The Centaur Warlord of Lockney and Other Tales of the Beast Men aka All About Centaurs by John Josten is a free role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is a generic supplement and is part of the Small Bites series. This particular version is the “World Walker” edition, an abbreviated version of the full supplement. The full version is about twice the length but is only available to Patreon supporters.
This is a 21 page PDF which is available for free from RPGNow. One page is the front cover and just under a page is an advert for the publisher’s sites and Patreon campaign.
There are a few paragraphs of the Introduction, which gives a brief consideration of the supplement, followed by the Table of Contents.
Next is the Fletnern Wiki. This is a selection of related articles reproduced from the wiki, on individuals, cities, regions, races, slavery and continents.
The Sounding Board is a selection of reproduced blog posts.
When Slavery Works considers why slavery is currently working in some places in Fletnern. Partially this is because a navy that normally cracks down on slave ships is letting them through, as the people on them would probably die otherwise due to natural disasters.
What’s a Beast-Man? considers what makes a creature a beast-man, and what makes them a chimera (the latter a general term rather than the specific creature). Beast-men are considered to be a mix of human (or other appropriate race) and animal, whilst chimeras are mixes of two or more animals.
Superstition vs. Religion considers the difference between the two and what effect knowing magic exists would have.
World Building through Consequences is on explaining why the current situation is the way it is.
The Lifestyle of a Minotaur considers how minotaurs would live day to day. If they aren’t stuck in a maze for instance.
Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane is on centaur tribes and groupings, of which there are a number of different ones in different regions. They may have similarities, but there are also differences.
News of Fletnern has some updates for the general region covered. Racial Changes in Villai is how centaurs came to be a larger proportion of the population following a war. Currently, in the Eastern Plains… is how banditry has changed and slavery increased, resulting a fall in the price of slaves. Glynglen’s Trial is on an attempt to boost income resulted in a captured centaur warlord escaping before execution. Earlier Agri Centaurs is on how those centaurs used to be before the rise of warlords. Southern Centaurs in the North is a tribe of centaur vampire hunters.
The Good Life is on centaurs, minotaurs and satyrs, with some rumours at the end.
Finally, What’s Missing lists the articles that are in the full version and In Conclusion wraps things up.
The PDF is bookmarked but the bookmarks, and the Table of Contents, only really cover the major sections. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two column format and some minor errors were noticed. There are a variety of appropriate stock black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This is, as usual, a collection of generally related articles rather than a coherent whole. The articles are all on the subject of centaurs, minotaurs and satyrs, with centaurs being the most thoroughly covered and satyrs the least. The portrayal of centaurs is rather different to the classical centaur, being inspired more by Native American tribes than the classical period. The minotaurs are covered in more detail than is usually the case; minotaurs are frequently not covered in any great detail as to their possible society. So that makes an interesting read.
The Centaur Warlord of Lockney and Other Tales of the Beast Men aka All About Centaurs is a sometimes interesting collection of articles on centaurs and other beast-men, and it can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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