Locales, Volume One (PDF)

$5.50

Publisher Stock #: TFC001
Author(s): Nick Kristof, Dave Kristof, Brian DiGennaro, Greg DiGennaro
Artist(s): Nick Kristof, Greg DiGennaro, Mike Strane
Pages: 46 File Size: 2.21 MB
Original electronic format
Watermarked



Locales Volume I is the first product from a new company, The Fantasy Cartographic. They apparently don't have a website yet, but they are on RPGNow.com
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=2224&products_id=51180&filters=0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2224

This product is essentially a collection of "geomorphs". Basically an assortment of pre-drawn adventure maps where the gamemaster fills in the numbers and keys to his liking. But whereas the classic "geomorph" provided just maps, this also provides some adventure seeds as well, one primary background for the map and 2 or 3 smaller alternative ones.

It's systemless, being mostly maps, but the background and adventure seeds are fantasy. It seems fairly clearly intended for use with D&D or similar systems (Like C&C or Osric). Besides some of the races mentioned, like dark elfs who live underground, it also has a section that says "Notes for the DM".


Contents

It contains nine locations, but two of them are related, and combined take up about half the product. So whether or not you find that location useful goes a long way towards how valuable you'll find this product.


Said location is a giant cavern full of giant pillars, stalatites, and stalagmites. So big that various underworld races could mine them out and live in them. The cavern and one such inhabitated column, meant to be more of a fortress than simply a home (it is a home, but to a warrior like group), is mapped out. 16 levels, plus one sublevel, so it's a fairly big place. Although the middle levels are quite thin.

Another fairly large location, 6 pages worth, is a dungeon (or tomb, according to the background) that folds back in on itself. That is, if you turned turned left and walked forward the same distance 4 times, you wouldn't be back in the same place.

This idea was pretty clever, I thought, somewhat Dr. Whovian, and could really torment players who made their own maps.

The rest of the maps/ideas are only a couple pages each. A keep (actually 4 pages), an elemental temple, 3 types of caverns/lairs, and some old ruins. These are probably all more generally useful for the typical fantasy campaign, especially the keep. Though the keep is also perhaps the one map where a key being provided would have been helpful, since some rooms look like they have a definite purpose in mine just from looking at how they are shown on the map.


Looks/Layout

It's a clean, clear, easy to read file. No weird fonts, the maps are black on white and printer friendly for the most part (some extended black areas in the cave pillar fortress, to indicate where the rock is). There are some small color photos of the locale in question in the background page of each one, but not on the page you'd actually want to print out, the map of the locale itself. So a nice touch.

I'm not a big PDF person, so I don't keep up on the latest in advanced PDF technology. But this PDF didn't seem to use any bookmarks, which most ones have for quite some time now.

Final Thoughts

I personally have found such things useful. Anyone can draw maps, but often unconsciously they can end up looking alike. I know for some reason all my maps end up looking like a portrait of Ernest Borgnine when viewed from a distance.

The selection is creative and fairly varied, though perhaps 3 cavern style locations is one too many.

On the other hand, I think it would have been nice, since the product is systemless, to be genre-less as well. For instance, including background or adventure seeds for things like horror or science fiction as well as fantasy.

Admittedly, that might clash with the name of the company, but it would broaden its appeal. And many of the maps in this could be used for other genres. For instance, the cavern and its fortress could be some sort of elder race city, like in HPL's The Mountain of Madness or Basil Copper's Great White Space. Or in science fiction, it could be an underground moon or asteroid base or something. This isn't really a criticism, so much as a suggestion.

Value wise, comparing it to some of the other products on RPGNow, it seems like a pretty good deal. Similar maps of a location seem to go for $1 each

Wolves on the Rhine (near final)

The Romans. A very popular subject, especially if you watch the History Channel (probably second only to WW2), but also among historical fiction and movies. There have been quite a few roleplaying sourcebooks (AD&D, Gurps, d20 among others), and even one game still in print (Roma Imperious) based on them. But I can't actually recall any Roman themed adventure. Until now.

Wolves on the Rhine is a "programmed" adventure from Dark City Games. "Programmed" basically means you can play it solo if you like, although nothing is keeping you from running it the traditional way, and unlike typical (at least not from Metagaming or Dark City Games) solo adventures, you run a party of 4 characters.

As you might guess from the title, the adventure is set at the Rhine river, the border between Gaul and Germania. You are members of Twentieth (XX) Legion (who later would became famous for taking part in putting down the revolt in Britain). While not exactly a peaceful area, things have gotten worse lately, with the local barbarians raiding forts and towers and such. You've been assigned to talk to some friendly barbarians and see just what is going on.

If you are a fan of the original Conan stories (like I am), you probably can't help but notice a similar feel to some of them, the ones where Conan is on the frontier of Aquilonnia and is up against the Picts. Indeed, the plot (and name) is close to one of those, Wolves Beyond the Border. Although I guess it also somewhat foreshadows the XX Legion's experiences in Britain as well.

Some of the adventures from Dark City Games are pretty complicated. This one is pretty easy, as apparently it was written by a first time programmed module author (having tried to write a choose your own adventure story, I can say these are trickier than you think). It lacks even plot words (basically where if you find or do something, you write a word on your character sheet, and if you have that word later on, it can change things somewhat). This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does rather cut down on the replay value. There are actually still a lot of choices, but most seem kind of minor, and the consequences are immediate, rather that happening later on.

Gameplay

They use their own rules set for the game, which comes in a small booklet. The closest comparison is The Fantasy Trip, basically a system similar to GURPs, but simpler and less headache inducing. Characters have 3 stats, usually around 10-15 or so, and various skills. To perform a skill, you roll under that on 3d6 (or rarely 4d6). It's gritty - in that armor stops damage, and characters don't have hit points, but take damage to their ST stat.

Most of the previous adventures used the same set of fantasy rules, but as this is a historical adventure, the included rules was tailored for just for the Romans (complete with Roman armor and weapons).

At first, I thought playing through would be a little tougher than the previous ones, because there is no healing magic. But actually, in practice, my Roman characters had a lot more armor, which actually made it rather tough to be injured in most combats. Most the opponents would only do 1d6+2 damage, while the Romans could have up to 6 points of armor. So only a hit that rolled a 5 or 6 (+2) for damage would actually injure one of my guys. Of course, conversely, all that armor comes with a dexterity penalty, which makes it harder to hit in combat. So combat was a bit longer than in previous modules, with a lot of misses and blows that didn't do any damage.

Except the bear. Like all these modules it seems, the wildlife seems to be murderous (although I guess it's more fitting here), and the bear in this was quite tough.


Looks/Layout

Previously modules from them featured some snazzy looking cover art, then some average quality black and white interior art. Usually the same art as used on the counters. This does that, but the art is in full color, including on the counters (and the map sheet is in color as well). This dramatically increases the look of the art and the module itself. I actually usually use figures for the characters and foes when playing these games, but to not use the color counters in this made me feel guilty.


Final Thoughts

While I enjoyed this module, I really did find it quite short and well, too easy. It's almost impossible to screw up or get lost in it. Still, I guess it does have replay value, you need to go through it twice to see everything.

Also, perhaps because of its historical nature, it felt less like a roleplaying game and almost more like a boardgame. I mean in the past ones, I had fun creating characters to fit different roles, buying equipment, etc. In this, there's no equipment to buy, and very limited roles - basically either a Roman Legionaire or a Barbarian Auxiliary (I went with 3 Romans/1 Barbarian who was an archer). And no loot, either. Not even an "I put down a Barbarian uprising and all I got was this shirt" T-shirt. So to a certain extent, it was a bit harder to develop a connection with my characters, since they were all basically alike in terms of abilities and possesssions.


On the other hand, the production values are definitely the best so far, with the interior color art and color counters and map sheet. If you are playing a Roman game, I can almost see buying this just for the counters.

So, it gets a 3 out of 5 (or average) for substance, and 5 out of 5 for style.

Wolves on the Rhine (first draft)

The Romans. A very popular subject, especially if you watch the History Channel (probably second only to WW2), but also among historical fiction and movies. There have been quite a few roleplaying sourcebooks (AD&D, Gurps, d20 among others), and even one game still in print (Roma Imperious). But I can't actually recall any Roman themed adventure. Until now.


Wolves on the Rhine is a "programmed" adventure from Dark City Games. "Programmed" basically means you can play it solo if you like, although nothing is keeping you from running it the traditional way, and unlike typical (at least not from metagaming or Dark City Games) solo adventures, you run a party of 4 characters.

As you might guess from the title, the adventure is set at the Rhine river, the border between Gaul and Germania. You are members of Twentieth (XX) Legion (who later would became famous for taking part in putting down the revolt in Britain). While not exactly a peaceful area, things have gotten worse lately, with the local barbarians raiding forts and towers and such. You've been assigned to talk to some friendly barbarians and see just what is going on.

Some of the adventures from Dark City Games are pretty complicated. This one is pretty easy, as apparently it was written by a first time author. It lacks even plot words (basically where if you find or do something, you write a word on your character sheet, and if you have that word later on, it can change things somewhat). This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does rather cut down on the replay value. There are actually still a lot of choices, but most seem kind of minor, and the consequences are immediate, rather that happening later on.


If you are a fan of Conan (like I am), you probably can't help but notice a similar feel to some of those stories, the ones where Conan is on the frontier of Aquilonnia and is up against the Picts. Indeed, the plot is close to one of those (without giving too much away).




Looks/Layout

Previously modules from them featured some snazzy looking cover art, then some average quality black and white interior art. Usually the same art as used on the counters. This does that, but the art is in full color, including on the counters (and the map sheet is in color as well). This dramatically increases the look of the art and the module itself. I actually usually use figures for the characters and foes when playing these games, but to not use the color counters in this made me feel guilty.



They use their own rules set for the game, which comes in a small booklet. The closest comparison is The Fantasy Trip, basically a system similar to GURPs, but simpler and less headache inducing. Characters have 3 stats, usually around 10-15 or so, and various skills. To perform a skill, you roll under that on 3d6 (or rarely 4d6). It's gritty - in that armor stops damage, and characters don't have hit points, but take damage to their ST stat.

Most of the previous adventures used the same set of fantasy rules, but as the one in this is purely historical and tailored for Romans (complete with Roman armor and weapons).

Playing through was a little tougher than the previous ones, because there is no healing magic. But at the same time, the Romans had a lot more armor, which actually made it rather tough to be injured in most combats (except the one with the bear. That was tough).

Wicked Fantasy Factory 0: Temple of Blood review

I was lucky enough to have a game store in my area participate in Free RPG day. Even luckier, they didn't have a limit on how much free stuff you could take. However, not to be greedy, I limited myself to 5 pieces, including this one, Temple of Blood from Wicked Fantasy Factory and Goodman Games.

Why the heck are you reviewing a free module you ask? Well, while free now, it will go on sale for $2 later this year for those that missed out, both in print and PDF. Not to mention, I suspect about half the freebies (at least from Goodman Games and Paizo) will end up on ebay. Plus, I want to, since I liked reviewing and I don't have much else new to, since 3rd party d20 modules, my favorite, have largely dried up.


Wicked Fantasy Factory

This is a new line of modules (and the developer of them) from Goodman Games. Goodman is famous for the Dungeon Crawl Classics series line of modules. Some of them are actually fairly experimental in nature, not just simple dungeon crawls (DCC#34 most notably), but I guess this was so different, it needed a new line. Basically, the premise is that they are like regular adventures, but "Xtreme!". That is, with over the top action. While the WWF/WWE is perhaps the obvious inspiration, it also seems derived from Hong Kong action movies.

While it's still just D&D, a few new mechanics are added. "Mooks" is one, certain weak opponents are designated as this, which allows the PCs to kill them easier. Basically when fighting them, the PCs get certain benefits - for instance, the ability to use Cleave and Great Cleave, spells cast vs them are maximized, etc, basically things to make them easy to mow down in numbers.

On the other end, for the Big Boss, just when you think he's been killed, he comes back to life. (There should be another option - when a PC gets killed, his twin brother shows up for the next adventure.)

More derived from video games than movies is "finishing moves", I guess like Fatalities from Mortal Kombat (I'm not much up on fighting games, so my terminology might be dated). Basically, when an opponent is near death, a PC can perform a finishing move on them, and if successful, the enemy is killed in a dramatic fashion (like in an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon). But if not, nothing happens.

Also in the module is "Phat Loot", basically a magic item or treasure worth as much as all the treasure in the rest of the module combined. (Besides making the item er, "phat", it makes it easy for stingy DMs to take it out).




The module itself.


I was pretty dubious about this when I first read the press release about it. I remembered the XFL (Xtreme Football League), which was similarly hyped, but failed because the football was not only not "Xtreme!" it just wasn't very good football. If you don't have a solid foundation, all the Xs and !s in the world can't save a product.

However, beyond the hyperbole and hype, there's an enjoyable module here. I shouldn't have been surprised, really, since Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics line was built around a gimmick, but if they weren't good modules they wouldn't have lasted so long (50+).

Because of the new rules, and the layout (large text, 1 whole page for the OGL), it's not the longest adventure in the world, only 7 encounters. The plot is actually somewhat Lovecraftian, or at least the villain is. A cultist of an evil crazy god has kidnapped 5 women in order to perform an evil ritual and it's up to the PCs to stop him.

It's got a lot of combat, but there is also some thinking involved. At least one fight is probably too tough for the PCs, and they have to figure out how to take out a bunch of kobolds rather than just battling in a straight up fight. Numerous options are provided. Similarly, one of the encounters can be fought, but also can be talked with, if the PCs were quick enough to pick up on something when they talked with the bad guy early on. Yeah, that's right, early on, they get to talk with the bad guy and exchange taunts with him. Pretty cinematic and a nice touch.


Art/Layout

All in all, the art is actually pretty good. The cover is too dark and the artist has a little trouble with hands, but isn't bad. The interior art is also perhaps not the best from a technical perspective, but does a good job of capturing the mood.

I especially like the artwork depicting the aftermath, two adventurers mobbed by the freed women, some with their arms upraised saying "Yeah!". It reminded me of the ending of Project Shadowchaser, a rather bad Die Hard/Terminator ripoff starring Martin Kove (the bad sensei from Karate Kid). But the ending was one of the most genuine I've seen, someone throws him a beer and he drinks it, then pours part of it on his head (and drinks some more).


Final Thoughts

For free, it's great. For $2, it's still pretty good. Perhaps a little short, but definitely on par with those $2-3 8 page adventure that AEG/FFG used to put out.

I just really liked the cheerfulness of the product. If it doesn't make you smile while reading it, or looking at the illustrations, then well, you're probably a fan of White Wolf's games. But I think most D&D fans will get a kick out if it, both running it and playing it.

Delta Green (d20 Reprint)

I've been a Call of Cthulhu fan since 1989 or so, starting with 4th edition. I was a hard core fan for a while, buying pretty much ever new release from '90 to '95 or so. But due to circumstances beyond my control, I lost all of my CoC books shortly afterwards, along with most of my other gaming stuff. Anyway, not really until d20 Call of Cthulhu came along did I get back into that game, being a big fan of d20. And CoC d20 got me back into CoC.

But by that time, Delta Green was out of print and costing a small fortune used on ebay. So I passed on it until the reprint.

As mentioned, Delta Green is a sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu game. This version also includes stats for the d20 version of Call of Cthulhu, but otherwise is pretty much unchanged, other than presumably being reedited to make room for such stats, and they added a bunch of excerpts from glowing reviews in the inside cover of the book.

It calls itself "Modern", but in reality, it's very much set in the 1990s. But basically it's a way to play CoC in a more modern setting than the default 1920s.

Out of 340 pages or so, only about 140 or so make up the book itself (which mostly consists of a description of Delta Green and other organizations). The rest are appendices, including adventures.


Delta Green

Delta Green is a secret governmental (mostly) organization that fights the forces of the the Mythos, or at least the Supernatural. This concept dates back pretty far, arguably to some of the serials of the 30s/40s, where you had people like Commando Cody fighting invaders from the Moon and the like.

In role-playing, the premise igoes back to the early 80s, with the weird and wonderful Bureau 13 (available in a new edition in 2007, but sadly only in PDF). But is fairly common after that, including a group in Dark Conspiracy with a similar name (actually, it's their home base - its called Delta Seven)

But a group like this is certainly suggested by HPL's writings. He makes mention of the US government acting against Innsmouth. And indeed, in the sourcebook, that is essentially the origin of Delta Green. The first 50 or so pages of the book detail the history of the organization, starting from that incident, including its ups and downs. Its real heyday was during WW2, where it battled the occult forces of the Nazis ("Karotechia").

These days it's been largely driven underground. It was officially disbanded in 1970 after a bad operation in Viet Nam, but stayed active, just very disorganized. But just now (in book terms, in real time, 1995) it reformed with a more structured order, in cells, after the murder of its unofficial leader. This is where the book (and presumably your campaign) steps in, as part of the "new" Delta Green.

Things are a bit confusing here, though. Delta Green isn't so much anti Cthulhu Mythos, as anti-Supernatural (at least how it's presented in the text). But at the same time, they apparently have access to a lot of mythos tomes, and indeed, the head of the top cell has a 40% or so score in the Cthulhu Mythos.


Delta Green's Rivals and Opposition

While you'd think everyone would be happy having a group like Delta Green around, fighting the good fight, that's not true. It has its rivals. Its major one is Majestic 12, or MJ-12. This pretty much follows the standard MJ-12 folklore. Basically, if you've been living under a rock, they were formed as a group to investigate the UFO crash at Roswell. Anyway, in this, it hews to the more paranoid version of MJ-12, how they have made a secret pact with the aliens, the Greys, gaining access to technology and information, in exchange for the "right" to go about their business unhindered (or rather, with the cooperation and help of the government).

The key mystery here is that the Greys, are not really Greys, but literally puppets for the Mi-Go. But no one actually knows this except the Mi-Go themselves. (Pretty much every one who has heard of Delta Green the product knows this though, so it's not really a spoiler)

This actually makes a decent amount of sense. The original source of the Mi-Go (with regards to the Mythos) is HPL's story "The Whisperer in the Darkness". In that, the Mi-Go seem fairly interested in humanity. Not exactly friendly, but they took great pains to not actually hurt anyone in that story.


Besides MJ-12, Delta Green's old Nazi foe, Karotechia, still exists, although it's pretty much a shadow of itself.



Other Groups

Two groups neither associated with nor opposed to Delta Green are detailed. SaucerWatch, a UFO group, and The Fate, an occult nightclub/criminal organization.

SaucerWatch is fictional, but seemed to include some NPCs based on real life people in the UFO field. For instance, there is a Harvard psychiatrist who studies alien abductees (based on John Mack), a science fiction writer who has nightmare about being abducted by aliens (based on Whitley Striber), even a hot shot aviator from a famous airplane manufacturing company (based on John Lear). Still, it avoided the people who you constantly see dragged out on UFO specials on TV.

However, it's far too organized to be a believable UFO organization. Pretty much all the real world ones are too busy with infighting and are incredibly incompetent. At least based on personal experience. Most the real investigation is done by very small groups or individuals who keep a very low profile (since they are more interested in that than publicity).


The Fate, on the other hand, seems rather derived from the whole World of Darkness line from White Wolf. Which was sort of the next big thing in the early 90s. Oooh, we're mysterious and cool, hanging out in nightclubs and being vampires/mages/werewolves/etc, listening to cool underground gothic bands. In this case, it's mostly the middle one, mages.


Other Stuff

You get a bibliography on spy and UFO stuff. The spy stuff seems good, but the UFO stuff seems to be missing some essential reads, like Jaques Vallee's Revelations, which is about UFOs and Government Conspiracies (including basically the theme of this book - that someone is using the belief in Roswell and "Greys" and the like as a "control" system for humanity, which is exactly what the Mi-Go are doing) and Charles Berlitz's books on Roswell and the Philadelphia Experiment (which aren't exactly good, but are the ones mostly responsible for mentioning those two things, which seem to play a big role in the background of this product).

Also some brief info on spy terminology and some info on security classifications. There are several sample classified documents. Also a brief section on new mythos books, including a classic UFO book not mentioned in the bibliography, Jessup's "The Case for the UFO". The special annotated version. Which is where the Philadelphia Experiment came from, basically. (


Adventures

A good chunk of this book (80 pages) is devoted to adventures.

The first one is meant to be an introductory adventure, and is basically the movie "The Hidden" combined with Val Kilmer movie "Thunderheart".

Still, besides the rather obvious origins, it could have been a good adventure, but just doesn't seem fully developed. The alien pretty much just stays in one body (which just happens to be an ex-Green Beret) when the PCs deal with them. Similarly, rather than doing a lot of legwork involving roleplaying or interaction with locals, the PCs sort of short circuit that with a "vision quest"


The second adventure felt a lot more like a Dark Conspiracy adventure than your typical Call of Cthulhu one. Basically, the Greys/Mi-Go have taken over a small town and are doing horrible experiments on the people there, and watching the results

The last one is really a mini-campaign, or at least two parter.

It starts off in St. Louis, where I am from. It's amusing that they used the name of a local company (McDonnell-Douglas), but changed it a little (McConnell-Bayless). But they were bought out years ago by another company (Boeing).

Anyway, it starts off with a mysterious explosion at a local politician's party. Then it leads to a local new age contactee cult, and the PCs have to deal with a Terminator 2 liquid metal style opponent. This eventually leads them PCs to (presumably) deal with the main branch in another city.

There, the PCs end up in the middle of a Waco style crisis (having to deal with a cult's compound). But besides crashing the cult, they end up someplace they could never have imagined.

It's a pretty good adventure, if a bit combat heavy (at least that's the way it's assumed to be run). It does run the trouble of being something of a campaign breaker. In it, something happens that would likely change the future from that point on, which makes it troublesome running in a campaign set in the 90s, as everything from there would differ from out world of today.


Even more stuff

After the adventures, you'd think the book would be done! But no, there's almost a 100 pages left. Basically it's on creating PCs who are government agents. You get a listing of just about every government agency, a BRP template for them (basically just a skill list), and a sample character. That takes a lot of pages, since there are a whole lot of US government agencies.

After that comes a smattering of new rules. New skills, new spells, and guns, lots of guns (which honestly, I didn't think were needed, given that both CoC d20 and the later 5th editions of BRP CoC were full of guns)



d20 Aspect

While this is a d20 book, the d20 stuff is mostly just stats for the various characters. There are some small sections on new skills, but I'm not sure I would actually use it.

The relationship between d20 and BRP is a curious one. They are in essence, two different variants of the same original system (D&D), and thus share the same basic attributes (Strength, Dexterity, etc, rated 3 to 18-ish). But they both diverged almost from that begining, 30 years ago - whereas BRP kept the basic d100% skill system found in early D&D, only applying it to more and more skills (rather than just for Thieves), BRP dropped the concept of levels.

D&D pretty much came up with several systems of skills, before becoming up with a unified one d20 roll vs a target number in it's 3rd edition/d20 incarnation. But it kept it's level system, and for reasons of both game balance and making the game easier to run for referees, tieing in the skill system to the level system.

The upshot of it is, you can't really go around adding new skills and such to a d20 game system willy nilly, because the number of skill points is finite. If you have X amount of skill points per level, and Y amount of skills. If Y is too big, you have characters who aren't competent enough. And if you increase X too much, the characters get too competent. Or they will specialize in other skills.


To be honest, if I were going to run Delta Green using the d20 rules, using Spycraft as the base would be my choice, adding stuff from CoC d20 (You can just drop the mythos/Sanity stuff in pretty easily), rather than using CoC d20 as a base, plus the new rules in this. Because CoC d20 was really aimed at ordinary people, not spies, and while the new skills and feats and such cover this, you'd really need to add more skill points and feats to the CoC d20 classes for them to be used properly.

Whereas Spycraft d20 takes the tack that the PCs are spies/military/cops to begin with. There's a while different baseline of competence.


Final Thoughts

This is an nice book, but I'm not sure how useful it is.

The trouble with the material, at least from a 2007 perspective, is that it's too 90s, and feels dated. Back then, Roswell and the whole Majestic 12 thing was fairly fresh. But now it's gotten well, silly, from being parodied on shows like Futurama to being the basis for a teen soap opera. But that part actually stayed fresher than I expected. It's the other stuff that feels dated.

Most notably, there is an air of impending doom, like the apocalypse will soon by upon us. This is sort of a part of the whole millenial angst going on back then, as well as the Y2K thing. While it seemed important at the time, it seems rather quaint now.

While you actually find this apocalyptic theme in most CoC books in a modern settings (the "End Times" it is generally called), it's actually not really justified by the mythos writings. In them, makind lasts a pretty long time. At best, to the Zothique days (if you take Clark Ashton Smith as "Canon"), which is actually almost sort of post-human. But even if you just go by HPL himself, civilization as we know it apparently lasts until the 26th century, and humanity itself lasts for at least 15,000 more years on Earth (with an Asian sounding culture being dominant around AD 5000 and African in AD 15000).

I realize that Chaosium and company throw out a lot of other authors writings that doesn't fit their idea of the game (like Derleth and Lumley's really nice Elder Gods who look like the plush Cthulhu dolls), but that is straight from HPL himself.

Also, while I wouldn't say it dwells on it, a lot is mentioned about "militias". Which I guess was quite topical back then, what with Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing, but these days is largely forgotten. (Not unlike say, Anarchists from the early 20th century and let us hope the current troubles in the not so distant future). If it were just in the source material, it wouldn't be bad, but it's also the premise of the 2nd half of the mini-campaign/adventure, rendering it somewhat harder to use in a modern setting.

Much of the technology we take for granted, is also just in its embrionic forms in this. Cell phones, laptops, the whole internet thing, etc. The movies the adventures are inspired by were released in the 90s.

Not to say that this is bad, just that it makes it less useful for a game set in modern day. While you could set a game in the mid 90s, when the book was written, the near past is often, well, boring. Because you aren't yet nostalgic for it. However, it is a great snapshot of the mid 90s. Better than watching one of those dumb VH-1 specials.


I would also have liked to seen a more comprehensive treatment of the UFO phenomenon. While the Mi-Gos masquerading as Greys is quite clever, it only addresses a small amount of reported alien types. Where are the human looking ones? Or the bellicose dwarves? Or the increasingly popular repitilian ones? Not to mention all the weird stuff.

While they somewhat addressed contactee cults in one of the adventures, it almost seemed more as an afterthought. I think much more could have been done there, especially on the religion/occult angle that many of them have.

I also think the whole Occult Club bit is just a bad attempt at a White Wolf knockoff. Maybe it's meant to be parody, but I dunno. Seems more like an attempt to try to emulate the "coolness" of WW 90's products. (Surprised they didn't try to get Tim Bradstreet to do the art for that chapter).

Lastly, the product largely assumes that as members of Delta Green, the players will be playing some sort of government agents, most likely FBI guys. However, I don't think it includes enough material on how FBI investigations work, for either the GM or Players to properly act the role. I mean, I guess you can go by what you see on TV or the movies (I guess the X-files would be the main one), where they just flash their badges around and do whatever they want. But that doesn't seem quite fitting for a sourcebook that is purportedly so authentic.

The great thing about Bureau 13 is that you played people who largely were pretending to be government agents (they were, but they didn't have a lot of training, they were ordinary people recruited). So if you didn't know how to act, it was part of the game. But this, you are supposed to be actual government agents. At least some guidelines would help.

This conclusion sounds really negative, but despite those flaws, it's still one heck of a book. I immediately placed an order for Delta Green: Countdown upon finishing reading this book.

The Sewers of Redpoint

The Sewers of Redpoint

The Sewers of Redpoint is a fantasy module from Dark City Games's "Legends of the Ancient World" line. If you aren't familiar with that, basically, they are small, self contained modules which come in a little baggie which are meant to emulate the old "Fantasy Trip" adventure or minigames. Indeed, basically it is a minigame, besides the adventure, you get a small rules booklet, a board map, and a sheet of counters. All you really need is some d6s and pencil and paper. You don't even need other people, you can play them solo, if you want.

The rules are only about 8 pages, and are fairly similar to that of the Fantasy Trip (and its successor, Gurps), and if you have those rules, you can play with those instead. But these rules are certainly serviceable. Just to recap:

Characters have 3 stats, Str, Dex, Int. Skills, including attacks, are generally handled by rolling under the associated stat on 3 dice (but sometimes 4 for more difficult tasks). For most things (except combat), additional skill levels add 1 to the number which you have to roll under, for combat skills, ranks in that increase how much damage is done on a hit. How much damage a character takes is determined by his strength (ST). Armor stops damage.

Some characters can use magic. They have fatigue points equal to their intelligence (IQ). To cast a spell, they have to succeed on a 3D IQ check. There are quite a few spells, which a character has to known to cast. Each spell has a different fatigue cost. There's just one magic type (no arcane/divine like in say, D&D), but the healing magic isn't terribly powerful.

There's not a huge amount of non-combat skills, maybe 30 or so, plus reading/writing languages. Some of them do come into play into the adventure, so they shouldn't completely neglected.


The module itself


This is the 4th one of these I've played through (3rd in their fantasy line), and they range from the fairly easy to the fiendishly difficult. This is very much on the easy side, indeed, while it's not labeled as such, seems like a beginner module (although it's not for beginner characters, standard beginner characters have 32 ability points, the ones in this start at 36).


Essentially, in the city of Redpoint, a somewhat Lovecraftian cult (followers of the "Worm God") has kidnapped a holy child from a good church, and has disappeared with him into the sewers below (I think this was also the plot of a bad Eddie Murphy movie). Your party of characters must explore the sewers and retrieve him (unharmed, hopefully). Basically, it's a fairly straight forward dungeon crawl. There are almost 25 areas or rooms in total.

The exploration of the sewers isn't too linear. You don't have to go through all 25 areas. Indeed, there seem to be 3 main paths, with some branching between them. To get to the final showdown you do need a couple keys to open a door, so you might have to go through more than one path. Though it's possible to get them in at least one route.

One very interesting touch is there is a fairly extensive post-game process. That is, during your exploring of the sewers, you can pick up "plot words" which are basically like flags in computer programming, that tell the game whether you did something or not. Some are used during the adventure itself, but quite a few are for things after the adventure. This goes a long way to make it feel less like a "one-shot" and more like part of an ongoing game. (Although, you can earn a lot of money in the game, there isn't much in the rules set to spend it on)



There's also some background info on the setting used in their "Legends of the Ancient World" setting, mostly mentioning how after the "Mage Wars", civilization apparently mostly consists of scattered city states built on the sites of old ruined mage towers. Redpoint itself is an exception, and for whatever reason, has a somewhat Roman flavor to it.

It's a bit confusing, because a nearby city-state is named "Demeter", which of course is a Greek goddess.


Art/Layout/Etc...

Once again, the cover art by Nicole Cardiff is excellent, although the nitpicky will wonder why the guy is swinging a shortsword like that (since they are usually stabbing weapons).

You get a map of the sewers as well. It's essentially a flowchart, but beautifully illustrated, illuminated is really the word for it, like the old medieval manuscripts. Including a map definitely helps you run the adventure for other people (like a traditional RPG), as well as helping you not stay lost, but for the most fun, it's best to make your own map, and consult the one in the book if you only get really really lost (which probably shouldn't happen in this).

The sheet of counters basically features smaller versions of some of the art you see in the booklet. While they perhaps aren't the super high quality counters from say, Fiery Dragon Press, they're definitely comparable to the old fantasy trip ones, and good quality.

One trouble I had though was that there didn't seem to be any obvious counters for your characters, or rather, I couldn't tell which ones were meant for such. I think later modules from them solve this problem by using a slightly different background, but I'm not sure of the chronological order of their products, since they aren't numbered.



Final Thoughts


If you are interested in getting into these games, this would make a pretty good introductory module, because it's straight forward in terms of gameplay - like I said, it's basically a dungeon crawl. The other two in the line I've played were more varied in environment and more complicated in the gameplay itself.

It also puts you right into the action, so to speak. The other two (Island of Lost Spells and Gates to the Underworld) started off with you in a small village, where you walked around and gathered background information on what was going on, and shopped for stuff. In this, it starts at the entrance of the sewers. Which isn't necessarily better (in fact, I liked wandering about town), but again, more suited for someone new to these.

It did seem a little short, but the stuff coming after the adventure helps make up for that a lot.

Gates to the Underworld

Gates to the Underworld

20-25 years ago, I remember reading a Phil & Dixie comic strip about mini-games in Dragon magazine. The gist of it was, how ambitious in scope some of them were getting. Although sadly, they pretty much vanished after that golden age of gaming, they aren't quite extinct yet. And some are indeed still very ambitious. This one, Gates to the Underworld, will lead you into Hell itself.

It's part of Dark City Games's line of "Legends of the Ancient World" modules. Basically, they are adventures in the vein of the old "The Fantasy Trip" Microquests. They are "programmed" adventures, which lets you play them solo, but they can be GMed as well. They come with their own rules set, which again is similar to, but not quite, the old Fantasy Trip game. (For more details on this, read my review of their first module, The Island of Lost Spells)



The adventure itself is pretty complicated. A village, or rather, a small area has been plagued by demons. The PCs (well, you) must explore the area (including the country side and some ruined villages plus the one remaining one) and figure out how to close the gates to Hell. Which actually involves a short trip to Hell itself (which is I guess pretty similar that that of Dante's).

The most interesting parts are the villages and Hell. It's tempting to skip it, but the village you start at has a lot of information that you need to discover by talking with everyone possible. And at the end of the adventure, when you get to the underworld, you are often put in situations where you have to interact with damned souls. The descriptions of Hell are also quite vivid, if a bit graphic. (There's a warning about this on the cover actually.)

On the other hand, I found the countryside exploration a bit confusing. You really do need to make a map while playing through it, and even then I got a bit confused. Also I found the combat encounters in it a bit uninspired. Wolves and mountain lions mostly. Also made me wish there was more healing magic in the game's rules system.





It's actually funny, for a small company, the cover art by Nicole Cardiff puts to shame many of the bigger RPG companies. The interior art is more what you expect, but this is not really a bad thing, it fits the nature of the product.




I liked this adventure, but at the same time, I struggled with it. I have to admit, I got lost more than once. I would have to think it's somewhat on the "expert" end of skill levels.

Still, at the same time, the story in the adventure was compelling enough that while somewhat frustrating, I kept at it. I also really found that the characters in the adventure were both hokey and yet convincing and interesting at the same time.

So if you want to try out one of the Dark City adventures, this is probably not a good choice for a starter module, but is a good one if you played another one and are looking for a challenge.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #35: Gazetteer of the Known Realms (Final)

Dungeon Crawl Classics #35
Gazetteer of the Known Realms

Goodman Games was one of the early d20 startups, and like most of them, their products initially revolved around the company's own setting. In their case, it was "Broncosaurus Rex", a setting combining the civil war, steampunk, and dinosaurs. Although actually quite an interesting mix, this was fairly quickly dropped in the pursuit of other products, including the Dungeon Crawl Classics line of adventure modules, which are meant to be in the spirit of the old TSR modules for D&D and AD&D. This decision was probably wise, as most other d20 startups are long gone while Goodman Games continues to thrive, or at least continue to put out a large number of products, including 1-2 Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) per month. While they still put out other products, the DCC line is what they are famous for these days.

Originally though, the DCCs were meant to be generic, that is, no real implied setting at all, and could be dropped into almost any world without a problem (which was largely true in practice, although some modules were based on Mesoamerican or Middle Eastern cultures and thus might not fit the average D&D setting). But apparently once there were so many of them, they decided to make a setting out of them. And so this product, DCC #35 was born.



The Product Itself

It's a boxed set and consists of 2 large-ish books (1 120 pages, 1 136 pages), 2 smaller 32 page modules, and a number of maps. Going by the page count the price ($69.99, $47 @ Amazon.com) is a bit high, but I guess when you consider the 32 page modules as going for about $12 each, it's a bit more reasonable. Not to mention, the 4 fold out color maps. Still, too much for my blood until I managed to trade my copy of Rappan Athuk: Reloaded for it.

The Setting

The setting is basically described in the two larger books. One is a Gazetteer, the other is a GM's guide (which has "secrets" of the various places, monsters, some NPCs, the list of gods, etc). Unfortunately, both are actually almost unreadable, because there the paper's background art is very dark and very detailed with a lot of squiggly lines, and the typeface is rather light (grey instead of black). The Gazetteer is actually worse than the GM's guide, I really struggled to read it, but the GM's guide is no great shakes, either. The best way to describe is like those entry the right letter tests when you sign up for a website or something, used to prevent 'bots from signing up.

Anyway, once you get past that, the setting is basically divided up into 3 regions. The Northlands, the Southlands, and the Lostlands. The Northlands coresponds to the typical D&D setting, that is, based on western Europe. The Southlands is quite a bit more interesting, it's based on Mesoamerican cultures. The Lostlands seems mostly inspired by Egypt and Middle Eastern cultures.

In fact, if you want to visualize the setting, spatially, that's about where they are set. If you imagine the Northlands as Western Europe, the Southlands lie to the southwest, about where South America would be (if a bit closer), while the Lostlands are to the southeast (where the Sahara and Egypt would be) and east (Western Asia). There's even something of an analog to the British Isles, a large island just offshore to the NW of the main Northlands, and full of unrully, Celtic like people (or maybe Picts). On the other hand, it's not perfect, part of the "Northlands" is actually quite south, the western coast of the southern continent (where part of the Lostlands), basically akin to say, Gibraltar and the west coast of Africa.

Although this is the largest section of this book at around 40 pages, nothing much really jumped out at me in the Northlands. You have a fading empire with a fairly unpronounceable name (Criestine Empire - at least 8 different pronunciations I can think of, and none are given in the text, and unfortunately, I can't help think of it as the toothpaste empire) and its various kingdoms/provinces, some of which have seceded or are independent.

Another kingdom has been invaded by a humanoid horde. Curiously, the free region of this area supposedly consists of 3 cities. However, the 3 cities have a total population of about 60,000 combined, while the region supposedly has a total population of 1.7 million. Which is fine for say, medieval Europe, but pretty much every square inch of Europe in medieval times was full of farming peasants. Doesn't seem suitable for a war torn region. And really, that same sort of demographics seems to apply for the entire Northlands, which implies that there really isn't much wilderness.


The Southlands are more interesting. Like I said, they are based on Mesoamerican culture (mostly Aztec, looks like), although a much less bloodthirsty one than in the real world. The area apparently used to be ruled by Snakemen (called the Drakon, basically the Yuan Ti with the numbers filed off), but the humans revolted. The snake people are still around, but there are 7 cities of mesoamerican like human, the Xulmec, along with a colony of the Criestine empire). This area only gets about 20 pages, though. Also weird that you get a guide to pronouncing "Xulmec", which really only has one obvious pronounciation ("Shul-mec"), since everyone (at least D&D players) knows that "X" = "Sh" in that context and there are only two vowels

Lastly is the Lostlands. It used to be a part of the world ruled over by Sphinxes. It basically resembles the Middle East and Asia. It gets around 15 pages.

Some of it it fairly straightforward, but you have some twists. Like for instance, there are Japanese like Dwarves (the nation of Taijin), and the Mongols are Wild Elves. (Sort of a reversal of Sovereign Stone, where the Dwarves are the Mongols and the Elves are Japanese). Also some other stuff like a city of golems, a big crater full of drow

(The demographics of this region tend to tilt the other way, everyone lives in a city, no one in the wilderness)

Since the nations of the world is covered in just under 80 pages, there's obviously not a whole lot of detail.


Geographical Features

This fills up about 10 pages. Most of the actual geological features (rivers, plains, mountains) are boring, but there are a couple pages on various famous dungeons. That is pretty interesting.


Organizations

This takes up about 20 pages. All sorts of groups. From cults to knightly orders to guilds. Just descriptions, nothing like prestige classes or stat blocks for the group themselves.


The GM's Guide


The Pantheon

This is a rather curious mix. Most of the gods are not from our world but completely fictional, but two are taken from Zoroastrianism - Ahriman and Ahura Mazda. Which I must point out, still exists today and is more common than you might think (I have relatives who are, a friend in high school's family was, and one of my teachers in college was). Okay, not super-common, but still common enough that some might find it offensive. And it's ironic that a religion that was basically the pioneer of dualistic theism, has its 2 gods used with a host of others).

Beyond those two, there are a lot of gods. Many of the others are inspired by different cultures. There are a number of Mesoamerican-ish gods, with Aztec sounding names. And one somewhat Cthulhu Mythos-ish (Zhuhn and the Outer Gods). Some names are apparently borrowed from the real world, but slightly altered. For instance, Pelagia, who in this case is the goddess of the sea, but in the real world can be confused with Pelagianism, a variant of Christianity. Or Aristemis, a goddess with a bow, but unlike Artemis is not a hunting goddess, but one of diplomacy and strategy.

Honestly, since they went with the two historic gods, I think they probably should have gone with actual Mesoamerican, Greek and Norse and whatever gods as well, rather than coming up with weirdly named variants. But I guess since they were cobbled together from all the various DCCs, it couldn't be helped.


Bestiary

The 25 pages includes a variety of monsters, including a number of Mesoamerican critters, a few new variants on standard D&D monsters, like a Azure Ooze and a Crystal Golem, the Drakon (their replacement for Yuan Ti, which is one of the D&D monsters not in the final SRD and so off limits to 3rd party companies without special permission, but were in the draft SRD and so made it into some modules, including I would guess some early DCCs).

I'm not really going to go into their stats, since that's not really my thing, but I was puzzled by a few things for the playable character races. I'm not an expert on such things, but a number of them are playable. Usually (I thought), when a race had racial levels (basically hit dice), they were equal to that races level adjustment.

For instance, a +3 Level Adjustment race would have 3 racial hit dice. So that when a you would have a character of x level, they would have an appropriate amount of total hit dice for that level. There are a few cases where they don't jibe. The most egregious is the thunder giant, which is a +10 level adjustment, but gets a whopping 24 racial hit dice. Granted, it would only come up when you have a campaign starting at 11th level (or are making a replacement character), but getting 24d8 seems like a heck of a deal.

(Then again, maybe that's a 3.5 thing. In 3.0, which I basically still use, racial hit dice generally = ECL or Level Adjustment)


New Rules

About 20 or so pages is devoted to new rules for the setting. New equipment (Mesoamerican style stuff, mostly, but a few others), new spells, feats, domains, etc. Nothing really outlandish or all that notable.


Rogues Gallery

Another 20 pages is devoted to famous characters of the setting. These get about a paragraph of description, and the basic stats (class, level and any notable ability scores). A number of them do get portraits, which is a nice touch, except they are really more like caricatures.

Other Stuff

There's a short chapter on Zero level characters. Basically 1st level characters with NPC classes. I think it's a bit vague in explaining how advancement works (see my note below in the part about the included 0-level Module).

Lastly there is are several pages listing possible "adventure paths" using DCCs. That is, groups of modules played in order that take the PCs from level 1 (or 0) to 20 (or almost to it, 15+). Why? It's sort of the "in" thing these days among D&D/d20 modules.



The Maps

I guess part of the reason the boxed set is so expensive, is that it comes with a number of big, full color maps. Which would be great, except honestly, the maps are nothing special. They aren't ugly, but they don't make you say "Wow, what a great map". And for some reason, they aren't hex mapped, either. I don't know how you could have a setting that is supposedly old school, and not have hex maps.

The Adventures

Halls of the Minotaur

This is a zeroth level adventure. Goodman already did one of this, DCC#0, basically the PCs are all 1st level characters with NPC classes, which means they are roughly 1 level lower than PCs (and thus zero level).

In that adventure, the pre-generated characters were sort of twinked out, that is, they were 1st level NPC class characters, but had high stats and some nice items, which made their fairly capable. This still has somewhat high stats, but not overly so, and the characters start off with basically nothing (basically equipped like medieval peasants).

Anyway, part of the tricky bits of 1st level adventures, and especially in something like this, is that characters are pretty fragile, and you have to make sure they don't fight anything that can take out a character in one round on average. This adventure does a pretty good job of it, except for the end fight, which is (shockingly) with a Minotaur.

The Minotaur is wounded, but he still does quite a bit of damage in the attack, enough to take out a character on average, much less a high roll or critical. And he's pretty much always going to hit.

So clearly, the PCs won't win in a stand up fight with him. Which the module points out, and gives ideas on how to deal with him in other ways. But at the same time, that's the sort of thing that experienced players would know, not beginner players. So the DM might have to do some hand holding. And also, beginner players might find it anti-climatic, getting to the final boss, then not being able to actually fight it.

(Though I should note, that the players earn at least 10,000 xp or so combined (and thus likely 2000 xp each if 5 characters) by the time they get to the Minotaur's part of the module, which should be enough to let them from from "0" (starting at -1000 xp) to 2nd level (1000), although the mechanics of this are not really explained. In the GM's Guide it says upon reaching 0 xp (from -1000), they can take a PC class, but it's not explained if that's in addition to their NPC level, or replaces it. So if they get another level and then another one at 1000 xp, they could have 3 character levels, 2PC/1NPC.)




The Thief Lord's Vault

This is set in the city of "Punjar" in the Northlands, a city full of thieves. Basically, it's the dungeon and vault of the head of the city's thieves' guild. Lots of fairly nasty traps for the most part, though later on there are a few minions of the thief lord. Although it's aimed at 4th-6th level characters, it's very much aimed for expert players who know what they are doing.

This dungeon itself is actually interesting, and most of the traps are well done. However, the module itself doesn't make sense from a logical standpoint (okay, that's true of a lot of dungeons, but this even more so). Why would a 17th or so level Thief Lord store his treasure in a dungeon that 4th-6th level characters could make it through? And considering the city is full of thieves, most of them higher level than the PCs, why hasn't the vault already been plundered? For that matter, why didn't the CE guards in the vault decide to take the money and skip out? They already know most of the secrets of the vault, and sort of a secret egress.


So anyway, neither adventure was bad, but neither knocked my socks off, either.



Layout/Art

As mentioned, the 2 large books have the background art on each page which makes it very hard to read. Other than that though, it's a pretty straight forward book.

The art for the most part is not terribly impressive. Goodman has employed a number of excellent artists in their other DCCs, including some famous ones like Erol Otus and Jim Holloway. None of them appear here, though. The artists aren't bad, but most are definitely "B" list or lower. (I really hate to say that, since when I write a review, I do often hear from artists, but it's true. )

Final Thoughts:

I've been playing D&D since the late 70s. Back when I was a kid, I remember the feeling my friends and I got when Greyhawk came out, how magical it was, especially looking at the map and all the wondrous places on it, and places we wanted our characters to explore. So perhaps nothing can live up to that. But I almost pretty much completely missed out on Mystara until the late 90s, and when I discovered that, I loved it. I even liked some of the 2e AD&D settings, like Birthright and er, Spelljammer.

So what I'm getting at, is the setting just really left me cold. Didn't do much for me at all. Still, it's pretty inoffensive compared to other d20 settings. It's not as boring as Kalamar (and while the names in this aren't easy to pronounce, they aren't nearly the tongue twisters like in Kalamar), not as "kewl" as Eberron, not full of seemingly randomly generated gibberish like the Wilderlands, not full of munchkins like Forgotten Realms, not whatever it is Arcanis is (strangely, although they are still making d20 stuff, I don't own a single product from Paradigm, and I probably have well over 200 d20 books).

So, if you absolutely must have a setting, this is perhaps the least worst of the choices (although for all its randomness at times, the Wilderlands is far more old school, more detailed, and certainly more interesting). But really you'd probably be better off just making your own from scratch, which is quite common for D&D and not that hard. Only the Southlands is really interesting, and that is perhaps too derivative of real world Aztec culture, rather than simply inspired.

Even if you actually like the setting provided, the scant detail really doesn't offer much you couldn't come up on your own by piecing the various DCC's together yourself - basically you just get the "glue" which sticks the DCCs together, not really any detail to help you run a game in any one location. So I'm not sure the value you get from this is all that great.

And while they have DCCs in the works up to at least #50, I have no idea if we will ever see any regional sourcebooks or the like. So if you get this, you are likely on your own if you ever want more detail.


Beyond that,the poor readability of the 2 main books really hurts. It's not overly apparent in my photo - it really depends on the lighting conditions. In bright light it's legible because the background art sort of fades, but the lower the light, the more the background art shows up. Reading outside is okay, but I struggled to read it in bed at night with just a small 75 watt table lamp.

So all in all, I have to give it a C-.

(Legal Note: Photos of the various pages and maps are used under the "fair use" provision of copyright law. And an excuse to use my new digital camera. Which actually takes much better pictures, but I downsized them to be much smaller)

Dungeon Crawl Classics #35 - The Setting

Goodman Games was one of the early d20 startups, and like most of them, their products initially revolved around the company's own setting. In their case, it was "Broncosaurus Rex", a setting combinging the civil war, steampunk, and dinosaurs. Although actually quite interesting, this was fairly quickly dropped in the pursuit of other products, including the Dungeon Crawl Classics line of adventure modules, which are meant to be in the spirit of the old TSR modules for D&D and AD&D. This decision was probably wise, most other d20 startups are long gone, while Goodman Games continues to thrive, or at least continue to put out a large number of products, including 1-2 Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) per month.

Originally though, the DCCs were meant to be generic, that is, no real implied setting at all, and could be dropped into almost any world without a problem (which was largely true in practice). But apparently they decided to make a setting out of all the modules. And so this product, DCC #35 was born



The Product Itself

It's a boxed set and consists of 2 large books, 2 smaller 32 page modules, and a number of maps. Going by the page count the price is a bit high, but I guess when you consider the 32 page modules as going for about $12 each, it's a bit more reasonable. Still, too much for my blood until I managed to trade my copy of Rappan Athuk: Reloaded for it.

(Insert Photo Here)



The Setting

The setting is basically described in the two large books. One is a Gazetteer, the other is a GM's guide (which has "secrets" of the various places, monsters, some NPCs, the list of gods, etc). Unfortunately, both are actually almost unreadable, because there the paper's background art is very dark and very detailed with a lot of squiggly lines, and the typeface is rather light (grey instead of black). The Gazetter is actually worse than the GM's guide, I really struggled to read it, but the GM's guide is no great shakes, either. The best way to describe is like those entry the right letter tests when you sign up for a website or something, used to prevent 'bots from signing up.

(insert photo here)

Anyway, once you get past that, the setting is basically divided up into 3 regions. The Northlands, the Southlands, and the Lostlands. The Northlands coresponds to the typical D&D setting, that is, based on western Europe. The Southlands is quite a bit more interesting, it's based on Mesoamerican cultures. The Lostlands seems mostly inspired by Egypt and Middle Eastern cultures.

Nothing much really jumped out at me in the Northlands. You have a fading empire with a fairly unprounounceable name (Criestine Empire) and its various kingdoms/pronvinces, some of which have seceded or are independant

Another kingdom has been invaded by a humanoid horde. Curiously, the free region of this area supposedly consists of 3 cities. However, the 3 cities have a total population of about 60,000 combined, while the region supposedly has a total population of 1.7 million. Which is fine for say, medieval Europe, but pretty much every square inch of Europe in medieval times was full of farming peasants. Doesn't seem suitable for a war torn region. And really, that same sort of demographics seems to apply for the entire Northlands, which implies that there really isn't much wilderness.


The Southlands are more interesting. Like I said, they are based on Mesoamerican culture, although a much less bloodthirsty one than in the real world. The area apparently used to be ruled by Snakemen (called the Drakon, basically the Yuan Ti with the numbers filed off), but the humans revolted. The snake people are still around, but there are 7 cities of mesoamerican like human, the Xulmec, along with a colony of the Criestine empire)



Lastly is the Lostlands. It used to be a part of the world ruled over by Sphinxes. It basically resembles the Middle East and Asia.

Some of it it fairly straightforward, but you have some twists. Like for instance, there are Japanese like Dwarves (the nation of Taijin), and the mongols are Wild Elves. (Sort of a reversal of Sovereign Stone, where the Dwarves are the mongols and the Elves are Japanese)

(The demographics of this region tend to tilt the other way, everyone lives in a city, no one in the wilderness)


The Maps

I guess part of the reason the boxed set is so expensive, is that it comes with a number of big, full color maps. Which would be great, except honestly, the maps are nothing special. And for some reason, they aren't hex mapped, either. I don't know how you could have a setting that is supposedly old school, and no hex maps.

The Adventures

Halls of the Minotaur

This is a zeroth level adventure. Goodman already did one of this, DCC#0, basically the PCs are all 1st level characters with NPC classes, which means they are roughly 1 level lower than PCs (and thus zero level).

In that adventure, the pre-generated characters were sort of twinked out, that is, they were 1st level NPC class characters, but had high stats and some nice items, which made their fairly capable. This still has somewhat high stats, but not overly so, and the characters start off with basically nothing (basically equipped like medieval peasants).

Anyway, part of the tricky bits of 1st level adventures, and especially in something like this, is that characters are pretty fragile, and you have to make sure they don't fight anything that can take out a character in one round on average. This adventure does a pretty good job of it, except for the end fight, which is (shockingly) with a Minotaur.

The Minotaur is wounded, but he still does quite a bit of damage in the attack, enough to take out a character on average, much less a high roll or critical. And he's pretty much always going to hit.

So clearly, the PCs won't win in a stand up fight with him. Which the module points out, and gives ideas on how to deal with him in other ways. But at the same time, that's the sort of thing that experienced players would know, not beginner players. So the DM might have to do some hand holding. And also, beginner players might find it anti-climatic, getting to the final boss, then not being able to actually fight it.

(Though I should note, that the players earn at least 10,000 xp or so combined (and thus likely 2000 xp each) by the time they get to the Minotaur's part of the module, which should be enough to let them from from "0" (starting at -1000 xp) to 2nd level (1000), although the mechanics of this are not really explained. In the GM's Guide it says upon reaching 0 xp (from -1000), they can take a PC class, but it's not explained if that's in addition to their NPC level, or replaces it.)




The Thief Lord's Vault

This is set in the city of "Punjar" in the Lostlands, a city full of thieves. Basically, it's the dungeon and vault of the head of the city's thieves' guild. Lots of fairly nasty traps for the most part.

This dungeon itself is actually interesting, and most of the traps are well done. However, the module itself doesn't make sense from a logical standpoint. Why would a 17th or so level Thief Lord store his treasure in a dungeon that 4th-6th level characters could make it through? And considering the city is full of thieves, most of them higher level than the PCs, why hasn't the vault already been plundered? For that matter, why didn't the CE guards in the vault decide to take the money and skip out? They already know most of the secrets of the vault, and sort of a secret egress.



Layout/Art

As mentioned, the 2 large books have the background art on each page which makes it very hard to read. Other than that though, it's a pretty straight forward book.

The art for the most part is not terribly impressive. Goodman has employed a number of excellent artists in their other DCCs, including some famous ones like Erol Otus and Jim Holloway. None of them appear here, though. The artists aren't bad, but most are definitely "B" list or lower. (I really hate to say that, since when I write a review, I do often hear from artists, but...)


Final Thoughts:

I've been playing D&D since the late 70s. Back when I was a kid, I remember the feeling my friends and I got when Greyhawk came out, how magical it was, especially looking at the map and all the wondrous places on it, and places we wanted our characters to explore. So perhaps nothing can live up to that. But I almost pretty much completely missed out on Mystara until the late 90s, and when I discovered that, I loved it. I even liked some of the 2e AD&D settings, like Birthright and er, Spelljammer.

So what I'm getting at, is the setting just really left me cold. Didn't do much for me at all. Still, it's pretty inoffensive compared to other d20 settings. It's not as boring as Kalamar, not as "kewl" as Eberron, not full of seemingly randomly generated gibberish like the Wilderlands.

So, if you absolutely must have a setting, this is perhaps the least worst of the choices (although for all it's incoherence at times, the Wilderlands is far more old school and certainly more interesting). But you'd probably be better off just making your own from scratch, which is quite common for D&D. This really doesn't offer much you couldn't come up on your own by piecing the various DCC's together yourself.


Beyond that,the poor readability of the 2 main books really hurts. I have never seen anything as illegible as this. If they didn't sell it as a PDF, I would suspect it's an attempt to make scanning/photocopying/OCRing of it impossible, and thus theoretically reducing piracy, like the copy protection codes for games back in the early-mid 90s.

The Island of Lost Spells (Final)

The Island of Lost Spells

The few years has seen something of a revival in classic gaming. Most notably Castles & Crusades and OSRIC trying to unofficially revive the 1st edition of AD&D, but some others, including a new version of Runequest, Paranoia, some supplements for Classic Traveller, and I think even a new-ish version of Tunnels and Trolls.

But this module (and the whole product line), The Island of Lost Spells from Dark City Games, flew under my radar completely. It's an unofficial revival of The Fantasy Trip and the old Microquest adventures from Metagaming, at least in spirit. It even comes in a ziplock bag!

If that doesn't make sense to you, some history: in the 70s and early 80s, there were a number of small games that were sold in very slim boxes or in ziplock bags. Basically they came with a small booklet, a sheet of counters (thus a bag or box was needed), and a map or two. Most of them were wargames, but some were roleplaying games as well, or hybrids of the two.

The Fantasy Trip from Metagaming was probably the most successful of these hybrids. It started off as a man level gladiatorial combat boardgame - "Melee" for hand to hand and "Wizard" for magical duels, but evolved into a role playing game with the addition of a supplement called "In the Labyrinth" and advanced versions of Melee & Wizard. And eventually there was a line of adventures for the system as well, called "Microquests". These were also notable because most (all?) of them were sort of like those Choose Your Own adventure books, suitable for solitaire play.

This product, "The Island of Lost Spells" (indeed all of Dark City Games products as near as I can tell), are meant to replicate those "Microquests", and it does a very good job of it.


What You Get...


It consists of a 32 page booklet (digest sized), a fold out hex map, a sheet of cardstock counters, and a 8 page rules booklet (again, digest sized, although only 6 1/2 pages are used). The hex map is marked with a number of generic rooms of various sizes, and with location indicators (like A, B, C, D)

The rules are pretty simple. Basically characters have 3 stats and possibly a few skills (not a big list, and each tied to an attribute), and to succeed in a task of some sort, they have to roll under the stat (or stat+skill) on 3 d6s (or 4 d6s in some cases). Armor is rated in points, and stops damage. Damage is applied to a character's Strength stat.

There's a small selection of spells, grouped by IQ Level. Casting spells causes fatigue to the caster, and in order to cast the spell successfully, the magic user has pass an IQ test. (Beats getting into Mensa).

Obviously, in 6 1/2 pages, you aren't getting the most detailed role-playing system ever, but it's surprisingly comprehensive, all things considered. There's about 30-35 skills, a handful of arms and armor, a couple dozen spells, and rules for improving characters

The Adventure Itself...

The adventure has the PCs exploring legendary ruins on an island, which in ancient times, was the home of a group of magicians. But first, they must putter around a village and equip themselves. And then charter a boat out to the island.


It's for one to six players, but it's "programmed" so to speak, essentially like a Choose Your Own Adventure book or Fighting Fantasy, but with less prose and more RPG. Basically you start at entry 001, then pick from a variety of options, and so go to entry x, y, z, etc. You will sometimes get a "Plot Word" while going though the adventure, these are sort of like flags in programming and depending on the location, will direct you to an entry not otherwise accessible.

For much of the adventure, play is pretty straightforward. But once you get into the actual ruins itself, it gets a little more complex. You need to use the included hex map you keep track of where you are in the room - most rooms have 4 different positions your character can be in. This can get to be a little tricky, especially if you have cats, who seem irresistibly drawn to maps with counters on them.


As you explore the ruins, you'll come across critters to fight, things to investigate (often requiring a successful skill check of some sort to reveal information), and occasionally an NPC. Obviously in something like this, interaction with NPCs is a bit limited, although if not running it solo you are generally given enough to improvise more conversation.

Initially there really isn't much purpose in your characters exploring the ruins besides looting it, but you'll likely discover a more noble one. You also find out the cause of the place becoming ruined. There are actually multiple ways to discover these things, so it's not hard to miss.


Although it's described as being for one to six players, the adventure itself is designed for 4 player characters. There is no advice given on how to scale the adventure for more or fewer characters, so if you have fewer than 5 players, you'd have to have them double up (or more) on characters (with one being the GM), or if you have six, I'd guess you'd have to have two GMs. Well, really, adding one character probably wouldn't break the adventure, but I would think having fewer would make it much more difficult.


Appearance/Layout

The quality of the book is good. While it's fairly obviously done on a laser printer or P.O.D, the paper used is quite sturdy. Indeed, the cover is almost too sturdy, as it has a tendency to not close enough.

The layout is very professional looking, nice and clean and easy to read. There's a consistent use of bold, italics, and spacing.

The art is something of a mixed bag. The cover art, in color, is very nice. The interior art is all very small, and while none of it is bad, none will actually make you say "Wow, nice art" like the cover.


Final Thoughts


I would say that the adventure itself is well designed. Somewhat less linear than I expected, and a lot more complex in terms of gameplay. It's not dumbed down at all. And although the page count of the product is fairly smallish, because of the small font used, tiny margins, and rather concise writing, it's longer than I expected.

On the other hand, there was a lot of page flipping involved. And while I understand how the positioning can be important for combat, it's also somewhat unwieldy in practice.

Bottom line, it definitely does a good job of emulating the old adventures, and it was fun to play. Somewhat ironically, most of the problems I had with it were fixed in a more recent adventure from them (Void Station 57, which I will be reviewing soon), so this gets marked down a little in comparison to a B

The Island of Lost Spells (Rough draft)

The few years has seen something of a revival in classic gaming. Most notably Castles & Crusades and OSRIC trying to revive the 1st edition of AD&D, but some others, including a new version of Runequest, Paranoia, some supplements for Classic Traveller, and I think even a new-ish version of Tunnels and Trolls.

But this module (and the whole product line) flew under my radar completely. It's a revival of The Fantasy Trip and the old Microquest adventures from Metagaming, at least in spirit. It even comes in a ziplock bag!

If that doesn't make sense to you, some history: in the 70s and early 80s, there were a number of small games that were either in very slim boxes or in ziplock bags. Basically they came with a small booklet, a sheet of counters (thus a bag or box was needed), and a map or two. Most of them were wargames, but some were roleplaying games as well, or hybrids.

The Fantasy Trip from Metagaming was probably the most successful of these hybrids. It started off as a man level gladiatorial combat boardgame - "Melee" for hand to hand and "Wizard" for magical duels, but evolved into a role playing game with the addition of a supplement called "In the Labyrinth" and advanced versions of Melee & Wizard. And eventually there was a line of adventures for the system as well, called "Microquests". These were also notable because most (all?) of them were sort of like those Choose Your Own adventure books, suitable for solitaire play.

This product, "The Island of Lost Spells" (indeed all of Dark City Games products as near as I can tell), are meant to replicate those "Microquests", and it does a very good job of it.




It consists of a 32 page booklet (digest sized), a fold out hex map, a sheet of cardstock counters, and 4 page rules booklet. The hex map is marked with a number of generic rooms of various sizes, and with location indicators (like A, B, C, D)

The rules are pretty simple. Basically characters have 3 stats and possibly a few skills (not a big list, and each tied to an attribute), and to succeed in a task of some sort, they have to roll under the stat (or stat+skill) on 3 d6s (or 4 d6s in some cases). Armor is rated in points, and stops damage. Damage is applied to a character's Stength stat.




The adventure has the PCs exploring legendary ruins on an island, which in ancient times, was the home of a group of magicians. But first, they must putter around a village and equip themselves. And then get a boat out to the island.


It's for one to six players, but it's "programmed" so to speak, essentially like a Choose Your Own Adventure book or Fighting Fantasy, but with less prose and more RPG. Basically you start at entry 001, then pick from a variety of options, and so go to entry x, y, z, etc.

For much of the adventure it's pretty straightforward. But once you get into the actual ruins itself, it gets a little more complex. You need to use the included hex map you keep track of where you are in the room. This can get to be a little tricky, especially if you have cats.


Anyway, as you explore the ruins, you'll come across critters to fight, things to investigate (often requiring a successful skill check of some sort to reveal information), and occasional an NPC.






I would say that the adventure itself is well designed. Somewhat less linear than I expected, and a lot more complex.

On the other hand, there was a lot of page flipping involved. And while I understand how the positioning can be important for combat, it's also somewhat unwieldy in practice

Void Station 57 (First Draft)

Void Station 57

Void Station 57 is the first in Dark City Games' "Legends of Time and Space" line of adventures. Like their other adventures, it is inspired by the old Metagaming Microquest adventures. Unlike those others, it's a science fiction adventure, not fantasy.

It comes with an adventure booklet (28 pages, digest sized), a hex map, a sheet of cardstock counters, and a small rules pamphlet.


The Adventure Itself

The adventure deals with the crew of a starship who has come upon a fueling station in the middle of a void that appeared to be derelict. Since the reason the crew stopped at the place is because they needed re-fuel, they don't have much choice but to explore the place and get it up and running to re-fuel their ship. But that won't be easy.

While I don't want to spoil things, they have to face just about every sort of nasty thing you've seen in movies like this. Okay, not quite that bad, but the station has a lot of different problems.

Since it's meant to be like those old Microquest adventures, it can be played like a regular module (that is, with GM and players), or it can be played solo - like those old Fighting Fantasy books, albeit with you controlling multiple characters.

Basically you start out at entry 001 in the book, then read the paragraph, and are given a choice of which way to proceed. Like if you search the place, go to paragraph X, if you go left, go to paragraph Y, if you go right go to paragraph Z, etc.

Sometimes you run into hostile enemies (and so you have to run the combat), or have to do something that requires a skill check. Occasionally you pick up plot words, which basically are used to keep track that something has happened to either advance the plot, or PCs have aquired something notable. (If you've ever done programming or written text adventures, basically they are flags)

As mentioned, the refueling station has a lot of troubles. As you play, you piece together the cause of what happened, through the descriptions of the rooms you explore, and from objects left behind by the now dead crew

Rules

It comes with a small 4 page rules sheet. Very simple rules. Characters have 3 stats and a few skills. In order to succeed at a task (like in combat), they have to roll under the relevent stat (or stat+skill level) on either 3d6 or 4d6, depending on the difficulty (usually 3d6).

Damage is applied to a character's Strength statistic. Armor stops damage.

It's pretty simple to adapt the adventure to Gurps and also converts extremely easily to Classic Traveller. The latter has a few more stats and the skills are differently named, but the stat and skill range is pretty much the same and you can actually convert on the fly.


Looks/Appearance

While it definitely has a nostalgic feel, it's quite nice looking. The layout is crisp and clear, with consistent use of formatting (bold, italics, and the like). Seems to be well proofread. They picked nice, easy to read fonts.

The art won't "Wow!" you, but I've seen worse from much larger companies (and in much more expensive products). Although the cover art is quite good, actually. The map of the station is functional and easy to read.

Final Thoughts

I found this to be much easier to play than the other Dark City Games adventure I have - The Island of Lost Spells (a fantasy module) - part of it has to do with no magic making combat simpler, but also the structure of the module was better. Less page flipping, room structure was simpler, and a keyed map of the space station was a big help. The latter is also very helpful if you don't want to play it solo.

I also really enjoyed the adventure itself. It's a pretty clever setup, which oddly I don't remember seeing before in an science fiction module (though I guess there aren't all that many science fiction modules compared to fantasy ones), and some of the small details in the descriptions are really evocative and make it believable.