This is an underwhelming and only vaguely inspirational product that, in my opinion, isn’t worth the author’s Suggested Price. With no introduction or synopsis other than a one-page disclaimer about Ulfsark Games, the entire body of work is simply a collection of images of the coins (front and back) with a single paragraph of lore independently pertaining to the said images. There are four styles of coins, but the author doesn’t even make the effort to denote this other than to collect each style on a single page.
It's hard to delve into any lore with only one paragraph, but the author makes a valiant effort at it – with mixed results. In just the first two coins, the author talks of a farmer who had his brain and spine extracted for crossing a cult; and of a blind priest who regained his sight by passing through an arcane portal only to be witness to a madness-inducing hellscape. Unfortunately, this is literally as far as the “lore” goes. The material is at its weakest when the author simply gives a description of the image, such as the explanation of a dire wolf or the siren’s song.
Without speaking to the physical coins themselves (available for purchase from Ulfsark Games), the pictures are rather mundane: a skull, a unicorn, a tidal wave, etc. The author had the opportunity to really elevate these images but did himself a great disservice by so severely limiting his word count. While I don’t need a crew manifest or the lineage of captains for the Blue Pearl, I’d like to know why its disappearance was significant enough to be memorialized on a coin. As it is, none of the lore ties itself to coins. The author might as well have pulled the pictures from a random Internet search.
At its best, this is a collection of overly vague adventure seeds that any GM might conceive of; at its worst, it’s a handful of time I’ll never get back.
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