Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: The Gyik – Jigsaw Fantasy

The Gyik – Jigsaw Fantasy by Loz Hensel is a generic free role playing game supplement published by Artemis Games. This supplement covers a single monster taken from the supplement The Sivatag Desert.

This is a five page PDF which is available from RPGNow. One page is the front cover and one page the credits.

This is a two page description of a single monster, the titular Gyik. It gives an overview of the creature and its ecology; what they look like, what they eat, how they change their skin colouration, which is connected to what they eat, and how they reproduce.

The final page of the content is two Jigsaw links giving suggestions on using the creature. One link suggests using gyiks as pets for evil fey, the second gives an overview of the gyiks’ primary food source.

The PDF lacks bookmarks but at this length they are not really needed. The text maintains a single column layout in Artemis Games’ slightly inconvenient to read standard font and no errors were noticed. There is a single image, a stock photo of a lizard that has been slightly altered.

As this is a generic supplement, no stats are given for the gyik; these will need coming up with. Although the gyiks radiate a faint magical aura, this is due to the animals they consume – which is attracted to that same aura, meaning that the food the gyik eats attracts more of that same food – and merely causes the gyik’s eyes to glow red and allows them to change colour. Even though the animal is pretty unintelligent, it is a very large lizard with big teeth that hunts in packs so it could easily be dangerous. The gyiks’ food, the kouzo, could also be a best for spellusers, given that they are attracted to magic.

With the lack of stats, it will take a bit of time for GMs to adapt the gyik to their own campaign; the downside of generic supplements. The gyik itself is an interesting and potentially quite dangerous large lizard, even though it lacks much other than sheer physical power. The Gyik – Jigsaw Fantasy is a useful small supplement and can be downloaded for free by clicking here.