A BareBones Fantasy Primer

If you aren’t already in the know, BareBones Fantasy is a rules light percentile based fantasy RPG. It offers an elegant set of core rules coupled with a simple and yet surprisingly robust skill system as well as a broad stroke fantasy setting in which to adventure. There are already several very excellent reviews of the game, a few of which can be found Here, Here and Here. Rather than write another review to tell you the game is good (it’s good!), I thought I’d post a primer of sorts to catalog the available products for the system. Without further delay:

The Core Books

This book is the crown jewel, the BareBones Fantasy RPG. Within its pages you will find everything you need to play the game. With this book, a couple of D10′s and a pencil and paper, you will be off and running in no time.

The Keranak Kingdoms setting book takes a unique approach in that it offers a complete fantasy setting, but presents it in very broad strokes. The idea here is that you’ll have just enough material to use as foundation and inspiration for your games without having to learn a ton of pre-established lore. This book is built from the ground up as a launchpad for your own stories. The book includes maps and brief write ups of the various regions but the focus here is really on getting players and GM’s to customize the world to their particular tastes.

In Flesh and Blood, an official supplement to the BareBones Fantasy role-playing game, you’ll find 20 playable character races fully defined.  Beautifully illustrated and ready to drop into an existing campaign setting.  If you’re playing in the Keranak Kingdoms you’re in luck; each race is given cultural information on how and where it fits into the kingdoms.  If you’re a GM running kingdoms of your own, you’ll still find this a useful supplement full of ideas.  From the dragon-kin of Caer Urdak to the enigmatic tigerfolk of Ravenreach, you’re sure to find a place for all you find within these pages.

Included for the sake of completeness, the four core races of the BareBones Fantasy role-playing game are also repeated here, with expanded information from the Keranak Kingdoms setting book.  This truly becomes a one-stop-shopping place for players to choose character’s races while making their heroes.

You’ve played with the bare bones… now add some flesh & blood to the mix!

• Bugbear
• Changeling
• Dragon-kin
• Dwarf
• Elf (Dark)
• Elf (High)
• Elf (Wood)
• Giant/Half-Giant
• Gnoll
• Gnome
• Goblin
• Halfling
• Half-Ogre/Ogre
• Half-Orc/Orc
• Human
• Kobold
• Lilithii
• Lizard kin
• Living Construct
• Mantis men
• Sprite
• Tigerfolk
• Werefolk

And as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also find the Artificer, a new character skill that gives you the ability to construct contraptions!

 Adventures

Soul’s Reach is the first in a three part series of adventures penned by Larry Moore. From the description:

When a tunnel collapses in the Dul’Urich Underkingdom, Prince Dwalin is sent to find a fabled pass in the north.  Several days later his bloodguard returns beaten and malnourished claiming the prince and his band became dull of wit and disappeared sometime in the night.  The news bodes heavily on the underking’s heart and he entrusts his herald the task of finding his son.

Enter the characters.  Herald Gal’kut hires you to find the prince.  This is no easy task, as the prince’s path lies over the Laridian Wastes – an area teeming with harpies and hell hounds.  Even if you think you’re ready to find them, think again.  Someone powerful has found them first, and if he succeeds in his foul plans the world will never be the same again.

Trouble Brewing is a 12 page module for first rank characters that is the first in a series of adventures penned by Michael Wall. From the description:

Relaxing at a tavern in Tenkar, shedding the dust of the trail from your boots and clothes, you stumble upon a danger that threatens the peace of this town. The local constable and his deputies are too busy dealing with its symptoms to address the cause. Are you and your friends ready to deal with the sinister secret beneath Tenkar? 

This is a rank 1 adventure for the BareBones Fantasy™ role-playing game. It is set in the Keranak Kingdoms™, but could be placed anywhere in any setting. Written by Michael Wall, this is the first in a multiple part story arc which is continued in Slimy Trail of the God-Snail.

A Bigger Problem is the first in a series of adventures penned by Quinn Conklin. From the description:

When you and your friends agreed to help protect a merchant’s wagon on its way to Shield Home in the Keranak Province, none of you expected what lies ahead!  This is a rank 1-2 adventure for the BareBones Fantasy role-playing game.  Although it is set in the Keranak Kingdoms, it could easily be placed anywhere in any setting.  Written by Quinn Conklin, this is the first in a multi-part story arc which will be continued in Children of the Giant’s Fist (coming soon!).

Children of the Giant’s Fist is the second installment of Quinn Conklin’s series of adventures. It will be followed by Striking through the Shield which should be available very soon! From the description:

Your mission complete, you await payment in the town of Shield Home and enjoy some well-deserved rest. But adventure waits for no man, and soon you and your companions find yourselves on a mission to save a child who has gone missing. The truth of his disappearance reveals a sinister plot that threatens all children of Shield Home. So much for an earned respite… 

This is a rank 1-2 adventure for the BareBones FantasyTM role-playing game. It is set in the Keranak Kingdoms™, but could be placed anywhere in any setting. Written by Quinn Conklin, this is the second in a multi-part part story arc which is concluded in Striking through the Shield (coming soon!)

Maidens of Moordoth is a one sheet that comes with the core book as a freebie. It’s also available as a stand alone product. From the description:

Maidens of Moordoth is a low-level 1-sheet adventure designed for Labyrinth Lord^TM but easily usable in any old school fantasy role-playing game.  It provides all you’ll need for a full night or two of play.

The elders of the village of Moordoth are the keepers of a grim secret.  They vowed to take it to their graves, but a pack of ghouls and the wailing haunts of six lost maidens seem to command otherwise.  The characters are hired by the town elders to put a stop to this madness.  The characters will soon learn that all is not what it seems as they unravel the secret of the Maidens of Moordoth.

Trouble at Karam’s Claim was actually originally released before BBFRPG as a one sheet adventure for Labyrinth Lord. It’s easy to convert and works great as a drop in the pan adventure for BareBones. From the description:

When the miners at Karam’s Claim depleted the hills, they set their sights on deeper wares.  They dug too deep, and uncovered an unusual orc clan lead by an exiled ogre lord.  The characters are in the right place at the right time, and must rescue the miners from the clutches of evil.

Trouble at Karam’s Claim is a 1-sheet adventure designed for a party of four to six low-level Labyrinth Lord^TMcharacters, though it can be easily adapted to any old-school fantasy role-playing game. This adventure is combat-heavy. If the players lack sufficient front-line fighters, consider having miners they rescue take up swords from fallen orcs and fall in line with them.

Periodicals

Decahedron Magazine is DWD’s free magazine that will support their d00 lite releases. Each issue will contain supplemental material for their games and fan and community submissions are highly encouraged. So far issue one has been released. From the description:

Decahedron is a magazine designed to support the BareBones Fantasy RPG.  It contains articles written by gamers like you. Originally, this was intended to be a paid-for publication containing material DwD Studios produced, along with some fan-generated content in a profit-sharing model. However, due to the popularity of the game and the ever-growing community, we wanted to continue our roots of community development like we have done with our other fan-based products and sites.

This magazine is something we can all develop together and be proud of. Designed to be small, lite, but full of fun content, we hope you enjoy this issue, as we plan on many more to come. As long as gamers are contributing content they’ll have a place within the pages of Decahedron.

Within issue you’ll find:

• a great cover by Joe Calkins.
• A spotlight on Jim Alcala Sales, an active member of the forums at dwdstudios.com.
• The Gaming Table: we all love d100 tables, and this issue gives you 100 imaginative descriptors for when you’re stumped during character creation.  Assembled by various authors in the forums at dwdstudios.com.
• Grimoire: a regular article series containing more magical goodness for your game.  In this issue you’ll read about the Commune spell, by Bill Logan.
• Game Options: N. Harrison Ripps walks us step-by-step through the process he took to come up with a balanced approach at two-weapon fighting.  It’s a great article to give YOU the tools to create more balanced game options.
• Cavern of Kul’Thoru: Matt Jackson takes us on a tour of the lair of a hydra and his lizardman minions.  Complete with three different story hooks in case you’re stumped how to drop it into your campaign.
• Creature Corner: our own Larry Moore gives us the Drop Horror, a low-rank creature ready for you to… ahem… drop on your unsuspecting players.
• Character Races: not all campaigns are based on Tolkein’s works.  Mike Wikan gives us the Hriffani Nomads, a cat-like constructed race unloved by the gods but surviving despite all odds.
• The Undertemple of Eleroth: one of our goals is to give you a new map on the back cover of every issue of the webzine, a ready tool for able GMs to stock and build a story around.  This issue’s map by Bill Logan.

Please join the site over at http://www.dwdstudios.com/barebones and get involved.  This magazine was written under a creative commons license, meaning YOU can write stuff too.  We already have several great promising submissions, and we’re excited to see what you add to the mix.

See you there!

Accessories

The Flesh and Blood Reference Cards support the rulebook of the same name.  Although these could be used alone, a great deal more descriptive text, campaign notes, and setting information can be found in the actual rulebook.  To see a sample of the print & play version of these cards, download the PDF associated with this file.  If you want the full set of print & play cards, they come in a black & white form with the Flesh & Blood rulebook.

 

The Bag o’ Bones

Components: Large black bag and 20 black token chips (bones).

Designed as a supplement to the BareBones Fantasy RPG.

Suggested rules for use:
Each player gets 2 bones at the start of a game session. Halflings receive an additional bone (representing their Luck ability). During game play, a player may cash in a bone for any of the following effects:

• Bone-up: Reroll a crappy roll you just made, to pretend you don’t suck.
• Bone of Contention: Force the GM to reroll something you don’t like.
• Sticks & Stones: Assumes you roll a successful resistance check without having to actually roll or take an action
• Cuts to the Bone: Add 1D to damage you roll against a foe you just successfully hit.
• Bad to the Bone: your moves are so freakishly cool anyone who witnesses them (friend and foe) tell the tale far and wide. That is, if you let them live… Even if you get a beating, you look cool taking it.
• Bone Crazy: Guarantee that for one round, no action you take or that is taken against you will result in your death so you can try something TRULY stupid and be sure to live long enough to hear the cheers or jeers.

During game play, the GM can “throw you a bone” if you do something particularly cool that he didn’t expect (or that he thought would never work).

To balance stuff out a bit, the GM should also be given bones to use, one bone per player. He won’t get extra bones to spend (nobody is going to “throw him a bone”) but the ones he has could be used in the same ways as above. Of course, a spending war could ensue… where the GM and player(s) keep spending bones to do/undo each other for something important.

Final Thoughts

I plan on keeping this list updated as new products are available. The DWD release schedule was operating at a break neck pace for awhile there and things have slowed a bit recently which I think is probably a good move. This is a fantastic game and I’m excited to see what comes out in the coming months!

Short Order Heroes

I received a promo deck of cards for Jesse Butler’s upcoming card game Short Order Heroes. The game is being produced by his company Calico Games. The cards look awesome! Each one has an adjective on it and a numerical value accompanied by artwork that visually depicts the adjective. The artwork by Eleanor Ferron  is fantastic and does an awesome job of communicating the intent of the card. Many of the images would work even without the text which I think speaks volumes about how well done the art is.

The deck can be used in several different ways. For one, it can be used as a toolbox for super quick and interesting character or NPC personality generation. These are going to be awesome for those times when I need to come up with a character on the fly. You simply draw 1 or 2 cards for NPC’s (or more if you plan on keeping them around for a bit) and then use the cards drawn to quickly invent their personality. As I’ve been playing with the deck I’ve found that things get very interesting when you draw cards with seemingly contradictory adjectives. Reconciling those contradictions leads to some cool and unpredictable personality types.

Another way they can be used is as a stand alone rules light RPG. Each card has a numerical value on it. Positive adjective cards have high numerical values (as high as 6) while negative adjective cards have low values (as low as 0 if you’re jinxed). These two opposites are bridged by a ton of cards filling the full range in between. Players can draw three cards to create characters and the cards they draw will influence task resolution. Conflicts are resolved by drawing cards and using the numerical values to adjudicate. 1,2 and 3 are a failure while 4,5 and 6 are a success. These, however, are modified by any positive or negative cards the player holds that may be applicable to the situation. Additionally, the adjectives on the drawn cards are also used to enrich the narrative within the game fiction.

There are really a ton of different ways you could use this deck. When I was playing with them I immediately thought that they would make an awesome add on to a solo dungeon plundering game too if used with randomly drawn geomorphs and a few tables to generate additional content.

The rules that come with the deck are very lightweight. The cards aren’t meant as a full featured detail rich game as much as a very flexible tool set that anyone can use to enrich their own games. The rules light approach is a real strength in my opinion and greatly contributes to these being useful for a ton of different applications. The fact that the art doesn’t pigeon hole you into a specific genre further reinforces the multifaceted functionality of the deck.

Calico Games will be launching a Kickstarter soon to fund mass production of these decks. I would encourage anyone interested to click on Jesse’s G+ link above to get further details about the project as it evolves. This is a cool deck of cards and well worth a look for gaming enthusiasts.

Star Wars Dice

 

Most readers are probably aware that Fantasy Flight Games has launched their Star Wars RPG, Edge of the Empire. The Beta book was revealed at Gen Con last year and the the Beginner’s Box has since been released. The game looks promising and has received a lot of attention due in part to the fact that it uses custom dice.

I wanted to take a quick minute to point out that Fantasy Flight has released a fantastic dice app for both the Android and Apple mobile platforms. The application is great and includes standard dice too which makes it useful for nearly any RPG.

The app isn’t free but it’s worth the price of admission and is one of the most attractive die roller apps I’ve tried on Android.

Marchland

Marchland is a 172 page modern fantasy setting book for Savage Worlds that mixes a familiar modern world with magic, mysticism and fae mythology. The book is published by Hearthstone Games and includes both an attractive full color pdf version as well as a printer friendly pdf.

The setting evokes a Dresden Files feel though it shares even more DNA with Changeling: The Dreaming. In fact, the overall approach is very much reminiscent of the early World of Darkness books in that the game world is very similar to our own but is slightly off. Most of earth’s denizens are oblivious to the magical goings on around them and the player characters are immersed in the majesty of a world that is much more rich and fantastic than it would seem on the surface.

To be clear, and fair, this isn’t just a facsimile of either of those properties with the serial numbers filed off. There has been a good amount of work done to establish a unique world and the setting offers a lot of original material for both GM’s and players to explore. Hearthstone Games has created a city called Brighton Bay that serves as a central hub for the setting and there’s plenty of great stuff here to run interesting games for a long time. Furthermore, the book delves deeply into Faery groups and culture and offers a robust amount of information about them. The setting’s writer, Mark Woodside,  first divides them up into the European Fae and the native American Manitou, and then further explores them from there.

It should be noted that if you just wanted to use the material in Marchland to run a Dresden or Changeling game, you’d be in good shape!

 

Marchland, while fully compatible with core Savage Worlds, does make a few changes in an effort to create a unique feel for the setting. The magic system shrugs off Power Points in favor of a casting modifier and the character creation section is much more robust to account for the creation of unique Fae and Revenant (ghost) player characters.

This is a cool setting. There’a a lot to like and despite the fact that there are a ton of SW settings Hearthstone Games has succeeded in filling a void in the Savage Worlds lineup. Even if you don’t want to use the book as a complete setting, you’ll find plenty here to mull over and enrich your game. This one is definitely worth a look!

Beasts of the Dominions

Beasts of the Dominions is the newest release by Umberto Pignatelli for his excellent Savage Worlds Sword and Sorcery setting, Beasts and Barbarians.

This book is unique in that it offers a look at 10 different adversaries culled from all over the Dread Sea Dominions. The approach showcases different regions while presenting details on the listed monsters. Each entry in this 116 page title also offers an adventure where the focal point revolves around the enemy and geography presented. This gives the game master plenty of material for either running as is or using as inspiration for home brewed games.

The list of adversaries ranges from new unique monsters to well worn staples of the fantasy genre. While the new monsters are interesting and fun, the familiar faces manage to root the book in the tried and true sword and sorcery milieu without ever feeling derivative. In addition to S&S classics, I was often reminded of David Eddings’ Belgariad and Robin Hood while reading the book. These reference points were welcome and represent one of the things that makes Beasts and Barbarians so great – it doesn’t forget where it comes from.

The book concludes with some player facing material that offers information on playing a Disciple of the Black Temple as well as a section that offers GM advice on incorporating Disciple characters into his/her game.

This book represents a fantastic value for fantasy enthusiasts. If you are already playing Beasts and Barbarians you can pull multiple sessions of material from Beasts of the Dominions. If you aren’t playing B&B there’s nothing to stop you from using BotD for any Savage Worlds fantasy game. Once again Umberto does a great job offering much more than just combat encounters. There are all sorts of fun story elements and plenty of  opportunities for non combat situations.

I always look forward to new B&B releases and this book doesn’t disappoint. It’s worth noting that customers who had previously purchased B&B from RPGNow got an email with a customer loyalty discount. This is a great way to thank fans!

The Marvels of Majestic Mars

To celebrate the release of John Carter on DVD and Blu-ray this Tuesday, I thought I’d take a quick look at a couple of recent releases for Adamant Entertainment’s Savage Worlds Mars setting.

City States of Mars – Korium

This is a 53 page pdf that, as the name suggests, details the Martian city, Korium. There’s an extensive amount of information outlining culture and geography in the early chapters of the book and adventure hooks are present throughout.  Several locations within the city are explored and the book does a great job of providing plenty of material for coming up with adventures. Each entry for the various sections of the city features details on notable locations as well as stats and background material for a ton of npc’s. The book is capped off with information on some of the areas surrounding the city and a bestiary.

This is another cool book for the Mars setting. There’s enough new material here to provide your game with story arcs, interesting npc’s and monster’s for a long time.

Soul Thieves of Mars

This 17 page adventure has the pc’s escorting a caravan to an outpost where they end up in a showdown with a powerful psion. One by one the locals have started acting strangely and a murder plunges the characters into a web of chicanery.

The adventure is heavy on role playing opportunities and investigation and the primary antagonist is an interesting character that would make a cool recurring villain.

If you haven’t checked out the Mars setting yet, it’s awesome and worth your time.

If you haven’t seen John Carter yet be sure to add it to the queue. Despite its poor performance at the box office it’s a fun and wildly entertaining movie!

Interface Zero: Hostile Takeover

Hostile Takeover is a 41 page supplement for Gun Metal Games excellent cyberpunk setting, Interface Zero. The book focuses on adding elements of corporate intrigue, politics, policy and power plays to a campaign. It is divided into two sections – the first is designated as “The New Employee Handbook” for players, and the second is titled “The Policy and Procedure Manual” for Gamemaster’s.

The player’s section is written as if it were a manual for a new hire at a corporation. It contains information for understanding the setting and has advice for using the standard Savage Worlds mechanics in a way that is stylistically consistent with the genre. There are also new Hindrances and Edges for players to choose from that reinforce the setting (I got a kick out of the “Non Disclosure Agreement” hindrance).

The GM’s section, as you’d expect, has a lot of advice for introducing corporate play into Interface Zero. Early on it talks about avoiding turning your game into an office simulator, which I found interesting and helpful since, to me, that seems the quickest way to kill the fun factor of the setting. There are entries on running different types of corporate style games, as well as a detailed section on creating unique companies that have a sense of character. There is also an excellent chapter called “Murder in the Board Room” that shows you how to use common Savage Worlds mechanics (chases, mass battles, etc..) in new ways that emulate different facets of the genre (like using the mass battle rules to resolve a corporate takeover). This approach is very creative and keeps with the classic Savage Worlds idea of trappings. The book is end capped with a list of common NPC’s  that your player’s are likely to encounter in an office environment.

This is a cool book and a pretty neat idea. On the surface, the prospect of role playing in an office sounds painfully dull. This book had the challenge of refuting that idea and it does so quite well. Presentation, like all Gun Metal Games releases, is stellar. Layout is well done and  the whole book is very polished. This title is well dressed, ready for business and bleeding cool.

 

Leagues of Adventure!

Leagues of Adventure is a 250 + page game book of Victorian Adventure from the fine folks at  Triple Ace Games. Written by Paul “Wiggy” Wade-Williams, the game presents a Victorian era setting – with steampunk elements – using the Ubiquity Roleplaying System. Ubiquity, which was created by Exile Game Studio, was first seen in the popular pulp game, Hollow Earth Expedition.

Since Leagues of Adventure and Hollow Earth Expedition are both pulp style games, I wanted to start out by talking about how they differ. To oversimplify, Leagues of Adventure is to Allan Quatermain as Hollow Earth Expedition is to Indiana Jones. While both games evoke a pulpy feel, they differ distinctly due to the eras in which they are set. It’s easy to look back and lump 1850 – 1940 into one easily digestible “way back when” time frame, but the two eras are quite different. While “Indy” evades machine gun fire from a Nazi in a speeding Jeep, your Victorian hero has come to fisticuffs with his/her well dressed adversary on the roof of a horse drawn carriage. While archaeologists in the 1930′s are deciphering hieroglyphics in an old temple, explorer’s in the 1890′s are still looking for the uncharted areas of the earth where said temple is yet to be found. The Victorian era presents an earth that is still very much shrouded in mystery. These two games are unique and self contained, but also provide very complimentary worlds. It would be appropriate for your young Victorian era hero in Leagues of Adventure to be the elderly, refined, world traveled great uncle of your 1930′s hero in Hollow Earth Expedition.

As I mentioned above, LoA is powered by Ubiquity. This was my first exposure to the system (I have since purchased and read Hollow Earth Expedition for perspective – awesome game!), and I have to say that I like it very much. It shares a lot of common design philosophy with Savage Worlds but still differs in some important ways. In many ways I’d argue that Ubiquity is a little less crunchy than SW, though this is likely subjective. Many of the mechanics are more streamlined than their SW counterparts and overall there is a cinematic quality to the system that is very appealing. This isn’t to say that one system is better than the other, they are both fantastic and have their own merits, I just think it’s worth mentioning since I usually talk about SW and this article veers off that path a bit. I’m not going to go into specific mechanics since the focus of my review is on the setting, and not the underlying system.

Where LoA really shines is in its portrayal of a quasi historical Victorian steampunk earth. This is a place where Jules Verne isn’t making up characters for outlandishly imaginative tales, he’s actually writing about the exploits of his friends. Fictional characters from the time are seamlessly interwoven with historically accurate elements and the result is a very believable fantastic world, ripe for adventure and exploration. Built atop this entertaining framework is a game where characters fly in fantastic airships, travel to exotic locales, encounter amazing beasts and unravel the schemes of nefarious secret societies. The art in the book, by Illustrator Chris Kuhlmann, is beautiful and perfectly captures the feel of the world.

Character creation is pretty straightforward and a key part of the process is choosing a “League” for your character to belong to. Characters can belong to more than one League and membership has different benefits depending on the group in question. There’s even a League known as The Hollow Earth Society, a nice nod to Exile’s Game. The full list of the eight step character creation process is: 1. Archetype, 2. Motivations, 3. Primary Attributes, 4. Secondary Attributes, 5. Skills, 6. Talents and Resources (Edges), 7. Flaws (Hindrances), and 8. Experience.

Another major area of the book that is worth special attention is the vehicle and gadget creation section. LoA offers a very robust creation system that embraces steampunk and weird science aesthetics. It’s a “from the ground up” type system that offers a great deal of crafting freedom and encourages imagination. It’s worth mentioning that this system is very modular and if you were inclined to run a “dry” game that favored historical accuracy over steampunk gadgets, you could certainly do it. Basically, this compartmentalized approach functions well as a weird science dial that you can adjust to personal taste.

The rest of the book is rounded off with advice for running games, information for creating Villainous Leagues, stats for beasts and adversaries and a gazetteer. The gazetteer has a massive amount of information describing the world of LoA and has a ton of adventure seeds. Honestly, there’s enough additional material here to run adventures for a very long time. No matter where your geographic interests lie, you’re bound to find it covered. Need stats for a Eunuch Guard or Doctor Moreau? Check. About to have Professor Moriarty, on mammoth-back, charge headlong into your hero’s camp? Got you covered. As I said, there is an amazing amount of cool information available in this book.

The only problems I found with the book were minor editing issues. They don’t break the text but they do create moments where reading flow is awkward. They are the types of errors that humans find much better than spell checkers. It should be noted that this is not the norm for the book. These errors are few and far between and most of the text is very well written.

This is a great read and an exciting release from Triple Ace Games.. Right now the pdf is available from their site and can be purchased alone or as part of a pre-order of the print copy. I can’t speak of this book highly enough. It’s also worth mentioning that even if you aren’t keen on trying Ubiquity, the book is worth getting just as a Victorian/steampunk resource book for rules of your choice. Ubiquity is close enough to Savage Worlds that a conversion would be very feasible as well.

I’m looking forward to seeing what support materials Triple Ace has in store for Leagues of Adventure. If you’re even remotely interested in the setting I’d encourage you to check this book out!

Hael: Supplemental Books and Resources

Night of the Long Fangs

I reviewed the Hael Core Book a few weeks back in a previous post. Storyweaver released a couple of adventures around the same time the core book came out and just today uploaded their soundtrack to the Hael universe to RPGNow. It’s awesome that this setting just came out and there is already so much great support material.

Adventures

Night of the Long Fangs and Burning Bridges (16 and 17 pages respectively) are both presented with Storyweaver’s “Game in a Can” label on their covers.  They are both unique sandbox style location based adventures that share a common design structure. The framework is actually very reminiscent of modern console and computer RPG’s (in a good way!). You are given a location that is well mapped  out and each page in the books presents a different area of interest in that location. Along with flavor text you get information on NPC’s, stat blocks, story hooks and rumors. Each NPC has their own seemingly independent plot hooks that tie into one grand overarching tale. With this structure it’s just a matter of letting the players explore the area and interact with the populace. I like the way these books are presented very much and they do an amazing job of offering interesting stories without railroading you into clunky plot dependencies that break progress if missed. You can’t beat the value either since Night of the Long Fangs is a very reasonable $3.95 and Burning Bridges is free!

Hael Soundscapes – Untamed Sounds

Untamed Sounds is a collection of music for use during games. There are six tracks of music (plus a 7th bonus introduction track) that are designed to provide background ambiance for a variety of game situations. The songs are titled according to how they are connected to the Hael setting and they provide music for battles and other common game events. The production values are very high and stylistically the music would be appropriate for most any fantasy setting. (While writing this I kept wanting to write “Album”…. getting old….)

As I said above, it’s fantastic that there’s already excellent support material for Hael. I wasn’t familiar with the old D20 incarnation of the setting so I don’t know if these books are new material or revised and re-released stuff but really it’s irrelevant. I hope to see more of the “Game in a Can” releases soon and I’m really liking the music too. It seems like Storyweaver has great priorities as far as support for their products is concerned.

Iron Dynasty – Kesshi Tales 10

Kesshi Tales #10 is the newest Reality Blurs release for their excellent Iron Dynasty setting. Up until now each Kesshi Tales release has had a corresponding guidebook that further detailed the region where the adventure took place. This book is different in a couple of ways in that it both breaks from that symbiotic release schedule and also focuses on the introduction of some new mechanics.

Structurally, this 39 page book stays true to the aesthetics of the previous releases. It opens with an overview and synopsis of the adventure which has the players getting wrapped up in the affairs of a Dueling Academy in the capital city of Kara, in Sorimizu. After the initial introduction the book has a section that introduces a couple of new Edges for dueling. There is also a brief discussion on reputation which expands on what is presented in the core rules. Specifically,  it discusses how the outcome of a duel affects a characters reputation and also introduces a card based system for randomizing an opponent’s rank and reputation.

The rest of the book details the cast and outlines the eight scenes that make up the adventure proper. The main story, as I mentioned above, has the character’s investigating recent attacks on student’s from the Kiyohara Dueling Academy. The adventure is set up to showcase the new dueling mechanics and, as one might expect, is very combat oriented.

This book is a fine addition to the already impressive line of Iron Dynasty books. Like the other titles in the series, layout is super clean and tablet friendly. The other thing I love about these books is that they are so well organized that you really need very little prep time to use them. They are even great for those who aren’t interested in pre packaged adventures. You can just grab npc’s, stat blocks and set pieces and throw them into your own sandbox to play with as you see fit.

As a side note, you can get the pdf of the Iron Dynasty core rules from RPGNow for $7.50 right now! That’s a steal!