Vs. Stranger Stuff Season 2: Urban Legends of Crestview Hills – Lover’s Lane (VsM Engine)
This supplement clocks in at 3 pages, 1 page front cover (including relevant text) and ½ a page SRD, leaving us with slightly almost two pages of content, so let’s take a look!
This review was moved up in my reviewing queue at the request of my patreon supporters as a prioritized review.
This is an installment of the “Urban Legends of Crestview Hills”-series of small pdfs that provide brief adventures/hooks (HAHA!) for use with Vs. Stranger Stuff Season 2’s default setting of Crestview Hills, though adaption to another setting is simple enough.
It should be noted that the supplement differentiates between the different play-modes for Vs. Stranger Stuff Season 2, which is a neat plus.
The following contains SPOILERS, so potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.
Lover’s Lane is a staple of Americana – a dirt road where you can look upon small-town America, where teens go for some alone time. Recently, though, tales of a hook-handed madman abound!
The easy mode version takes a cue from classic Scooby Doo – here, the true culprits are masked (and potentially insane) white men, with the best aspect here being a conflict between “old” and “new money” suggested – this conflict in the American class system has always been interesting to me.
The normal mode suggestion provides stats for a new creature – the hook-handed horror cryptid – sneaky, with wings that reminded me of classic Jeepers Creepers and chitinous armor, the monster is pretty tough and cicada-like, making for a creative twist here.
The hard mode suggestion for this hook is really cool as well, as it takes the easy mode angle and one-ups it – it makes mortals responsible, but adds a sprinkling of supernatural horror, making the true culprit a living idea!
Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout is great and b/w, adhering to a two-column standard. It utilizes public domain art to great effect. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.
Lucus Palosaari managed to cram quite a lot of cool ideas with different angles and themes into this hook; from the potentially child-friendly easy mode to the more dangerous and challenging harder modes, this does a really good job providing some diverse angles for you to employ. All in all, very much worth the very fair and low asking price, my final verdict will clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded up.
You can get this neat little pdf for just a single buck here on OBS!
Missed the inspired Vs. Stranger Stuff Season 2? You can find it here!
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