Mimics: An Unnecessary Work, and Other Garbage by Philip Reed

There was a recent Kickstarter for Mimics: An Unnecessary Work that I managed to miss. Complete and utter lack of awareness. Failed my Perception roll with a natural 1.

"Well", you're not wondering, "is it any good?" I'll let the creator tell you in his own words.

Welcome to Mimics, An Unnecessary Work. Designed as a completely worthless collection of ideas that gamemasters may turn to when tossing a mimic into their next dungeon, this title was created because I felt like jotting down some useless words that are likely as unnecessary as anything I have ever written. If you foolishly throw a handful of coins in my direction in exchange for this document, I apologize in advance. Though, to be fair, I did try to steer you away from spending your money on this creative effort: the name alone is a warning to all who might be tempted to buy this.

There's plenty more on the Kickstarter page, all of it done with the same tongue-in-cheek style. 

Here's the link. These things only stay readable for a short time on Kickstarter after a campaign ends so it might be useless a few months from the time of this post, much like the product.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/philipreed/mimics-an-unnecessary-work-for-use-with-fantasy-rpgs?fbclid=IwAR0ClDVH2MH6Y0Ik3UModdZ6E2RLqrp_PEHWn-C6yUq-zXCZWjbR-ZAduP4

Philip decided to flood the RPG marketplace with more useless junk to accumulate with the already terrible detritus most "creators" vomit up. Here again in his own words is Philip.

As always, everything I have put to paper should be ignored once you realize just how worthless it truly is. I am positive that your own creativity can lead to far better ideas than I’ve offered in the unnecessary work.

What can I say that Philip Reed isn't doing a great job of elucidating on himself?

This guy isn't shy about producing things nobody needs in formats nobody would reasonably want to use. Here again is Philip.

Those who have followed my creative efforts have no doubt recognized that I enjoy tackling formats well outside of the norm. I recently ran a Kickstarter campaign for Tome of Skulls (already shipped to backers!) that embraced a new product format: the Pocket Map! When I ran across pocketmaps.com, a website specializing in small maps that can fold down and slip into a pocket, I just had to give them a shot. The end result looks so good that I am back with a second product in the pocket map format! 

But this menace to gaming society didn't stop there. He also produced other similar pocket map sized atrocities.

Yes Philip, Gelatinous Cubes do indeed rule.

So there it is, a huge waste of space, unless like me, you're enamored with adding to your collection of gaming materials that may never see use in your campaign. 

Of course I bought the four of them that are right now available in .pdf format on Drive-Thru RPG. I paid in Butt Pennies.

In all honesty I love a good self deprecating sense of humor coupled with fun creations. Philip Reed did a masterful job of creating humorous and useful material.

The colorful art and graphic design is pleasing to the eye and while most of us will never be able to refold the physical versions back into their original pocket shape, at least once framed, they will make great double-sided free-hanging posters.

Give these a look. At $3.95 each for the .pdf version it likely won't break your wallet, and who knows, you may find they make great bid cage liners!

Note: The Kickstarter for this was a success, funding at over 300%. Good job!

Lost Baronies Campaign Map and Adventures

Back when the Lost Baronies campaign was under way, I had the bright idea that I could provide a rough starter map of the island, and let the players fill it in as we played. That idea was inspired by the West Marches campaign another DM successfully executed.

I wanted to give the map a different look than hex paper or graph paper so I bought a roll of that inexpensive brown wrapping paper commonly used for shipping packages. Then I drew in a few landmarks and obvious features, leaving everything else blank. Part of the plan was to have various players drawing the map creating a mix of styles.

The players liked what I had drawn, but the campaign didn't last long enough for the mapping idea to blossom. Below are some pictures of what exists, drawn by me:

 The island boundary is very lightly drawn on the map to make it easy to shift the outline should players need to do so when adding to the map. The only places it needed to stay put were at Restenford, and Loreltarma, the major port towns.

 Restenford and Farmin are the locations for the old TSR published adventures L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, and L2 The Assassins Knot, by Len Lakofka. My players successfully avoided all but one of the published dungeons and wilderness encounters while in these areas.

 Kroten and the surrounding towns are all from another in the L series of published adventures. The party had gotten into Grest and were about to get themselves caught up in a puzzle dungeon that could become a death trap if they gave up too soon. Fortunately the players that were active at the time were resourceful and methodical so the danger would be somewhat mitigated.

 The Kenall Keep on this section of the map is none other than The Keep on the Borderlands, aka the Caves of Chaos. Wolford is the town over by that weird looking mountain on the map, which as it happens, is Skull Mountain (published by Faster Monkey Games).

 I threw a bunch of mountains along part of the northern edge of the island just because.

Loreltarma (the correct name for the city, which is misspelled Lo Reltarma on the Greyhawk maps).

The published adventure material that was available for the player characters to interact with is quite large. It included the following list and more: The Secret of Bone Hill, The Assassins Knot, Priestly Secrets, Devilspawn, The Keep on the Borderlands, Skull Mountain, Stone Hell, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, The Wandering Trees, and assorted smaller vignettes. Since most of it with certain obvious exceptions, has not been played by the current group, I can still use all or parts in whatever I run next.