Enchanted Locations
Enchanted Locations is a map and encounter sourcebook for d20 fantasy games by Fast Forward Entertainment. The book is designed primarily by veteran D&D designer James M. Ward.
A First Look
Enchanted Locations is a 160-page hardcover book priced at $29.99. This is expensive for a book of this size and format.
The cover of the book depicts maps, a compass, pen, and magnifying glass strewn across a desktop, with a filter applied to make it look like an oil painting, an effect that FFE uses for many of their book covers.
The interior is black and white. There are few actual illustrations, but a major part of the book is maps. The maps are similar in format to those presented in FFE's Dungeon World and Treasure Quests. The maps are simple, with textures shapes (mostly rectangles) and icons applied to a textured background.
The text density is very high in the introductory section, but in the bulk of the book uses a very large font and makes generally poor use of space.
A Deeper Look
Apparently FFE has taken a lot of flack about the amount of treasure included in many of their books, because author Jim Ward spends a lot of time in the introductory section explaining and justifying his stance on treasure in a fantasy game. In short, he owns up to adhering to a "monty haul" style of game mastering and writing, and classifies the prevailing D&D treasure model as "conservative".
Although I doubt he will win many adherents, he does make his case eloquently , with the possible exception of the faux pas of claiming that the Dying Earth novels were written by Michael Moorcock.
As with most long-term gamers, I outgrew my Monty Haul stage, and concur with Roger E. Moore in his Dragon article years ago (issue 82 to be precise) when he termed Monty Haul play a malady.
To Ward's credit, the introduction section is not a total loss to those who have reservations about handing such power to their players. The section has some interesting advice about making thematically appropriate and interesting treasure placement.
The body of the book is the many maps and accompanying keys. Throughout the book, the maps and keys are arranged on facing pages with the key on the left and the map on the right. The maps are arranged in order of encounter level, covering EL's 2-21, with most ELs represented more than once, but skipping a few ELs entirely.
The key pages follow the same format. Each key page lists 20 locations keyed on the map by name only, then gives stat blocks for two encounters, and finally treasure. There are two treasures provided. The first is the "by the book" treasure that Ward classifies as "conservative", and an "alternate ancient treasure" that is creating by Ward's treasure philosophy. The later isn't a total loss if you are a mainstream gamer; the treasures do have some interesting thematic bits, and it can be parsed out or toned down or included as an appropriate aggregate treasure if you flesh out the maps with more encounters.
The locations vary in size and scope widely, including places like valleys, towers, dungeons, and empires, providing a variety of different potential locales for adventure.
Conclusion
This book would be most appropriate if you don't have a well-mapped campaign and find yourself running ad hoc games commonly. The maps would make decent adventure-starters, providing a few nuggets of ideas and giving your some elbow room.
That said, it occurs to me that you don't get much for your money here. The price per page is fairly high, the amount of text (and therefore usable material) per page is low, and the maps are simply not aesthetically pleasing, especially for a product whose primary focus is maps.
-Alan D. Kohler
