The long-awaited, fully-fleshed out combination of Animal Adventures: Dungeons and Doggies Volume: 1 –Volume: 2 – Volume: 3, and Cats and Catacombs Volume 1 – Volume 2 has arrived.
Animal Adventures: Secrets of Gullet Cove – Starter Set arrived with a sourcebook, new and wild Adventures and new baddies in all shapes and sizes. I was very lucky to be one of the first backers to the Kickstarter for this new edition to the Animal Adventure family. With this, I have received a large selection of maps and miniatures. Let’s take a look, shall we?
(This is the Backer’s Edition for the Kickerstater so there are extras that may not be in the Starter Set).
Source Book
Like any good sourcebook, this one has all you need to flesh out the world of Animal Adventures. Ranging from classes, traits, background and history of Gullet Cove and the Isle of Dogs, it allows you to place your animal character in the perfect setup. The book provides a few premade NPCs that you could use as a template or, if that is not good enough, then you can always create the perfect pet character – like a Wizard Dalmatian, Pitbull Barbarian or a Corgi Wizard? (I would go for a Dachshund Rogue). As a Starter Set, we are treated to not one but 5 new adventures. Each adventure is detailed with tips and guides, allowing the GM to guide their player through the streets of Gullet Cove. The premade adventures have detailed descriptions of all the locations the player will visit, along with possible dialogue and consequences that the players may face for doing/not doing certain tasks.
We have the standard D&D character classes to choose from: Fighter, Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, Druid, Sorcerer and Rogue by using the 5th Edition Player’s handbook as normal and adding the Doggies or Cat as your race.
The Sourcebook goes into a detailed description of religions, traits and abilities to give you a fully fleshed-out character. There is a big emphasis on the Guilds in Gullet Cove as these Guilds play a large part in the city and in the animal’s lives.
All the miniatures are represented as characters and even have their own stats and backstory. There are many of the NPCs and characters of Gullet Cove that appear in the premade adventures.
The Sourcebook has over 10 pages dedicated to magic equipment and items, with an animal theme to each. My favourite is “Pavol’s Bell of Conditioning” which allows the holder to cast a suggestion spell 3 times a day.
New Heroes and NPCs
Adding to the Doggos and Cats from past editions, we have 9 more newcomers, including “Warden of the Golden Collar” and “Queenie” who is a Merchant Corgi.
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- Roger
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- Warden of the Golden Collar
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- Queenie
The Villains
You can’t have heroes without a villain to test the hero’s grit! We are treated to the massive monster that is “Rataclysm”, a mutated rat hoard that looks like a combination of multiple rats. There is, of course, the “Rat King”, “Wererats”, “Skellycats”, and Zombie Cats, but my favourite has to be Necromastiff.
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- Rataclysm
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- Wererats
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- Skelly Cats
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- Zombie Cats
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- Rat King
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- Necromastiff
Maps and extras
We have 5 maps that are used in the first adventure. This includes the boat that you arrive on, a map of the city and a list of the key points that are referenced in the 5 adventures in the sourcebook: the Market, the Garden, the Basement and one of the taverns.
Below we have some tokens or coins and some Rat markers. These coins are very important in the world of Animal Adventure as I found out after reading the Source Book. Basically, these are Guild tokens and as the book explains, they play a very important role between the Guilds and can be worth more than Gold Pieces.
I’m excited to try to play this with some friends. I will be modelling it on my puppy, a Dachshund. I’m thinking Rogue or Ranger – what do you think? Let me know what Dog/Cat configuration you would do? Comment below – pictures are a must – post on the Facebook Page!
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