Is wear on a book from being carted too and from games nights a tragedy or marks of heroic purpose? If we take the latter then Jinx Almanac is one of the most useful books I have gotten my paws on anytime lately. Taking note of the points about whether one can review an RPG that you have not played, this is one book that I have surely earned the right to review.
This is a collection of digital magazine articles, special editions, modules and all sorts of ancilliary stuff that was published for Brancalonia and then collected during the second crowdfunding campaign. It is a big grab bag of stuff that has a surprisingly dense amount of gameable content. I got mine from the second Kickstarter campaign along with the Empire Whacks Back.
Cover art by Lorenzo Nuti
We are well past first impression territory here - we have the same Brancalonia art style - old paper with wine stains on it, consistently pretty and evocative art both new and public domain with nice clear layout from a design sense, even if some decisions about the sequencing of information are a bit odd.So what is all this stuff you get in the book?
There are two main bits:
The collected 'Daily Jinx' which is all the articles from the newsletters published by Acheron 2020-2022 including the Misfit Tales and Good Knaves Wanted sets of adventures.
For a Few Quatrins More is a set of eight adventures from various sources - actual play sessions, test adventures and early Brancalonia campaigns
I think a better way to split things up is two blocks; first is a big set of adventure hooks, second are fleshed out adventures. The hooks are the front half of 'Daily Jinx' plus Durante's Return at the end, the second half of 'Daily Jinx' and all of 'For a Few Quatrins More' are relatively fleshed out, ready to run adventures.
On the good side of things, there is a lot of content in here spread across the book - I have been running these as 5 hour one shots and there is easily enough in each of the 13 adventures *and* mini-adventure "Misfit Tales" to give me an evenings gaming.
We get more of everything interesting from the Core book - odd magical trinkets and potions - plus a bunch of NPCs, rumours and in-world trivia that might spark more adventure ideas. There is also a faction set-up to use for a campaign involving more intriguing between factions of ne'er-do-wells as opposed to just fleeing the law.
Within the adventures themselves there are often some quality random tables that are unlikely to be fully used during the adventure and easily recycled afterwards - wilderness encounters in Treasure of the Bigat, Big Trouble in Borgoratto or A Fistful of Hops - things that allow you to build out sets of hooks into a full nights fun.
On the other hand, there are some rough edges here that mean some of the quality ideas need some assembly before being table ready. An example is some counter-intuitive organisational decisions there is a mini-series in Treasure of the Bigat, Big Trouble in Borgoratto and Bride of the Bigat which has you start with Treasure on p88, continue with Trouble on p102 then leap back to Bride on p80. In any given adventure the information is laid out with more effort put to maintaining in-world flavour and the telling of the tale than in having the information you need as a DM at the place you need it - the name of the Inn where the action takes place is mentioned in the background brief, not at the place you actually get there - which means there is a little more flipping to and fro while running.
I have managed to run half of the adventures in the book, prepped most of the rest and those that I have not run have been more 'not yet'. The last four are the 'misfit tales' - described as mini adventures but actually just denser - you get enough for a one-shot in each.
Under the Banner of the Knave Kings (L1) - mini-quests to win over factions
Tarantasia: Petechin Heist (L1 / L3) - prison escape / vault break
The Treasure of the Bigat (L3) - monster hunt
Big Trouble in Borgoratto (L3) - spooky village exorcism
A Fistful of Hops (L3) - sea voyage, mystery and siege
Hot! Cross! Buns! (L3) - sneaky assassination
Bride of the Bigat (L4) - monster hunt w/ many rivals
Pickled Rich - The Gangover (L4) - time-skip scavenger hunt
Army of the Chitinominious (L6) - venture into ruined city
Phantasm of the Sea of Shadows - haunted ship
The Spinsterites Nunnery - haunted abbey
Showdown at the Hangmans Inn - grim cellar delving
The Battle of the Be(ast)damns - time-skip 'monster hunt'
In essence this is an adventure anthology with a bunch of world lore and adventure hooks also tossed in. The adventures would be hard to play straight out of the book but with a decent hours prep before hand there is a solid nights gaming in each. I find the looser frame for each more suited to the kind of rough-and-tumble adventuring that people adopt in the Brancalonia setting. The one or two bits that I am not sure what to do with are more than balanced by the solid, playable content that makes up the majority of this. I have gotten a lot of gaming out of Jinx Almanac, a lot more than any other adventure anthology I have gotten my hands on these past few years.
wow
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