RPGPundit Reviews: People of Pembrooktonshire

People of Pembrooktonshire is the last (for now) of the James Raggi products which were sent my way for review. Like the Three Brides, this booklet-sized product (36 pages long) is based in the town of Pembrooktonshire. But it is not a module (or a group of adventures, like Three Brides was). Nor is it precisely a setting-guide; or rather it is, in a way, but in a very unconventional way.

Pembrooktonshire is a small town in a fantasy world, but far from a typical small town. Its not Hommlet, let's put it that way. Instead, its a weird and twisted place, with all of the worst characteristics of pettiness, hatefulness, and xenophobia that small towns are likely to have, lots of barely-hidden bad behaviours, and a completely inappropriate sense of self-importance on the part of virtually every townsperson. In the product itself, Mr. Raggi essentially admits that there's only one character from the entire town who's basically a nice guy. Everyone else would veer somewhere between Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil.

Let me note (in case you hadn't guessed by the product title) that Characters are what Pembrooktonshire is all about. Mr. Raggi has been very clever in a way, in that in a typical D&D-format module or setting book, what you'd get is probably a map, with a keyed description of the places and buildings, and then stats and some minor commentary on the townsfolk.

Raggi turns this on its head: What he provides instead is a very very brief overview about what Pembrooktonshire is about, and then a list of dozens of NPCs, with no stats, only descriptions about who they are, what they do in the town, their personality, and their secrets (if any).

In principle, I can't disagree with this approach. I myself coined the term "Cast of Thousands" as a GMing tool in my blog; the idea that one thing that makes emulation happen better than anything is having dozens of fully-developed NPCs with their own personalities and motivations, doing their own things in the setting. So this is a good thing. And I will agree that Mr. Raggi is successful in capturing the (mean, ignorant) spirit of Pembrooktonshire using this method. You get a perfect idea, by reading the stories of its people, what Pembrooktonshire is all about, and what the experience of the PCs would be there.

That said, this product is not flawless.

The first big problem with it is that Pembrooktonshire is neither a likable place, nor a place that is worth spending a great deal of time in during a campaign. It had already been established in Three Brides that Penbrooktonshire is protected from having any really dangerous monsters or menaces in the area around it, so it hardly makes a good long or short term "home base" for an adventuring party in that sense. Nor is it a place where they would be welcome. So these are in a way two strikes against the long-term viability of the product.

The product itself presents the dozens of characters in such a way that, in their stories, there's the potential for an adventure seed. For example, you have the Whale-oil salesman who's discovered how to use Troll Oil from a troll's arm instead, and is selling that to the townsfolk. Which is great for him, unless someone ends up not using the oil right away (like he instructed), in which case you could end up having a troll attack right in someone's pantry!
There's weirder stuff too, like the three cows who are actually polymorphed dopplegangers. They were stuck in that form by a wizard centuries ago, and believe themselves to be regular cows. The townsfolk failed to get that something was wrong with the cows, like that they NEVER DIE.  But should a dispel magic affect them at some point, you're going to have a problem on the town's hand.


There's some stories that are more for roleplaying purposes, or can end up making the basis of an investigative adventure, like the "town eunuch" (who escorts young ladies to social events for their families), who's actually a lesbian seductress in disguise. Or the town "soldier", the only young man who left the town to serve in the army, who is considered by everyone to be an expert on all military matters even though he never actually saw combat; the town, if it should end up under attack, will take the soldier's "professional advice" over anyone else (especially foreigner PCs), leading to potential disaster.

The problem is, there's a ton of stuff, ideas related to the characters presented, some of them very interesting, some of them good, and a few pretty bad in my opinion.  But it makes little or no sense, as the setting of Pembrooktonshire has been set up, for an adventuring party of PCs to stick around there for any more time than they absolutely have to; and Mr. Raggi makes no effort whatsoever to give any reasons in the book why the PCs would choose or be forced to stick around.   A good GM can figure out ways to force this to happen; but its still a flaw in the product that it isn't addressed, not even with some vague general tips.

There are also a few serious stinkers among the characters. Stuff that just doesn't make any sense, or strains the emulation of the setting. The "Diplomat" character, who has apparently been convincing the faraway ruler that Pembrooktonshire is vassal to that the town is in fact not in its currently location, but is some other town. The Ruler will then clamp down on that town mistakenly believing they have not paid the Pembrooktonshire taxes to him, and Pembrooktonshire gets ot live unmolested.  Now, unless the GM places Pembrooktonshire in a kingdom run by a dynasty of mental defectives, I fail to see how this is really credible.

For that matter, Pembrooktonshire is not very credible. It is too rich for a pathetic little town in the middle of nowhere, too capable of having valuable products being imported and exported from the town, while supposedly at the same time being unfindable by the local ruler and so isolated that it can become a weird twisted society of its own; complete with two dozen or so truly horrific secrets in the town.
Even the sheer level of the cruelty of the town is pretty laughable, and there seems to be a very strong element of class-warfare in the motivations of the author. I get the feeling that Mr. Raggi is very much resentful of the upper classes; the "great families" of Pembrooktonshire (of which there are far too many for such a small isolated town) are all utterly despicable. There is even a "town serf", who's family and farm have by law been kept in slavery because it entertains the "great families", who sell him between themselves every few years.
This is an absurd idea, has no relation to anything in history, certainly is not authentically representative of serfdom in any culture I know of, and is basically there just as either very dark humour or some kind of bizarre social commentary.

All this, and we haven't even gotten to the truly parodically absurd cases; like the little boy named Christopher who wandered through the wood and met a a small bear, and owl, a pig, a rabbit, and a tiger (or should that be a tigger) who could all talk. Being a well-trained Pembrooktonshirer, he murdered them all for being sorcerous heresy, and has since dedicated himself to hunting down all kinds of other animals obviously ripped off from fairy tales.

I mean shit, dude, there's gonzo, and there's just stupid.

So in all, the People of Pembrooktonshire is a flawed gem. I mostly like it, but I also see some serious production flaws.
If you want to have a very odd, very unlikeable town for your PCs to spend time in, you could certainly do worse than buying this product. Do remember that it amounts to basically a broad outline of the town, a bunch of neat NPC descriptions, and a bunch of very very rough adventure hints and seeds in those same descriptions. If you are the kind of GM who wants these kinds of seeds, and is willing to do the work necessary to incorporate this to your game, then you might find a lot of fuel in this book.

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Ok, so you know this is exactly the kind of mini setting I dig.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: RPGPundit;349961All this, and we haven't even gotten to the truly parodically absurd cases; like the little boy named Christopher who wandered through the wood and met a a small bear, and owl, a pig, a rabbit, and a tiger (or should that be a tigger) who could all talk. Being a well-trained Pembrooktonshirer, he murdered them all for being sorcerous heresy, and has since dedicated himself to hunting down all kinds of other animals obviously ripped off from fairy tales.

I mean shit, dude, there's gonzo, and there's just stupid.

Sounds cool to me, and in the tradition of not-too-serious rollicking adventures.

How modify-able is it?  If a GM wanted to take the Christopher character out would it upset the assumptions of the setting too much?

Quote from: Hairfoot;350117Sounds cool to me, and in the tradition of not-too-serious rollicking adventures.

How modify-able is it?  If a GM wanted to take the Christopher character out would it upset the assumptions of the setting too much?

Very few of the characters are referred to in other characters' entries (although a few are), and many of the oddities attributed to characters are secrets, so it's quite easy to leave out particular characters... or more likely (since there are 137 entries in the book), simply cherry-pick which characters you use to complement the tone you want to convey.

Don't want to use the flagrantly goofy stuff? Leave it out. There are dozens and dozens of other characters to use. Don't want to use the social commentary stuff? Leave it out. There are dozens and dozens... etc.

I never imagined that anyone would try to shoehorn over a hundred NPCs into their game anyway.

Quote from: RPGPundit;350117It had already been established in Three Brides that Penbrooktonshire is protected from having any really dangerous monsters or menaces in the area around it

In my campaign, the mountain range around Pembrooktonshire is massive, and the spirits that protect Pembrooktonshire have their fingers in many pies. This has been the central point of conflict for the group I ran in Vaasa, and the source of many headaches for the group here in Helsinki.

Besides, if one is going to use Pembrooktonshire, it wouldn't need to just be a home base from which to adventure elsewhere, with all the strange things happening in the town itself. No Dignity in Death shows that there can be plenty of things to do for outsiders, and People of Pembrooktonshire gives more hooks than anyone can ever use.

Dopplegangers polymorphed into cows?  Sounds like a Marvel Comics shout-out.

Quote from: VectorSigma;350356Dopplegangers polymorphed into cows?  Sounds like a Marvel Comics shout-out.

Indeed.

It certainly does provide a wealth of hooks. And yes, i would agree that on the whole, the book is extremely GM-modifiable.

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