Tabletop Review: Village Snooper: Blacksmith Shop

Village Snooper: Blacksmith Shop

Publisher: Fishwife Games
Pages: 1
Cost: $1.00
Release Date: 01/10/2012
Get it Here: RPGNow.com

The Village Snooper series of one-page descriptions of various establishments you might find in a village or small town. This particular download is for a Blacksmith shop and is broken down into four main areas: map, map key, price list, and some adventure hooks.

The map for the blacksmith shop is rather small, but covers two floors and roughly 60 square feet. It is perfectly adequate for the GM’s needs, but I personally found the colors a bit garish. At this scale I’d rather just have a black and white hand-drawn map or, even better, make it appear like a classic “old-school” map.

To the side of the map is the map key, which just gives a quick description of the map.

There is a price list with a small description of items available for sale along with a note on how to convert prices listed to the appropriate value in your campaign. I found this small thing incredibly useful because the items listed for sale aren’t ones you’d normally find in any game’s equipment lists. By using a silver standard and then describing the comparitive value of a silver piece, any GM using the Village Snooper can easily tweak the prices to fit his campaign.

The final area of the Village Snooper is full of adventure hooks. If you need to figure out how to work this Blacksmith shop into your game, there are three well-designed adventure hooks.

Overall I think the Village Snooper is a good idea, but there are a few things I really don’t care for. Even though the map is well designed, the colors, which happen to be the only color on the page, don’t add anything significant to the overall presentation. The item list does have a bunch of unique items for sale, but I wonder just how often a PC will want to purchase a door knocker. Fully 1/6th of the single page is taken up by the publisher’s information, including a large logo which is almost as big as the provided map.

If you are needed a quick Blacksmith shop, this Village Snooper could be a good start. The only thing really missing is some essential NPC data. At least when you print this off there is plenty of room on the empty back side of the page to put any needed notes.