21 Plots

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91708[1]By Leonard Pimentel

Overview

This supplement from Gypsy Knight Games, provides you with 21 plot hooks, each of which is fleshed out in six different ways, giving you a grand total of 126 simple plot threads.

Style

Production-wise, this supplement could have been better. There is very little artwork, which is fine, but it’s all in a style of CGI that seems to be cropping up more and more in small-press roleplaying products: human figures with photorealistic clothes and gear and vacant doll-like expressions. Unfortunately, the lack of expression on these characters’ faces prevents this kind of artwork from being evocative (as made painfully evident when R.Talsorian Games decided to use photographs of actual dolls for its often (and perhaps unfairly) maligned Cyberpunk v3.0). Additionally, the interior layout is completely plain and lacks any design elements at all except for the fact that the plot expansion options are in table format. Finally, the text itself could use minor polishing and could have benefitted from the skills of a professional copy-editor. In short, more should have been done to make this product appealing. Style Score: 2 out of 5.

Substance

This supplement provides what it promises, as long as you understand it promises plot threads rather than fully fleshed-out plots. It includes a number of interesting ideas and lays them out in an exceptionally straightforward manner. While these plot threads need to be expanded for play, they can certainly spark the imagination of a Referee who needs an adventure idea, and they can do so quickly. Additionally, this supplement can be used for almost any science fiction game or, for that matter, for any game in which the players own a large vehicle suitable for long-distance travel. Which leads to one quibble: most of the plot threads assume the character party is travelling around in their own ship. Should this not be the case, this supplement will be much less useful. The only other quibble is that almost all of the plot hooks include one or two options in which everything is exactly as it seems and the resulting plot thread is, frankly, uninteresting. Thus, a good 20 to 40 of the plot threads are rather dull. For a supplement about plot threads and nothing more, it would be hoped that all of the plots would be somewhat interesting. Substance Score: 3 out of 5.

Conclusion

This is, at best, an average product. But it is one I would nevertheless recommend buying because it provides Referees with the one thing they can never be without: plots. Additionally, these plots are delivered in a raw, almost stripped-down format that makes them quickly and easily accessible and fuels creativity. In fact, this bare-bones presentation could make this supplement more useful than one with an overabundance of fluff in which a Referee could get lost as he searched for ideas on the day of, on the way to, or even in the middle of a game session.

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