I started reading the Ripper’s Resurrected book Frightful Expeditions the other day and now that I have finished it, here are some of my thoughts on it. The book itself covers each of the world’s continents giving some high level information on the continent a couple of scenarios and some location specific monsters to be used. Each of the continents was a stretch goal that was unlocked as part of the Ripper’s Resurrected campaign with the final stretch goal being a physical book. Given all of this, I understand why the book is as limited in detail as it is. Each continent could easily be its own full sized book and still not cover the world as well as I might like.
Africa: This continent is split into four areas, the Congo, the Sahara, the Serengeti, and South Africa. Each region gets an assortment of Strange Locales and three of the areas get a Savage Tale (the Congo is the only one without one). With the coverage in such broad strokes, here are a couple of links to fuel inspiration for further ideas of interesting locals and creatures from Africa, but there are plenty of more places to get inspiration from.
Antarctica: This continent is the one that I have the least problems with the coverage of. It covers a fictional continent that in pre history was not frozen and a civilization grew up there, and in that past, it fell. There are three Savage Tales for the continent and they are all linked like a small mini plot point campaign that deals with exploring the continent and possibly ending a future threat to humanity. All in all this makes Antarctica a stand in for Atlantis in this setting.
Asia: This continent is only split into three areas and all of them in the east, it covers China, India and Japan leaving large areas of the continent uncovered including such areas as Siberia, Persia (the islands of the South China Sea are covered with Australia). In many ways I feel that this region got the worst coverage because there is so many things that could be covered from Tibet, Mongolia and Persia, and though I don’t know it yet probably just as much from Siberia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Savage Tales for this region cover all three areas (China, India, and Japan).
- Asian legendary creatures
- Locations in Chinese Mythology
- Mongol mythology
- Tibetan mythology
- List of Turkic mythological figures
- Siberian mythology
- Another source of Siberian mythology
Australia: This continent/region is split into three areas. Australia itself, New Zealand and the Dutch East Indies. Most of the information is on Australia and New Zealand leaving the most diverse region only hinted at. The Savage Tales for this region are located in Australia and the Dutch East Indies. I will say one of my favorite scenarios is in this section.
- Ghosts in Malay Culture
- Indonesian legendary creatures
- Philippine mythical creatures
- Oceanian legendary creatures
Europe: This section is split into two areas leaving most of Europe uncovered. The only areas covered are the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the United Kingdom. Of these two locations the United Kingdom (Ireland and Scotland no mention of England) get the most coverage. It makes sense that they left out England because that area is covered in the main rules, but the lack of coverage for France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Italy, etc. leaves this section feeling rushed.
North America: This section covers three countries, Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and while Canada gets a probably half a page of information, leaving the east coast, the north, and central parts of it mostly blank. Mexico gets the shortest section barely two paragraphs, while the United States gets the bulk. There is also a section talking about how the Rippers universe is not the same as the Deadlands universe, but there are enough similarities that certain things could be brought across, or with a little work you could blend them together if you wanted to. Either way the coverage of Mexico is woefully lacking. This region also gets four scenarios with at least one in each of the countries.
South America: This continent is split into three regions all of which cover more than one country with some countries being a part of multiple regions. The regions are the Andes Mountains that cover the entire west coast of the continent, the Southern Cone which covers the southern non-mountainous areas of the continent. The final region is the Brazilian Highlands, Amazon Rain forest and Guyanan Highlands. For some reason, I feel that this chapter does the best covering its continent, though it still doesn’t cover any area in any depth (the reason I feel this way might be because they do not split the continent into countries but into geographical regions). The scenarios are okay, nothing that stood out, but also nothing that was bad.
Overall it is not a bad book, it is just attempting to cover too much material and unfortunately a lot of really cool things had to get left out. All of the links that I provided are the results of some simple google searches, and I resisted the urge to drill down into them, but they should give some good additional ideas and provide links to other inspirational material that can be used in your games.
Hours without sleep 