GM's Miscellany: Village Backdrops is my first compilation book (along with the Wilderness and Urban Dressing books) that I've purchased from Raging Swan Press as I've bought a few of their smaller, individual PDFs in the past. Needless to say, I've been absolutely immersed in reading the boatload of detailed minutae that this amazing book has to offer. It's hard to break away from reading it! But I must, for I've finally found the penultimate tools to help flesh out my tiny villages that will soon populate the outskirts of Dagger Falls in my Forgotten Realms campaign (using Pathfinder rules).

The sheer quantity & quality of orderly, eyeball-ergonomic idea lists and design guides are a GM's dream. Not only because I was able to expediently execute a lushly-immersive and aesthetically-detailed village profile within mere minutes ... but also because the contents and people of the village I was able to create had vibrancy and a real pulse.

I was expecting to find about a handful of the 12 included villages that would really capture my eye. Instead, all 12 had some form of imagery and content that really grabbed me. And about 1/2 of them I fell in love with (especially White Moon Cove and Apia). I can't gush poetic enough at how fantastic this GM resource is for me. And I've seen it all in my 2 decades of GMing and playing D&D and Pathfinder.

After getting a good feel for all 3 of the big Raging Swan Press compilation books I just bought ... I'm certainly going to be making a larger investment in some of their other compilation books (Tribes, Dungeon Dressing, All That Glimmers). This company has some truly extraordinary GM tools and their formulaic (I say that as a compliment) design layout makes both deep reading and quick-scans-for-emergency-ideas easy, consistent and fun. That part is crucial to me. Because "idea tables" can be done wrong in a way that compels a GM to not use a gievn set of tables again. Raging Swan's m.o. is the exact opposite of that. I use the words "eyeball-ergonomic" up above ... and that's as accurate a description and compliment as I can find to give their design layouts. Great stuff. I'm so happy!

GM’s Miscellany: Village Backdrops details twelve small settlements that are part of Raging Swan Press’ Lonely Coast mini campaign setting (which is free to download and well worth a read), though they are intended to be easily divorced from that setting and dropped into any campaign with a minimum of fuss. Each village write up consists of a chapter heading page and five to six pages of description which includes a ½ to ¾ page hand drawn map.

The book starts with a page of author bios, which is something I’d like to see in more RPG books. This is followed by the table of contents, a list of stat blocks by CR, a section on how to read the stat blocks, and three pages on using this book with Ultimate Campaign.

Designing Villages is the first proper chapter of the book, and really it could be called Village Dressing. It starts with some useful tips on village design and then moves straight into tables detailing everything from government to industry to external conflicts to internal secrets to a 100 item table of sample village names. Using this chapter and a little imagination, a GM can make up a flavourful village in remarkably little time.

From here we move into the villages proper. Each village opens with a few paragraphs describing the village followed by a settlement stat block, a short list of notable residents, a short list of notable places, village lore which includes Knowledge check CRs, and a brief description of the average villager. The notable locations in the village then get expanded upon with a few paragraphs each. Each village closes with a table of possible events and a selection of whispers and rumours.
I want to commend the various authors of this book for making each and every village unique and interesting despite the relatively scant page count. While some of them tickle my fancy more than others (Apia, Bossin, Denton’s End, Oakhurst, and White Moon Cove are particular favourites), there isn’t a dud among them. Each village has enough unique flavour, interesting locations and plot hooks that a GM could keep his players busy for ages. While I was reading through the villages, I found myself constantly pausing to write down notes and ideas for adventures; this isn’t something that I find myself doing while reading most setting supplements.

The book itself is a nice solid black and white softcover with appealing black and white illustrations and simply beautiful cartography; I really like the hand drawn style of the maps in this book .

If I had to complain about anything, I’d say that the lack of a map of the Lonely Coast noting all the village locations in relation to one another was a missed opportunity, but otherwise this book is excellent. Once again, Raging Swan Press ably succeeds at their goal of supplying time strapped GMs with flavoursome, easily digested material that is dead simple to drop into a campaign; this book is worth an easy five stars. I can’t wait to delve into GM’s Miscellany: Village Backdrops 2!

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This compilation of Rgaing Swan Press' critically-acclaimed and well-received Village Backdrop-series is a massive 101 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 2 pages of editorial, 1 page author-bios (read those, fellow gamers - if only so you remember who wrote your favorite supplements), 1 page ToC, 1 page advice for novice DMs on how to read statblocks, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 91 pages of content - so let's get this on, shall we?

Well, first of all, we kick off this massive compilation with a list of all the statblocks in this book and the respective villages in which the beings reside - thus we know in which chapter the respective entry can be found, which is relevant for while the book does have a column of page-numbers, unfortunately the page-numbers themselves seem to have gone missing. So, as a courtesy to my loyal readers, who endure rambling review after rambling review, here are the page-numbers, from top to bottom: 96, 84, 84, 53, 36, 41, 54, 89, 34, 28, 89, 36, 77, 54, 65, 71, 41, 90, 78, 70, 40, 35, 53, 72, 29, 60, 65, 48. You're welcome. :)

Back to the review: Want a good example why Raging Swan Press is one of the major players among 3pp? They listen to their customers. In one of my reviews, I mentioned that support for Ultimate Campaign would have been the icing on the cake. What do we get here? Essentially an Ultimate Campaign-style breakdown of all the villages and development options etc. - that is AWESOME.

What's also awesome would be the following section of the book, which I term "So what's the village like, anyways?" - not content with simply providing an array of iconic villages, we get a full-blown village design-guide/generator: From basics like conflicts, flavor etc. to tables to determine government, alignment, prominent features, industry, population, notable buildings, conflicts and secrets, to 100 sample village names, 20 generic events and even 20 traditions, we essentially get all the tools to create iconic villages on the fly. Better yet, we also get a massive array of no less than 32 sample market place-entries containing magic items that can be bought in your village and even 20 sample sellers to add flavor to the purchasing experience. This chapter is gold for the time-crunched DM: Literally, with just a couple of rolls, you can craft the basics of just about any village - this is preparation gold!

So...next would be the respective villages: From bee-centric Apia over plague-ridden Ashford to Bossin in the grasp of bullies, Denton's End, where the dead rise to the Golden Valley, a settlement in the declining stages of a gold rush and lovecraftian, decadent Hard Bay; Hosford, where people have been disappearing; disputed Longbridge; xenophobic Oakhurst; Roake with its troubled past and fragile idyll; Thornhill's dreary mood to finally White Moon Cove, the seaside village featured in "The Sunken Pyramid" - the villages are essentially all characters of their own, coming with lavish mapped, each and every one studded with rumors, market places, personalities, events and awesome maps. (Of which you can find player-friendly versions on RSP's homepage.)

Want to know more about the respective villages? Well, I've written an in-depth review for each and every one of them, so check those out - I'm not going to repeat myself and bore you.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting, aside from the unpleasant glitch in the statblock-summary-table, is superb and just about flawless. Layout adheres to RSP's 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes with an array of thematically-fitting b/w-artworks, many of which actually take up a whole page. Cartography is universally awesome. As a pdf, the book comes in two versions, with one being particularly printer-friendly and one optimized for screen-use. The print edition, which I'm holding in my hands right now, is of top quality with nice, solid paper. I would have loved to have the book's name on the spine - to find it easier. The pdfs come fully bookmarked for your convenience.

The authors John Bennett, Creighton Broadhurst, Eric Hindley, Ben Kent, Greg Marks and Marc Radle have all contributed their fair share and talent to making the Village Backdrop-series as awesome as it turned out and this book, not content with just compiling the first 12 installments of the series, this pdf instead adds additional material galore - extremely useful, cool additional material that helps with the use of Ultimate Campaign and with the generator, this should allow beleaguered DMs to create a nice array of on-the-fly villages. Not only is this a great collection of iconic villages, it adds so much more value and for the fair asking price, should be considered a steal. And with only one gripe tarnishing what otherwise should be considered a simply stellar collections of iconic locales, this book leaves me no real choice but to recommend it at a full 5 stars + seal of approval. If you already own all the backdrops, this is better than printing tem out thanks to the added material, but probably should clock in at a star less. If you only own half of them, then this should still be considered an excellent purchase and well-worth getting.

Endzeitgeist out.

"GM's Miscellany: Village Backdrops" by various authors, brought to you by Raging Swan Press, 101 Pages, Pathfinder compatible.

There are twelve villages that are given life in this booklet, as well as info on how to design your own. There's a great section about using these villages with Ultimate Campaign. Then, there's ten pages of village design info, including many good charts. Each village includes a couple notable locations.

The Villages:

01 - Apia includes a really strange NPC. There are six pages of info on Apia.

02 - Ashford has a great NPC and a curse to lift. There are five pages of info here.

03 - Bossin is a town looking for a saviour. There are five pages of info here, too.

04 - Denton's End is a village with an unusual background. There are five pages here, too.

05 - Golden Valley is a town on the verge of the end of its gold boom. Five more pages here.

06 - Hard Bay is a good village by the sea with a secret. Five more pages here.

07 - Hosford is the seventh village. Five more pages here.

08 - Longbridge, a hotbed of intrigue and worse between two lords. Five more pages here.

09 - Oakhurst, a village with unusual NPC's to add to your campaign. Five more pages here.

10 - Roake, another village with a secret. Five more pages here.

11 - Thornhill, a focus for adventurers delving deeper into the swamps. Five more pages here.

12 - White Moon Cove, the last of the villages, contains a link to the Sunken Pyramid, and five more pages.

Finally, there's the usual OGL.

Every village info block contains a map of the village, all include info at a glance, demographics, notable folk, notable locations, info on the village marketplace, village lore, and general info about the villagers. Each includes detailed info on Notable Locations.

Only one page of ads, and that for the link to "Sunken Pyramid", and the rest practically pure crunch. A great resource for GM's searching for a jumping off point or two, and a good look at a design system that will provide many more villages.

Folks, you need look no further for a starting village reference source. Considering the price, I think this should rank high on every GM's short list of things to buy.