The Yugsalanti Fortune Tellers of the Roads aka All About Fortune Tellers by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is essentially a system-neutral supplement; there are a few references to the publisher’s Legend Quest system, but these have no real effect on the writing. This is one of the Small Bites series of supplements and is the “World Walker” abbreviated version. The full version is available to Patreon supporters and is more than double the length.
This is a 24 page PDF which is available for free from RPGNow. One page is the front cover and one is an advert for the publisher’s various sites.
The brief Introduction says that this supplement is even more all over the place than usual, because both real and fake fortune tellers are being covered. The rest of the first page has the Table of Contents, a mention of the Artist Spotlight and a Pronunciation Guide.
Fletnern Wiki duplicates various connected entries from the wiki. These are groups, regions, legends, cities and items. The region covered borders that of The Merchant Wars of Forsbury.
The Sounding Board is a selection of blog posts.
Missions with that little touch of role-playing starts out by considering slang but finishes with an adventure idea that has a potential moral decision for the players.
Setting up the Future is on setting up events in the future.
Prophecy covers the idea of prophecy and whether or not gods actually know what they are talking about.
Going off the reservation has the characters hit by a spell that disrupted their normal intelligence gathering tactics, but a spell that isn’t in the rule book. This sometimes can annoy players, if the spell isn’t one that they can use or develop.
High Fantasy – Invisible Allies has characters being followed or helped by other entities, for one reason or another.
Conning Your Players is on having NPCs con characters, and how the author feels uncomfortable with this concept.
Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane covers how the Yugsalanti behave around other cultures. The Yugsalanti are clearly Romany-inspired.
New of Fletnern has how the Conquering War of Garnock affected the city of Parnania, and the continuing fallout from this.
The Years of Occupation covers Parnania’s occupation, first by Garnock and then by their orcish allies.
The Future of Parnania is a brief bit on the city’s post-occupation problems.
The Barony of Zimbrook covers what happened to the barony before and after the occupation, and how it was taken over by Yugsalanti after they killed the orcs who had conquered it, and how the previous rulers felt they should just be able to come back.
Future State is how the rulership of Parnania is developing post-occupation, with the Yugsalanti attempting to take a greater role.
The Schism is how this rulership falls apart with a timeline.
The Arnonda/Couradoba Feud is a minor blood feud between two Yugsalanti families.
The Silver Boy is a boy who can turn iron to silver in small quantities, and what happens to him.
The Good Life covers the Yugsalanti people; their wagons, blood feuds and religions.
Yugsalantis in Parnania is how they are trying to take over that city.
Yugsalanti Culture has some details on the culture of the travelling people.
Slang & Superstitions has some Yugsalanti terms.
There is a single page Artist Spotlight with some graphics.
Finally, What’s Missing details what’s in the full supplement and In Conclusion wraps things up.
The PDF has bookmarks, but these only cover the major sections. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two column format and appeared almost error-free. There are some stock black and white illustrations, as well as some black and white and a colour illustration from the spotlighted artists. Presentation is decent.
This is, as usual, a collection of loosely associated articles rather than a coherent whole and, as the author stated, this is even more the case than usual. The Yugsalanti have both real and fake fortune tellers and both are covered in the supplement, although more is covered in the full edition. The Yugsalanti do, as mentioned, appear to have been greatly inspired by Romany, and many of them are portrayed as conmen – although the author does state that a lot of them aren’t such.
Yugsalanti Fortune Tellers of the Roads aka All About Fortune Tellers is another sometimes interesting collection of articles and it can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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