Frugal GM Review: Coins of Fletnern

Remember Monday how I mentioned that Drive Thru RPG has a butt-load of free items available for download?  If you were wondering just how much is a butt-load when talking about RPG products that answer is 2718 (and counting).

Earlier this week I actually went through the list of all 2718 free items and downloaded the ones that looked interesting to me.  They were either items I thought I might use in my game or just stuff I thought that looked cool.

One thing that has bugged me a bit about the stuff available for download off of Drive Thru RPG is that most of it doesn't have any reviews.  This includes things I've put online.  It is frustrating to know that over 100 people have downloaded a particular product, but nobody thinks it was useful enough to leave a few kind words.* I figured that the least I could do was to start reviewing some of the product I've received, both here and on Drive Thru RPG.
The first item I went through was this interesting looking supplement called Coins of Fletnern, by Board Enterprises.  My first thought was, "What the hell is Fletnern?".  My second was, "Who cares?"  The website doesn't give me much information, but I think it is just another game world for folks to play their RPG in.

This supplement was actually a bit longer than I would have expected, at 25 pages, and pretty slight on pictures.  My wife saw me reading it on my laptop and was surprised I would bother with so many pages of text about coins.

The thing is.....I've been fascinated by coins since I was a kid.  I used to have a coin collection where I simply tried to get as many different types of coins from around the world.  I've always wanted to have a bit of a richer monetary setup in my game than just having PCs haul around sacks of cp, sp, ep, gp, and pp.  Dragon magazine had a good article on fantasy coins back in the day, but it was little more than a bunch of new names and values.

Coins of Fletnern has coinage for 18 city-states and discusses several other forms of currency.  A lot of the explanations and flavor text were lost on me because I don't play in that game world or use some of the same fantastical elements in my RPG, but there was a lot of useful information I could easily lift out and drop into my own game rather easily.  There is enough "crunchy" details to help me visualize the different coins, including comparisons to an in-game "standard" and real-world currency.

All I would need to do is change the names of some coins and a small part of the description and I'm good to go.  The author spends some time discussing the fact that there could be a lot more detail to this supplement, but much more than was given would just bog things down.

If you would like to spice up your game by adding a little more flavor, then this supplement would be worth your time.  It was a free download, so you don't have anything to lose but a bit of your reading time.


*In the time between me starting this article last night and finishing it this afternoon I have received my first product review at Drive Thru RPG.  I'd love more, but didn't want to come across like I;d never gotten any.