The Inner Sea World Guide acts as the campaign setting companion to Paizo's Pathfinder game line. This book is an update to the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting (which was released before the official Pathfinder rules had been released). Pathfinder if you aren't familiar is Paizo's updated take on the D&D 3.5 rules. The primary world on the material plane where the action takes place is named Golarion and Paizo packs a lot onto this planet to cover many different themes and moods.
The first chapter covers races in Golarion. These are your standard core races although there are several variations on humanity (mechanically all identical). The racial backgrounds are a bit different especially for gnomes. The authors don't shy away from doing things to make Golarion a little different then just a run of the mill campaign setting. The second chapter covers the Inner Sea and this is the meat and potatoes of the book. Here we get 4 page blurb on all the countries and regions that surround the Inner Sea. Each section covers history, government, and has a gazetteer of key places. All in all this gives you a decent high level view of an area that gives some places to see/investigate/avoid and enough information that a DM can extrapolate further upon with ease. The sheer diversity of places should support nearly any type of game style/desired setting. There are everything from communist military run nations to a nation in the midst of a French style revolution (with resurrection blocking guillotines), to a crusader kingdom, and a caliphate. It's almost a guarantee that one of example of any common setting trope is found somewhere in the Inner Sea. The only possible drawback is that at times this seems almost too obvious and neighbors who may share the same geography can have very different cultures. For whatever reason this struck as a bit hard to believe. Yes, I realize this is odd to say when it doesn't bother me that their are dragons, wizards, and magic in general everywhere! It may also feel this way due to my initial lack of familiarity with the setting compared to say, the Forgotten Realms or Exalted's Creation. This chapter also discusses the world beyond the Inner Sea and some previous civilizations that have long since slipped in the domain of history.
Chapter three cover major religions/gods in Golarion. I'd argue this is the default Pathfinder pantheon. It also covers some of the major non-deity based philosphies that dominate the land. I found these to be pretty standard but I've seen a lot of deity write-ups so in that way I may be jaded. I liked that there were just philosophies that are followed in Golarion though. So many campaigns are completely dominated by gods that nothing else shows up. This breaks that mold. In fact there is even a completely atheist country that has banned any god based religion outright. I don't think I had ever encountered that in fantasy campaign world before! The religion chapter also does a brief purview of the planes and what beings live on them. This felt quite unfamiliar to me (see also my review on the book covering that in more detail) but that owes mostly to many new planar beings that replace ones that are probably solely licensed by Wizards of the Coast. I miss my slaads...
Chapter four tackles life on Golarion. Not too exciting other then the technology section which is interesting because in some countries firearms and printing presses are starting to become common. The fire arm rules are interesting. The other technology is intriguing as it changes some of the dynamics of the otherwise bog standard fantasy world. It's a change from that standard and I'll take it! Chapter five introduces some major factions that are players in the politics of Golarion both good and evil. Nothing too exciting here again.
The last two chapters cover the mechanical bits of the game including prestige classes, equipment, spells, magic items, and monsters. Nothing too exciting here as far as I'm concerned.
Overall I liked this book. Artwork and production value are the standard top rate quality that you'd expect from Paizo. The map is beautiful. The setting is diverse if a maybe a little too obviously so. I'd rather have too much differentiation though then not enough so it's not a huge issue for me. Even the parts that seem fairly standard are still well written and thought out. I'd rate this a 8 out of 10.
Available in: physical* and PDF.
Links: Amazon, Paizo, Noble Knight
Up next: Cat
Showing posts with label 8. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8. Show all posts
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Masks of Nyarlathotep
Masks of Nyralathotep is a world spanning adventure set in the classic era of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu. This is probably considered one of the legendary adventures for CoC and with good reason. It provides a myriad different ways for the investigators to go insane or die and isn't that what Call of Cthulhu is all about? The fact that this is the 4th reprinting is probably a good indicator of the success but let's dig into what this is all about. The over-arching plot throws investigators looking into a death of their good friend on intercontinental dash to stop plans to bring Nyralathotep to Earth.
While ostensibly an adventure Masks is written up and organized differently then standard adventures. Rather then moving from one plot to another there are simply locations. Other then the initial starting location (New York) there is no pre-determined order for where investigators should go. This provides for an amazing amount of re-playability which is rare for adventures. The locations are globe spanning (5 of 7 continents get in on the action) and all have at least one link to the others meaning there aren't any dead ends to trap players (barring their natural tendency to wander completely off course and end up in Oxford of course).
Each section of the book covers one location and all the places and peoples of interest within it. At the beginning of the section they list all the clues that are available, who they are from, and where they lead so the keeper can have an easier time and knowing where they may want to point investigators who have lost their way. The general descriptions of the locations are quite detailed and help to give a good feel of what life might have been like the in them during the 1920s.
In terms of deadliness and SAN-loss induction this adventure provides many opportunities for both. It may be nearly impossible for the initial party to survive the entire campaign intact. It might even be unlikely that anyone from the initial group even makes it to the end as fairly quickly the investigators find themselves in nasty situations. I'd probably recommend that keepers preface players with some idea of how nasty this adventure can be (especially for those less familiar with CoC) or there might be some rather surprised players!
Overall I'd give this a 8 out of 10. There are some very compelling areas to investigate and great support for a non-linear adventure. It may feel a bit strange for the keeper if they are unfamiliar with adventures laid out as such (it was for me). It certainly provides a wealth of story to work with and gives the investigators chance to do major things to thwart a dark god.
Available in: Physcial*
Links: Amazon, Noble Knight
Next up: D & D Gazetteer (D & D 3.0) or The Great Beyond (Pathfinder)
While ostensibly an adventure Masks is written up and organized differently then standard adventures. Rather then moving from one plot to another there are simply locations. Other then the initial starting location (New York) there is no pre-determined order for where investigators should go. This provides for an amazing amount of re-playability which is rare for adventures. The locations are globe spanning (5 of 7 continents get in on the action) and all have at least one link to the others meaning there aren't any dead ends to trap players (barring their natural tendency to wander completely off course and end up in Oxford of course).
Each section of the book covers one location and all the places and peoples of interest within it. At the beginning of the section they list all the clues that are available, who they are from, and where they lead so the keeper can have an easier time and knowing where they may want to point investigators who have lost their way. The general descriptions of the locations are quite detailed and help to give a good feel of what life might have been like the in them during the 1920s.
In terms of deadliness and SAN-loss induction this adventure provides many opportunities for both. It may be nearly impossible for the initial party to survive the entire campaign intact. It might even be unlikely that anyone from the initial group even makes it to the end as fairly quickly the investigators find themselves in nasty situations. I'd probably recommend that keepers preface players with some idea of how nasty this adventure can be (especially for those less familiar with CoC) or there might be some rather surprised players!
Overall I'd give this a 8 out of 10. There are some very compelling areas to investigate and great support for a non-linear adventure. It may feel a bit strange for the keeper if they are unfamiliar with adventures laid out as such (it was for me). It certainly provides a wealth of story to work with and gives the investigators chance to do major things to thwart a dark god.
Available in: Physcial*
Links: Amazon, Noble Knight
Next up: D & D Gazetteer (D & D 3.0) or The Great Beyond (Pathfinder)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Adventure!
Adventure! is a pulpy action game set in the mid-1920s of Earth where players play slightly above average humans pushing the bounds of science, exploration and humanity. For my take it provides the timeframe of Call of Cthulhu but instead of a theme of incomprehensible cosmic horror we get a tone of hopeful optimism about the future. It's all the 3rd part of the Aeon Universe trilogy of games from White Wolf. The book has a large section in the beginning filled with short stories that do a great job at conveying the atmosphere and themes that Adventure! is aiming for as well as giving some background to the game. I found this part to be a very quick and entertaining read. This flows rather seamlessly into providing the setting of the game including locations worldwide and major organizations.
Character creation feels quite similar to other White Wolf storyteller systems. Characters in Adventure! are on the lower end of the power scale so I suspect some of the inherent problems with the Storyteller system in handling high power games will be less prevalent here. Still Adventure! offers players some interesting powers (referred to in the game as "knacks") for characters. They are set into 3 categories which do overlap somewhat but also maintaining their own niches. Coming up with a character concept shouldn't be too hard for most players. Since this is another iteration of the Storyteller system anyone who has played World of Darkness (old or new), Exalted, Scion or (perhaps obviously) other parts of the Aeon Universe should be able to hop into Adventure! with minimal additional learning.
All in all I thought this was a quality game nicely contained into one book. The challenge nowadays is finding a copy as the non-D20 version is quite rare and rather expensive unless you can stumble upon it in a Half-Price Books like I did. The good news is the PDF is reasonably priced and with White Wolf converting their whole catalog to Print on Demand in the future this may be available in print again. I would rate this a 8 out of 10.
Out in PDF and Physical* copy (but physical is long OOP making it quite hard to find)
Links: DriveThruRPG
Next up: Books of Sorcery Volume 2: Black & White Treatise for Exalted (Eoris rules is slowly coming along as well but crunch takes me longer to process)
Character creation feels quite similar to other White Wolf storyteller systems. Characters in Adventure! are on the lower end of the power scale so I suspect some of the inherent problems with the Storyteller system in handling high power games will be less prevalent here. Still Adventure! offers players some interesting powers (referred to in the game as "knacks") for characters. They are set into 3 categories which do overlap somewhat but also maintaining their own niches. Coming up with a character concept shouldn't be too hard for most players. Since this is another iteration of the Storyteller system anyone who has played World of Darkness (old or new), Exalted, Scion or (perhaps obviously) other parts of the Aeon Universe should be able to hop into Adventure! with minimal additional learning.
All in all I thought this was a quality game nicely contained into one book. The challenge nowadays is finding a copy as the non-D20 version is quite rare and rather expensive unless you can stumble upon it in a Half-Price Books like I did. The good news is the PDF is reasonably priced and with White Wolf converting their whole catalog to Print on Demand in the future this may be available in print again. I would rate this a 8 out of 10.
Out in PDF and Physical* copy (but physical is long OOP making it quite hard to find)
Links: DriveThruRPG
Next up: Books of Sorcery Volume 2: Black & White Treatise for Exalted (Eoris rules is slowly coming along as well but crunch takes me longer to process)
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