Have you ever found a treasure on a website you haven’t visited for a while? I was searching DriveThruRPG in hopes of finding a free solo RPG to test some polyhedral dice. While there, to my surprise, I discovered a whole set of crowdfunding rewards that I had forgotten to download. One of them is the Hyper Halfling’s Book of Lists, part of a collection of “System Agnostic TTRPG resources”. These lists, charts, maps, campaign modules, etc are sometimes (but not always) set in the “Thuntverse”, the universe in which the webcomic Goblins: Life through their Eyes takes place. I got my copy for free by contributing to the Indiegogo campaign for Goblins: Animated years ago, but you too can get one for the low low price of $5US at – you guessed it – DriveThruRPG.
I know that RPGs and RPG resources aren’t exactly my specialty, but this one has me really excited. First of all, I absolutely adore the phrase “System Agnostic” for a TTRPG; it’s so simple, yet evocative. It doesn’t matter which RPG system you think is best, or even which one you are using right now, you can use this book. In fact, you don’t even have to be running an RPG to use these lists; many of them would be the perfect inspiration for authors or artists. Don’t expect to get specific items from these lists, with stats, bonuses, prices etc. The items from these lists are intended for atmosphere, storytelling, and all those little questions that players ask unexpectedly. Some of them aren’t even “items” at all. Trying to decide what the storage room in the Wizard’s Tower *smells* like? There’s a list for that. Someone asks what the Special of the Day at the local Inn is? There’s a list for that. That barmaid that the Bard is flirting with needs a name and a personality? There’s a list for that. The Rogue picks an NPC’s pocket? Roll to find out what was inside. Need to know *exactly* what furniture was destroyed during that bar fight? Roll a few times to find out.
One warning, this book isn’t “pretty” even for a PDF file. There’s no cover art, no interior art, minimal formatting. It has the feeling of having access to someone’s beloved Home Brew notebook, except it’s huge: 40 lists, totalling 94 pages when read on a computer screen. Each list has a Title (for example Backpack) followed by a couple of examples of when it would be used (The shoulder bag found with the corpse under a bush beside the caravan track, or, “I pick up the backpack that the big guy tossed aside during the bar fight and leave quietly, very quietly”). Every list contains 100 entries, which can be rolled randomly with percentile dice, or chosen specifically. Continuing with the example of the Backpack list, there can be options to choose a single item from the listed contents. Depending on the number of items, you may be rolling a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12 or even a D20. Many lists contain references to other lists. For example, the description for the Backpack List suggests going to the Measurement list to determine the pack’s size, shape, state of repair, or material construction. If an item chosen from one list is a generic item, such as Book, Potion, or Carving, you can go to the list for that category to determine *exactly* what the player found. (I would not recommend printing out this book, since you would lose the advantage of having hyperlinks that take you directly from one list to another.)
There are several interesting things about this book that impressed me greatly. Before writing this review, I had just read a couple of books that discussed the significance of using all the senses when telling a story. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the Smell, Sound, and Spice lists. It was also fun seeing lists that were not in fact “things”; Conversation, Prophecy, Quirk, and (story) Starter are some of my favourites. There is also an effort made for inclusion and diversity. There is no mention of races for the randomized NPCs, instead skin tone is described as Light or Dark. Some of the “people” lists allow you to choose if the person is male or female, while keeping the general character traits the same. For Name, there is one list that is “mostly” male and a second list that is “mostly” female. The only thing I found slightly disappointing was the lack of gender-neutral names and descriptions, especially in a fantasy setting.
If your Game Mastering style runs more in the direction of storytelling rather than hack and slash/shoot and loot, the Hyper Halfling is your new best friend. You don’t even need to be into TTRPG, authors, artists, and performers would also benefit. If you like what you see, you might want to try out The Hyper Halfling’s Treasure Hoard, The Shield of Wonder, Non-Combat Encounters Parts 1 and 2, Fumbles’ Fumble Chart, and The Well of Darkness dungeon campaign, all from Goblins Comic on DriveThruRPG.
