Neverland

Neverland is a delightful hexcrawl loosely based off the book/play/movie/cultural phenomenon by JM Barrie. Today Im going to share some beautiful art, great design, and lovely layout. Lets take a look.

Should you wish to support the amazing author/artist @kolbisneat and own a copy yourself you can find it at drivethru https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/331102 

or Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Neverland-Fantasy-Role-Playing-Andrew-Kolb/dp/1524860204

With that out of the way, lets dig in!

Art

The art is gorgeous. But also it doesnt look like most other books I own. It has its own style and it stands out. And theres tons of it. Art on almost every page. And the presentation is wonderful too.

The book is gorgeous. The design is wonderful. But the thing that made me fall for it is how GM friendly it is. It starts with a brief overview of all the factions involved, covers the major players(NPCs and monsters are in the same chapter) and then gets into the hexcrawl itself

Hexcrawling

Each hex is presented with a single sentence prompt as well as a more thorough breakdown. You have a d20 table to see what type of encounter players will run into, followed by a effect table, creature table, and npc table. You get a minimap of the surrounding hexes.

There was a missed opportunity for creatures and NPC pg numbers, which would have made things that much easier, but beyond that this makes for an incredibly quick encounter generation. Roll a d20 and d12, maybe roll another d12. Active, alive, easily referenced.

Some of the hexes have one page dungeons or villages, which are mapped out in detail in the next chapter. Theyre all short enough and well presented that you shouldnt need to prep beyond the initial readthrough. It has some additional mechanics too(chases, starfalls, etc)

And then we get to the glorious glorious references and tables that move this to great. It has tables for generating noc quests, or a set of premade ones. It has tables for wild animals. Loot. Fairy trades. Games, traps. Npcs and weird materials.

It has a table of glorious plot hooks. No work for players and GMs having to figure out why youd get here. It cares! Rumor tables to make the place feel travelled and alive. Wandering strangers with a table of motivations.

My forever favorite is a quick reference with names by faction, although confusingly neither this nor the surprisingly good pregens are in the pdf(maybe @ZweihanderRPG can look into it?)

Worth noting past this, the super problematic “indians” of the original book etc have been replaced by a village of Tylwyth Teg, which a quick google search says are welsh fey.

Theyre still indigenous people of the island with a close connection to nature so I dont know that it solves all the obvious trope-y issues, made perhaps more concerning by the lack of a credited sensitivity reader, but its still drastically improved from the source material.

Suppose ymmv on whether thats enough of a change to make you comfortable, and Im certainly not the expert who can answer that for you. But for my part I think its enough that Id feel ok running as is.

Also of note, amongst the inspirations it has 3 products listed:

Carapace by @GoblinsHenchman

Gardens of Ynn by @DyingStylishly

Hot Springs Island by @vyderac @DivinerSpeaks et al

I can absolutely see how they all inspired Neverland, and props for citations. I do have some questions about the recommendations for tying them in, particularly Hot Springs given some major tonal and thematic clashes.

Its a gorgeous book with lots of great tools and layout and information design tricks making it incredibly easy to use at the table. I plan on running it starting in November, and cannot wait. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming everyone!