REVIEW: Time that Fry Men's Souls

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I'm reviewing a hexcrawl! Times that Fry Men's Souls on Lulu, and on DriveThru. From the creator's synopsis:

A weird campaign setting for use with traditional fantasy rules. Crawl across 80 hexes of a demented Colonial New York and New Jersey, with 180+ encounters, 10 supernatural scenarios, and hooks for dozens more. Abundant tables are provided for the ease and inspiration of referees and players.

 I ran about 4-6 weeks of play by post of this setting before life got in the way. I've been itching to return to it, so this is a small scratch of that itch. I ran this with base 24XX resolution, and created a list of skills. Players also rolled for period appropriate trinkets, character quirks, and were given plenty of free reign on their characters using the book's excellent tables. I also asked the group to come up with a desired starting activity, anything from privateering to just plain ol' traveling (one group took up on the privateering). Oh yeah, immersion gaming, baby.

I had a lot of fun running this, for the short time that it lasted. Most of the fun came from the excellent tables and hexes of the setting. I supposed that TTFMS was set early in the American Revolutionary War, so there was wartime activity going on. I think this is a great time period to set an adventure, many small and large factions, many pregnant situations to interact with. And the setting leans into that!

The hexes each describe one or more interesting interactable thing, often with connections across the map; it could be a treasure, an enemy, a potential ally. Despite having connections across the map, I think the NPCs avoid being quest-givers for fetching items.

There's also a wide variety of terrain and types of encounters. Half-sunken ship? That's in there. Continental army? Oh yes. There is also plenty of openness in how the various interactions may go. I think this is a strength. It left me with a lot of openness to think of how I wanted to expand upon what was written. I love that sort of openness.

I also like that characters aren't thrust into responsibility-heavy roles necessarily. Hexcrawls are for exploring, and if your characters doesn't have the freedom to go where ever, it can be constraining. That said, you can certainly have the character concept where you might want to be rather stationary: AWOL soldiers, for instance, keeping a low profile while on the run.

I, being a dungeon enjoyer, liked the opportunity for dungeons. There is one hex along the coast with a tidal cave that seemed fun. We ended up not exploring it, but the plan was to put the Iron Coral there.

My only complaint would be that there is no Jersey Devil encounter. You can be quizzed by the devil for a second chance at life, but none of the classics? Good thing it's easy enough to design yourself.

Anyways, go buy it. It's a lot of fun.

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