RPG Review Portal

The Diamond Throne

Publisher: Malhavoc Press   [Site Info]
Format: PDF
Series: Arcana Unearthed: d20
Review: Here
Intro:
Arcana Unearthed, The Diamond Throne, Dor-Erthenos or Serran. The campaign setting for Monte Cook’s variant d20 player’s handbook (and run away success) can be called many things. We can smile wryly because this is a setting where truenames are important. The Diamond Throne is a large area, a kingdom, ruled by the giants on the continent they call Dor-Erthenos. The world itself, a planet slightly smaller than our Earth, is called Serran by humankind. The Diamond Throne is also a supplement supporting the setting from Malhavoc Press. This is a review of the PDF, as is typical of Malhavoc products, a paper edition of the book will follow the PDF.

The Diamond Throne supplement does not restrict itself to just a gazetteer of the Diamond Throne, it goes further than that, to every edge of Dor-Erthenos and even the island of Noal and White Shoal off the east coast. I actually found the southern most area of Dor-Erthenos more interesting. This is the Verrik Empire and was never fully conquered by the dramojh. There’s a claim to fame. The dramojh were truly sinister and truly scary. The best thing about the dramojh is that they’re not coming back. Really. Honest. No stats for the dramojh. If Monte sticks to this, if he maintains the integrity of the game (and the giants’ majesty and honour) then it could well be the most important, toughest, success he has ever won.

The Diamond Throne doesn’t restrict itself to just being a gazetteer. The supplement doesn’t just discuss places and people. I imagine die-hard Malhavoc fans will whoop in joy at the addition of 8 prestige classes. There are 12 new monsters and a look at magic items too.

This is a humble product. Arcana Unearthed may be one of the youngest campaign settings today (unless you’re reading this review some time next year) but it already has more right than most to use words like "ultimate", "definitive" and "capstone". It doesn’t. Instead we’re encouraged to . . .

Wrack & Ruin

Publisher: Bastion Press   [Site Info]
Format: Book
Series: Oathbound: d20
Review: Here
Intro:
In many ways Wrack & Ruin marks a special moment for Oathbound. The cleverness, the flexibility, the flavour and the sheer scope of this colourful high fantasy setting come together in one distinguished product. Wrack & Ruin just bristles with life, it is packed to the hilt with information, plot bytes, game mechanics, flavour and artwork. The City of Penance feels more real than ever before. It seems that the book’s authors know their creation inside and out and are tripping over themselves to share as much of their knowledge as possible.

Wrack & Ruin isn’t just a splatbook. Splatbooks are typically a whack of mechanics for a popular but wafer thin niche, you know, like Drow or Fighters. Wrack & Ruin isn’t trying to stretch a niche as far as it will go, this book has the luxury of being able to draw from a hugely diverse (and just huge) city. Penance is the fantasy equivalent of MegaCity One. Writers have been weaving stories from the latter for decades. In the inhabited sections of the colossal city the politics is crucial. Bloodlords rule over cantons. Although they can only do this in a way that The Queen approves of, they’re effectively in charge of hundreds of thousands and extremely powerful armies. We’re given a further insight into this deadly to and fro. Most of the city is inhabited or only scarcely so and these areas are known as the Wrack. The Ruin is an even more tempting area to adventure in, it’s a vast maze of streets and houses that have been built over and buried. If you’ve struggled to explain the presence of so many underground strongholds and the plethora of powerful foes that challenge high-level characters but never seem to bother with conquering the world then Oathbound and Penance is your saviour.

The Oathbound setting is so large and there are just so many races (and prestige races!) available that I find it hard to keep track of them all. Reading the first Oathbound novel, Forged, b . . .

Pirates!

Publisher: Living Imagination   [Site Info]
Format: Book
Series: d20
Review: Here
Intro:
It’s a pirate’s life for me! Hmm. Especially if the ratio of hot chick pirates to run of the mill thug pirates is the same in real life as it is in Living Imagination’s Pirates! The front cover sports one of the most skimpy pirate costumes ever. It’s not a case of "arr!" but "phour!"

If you asked around in search of the best d20 naval supplement then I think you’ll find a large percentage of people you ask will recommend Broadsides! This is handy. As the exclamation mark suggests, both books are by the same company. This allows Pirates! to plug nicely into a well established set of nautical mechanics. Do you need Broadsides! to use pirates? Nope. Not at all. If you’re here for the pirate prestige classes or don’t need publisher produced rules for sailing then you’re set. Similarly, if you don’t have Spellbound then there is only a sliver of Pirates! that will need massaging.

Let’s mosey on back to skimpy pirate costumes and the chances of the ratio of sexy pirate captains matching the illustrations in the book. I even used the phrase ‘real life’. The truth is, of course, that what we might imagine a pirate’s life to be is probably rather more glamorous than it is. Real life pirates, historic pirates, are one thing but most people flicking through Pirates! will want fantasy pirates with different races and magic too. This is dealt with in the introduction. Pirates! manages to get the mix of real facts and fun fantasy entirely right. There’s just enough in the introduction to give your pirate RP a touch of reality and there’s no risk of a dry history lesson. Food’s a problem out on the waves. It rots. It gets infested with maggots. The book has a tip, leave a fresh fish on top of the hardtack biscuits, it’ll attract the maggots and when the fish is covered in the creepy crawlies you can toss it over board and replace it with a new one. Fishy biscuits are better than maggot biscuits. The difference between a pirate and privateer – . . .

Monsters of the Mind

Publisher: Green Ronin   [Site Info]
Format: Book
Series: Mindshadows: d20
Review: Here
Intro:
I’ve come across Monsters of the Mind before I’ve read Mindshadows Mythic Vistas campaign setting from Green Ronin. I think that’s because, at the time of writing, Mindshadows hasn’t been released. By accident or by design this has served to turn Monsters of the Mind into a rather successful appetiser for Mindshadows. I know I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it. Given the full-page illustration of the Mindshadows cover on page 2 of Monsters of the Mind we might jump to the "by design" conclusion.

I’m a Lovecraft fan. I thought I’d mention that because I get Lovecraftian vibes from Monsters of the Mind. The illustrations are superb. Oh look; Toren Atkinson, fellow Cthulhu fan, gets lead credit for the interior artists. He’s in good company; Drew Baker, Kent Burles, Kevin Crossley, Dennis Detwiller, Todd Lockwood and James Ryman. My own art skills are so dreadful that the world of illustration is distant and alien to me, nevertheless, even I recognise names in that list. It’s not surprising the illustrations in Monsters of the Mind are a storming success.

Okay. There are illustrations and there are monsters too. That’s Monsters of the Mind in a concise summary. The supplement narrows down even more, well, already noted is the Mindshadows connection and so all monsters are native to the island of Naranjan. Naranjan is a large island, a month’s sail east from Freeport, and the setting for Mindshadows. Fear not, you don’t need Mindshadows (or even Freeport) to use Monsters of the Mind. You do need to be playing with psionics though. As the title of the book suggests, all these nasties are psionic horrors as well.

Occasionally the Naranjan and psionic shtick combination misfires and we’re left with a lazy monster. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often. You have a good chance of spotting a lazy monster by looking for the Naranjani descriptor suffix. The risk here is that you’ve a standard monster (Monster . . .

Torn Asunder

Publisher: Bastion Press   [Site Info]
Format: Book
Series: d20
Review: Here
Intro:
I like the abstraction in the d20 rule mechanics. Torn Asunder is a Critical Hit system which has the honour of awarding +4 AC to anyone wearing a codpiece. Actually, to be fair, it’s only +4AC in response to any called shots to the protected area – but that didn’t stop me chuckling when I noticed the +4 in the summary table first. Critical Hits and armour values for parts of the body is, for me, a step away from the abstraction I hold so dear.

So, if Torn Asunder is a step in the wrong direction then I must not care for it at all. Right?

Wrong. Torn Asunder’s critical hit system is fairly fluid. It snuggles nicely into the current combat system. You can use it or drop it at will. There’s an element of bookkeeping but it is small enough to avoid being a real problem. If I were forced to use a critical hit system then I’d probably use something like this.

It’s the flip side of the coin that wins Torn Asunder a space on my shelf. I tend to play in a gritty fantasy game without magic healing. This is the least supported d20 campaigning style. D&D itself assumes there will be plenty of magical healing. Urg. Torn Asunder has a system for character healing to complement the critical hits. Excellent. In a low fantasy game, or a high fantasy game with nasty critical hits, a character’s ability to recover from near death or get back to peak fitness can be an entire scenario in its own right.

There’s more than just hit and heal in Torn Asunder. As noted above, there are extra sets of armour, bits of armour and rules for working with the two. You’ll need something like this as you wheel away from abstract and slide towards the concrete. The book offers two prestige classes, some spells and even monster templates.

There’s a critical hit system inherit in d20. If you roll high enough to reach your weapon’s critical threat range then you’ve managed to make a better than normal hit . . .

Survivor's Handbook

Publisher: RPGObjects   [Site Info]
Format: PDF
Series: Darwin's World 2: d20 Modern
Review: Here
Intro:
"I do not know what weapons will be used in World War III, but I assure you that World World IV will be fought with stones. "

-Albert Einstein

There. I thought I’d begin with one of my all-time favourite quotes simply because it comes early in the Survivor's Handbook. This book is the first half of Darwin’s World 2 and the Campaign Guide is the second.

It’s almost poetic. Darwin’s World is heavy on the evolution. The world as we know it has been destroyed but mankind struggles on. Mutant kind struggles too The original Darwin’s World came out in PDF. Since that time we’ve seen revisions, a unified edition and even paperback products. Darwin’s World 2 isn’t just another revision, it takes the game’s core mechanics from D&D d20 to d20 modern. This edition is more than just a translation; the whole game has been restructured. In keeping with the evolution theme and RPGObject’s impressive record Darwin’s World 2 is being released first in PDF and then on paper, even hardback. The game itself has gone through many evolutionary cycles.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to describe RPGObject’s record as impressive. They’ve trail-blazed a good deal of the PDF gaming world and were one of the first to make the jump to paper. Darwin’s World is incredibly well supported on the RPG’s website, in other words; lots of free stuff. The fan support and feedback cycle is great. In fact, check out the competition PDF in the Survivor’s Guide bundle. Send in feedback, typo finds, etc and you might even win a free hardback. Bonus.

The game has benefited hugely from restructuring. Hugely. The original Darwin’s World, for me, was very much about the desperate struggle for survival among the ruins, a struggle hindered by mutants or by the fact that you are a mutant. Supplements moved quickly to address robots and the inherent super-tech there. The two sub-genres were good individually b . . .