A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Festivals & High Holy Days

Festivals & High Holy Days by William T. Thrasher is a role playing game supplement published by Skirmisher Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

This is a twelve page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $0.99 but was purchased at the greatly reduced price of $0.04 as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is blank, two pages are the front matter, one page is the Open Game License and one page is adverts for other supplements.

The first page of actual content is simply a full page stock illustration with a brief paragraph on holidays.

Next comes the actual holidays. This starts with a brief paragraph on Using Holidays; it explains that holidays can be used to install a sense of realism and mark the passage of time. The holidays have all been inspired by real world holidays.

The twelve holidays come next. Each follows a standard format; a name, a description of the holiday, its duration (from hours to a week, with most being in the range of a few days at most), how the holiday is observed and benefits. The benefits are various Pathfinder-statted benefits that those who observe the holiday can gain for its duration. These are thematically appropriate for the holiday in question. The holidays themselves are largely recognisable, being things such as birthdays, love-oriented tivals, independence days etc. The real world origins of each should be easy enough to determine.

Festivals & High Holy Days in Review

The PDF is bookmarked but only the major sections are linked; the individual holidays are not. Navigation could be better, but this is a short supplement. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a few stock illustrations depicting festivals; presentation is okay.

What this supplement isn’t is a set of rules on creating holidays. What it is is a selection of holidays that have already had rules created for them. A GM could take the ideas from this supplement and create their own holidays though, perhaps ones that are more unusual. Indirectly, the supplement does show how one would go about creating such, by taking a theme, creating observances for that theme, and then creating thematic benefits. The various holidays that are given could easily be renamed to give them a more appropriate setting-oriented name, and a GM does not have to use every holiday. The High Holy Days for religions are, by nature, rather generic – this holiday isn’t aimed at any particular deity, so there is no deific theme built in.

This isn’t a bad supplement, as it does have a list of decent-enough holidays that a GM can use in their own setting, with some tweaking. It perhaps could have been a better supplement though. Festivals & High Holy Days can be found by clicking here.