cover and one is an advert for their Patreon campaign.

There is a short introduction about how there is a communist nation of dwarves in the publisher’s setting of Fletnern following a civil war and the Table of Contents.

Next is the Fletnern Wiki. This is a collection of articles from the wiki, covering individuals, sites, legends, groups, items, regions and a city, all connected to the dwarven nation in question. There’s a reference here that is elaborated on in Secret Societies.

The Sounding Board is a collection of reproduced blog articles.

Dwarves – at least in Fletnern gives an overview of the civil war between the noble and commoner dwarf clans, and how one result of this is that a large number of dwarves are now atheist.

Your God Ate My God explains that gods gain power from having followers, and a decline in followers – as is seen with the dwarves – results in a decline in power for a god. Enough of a decline results in a fading god merging with a stronger god, who then functions as both.

Ages and Longevity discusses the problems caused in traditional systems where long-lived races such as elves and dwarves do not have a fraction of the skill or power they should have, due to game balance. This means that the author has all races have the same lifespan.

Reasons for Dungeons is on why the author is not fond of dungeons, and therefore has some ways of justifying their existence.

Fantasy Tech – Light Houses and whether or not it matters considers technology and the use of chemistry to provide light.

The Gold-Silver-Copper Conundrum, which refers to Hoards & Other Treasures, considers how illogical the standard fantasy coin exchange rate is, but how easy it is to use it, and what the author came up with as a justification.

Does Technology Really Matter? considers how technology is important to create the armour seen in most FRPGs.

Weapons by Race is why cultural implications are more likely to justify a race’s weapon choice than anything else.

Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane considers clan life and trade for the dwarves of Rock Cove.

The Good Life is how the dwarves live.

Finally, What’s Missing lists the articles that are only in the full version.

The PDF has bookmarks, but only for the major sections, and the Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth. Navigation could therefore be better. The text maintains a two column format and a few minor errors were noticed. There are various stock black and white illustrations; presentation is okay.

This supplement doesn’t seem to be about dwarves as much as it could be; there is a lot of information that isn’t present. This could be because it’s the abbreviated version that is missing some of the dedicated articles. In particular, The Sounding Board has a number of articles that are not really about dwarves. So don’t expect huge insights into dwarves.

As usual, this is a collection of related, and sometimes very distantly related, articles on the same subject, rather than a coherent whole. Also as usual, there is some interesting material in the articles, even if it might not necessarily be of use to every reader.

The Communist Clans of Rock Cove – aka All About Dwarves can be downloaded for free by clicking here.