Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Pathfinder Map Pack: "Swallowed Whole" [RPG]

If Swallowed Whole hadn't come out relatively early in the product line's life cycle, I'd accuse Paizo of scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Although the idea of having a map pack devoted to what happens when a PC gets swallowed by a monstrous behemoth sounds fun, the product just isn't useful in practice.

First, there really aren't that many creatures in Pathfinder with the Swallow Whole special ability.  Second, many of the creatures that do aren't represented in the pack.  Third, and the biggest obstacle on the couple of occasions I have had recourse to this pack, is that nothing in the Swallowed Whole special ability makes any reference to or depends on *where* the PC is within a creature's body.  In other words, they're either going to hack their way out, get digested, or get rescued--there's no need to keep track of what square they're in.  Last, there's no fixed relationship between the size of the creature and the number of squares that appear within its silhouette on the map pack.

Really, the core problem is that groups who prefer abstract "theatre of the mind" combat would have no recourse to a product like this in the first place (it's more fun to just imagine what's happening in the monster's gullet), while groups devoted to precise tactical combat positioning probably aren't going to be able to match the creature's size on the table with the number of squares within the map pack.  The bottom line is that it's a product without a purpose, and probably the least essential map pack I've seen.

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