Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: The Ghettos of Purity & Other Slums aka All About Welfare and Slums

The Ghettos of Purity & Other Slums aka All About Welfare and Slums by John Josten is a generic 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 is only available to Patreon supporters and is close to double the length.

The supplement is available as a 34-page PDF for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover.

The Introduction explains that urban areas, in fantasy settings just as much as reality, have parts of town that can be considered bad neighbourhoods, even if they are not strictly bad, and that this supplement looks at the ghettoes and slums of Purity as an example.

Fletnern Wiki duplicates a number of entries from the wiki, related to Purity, covering individuals, principalities, cultures, cities, rivers and groups.

The Sounding Board duplicates several blog posts. How to Grow a Fantasy Economy looks at assembling a fantasy economy from natural resources and major exports, using those to see what other parts of the economy are needed to support them.

Do Lifestyles Matter? looks at the publisher’s Lifestyles series of articles and how they can affect the game.

Rich Officer/Poor Officer compares the experiences of two officers, one born poor, the other wealthy.

Lifestyles of the Magic and Mundane starts with The Halflings of Purity explains that several generations ago, one of Purity’s three dukes decided halflings were unable to work as hard as humans, as they are smaller. This resulted over time in all three duchies becoming welfare states for halflings, and it extensively goes into the consequences of this.

The Fishers of Brinston explains that it’s difficult to live on the streets in Brinston, and the poor live on the river beach instead.

The Poor in Other Cultures looks at how other cultures deal with their poor.

Foraging and Scavenging looks at how people can find resources that they can make use of, and also has a list of items useful for adventurers from poorer backgrounds.

Dirty Jobs looks at the unpleasant jobs that the poor do because no-one else wants to do them.

Day Old Bread looks at the cheap disposal of old bread, and the food that those with less resources would eat.

Wet Behind the Ears looks at adventurers starting with very little in the way of resources, the first fights they could get into and how they could scavenge more equipment.

News of Fletnern looks at an earthquake that caused a refugee crisis due to wells drying up and the results of the population movement it caused.

The (Not So) Good Life looks at the poor, what different cultures consider to be poor and how issues are not black and white, despite modern belief that it is, as black and white leads to generalisations that are, by their very nature, wrong. It looks at how the poor survive and how they can find resources. Slang & Superstition has phrases meaning poor.

Monsters & Other Menaces looks at the monsters of the slums; rats being the primary one, but wild cats and dogs may also be a problem.

Characters with Characters starts with Pastor Feylvew Moorstanding, a priest in Brinston who looks after his community. Delauble tells the story of a poor, but attractive, young woman and the problems that happened in her life.

Huge Campaigns looks at The Alpha/Beta Campaigns, where the Alpha campaign is the big, world-affecting one, and the Beta is the small, local one.

The final pages are What’s Missing, which describes everything in the full version, and In Conclusion wraps things up and gives various links.

The Ghettos of Purity & Other Slums aka All About Welfare and Slums in Review

The PDF is bookmarked with major sections linked. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth and is hyperlinked. Navigation, given the length, could be better. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of pieces of black and white stock art. Presentation is okay.

As usual, this is a collection of articles of different types all on the same general subject. In this edition, they hew closer to the subject than is often the case, with most being either more general articles on the poor as well as specific ones on Purity and their approach to the poor, which has essentially created an underclass of halflings. Some articles will be more use than others, and some are useful for characters who aren’t starting off with the comparatively huge amount of beginning items that most do. The Ghettos of Purity & Other Slums aka All About Welfare and Slums is an interesting collection of articles and it can be found by clicking here.