You never know when a small seaside village will be needed. The intoductory notes contain a few adventure possibilities from vanishing locals to sea monsters or the place being taken over by pirates (and one suggestion about seafood that has got garbled!), but I'm sure you can come up with more. This section also explains the customisation possible, a series of checkboxes that allow you to turn on and off the grid, eliminate the room numbers, get the walls filled and either show or not show the doors and furniture. There is also a generic legend explaining symbols used.

So, on to the first plan, being an overview of the village with a small cluster of buildings around the harbour made secure by a long breakwater. There are quite a few boats moored up, it seems that the fishermen are at home...

We then spin through more detailed interior plans for a shipyard, tavern, temple and warehouses... it's a bit difficult to locate them on the overview map but if you look at the mostly blank notes pages at the back, they have been given numbers that relate to the overview map. So that's sorted!

The shipyard is a two-storey building, the workshops occupying the ground floor with living quarters and office space above. The main workshop opens onto a slipway and there's room inside to build a fishing boat of the size shown in the harbour. There's a big store room as well.

The tavern is equipped with plenty of tables and chairs/benches and a bar in a single tap room, with a kitchen behind, and barrel storage in a cellar below. There is an upper floor with several rooms that can be used for private meetings or living space, plus the owner's bedroom.

The 'sea temple' has the usual sort of religious trappings, a big statue at one end and others along the side walls with living quarters for the priest in back and stairs down to an underground level boasting yet more statues and a pool. It shouldn't prove too difficult to come up with appropriate worship rituals for whichever god you decide to have revered here. My go-to sea deity is called Psglod, by the way, it's one I made up. Priests wear blue-green robes with white trim and this is the patron deity of fishermen and other merchant seamen.

Finally the warehouse has a series of chambers that can be used to store all manner of nautical bits and bobs. The illustrations suggest lots of barrels, fish and some spare boats. There is an upper level with sleeping accommodation, an office and a meeting room - perhaps this belongs to the harbour master or the chief of the fishing fleet.

What's there is excellent... but there are far more boats than there is living quarters for their sailors (and these appear to be day boats, not live-aboards). Even the two or three buildings on the overview plan that are not detailed further would have to be jam-packed with bunk beds to accommodate them all. Add some housing for the fishermen and you have a great little village on your hands.

Return to Fisherman's Village page.

Reviewed: 2 January 2019