Travels in Arion by Graham Bottley is a role playing game supplement published by Arion Games for use with Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd Edition.
The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a PDF for $8, as a softcover print on demand book for $14, as a hardcover print on demand book for $18, as both PDF and softcover for $14 or as PDF and hardcover for $18. The PDF is the version reviewed although it was purchased at a reduced price during a sale. The PDF has 76 pages with two being the front and rear covers, four being the front matter, one the Contents and three the Index.
The Author Notes explain that this was written in a travelogue style.
Chapter 1: Introduction mentions that the city was covered in a couple of gamebooks and was chosen as the focus of a ten-part Atlantis campaign. There are some characters known to be traitors in the gamebooks that aren’t mentioned as such in this, allowing a Director to do what they want with such information. The city’s population is described, as well as its size, coins and political structure. It is a useful base for exploring the local area of Khul and the seas. Finally, three potential major current threats are covered.
Chapter 2: History has a history of the city from its Atlantean days, until the Gods destroyed that nation, including its early history after that event, the War Against Chaos, the following years and the Bloodaxe Dynasty that was established, up until the present day.
Chapter 3: A Walk Through the City starts the travelogue. Each area of the city is described in turn from the viewpoint of the narrator who is travelling through it. A two-page map of the city is at the beginning of the section. Sidebars cover various important or interesting NPCs and others give reviews of various taverns and inns by another person.
Chapter 4: Travels Outside Arion similarly treats some areas of the adjacent countryside.
This is followed by another two-page map of the city that is accompanied by a Street Directory; the directory names the various streets in the city together with their map location.
Travels in Arion in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough that these would have been useful. The Contents covers the major sections and subsections and the Index is more thorough. Lacking bookmarks, navigation is quite poor. The text maintains a two-column format and quite a few errors were noticed, the most common being the use of “i” instead of “I.” There are a number of black and white illustrations, which may or may not be custom. Presentation is okay.
Although this is aimed at AFF 2nd Edition, it lacks any game stats, so it could be used with any system. Large parts of it are probably suitable for giving to players as well. Whether the travelogue style is useful in game is another question. It makes it easier to read, but far harder to find useful information. Details on places are buried within the text and the Index, as well as an idea of what is being looked for, are going to be pretty essential for navigation. It’s really not possible to simply see where characters are and easily find what’s there, or even that easy to find a specific type of location. Travels in Arion is interesting to read but doesn’t seem as easy to use in an actual game and it can be found by clicking here.
Leave a Reply