NPC Files: Rungie Rampholean

Game: NPC Files: Rungie Rampholean
Publisher: Expeditious Retreat Press
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 14th, March 2005
Reviewer’s Rating: 4/10   [ Just shy of the mark ]
Total Score: 4
Average Score: 4.00

Rungie Rampholean the Master of Traps will set you back a gigantic $1 currently. That’s half the price of the usual whopping figure of $2. The discount might be money back for the entirely unpronounceable name of this NPC.

$1 for 22 pages is the sort of price that only PDF products can do. That’s fantastically cheap. If this were 22 pages, give or take for OGL and index foo, for original content then that would be fantastic. Original content isn’t really the strength of the NPC Files series.

NPC Files: Rungie Rampholean the Master of Traps is hugely crunchy. There are nearly twenty pages of stats. There are nearly twenty pages of d20 stats for the Gnome Rogue / Wizard.

The pitch is this; we have an NPC, we follow this NPC through a detailed and rich history, we have stats for them at key moments of their life and then a complete wash of stats for levels 1 through to 20.

A history is a hard thing to squeeze into a few paragraphs – and that’s all we have. We know Rungie had a pet badger called Beal. We know some of his quirks but we don’t know much else about him – any hates, loves, why he’s so obsessed on traps, and that sort of thing. We don’t know whether he’s lost any students to the traps his school practises on. I can’t get inside Rungie’s head; he’s Lawful Good but he’s a thief and a murderer.

The sheer weight of stats is useful to a point. I think it is this number-crunching which is the product’s real worth. I know how many Pounds Sterling I’m worth every hour at work and I know how many hours it’ll take me to generate 20 levels of d20 stats. I’m pleased to say that it’s cost-effective for me to buy this addition of NPC Files! (Even at the full price of $2.)

There’s another hidden strength in Rungie Rampholean; this is not supposed to be a mini-maxed NPC! In other words, the NPC has not been created in the most mechanically efficient way! My gosh. It’s a poor comment on the industry when something a simple as this becomes a unique selling point. I cannot bring myself to criticise Expeditious Retreat Press for this; they’ve proven themselves as not crunch obsessed (with excellent products like A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture) but it does put another slant on the NPC Files concept.

If having quick access to a detailed set of d20 stats is important, useful or otherwise beneficial and you’d rather not wing the dice then NPC Files is something to consider. If you’re happy to buy PDFs and time is precious then NPC Files is still on the to-consider list but if putting the characters together yourself is something you enjoy (as many gamers do) then NPC Files starts to fade in attractiveness. Of course, if you hate PDF products with a passion then, clearly, this product isn’t for you and it’s a mystery why you’re still reading this RPG review.

It’s a fairly easy call to make. In summary; if you have got a $1 to spend and need a whack of gnome rogue/wizard d20 stats then there’s every reason to pick up this product. Otherwise, there’s nothing in the way of unique selling points that’ll make NPC Files: Rungie Rampholean the Master of Traps speak to you.