Swallowfeld

By Thilo Graf

The Pdf for the rural village Swallowfeld consists of 37 pages: 1 page front cover, 1 blank page on the inside of the cover, 3 pages credits, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover.

The formatting is concise, the editing top-notch (I didn’t find a single mistake/typo) and the pdf is printer-friendly. The artwork is b/w and very nice to look at and serves to underline the old-school & old-world-feel of the supplement.

Following in line with the mood of the remote and ancient-feeling area of The Lonely Coast, Swallowfeld describes the little village in excruciating and atmospheric detail.

The pdf can be split in two major parts:

The first one consisting of 12 pages, including a b/w map that thankfully lacks annoying letters.

The village also contains evocative details like local diet, a paragraph on social order and law, passing seasons, festivals and traditions (quite cool and reminiscent of old pagan customs) and a table of local events to kick off sessions and moods. Be warned, though. The mood may get grim and is mature, but I personally like it that way.

The second major part of the adventure consists of 12 pages of NPC-stats as well as descriptions of the characters. Every one of them comes with his/her own picture, quality b/w artwork. Best of all, each entry has a paragraph on mannerisms, distinguishing features and hooks that makes it easy for the DM to make this place come to life.

After that, the pdf concludes with a 3 page player’s guide to Swallowfeld, including 1 page of player’s map.

Conclusion:

While this pdf is high quality, is very detailed and evokes the awesome old-world-atmosphere we already had in The Lonely Coast, the prose somewhere falls short of the high standards set by other pdfs of Raging Swan. It’s still top-notch, just not as awesome. I’d give 4.5 stars.

However, Raging Swan Press gives you more bang for buck:

As either free previews or supplements for the product, you can download 3 free web-enhancements on the homepage:

• One containing collated statblocks for the NPCs
• One containing the player’s guide so you can mail it to your players/print it separately for them.
• One containing all of the artworks of the NPCs to show off to your players, with blank space for notes.

That is superb service and eases the workload for any DM trying to run the village or use it as an entry-point.

For this service, I’d upgrade the rating to 4.5 stars, but not quite 5.