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Strange Places: The Sensate's Retreat

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Strange Places: The Sensate's Retreat
Publisher: Dog Soul Publishing by Chris G. [Featured Reviewer]	Date Added: 07/19/2007 00:00:00

The Sensate?s Retreat

Occasionally there is a book that comes out that is just so different I think to myself I have to use this. But even though it is very creative and thought provoking at the same time what makes it so interesting also makes it really tough to use. This is the kind of book that for the right players it will be a real treat. But at the same time I can see someone really not liking or being interested with it and just bored. I think this could be a fun challenge for a DM to run. Strange Places: the Sensate?s Retreat is a PDF by Dog Soul Publishing. The book is from the Strange Places series that is all completely done by Deborah Balsam. From what I have seen she is a very creative woman. I really like her books that are more like this. They have a bit of a surreal feel to them and they do not offer easy answers. The PDF is twenty six pages long and about half of that is just maps of the place. The PDF is book marked, in full color, and has a great look and lay out. Strange Places series is mostly stat free and can be used with any role playing. This one does give reference to a tenth level wizard, has a monster stat block, and refers to a monster from the monster manual. So while it is tied to the D&D game it is very easy to set free and bring to something else. The whole time reading this I have been devising a way to use this in my Changeling the Dreaming game as a weird fey freehold. With the different sense that are being used I could see this as an alien laboratory on some planet in a science fiction game or some training hide out for a sensory oriented super hero in a supers game. There are some adult elements to the game but that could be removed and one could really have a fun place to have kids explore while playing Fariy?s Tale or Meddling Kids or another kid friendly RPG. Or one can really enhance the adult content even more and build on the horror these rooms can generate and create a very frightening place for a game like Dread of Call of Cthulhu. It is a very versatile book for someone willing to think outside the box. The idea behind the place is the PCs discover a secret hideout. The PDF places this in a desert but the where is not as important. Inside the PCs will first see a nice pool of water and four spice jars. It can get tricky here because picking up a spice jar will send that player character to one of the rooms thus dividing up the party. In some groups that will work in others it might be best to just have everyone get teleported together. Each room targets a different sense and it does go a bit beyond the five normal senses. The place is not necessarily deadly though it could be. There are two rooms with creatures that can kill one the PCs would have to anger to become dangerous and the other they would just have to be slow. There are many rooms and each of them can really bring out a descriptive DM. The first one might find is the room of scents. It has twenty three pots and urns filled with different things to smell though there are only twenty things listed. The room of touch is very neat in that one covers themselves in a large silk scarf and then feels unusually and not always pleasant sensations. It is a much better place then the Room of Pain though. The Room of Longing places the character into one of their own daydreams. This could be difficult to deal with as it requires a little work ahead of time to figure out what a character might be longing for. Then there is the room of taste. It is filled with all sorts of food and it makes me want to use Bits of a Banquet: Into the Desserts. The Room of Sights is the room I like the least. It is basically looking up into a fish bowl of rare water plants and two exotic water creatures. It is also the only room that allows one to see something of another room. The two water creatures are more important in the Room of Joy. The Room of Sight I think could really have had something else as a visually stimulation in it. The Room of Joy features the two water creatures the Nuur. In this they are both female but I would have them as a make and a female so everyone has the ability to get some Joy out of it. This room can be come very adult very fast. The Nuur are a well constructed water fey. Then we have the Room of Pain. This is a sadistic version of the Room of Touch. Nothing one experience here is permanent but I can only imagine how disturbing some of these are to feel. Lastly there is the room of instinct. The Instinct it seems to go for is run for your life as you will probably be hunted in here. There is a lot going on in this place. The maps are useful but I found that this type of place does not need maps as each room can almost exist on their own. It is an easy place to explore and to experience a wide range of different things. There is very little information on who built this place or why. Aside from what the rooms do there is little to hint at the motives behind everything. I like that as it makes it really easy to use in different genres like I spoke about earlier. This is one of those products that will be great for certain types of group who like to explore characters and how they react to different experiences. I like that potential and even though it is certainly not for everyone this is the type of book that really appeals to me.

LIKED: Very creative and surreal DISLIKED: Could use a little bit on other ways tthis can be used QUALITY: Excellent VALUE: Very Satisfied

Rating:

[5 of 5 Stars!]

Strange Places: The Sensate's Retreat
Publisher: Dog Soul Publishing by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer]	Date Added: 04/27/2007 00:00:00

Strange Places: The Sensate's Retreat is a short product from Dog Soul Publishing. The zipped file is four and a half megabytes in size, and contains a single PDF. This PDF is twenty-six pages in length, including a page for the cover, a page for the credits/legal, a page for the OGL, and thirteen pages of maps. Full bookmarks are given for the rooms of the retreat and for all the maps.

This product is one that's replete with colorful artwork. Most of the pictures are actual photographs of places and things, though at least one has been photoshopped a little. All of the room descriptions have smaller reproductions of their map area, also in color, despite the maps being reproduced in full at the end of the product. Likewise, all of the pages save for the full maps have green borders around all sides of them. Printing this product out may be a bit of a chore for your printer, though given the lush maps here, you may want to make the effort anyway.

The Sensate's Retreat is a small hideaway in the middle of a desert somewhere. Set up to be a realm of sensation, each of the rooms of the Retreat is dedicated to a different sense, allowing characters who stumble upon it to feel, see, taste, and otherwise experience a variety of things wonderful and awful. While d20 game stats are given in several instances, none of this is especially tactical, so it's easily translated to any other game system. One notable exception is the introduction of a new creature, the nuur. Mermaid-like fey in water, nuur have legs on land. While the stats for this creature are mostly correct, it seems fairly mundane in comparison to the rest of the product. Given that the product page described them as a race that forms partnerships of various kinds with humanoids, I'd hoped that there was something here about gaining various bonuses or abilities depending on what sort of relationship you had with one of these creatures, but sadly, this wasn't the case. A few spell-like abilities notwithstanding, the nuur have only one special power, it's song of vengeance, and no information on using this as a PC race, not even a level adjustment.

The Sensate's Retreat works well when a GM has to wing it, introducing an unexpected area off the beaten path. The maps here are gorgeous, and the descriptions evocative, painting a lovely tapestry for your game. However, this product clearly applies fluff first and mechanics second, and it shows. The Sensate's Retreat is a nice place for the PCs to visit, but don?t expect them to adventure too much there. LIKED: The maps here are beautifully done, and match the evocative descriptions given for the various rooms of sensation. DISLIKED: The new race introduced felt rather generic, which was out of place with the nature of the Retreat. QUALITY: Very Good VALUE: Satisfied

Rating:

[4 of 5 Stars!]

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