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Cat's Meow: A One Page Adventure for 13th Age $1.00
Average Rating:4.3 / 5
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Cat\'s Meow: A One Page Adventure for 13th Age
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Cat's Meow: A One Page Adventure for 13th Age
Publisher: High Level Games
by DANIEL S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/15/2017 11:25:49

Let's get this out the way: the "adventure" is not really an adventure, it is a simplistic encounter of "you found this thing, kill it". With that said, the creature itself is nice, and I would totally use it in my campaign. The race presented (Chatoulim) is actually the best part of this PDF: if I was the author, I'd scrap the adventure, add a few more stat blocks and sell this as a new race/monster for a 5 star product. Nevertheless, it is worth the dollar in my opinion! :)



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Cat's Meow: A One Page Adventure for 13th Age
Publisher: High Level Games
by Timothy B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/27/2017 22:55:11

I'm glad to see High Level Games supporting 13th Age. I hope to see more products in the future! I liked this one-page adventure, but there were a few areas where it could've been a stronger product.

The cover is beautiful. While I'm not a huge fan of cat people, the Chatoulim figure on the cover is really well done. It's a professional-quality cover that I would expect from large- to medium-sized publishers, but was surprised to see on the initial offering from High Level Games.

The adventure is sufficiently generic in it setting that it could work in nearly any fantasy world. Even if you don't want to introduce the Chatoulim race to your game, there's likely some race/creature that could be substituted without problems. I appreciated that the adventure mentioned alternatives for a scene that takes place in a fish market, in case the adventure takes place far from a source of fresh fish.

The Chatoulim Monk is a cool monster. There's a tiny mistake in the "Angry Yowl" description, where it should read, "the target IS vulnerable" (the word "is" is missing). I don't think one monk would be a match for a party of six 3rd-level characters (on the upper end of the adventure recommendations). It would have been nice to suggest a number of Chatoulim monks based on the size and level of the party. Even better, suggest reskinning a mook of some sort from the 13th Age core book, and recommend a number of mooks to pad out the encounter.

While the mini-adventure will likely work as written once you get the PCs' buy-in, I struggle to see how the average group would be convinced to accept this quest, given that an apparently mundane little girl is offering a ridiculous sum of money. I wish a sentence or two would have addressed this. Are the PCs meant to believe that she's an ordinary girl, and has no sense of the value of money? In other words, whould they take what she says as exaggeration, just as if a modern-day child offered "a million dollars" to find her cat? That seemed the most reasonable explanation until the end of the first paragraph states that the girl will hand over one quarter of the offered reward, when pressed? Why would a group of adventurers trust this situation? A statement that explains what happens if the PCs follow the girl would help -- I see that as a likely scenario.

Why do the PCs get shut into the monastery by a suddenly evil-sounding monk? I understand that the adventure is intended to be mysterious, but this is pretty weird. Yet the weirdness isn't quite embraced -- if the PCs really stepped into an ambush, then make that clear. It sounds like the PCs may be able to talk their way out of the situation -- how? What was the monk's motivation to shut them inside? What could the PCs have that the monk wants? Does the monk actually attack? The adventure says he speak menacingly, but then goes on to say the PCs may attack him -- what if they don't?

In the final room, is this intended to be the same monk from the door or a different one? That wasn't clear to me. If they fought the monk at the door and this is a different one, this encounter is likely to feel exactly the same. This is where having a skill challenge to solve -- perhaps saving Gata from some terrible fate with the escalation die acting as a timer -- would help add a new element that wasn't present in the previous fight. Maybe this is the encounter that should use mooks.

What does a "cursed companion" mean? Perhaps I'm forgetting something from 13th Age, but I don't recall reading about cursed companions. How does the curse manifest? How can it be broken? I don't need a lot of detail, but some ideas like these would allow this mini-adventure to have long-term consequences for an ongoing campaign.

Next, there's a full page dedicated to the Chatoulim playable race. There's a fair amount of cultural background here, which is cool if you're going to introduce this race into your game. The stats look pretty good to me, overall. I think the Champion Tier feat for The Cat's Meow is a little underpowered. I'd allow the PC to pop free automtaically if the attack hits -- they already have a chance of failure, so why only allow them to pop free one time out of four for the price of a precious feat? It would be helpful to add the description of "Limited Shape Change" from the Chatoulim Monk to the "Limited Shapechange (Racial Power)" of the player race. It contains some limitations on shapechanging that the PC race doesn't mention.

I appreciated that a small map was provided on the title page. A legend would have helped me understand what I was looking at. I assume "C" stood for "cat" and that "A" was the encounter at the doorway.

I would have loved to see a few elements that would have made the mini-adventure feel more like a 13th Age adventure, beyond the mechanics. First, provide ideas for what Gata really is. "Here are six rumors fishmongers share about Gata" would have gone a long way to making this feel more like other 13th Age adventures. The GM can choose one, none, or possibly combine more than one to be true for the adventure.

What would make good icon advantages/complications during the adventure? If a PC has a realtionship with an icon who represents divinity (I realize the adventure can't mention The Priestess by name), what advantage might they gain in the Monastery of Cats? Or perhaps the monastery is influenced by forces aligned to an archdruid, and some advantages could be had from allies of that icon? What might a GM do for any complications that the PCs rolled?

To summarize, this is an interesting scenario, and it's hard to quibble over the content you get for $1. If you're looking for a mini-adventure to run on a night when you're down a player, or your adventure ended early, but your players are expecting another couple hours of gaming, this would be fun to run. My suggestions for improvement are minor, but kept the product from being perfect.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks so much for your feedback and we will certainly take it to heart. We have five more One Pagers in production and all of them will be offered in 13th Age.
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