The Abbey of the Crusading Goddess by Cian’s Basement Books comes in at 18 pages (1 cover page, 1 page ToC, so it’s basically 16 pages of actual content). Layout is simple, but clear, and the font size might be bigger than in other products but I found that it made reading the product quite easy, and I didn’t feel that it came at the cost of the content.

The product starts with a short description of the history and the location of the abbey. And while it’s described in a very general language, it’s easy to see that the inspiration for that probably came from Paizo’s Mythic AP. Still it’s generic enough that you can use it in any other setting easily. You can even reuse the 5 location hooks, giving a group of PCs a reason to travel there, which I think is a nice idea to have for a location. Then we learn about the local area, especially the village that has been built next to the abbey. There are several shops situated next to the abbey’s walls, and each of those gets a short paragraph including who owns it and what you can get there.

It follows a very detailed description of the five floors of the abbey and after that several statblocks detailing the abbey’s inhabitants, three for the more common members, then two important NPCs running the abbey as leaders. And last, there is a new feat, that grants the benefits of several orisons a number of times per day which is a nice way to grant a PC minor buffs without having the party cleric to cast them.

I haven’t talked about the maps yet. They are very simplistic in an old school kind of way, but also very clear and give you all the information you need and that are expanded on in the relevant test descriptions. Those maps cover everything I just talked about, from the abbey itself to every single floor.

All in all, I liked this product very much as it gives you the basics for such an abbey without adding to much fluff to it. This means that you might need to work a bit while you integrate it in any setting of your choice, but it also means that you won’t have to ignore too much (or anything at all) if you want to use it. It also has a special touch to it in that as written it is an abbey pretty much run and protected by women, but that doesn’t get forced upon the reader and could easily be changed if necessary. Though I like it very much this way.

So I’ll give it 3.5 out of five stars. And as this seems to be the first effort of a new publisher and as such, I think it has been well done, even if it isn’t on par with the more established 3PPs out there, as far as layout, artwork and maps are concerned, I don’t want too be to stingy with my stars so I’ll round up to 4 stars. If you have need of an abbey for your game and don’t mind to put a bit of work to add those fluff colours that integrate this into your setting, I think it’s well worth buying.