by Rachel

A slow day. With oatmeal cookies, Italian sausage, and fresh rolls from Dalo's. I took it easy today. Mostly offline. But, the Assembly Guide is getting there.

Catch you tomorrow for Puppy Bowl!

Game Over On borrowed time...

Happy Saturday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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by sdonohue

The Cat Will Mew and Dog Will Have HIs Day is a 2019 release written by Dylan R. Cockell as part of the Canis Minor community content program for Realms of Pugmire. It is focused primarily on Monarchies of Mau. The are is by Douglas I. Cockell.

Presentation
This is a 75 page PDF with an 8.5 x 11 portrait form factor. It uses primarily a two-column layout. It is different from most Canis Minor projects because it is basically black & white with a few things presented in colored boxes to call attention to them. The editing is thorough.

Content
This is a very long supplement. The table of contents is detailed and stretches to three pages. Immediately following the table of contents, we get some background for the whole adventure, most of which centers on the War of Dogs and Cats and the role of House Korat in that war. We learn that the current ruler of Korat, Dynast Kyr Von Korat, believes that renewed aggression with the dogs is a bad thing and she has tried to reconcile peacefully with them. She is opposed by General Chico von Korat who is whipping younger cats into a frenzy to reignite the war.

Against this background, the PCs are sent to Howlingbrooke Farm, the site of a decisive battle in the war to retrieve a relic. The relic belonged to the dog who led their forces in battle and has been unclaimed for quite some time. Just to make sure things don't go well, he has quietly alerted the forces of Pugmire that cats plan to go to Howlingbrooke which is considered off-limits for both groups.

The book is organized into scenes. The first scene finds the characters travelling through the Fearful Forest to Howlingbrooke. In the second scene they are ambushed by Pugmire's forces as they leave. If any of them are captured, there's a scene about their captivity and potential escape. Scene 4 is more social and the cats are part of a discussion by the nobles of Korat about the implications of their actions. Scene 5 is set after the audience and the character's are able to interact with a number of different NPCs. This scene is very open as there are many nobles to talk to. In scene 6, the dogs arrive and lay siege to the castle. This scene ends with a negotiation between the dog general and the cat general that goes poorly. Scene 7 finds a small party of dogs entering the castle and attempting to take members of the nobility hostage.

After the last scene resolves, the adventure is over for now. We get some advice on troubleshooting if anything has gone wrong, a summary of the proposed series of sequels to this adventure. After this we're back to game rules, with details on a new practice, Pleonixiamancy which is about magic related to territories; it includes new spells for Mancer characters. This is followed by a description of Atlas' Reward, the relic the characters were sent to retrieve and three new monsters: the taking tree (a carnivorous oak tree) and it's minions: creepers, small beetles who can retrieve living creatures for the taking tree to feed on and crawlers, larger and more powerful versions of creepers.

Next we have stat blocks for NPCs who are likely to be in a fight. These are followed by appendices. The first two, map of Hollingbrooke Farm and the tunnels beneath it are both described as "Coming Soon". The third appendix has a map of the diplomatic suites and the forth is the text of a document which explains the disappearance of Sophia Angora von Korat who fled to the Monarchy of Rex, possibly taking Atlas' Reward with her.

Evaluation
This is a very long adventure. It is full of red-backed read aloud text and blue-backed text boxes with GM advice or explanations of things not in this adventure. Each scene is very information dense and the scenes don't really follow the typical structure of Pugmire -- most of what are called scenes here would be chapters in other Pugmire scenarios and would be subdivided into several scenes. GMs will need to read them several times to understand them thoroughly.

If this were being reviewed by RPGGeek's most prolific adventure reviewer, this would be the part where the f-bombs would drop. This adventure is very had to run, is actually missing key elements, like maps, and is generally too information dense to be of much use. In the introduction, the author acknowledges that this is a railroad, but its also a bad one -- players often have little or no agency, even in the scenes, much less in the transitions. It's not surprising that none of the proposed sequels has been released in the 7 years since this one was made.

I'd just say no unless you really need to have territory magic in your game; that part is interesting and could prove valuable, although it might be more of an NPC focused school.

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