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Fever-Dreaming Marlinko
Visit Marlinko, a borderlands city where life takes a strange fever-dream cast, in this 72-page urban adventure fantasy supplement. Part city-setting, part full-blown adventure, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is a stand-alone companion to the Slavic acid fantasy weirdness of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes.
What you will find inside:
Background and hooks for the city's “four contradas,” city quarters with their own peculiar traditions, sites and even gods.
Gorgeous isometric city maps by Luka Rejec.
Two complete dungeon adventure sites.
Two new players classes (the Mountebank and Robodwarf).
Chaos Index with escalating events/triggers scattered throughout the city.
News generator with full news briefs and hooks.
Tiger-wrestling mini-game.
Weird nickname generator.
Section on running scams, hoaxes and grifting activity in a fantasy campaign.
Carousing system tied into the contrada system.
A“fair play/pay” guild system for hirelings.
What Others Are Saying:
“If a wealthy NPC owning an "all-weather tiger pit" appeals to you, and you generally like your games to be loud and chaotic, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is a must-have...Even the Labyrinth Lord/DM possessing no desire to run a game in Marlinko specifically, will unearth ample ideas portable to any town or city.”
– Corey Ryan Walden
"[T]his is really a model of what a good urban supplement should look like, and many of the tricks it uses to create [an] evocative and interactive setting are worthy of emulation in any campaign."
- Gus L.
"[I]t’s one of the best city supplements every produced, if not the best...Everything in this contributes to the fun. Everything is a hook. Everything is interactive...A perfect home base for your party."
- Bryce Lynch
"Fever-Dreaming Marlinko's strong points are the clever and evocative writing, and the abundance of gaming-oriented material. The book explicitly tells you that rather than focusing on shopping lists and dull descriptions of shops, it's going to focus on the interesting bits, and it does a great job of this. You come out of it with a clear idea of what Marlinko is like as a city, and what parts to focus on."
- John Bell
What you will find inside:
Background and hooks for the city's “four contradas,” city quarters with their own peculiar traditions, sites and even gods.
Gorgeous isometric city maps by Luka Rejec.
Two complete dungeon adventure sites.
Two new players classes (the Mountebank and Robodwarf).
Chaos Index with escalating events/triggers scattered throughout the city.
News generator with full news briefs and hooks.
Tiger-wrestling mini-game.
Weird nickname generator.
Section on running scams, hoaxes and grifting activity in a fantasy campaign.
Carousing system tied into the contrada system.
A“fair play/pay” guild system for hirelings.
What Others Are Saying:
“If a wealthy NPC owning an "all-weather tiger pit" appeals to you, and you generally like your games to be loud and chaotic, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is a must-have...Even the Labyrinth Lord/DM possessing no desire to run a game in Marlinko specifically, will unearth ample ideas portable to any town or city.”
– Corey Ryan Walden
"[T]his is really a model of what a good urban supplement should look like, and many of the tricks it uses to create [an] evocative and interactive setting are worthy of emulation in any campaign."
- Gus L.
"[I]t’s one of the best city supplements every produced, if not the best...Everything in this contributes to the fun. Everything is a hook. Everything is interactive...A perfect home base for your party."
- Bryce Lynch
"Fever-Dreaming Marlinko's strong points are the clever and evocative writing, and the abundance of gaming-oriented material. The book explicitly tells you that rather than focusing on shopping lists and dull descriptions of shops, it's going to focus on the interesting bits, and it does a great job of this. You come out of it with a clear idea of what Marlinko is like as a city, and what parts to focus on."
- John Bell
72 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2015
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 16, 2020
Imaginitive and well-written, if a little too off-the-wall for your standard fantasy adventure.
So don't do standard fantasy adventures.
So don't do standard fantasy adventures.
February 28, 2019
An interesting urban setting that embraces the weirder side of things. Great writing and ideas throughout - this is a module that I feel is best used as a whole, rather than taking bits and pieces out, as the whole package is so consistent. Bonus points for a Father Jack character.
March 17, 2020
I'm familiar with the authors work, having read his blog here and there. I tend to like my gaming a bit more vanilla and traditional. Mostly because of the people I play with when I'm the player, and because it's easier for me those rare times I'm the DM. I've shied away from purchasing a majority of a lot of popular OSR stuff because of that, but with a GM's day sale on at rpgnow I decided to give this product a try.
I'm glad I did. It's weird without being gonzo. Very creative and highly usable. Idiosyncratic but somehow familiar. Instead of a straight up city supplement, with pages and pages of various shops and npcs you'll probably never use, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko gives you creative options to make a city come to life without having to memorize all the "stuff". Very little of the details of the city are presented. The books gives you random tables of what you can find in the city, who the notable npc's are your characters might interact with, and random encounters that make the city feel authentic. Also included are carousing tables, a "chaos index", and a few new classes stated for Labyrinth Lord. A solid product meant to get your juices flowing. I've already purchased another Hill Cantons book, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, and am looking forward to reading it.
I'm glad I did. It's weird without being gonzo. Very creative and highly usable. Idiosyncratic but somehow familiar. Instead of a straight up city supplement, with pages and pages of various shops and npcs you'll probably never use, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko gives you creative options to make a city come to life without having to memorize all the "stuff". Very little of the details of the city are presented. The books gives you random tables of what you can find in the city, who the notable npc's are your characters might interact with, and random encounters that make the city feel authentic. Also included are carousing tables, a "chaos index", and a few new classes stated for Labyrinth Lord. A solid product meant to get your juices flowing. I've already purchased another Hill Cantons book, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, and am looking forward to reading it.
April 25, 2019
Beautiful prose and very imaginative ideas. I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for a unique campaign setting or for inspiration to spice up their own. However, Prose is like a window pane, and this window is stain-glass so it's often difficult to see the functional gaming pieces on the other side. I admit I glazed over a lot and had to re-read a number of pages to absorb the information. I think a better layout could help add some much-needed functionality to this book. It may be beautiful but it still has to be easily accessible at the table.
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August 30, 2021I read the descriptions of the four quarters of the city and the main NPCs, then skimmed the rest. I wanted to see if this would work for one of the cities in the Worlds Without Number game I'm running. Not quite, but there are a lot of easily-usable ideas in here, and now that the book is in the back of my head I wouldn't be surprised for it to come to the fore one day and find its place.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews