Questing with Kobold Quarterly 11

I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Kobold Quarterly 11, courtesy of Wolfgang Baur and I can safely say that it is a mixed bag of articles for anyone playing 3.x or 4E. Being someone that is interested in both, needless to say I was enjoying the best of both worlds.

Out of the 13 articles, I have selected several articles and separated them based on interest in 3.x/Pathfinder and 4E.

For 3.x/Pathfinder readers,
Howling Werebeasts and Ecology of the Vampire are articles that touches on the aspect of becoming a lycanthrope and being a vampire respectively. Both are great articles that talks about how one becomes their respective new forms and what sort of processes do they go through like the physical trauma experienced and how to live as one.

Although the mechanics are in 3.x, I would say that the main attraction of the articles is still the fluffy details. It really helps to get into the minds of a lycanthrope or vampire. Players will find it a useful guide on how they should roleplay as these characters and GMs are given a few pointers on how to handle them.

Spell-less Ranger is a Pathfinder variant for the ranger class as the title speaks for itself. This is probably the first Pathfinder incarnation of the same variant for 3.x in Unearthed Arcana.

Torture and Fear on the Tabletop is a very short and simple method of implementing the fear of torture into your 3.x game. It introduces three tables varying in the degree of torture implemented on the character with devious effects from straightforward damage (lethal and non-lethal) to permanent ability drains. The best part of this is that it makes the player roll the result rather than staining your hands with the pain you are inflicting on them.

For 4E readers,
Most articles I feel are crunch heavy and to be honest, I think the design of their crunch is not as strong as their 3.x/Pathfinder counterparts. In Wishing Well, they tried to put wish spells back into 4E but what they did in the end was just make it an abstract magic item. It is an interesting idea but I don't feel that it takes any radical steps to make them game-moving as wish spells had always been which cheapens the spell.

Monstrous Paragons are racial paragon paths for the minotaur, kobold bugbear and hobgoblin. I felt that the designers jumped the gun a little since the minotaur will be appearing in the Player's Handbook 3 and most likely be overlapped by the racial paragon paths that will be in that book.

What I do like about these paragon paths is that some of its features builds upon the racial powers or traits when you use them as playable races from the Monster Manual. One small nitpick for this article is that the color coded powers were a little confusing at first until you've read them properly.

Don't be fooled by the Mysteries of the Philosopher's Stone which is actually about an artifact that leads you to create the philosopher's stone with a ritual. This will be an interesting artifact to drop into your game with a heavy alchemist theme like Full Metal Alchemist.

For everyone,
The Howling City is an evenly fleshed out derro city (with a nice map) with 3.x and 4E stats but the next article that I'm going to recommend sold me for this issue.

Other than the crunch and fluff presented, I feel that the best article of the whole issue is Running Across the Screen where they asked 16 game designers/writers on various questions about gamemastering. You are not going to find any place else where they've gathered the most diverse selection of people from various companies and game systems that share their thoughts and style of gamemastering.

From Jason Bulhman (Paizo), Monte Cook (Malhavoc Press), Chris Perkins (Wizards), Mike Mearls (Wizards), James Jacobs (Paizo), Chris Pramas (Green Ronin) to Robin D. Laws (Laws of Good Gamemastering) and some folks from White Wolf, they talked about what is the job of the GM, running encounters and sandboxes. Reading this article just emphasizes the point that there is no 'one true way' and that every GM has their own style.


I've already reviewed 9 out of the 13 articles (not including the editorials) so if you find that this issue is going to fit your bill, you can find it at DriveThru RPG as a PDF for $5.99. Don't let the kobolds scare you.

Questing with Fantasy Craft

When I heard about FantasyCraft, it had piqued my interest for some reason. It was one of the few names that were mentioned during the GenCon season that was not Parhfinder. I was curious of what FantasyCraft could be and gladly volunteered to review a copy that I had managed to acquire.

FantasyCraft, if the name hadn't given it away, was build by the team that brought you SpyCraft. This was Crafty Games' attempt into trying to fit their MasterCraft rules for a fantasy-based setting. Although I had not read SpyCraft before, I had heard of its reputation for being a daunting and overly complex rules system. However, while daunting might be the impression at first, I find FantasyCraft a ruleset worth mastering.

FantasyCraft places a heavy emphasis on concept and the strength of roleplaying over its mechanics. The mechanics are more towards reflecting the benefits of roleplaying as a character rather than having sub-systems that appear to look smart for the sake of it. The foundation of these rulesets are built by creative processes on the player's part than his mathematical crunching ability.

Coming from a D&D background, character generation seems lengthy at first. In addition to the usual picks of races (or species) and classes (career), FantasyCraft also wants the player to consider his specialty (and talents if you are playing as humans). Each specialty is very much similar to an occupation from D20 Modern which grants its own mechanical benefits but it also adds flavor to the career level that you picked.

This removes class defined functions of each character base on their choices and wants the player to consider what type of character he really wants to play as. Although there may be the archetype combinations to make the perfect rogue or fighter or spellcaster, the amount of specialty available to you encourages you to go for a more diverse and unique character.

There is more to that as well. While D&D might incline players to play a more combat worthy sort of character, FantasyCraft doesn't make that discrimination by giving players careers and specialties to play as social or skillful types of characters. Effectiveness is not always proven on the battlefield as there are more areas to excel.

This is where the second strength of FantasyCraft comes in. It has a sandbox approach in dictating characters' abilities. Every specialty and career choice is rewarded with mechanical backing that would come into play eventually. A soldier might strive to gain the feats and combat abilities to take out the enemy but the courtier seeks greater renown so that he could call in more favors.

In fact, there is a resource management element in the ruleset that mostly happens outside of combat. Characters have to think about what do they want to do during their downtime and this can be used to pursue different sorts of resources by using non-combat related skills and abilities. Gold and treasure which are the staple rewards for defeating monsters in their lairs cannot buy the reputation and renown that may be needed to call in a few favors for the next adventure.

It should come as no surprise that for a ruleset that puts quite on emphasis outside of combat has quite a simple combat system. However, the deadliness of the field, is far from friendly. Using the WP/VP system for tracking combat damage, it also does track for serious damages that could cripple characters which will be reflected to mechanical penalties. This could range from battered limbs to head trauma or injuries that have to be treated during downtime.

Combat is also not boring with the amount of basic actions that a character can perform, further expanded if the character can do combat tricks which are granted by combat feats.

Now all this extensive rules would be for nothing if it doubles the load of the GM running it. Under the GMing chapter, you would mainly find great advice that are generic enough to be used for other game systems. The GMing chapter refocuses the emphasis that a good concept/story from the GM is more important than the rules. Under the worldbuilding section, you will be asked a series of questions of how each element in the world interacts with the world populace and the PCs.

It also tells the GM that the rules are flexible and it should be up to the GM to use the ones that he wants accordingly. A GM can decide what rules he wants to use by deciding on his campaign qualities.

Want to run a gritty world with no spellcasting? Then don't put in the sorcery and miracles qualities and add Fragile Heroes to make your PCs have half their vitality point.

You can even run a speed campaign by adding in all the Fast qualities which grants your PCs a much faster rate of leveling up, getting feats and attribute bonuses.

One of the few mechanics that I really love in GMing FantasyCraft is the shared narrative control. Players and GM are given a certain amount of action dice per session that they could use to enhance or set a certain tone for an encounter/scene during an adventure. A GM may use his action dice to 'fudge' the defenses of his NPCs while a PC could use his action dice to gain double XP from completing their character's personal subplot.

FantasyCraft takes a more tool-kit approach and it is not for everyone. I would take FantasyCraft and compare it with True20 rather than Pathfinder. The amount of sandboxing preparation, creative work and rules mastery that usually comes with these kind of systems equals to an amount of work than some GMs and players might not be able to cope with.

However, the kudos that I give it to is because it is a very self-sustainable system contained within its 402 pages which is less than the Pathfinder Core Rulebook anyway. FantasyCraft provides you with all the tools suited to a fantasy RPG that can translate into many years of fun.

If the day of Fantasy RPG apocalypse ever comes, I will be taking FantasyCraft into the underground bunkers and leave my 4E D&D books to the nuclear holocaust any day.

Want to learn more about Fantasy Craft? Read on...

• Atomic Array: Fantasy Craft (Atomic Array 032)


• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin


• Questing GM: Questing with Fantasy Craft


• allgeektout: What Fantasy Craft Has to Offer


• Campaign Mastery: Mine Fiction for Campaign Qualities


• Emerson's Bookshelf: Fantasy Just Got Crafty


• Critical Hits: Critical Review


• Fear the Boot: Fear the Review


• Gnome Stew: What Fantasy Craft Brings to the Table


• Uncle Bear: Fantasy Craft Chargen


• Flames Rising: Dark FantasyCraft Review

Questing in Irrin; A Review of Introduction to Irrin

I was honored to be given the chance to review Zachary Houghton's 'Introduction to Irrin' a few weeks ago and this review is way overdue (Sorry again, Zach). Bear in mind that this review is based solely on personal opinions and expectations that has almost nothing to do with professional standards and measurements. Give and take what you will.

When I first heard about and read Introduction to Irrin, it is not one with entirely big ambitions (and presents itself as such) to be an original published campaign setting but more like a tribute to a well-loved and well-played campaign setting shared by a group of players over the years. If you ever wondered what would happen if you collected the notes of your homebrew setting and gaming notes for the past 6-7 years and published them into one book, Introduction to Irrin is what you get.

In the foreword of the book, it has said what it has set out to do and Zach has written it with that intention well firmed in mind which is to be a 'vanilla fantasy setting, one which would be easily adaptable to a wide range of fantastic styles, and one in which elements could be added or subtracted with minimal disruption to other parts of this setting'. So don't expect to be mislead or surprised either.

Introduction to Irrin is a 48 page campaign primer that should be very familiar to those who have read their DM's own campaign handbook in a homebrew game. The book contains descriptions on races, nations, languages, places of note, religions, organizations and other roleplaying essentials (coinage, calendar and timeline) for playing a character in the setting. The current era of the setting is about late Middle Ages to early Renaissance set in a continent about the size of the United States and the lower half of Canada.

The setting is intended to be systemless but proclaims itself to be used for Castles & Crusaders, Palladium Fantasy, Rolemaster, Dungeons & Dragons, D6 Fantasy, HackMaster, Risus, Epic Role Playing, HARP, Pathfinder and other various simulacrum games or any other system that you prefer (including rock, scissor, paper if you must!). In fact, most of the feel and elements of the setting comes imminently from the systems mentioned above (and also from Greyhawk and Dragonlance).

As a result, my first impression on the setting is best described with one word; diverse.

There is quite a high number of nations (29 in all!) for such a small book, considering also the fact that Zach's love for timelines takes up almost half of the page count so you can be sure that every word on this section counts. Each entry for each nation is a few short paragraphs but a few can run up to half a page at best (like the Elven Court) which relays some important event or cultural quirks that make each nation distinct but connected.

There are also quite a number of politics between certain nations that can get a little hard to keep track of if you're not really paying attention but really brings out the tenious relationship between them and ripe for exploiting into a political adventure or campaign.

This is coupled with the fact that the number of (playable) races is also slightly more than usual due to additional races of the non-common variety. Other than the standard humans, elves (and subraces thereof), dwarves, gnomes, goblins and orcs, Irrin also introduces a few anamorphs like the Spiney; small and 'unrepentant kleptomaniac' hedgehog humanoids and the Wolfen; artistic and scholarly but fearsome wolf-man warriors.

Not as many but still equally diverse is the places of note in Irrin that are well varied between different terrains and climates. Each with their own interesting plot hooks that makes for potential ground to create a wilderness adventure/dungeon crawl with their own set of dangers.

However, here's some of the things that I didn't like or wished could have improved further (the version being reviewed states that it's 1.5 so maybe a 2.0 will come along in the future?). On the nations section, the names of the capital is mentioned but not a single description of the city itself is ever given which is sad since I would have liked to see the capitals of some of the major nations or at least use them as a template for creating my own towns or villages.

Speaking of towns and cities, there's not a single map to be found in this primer. Although there is a free map of the setting that can be downloaded for free, I doubt that after years of gaming in the setting it has not produce a map for some of the major locations.

Lastly just a minor nitpick. I think the book could use a slightly better formatting. Interwining sections together sometimes on the same page can break the flow of reading the primer sometimes because the transistion can be a little abrupt. A few empty spaces to seperate the sections wouldn't hurt and it would have given the book a more organized flow.

Still, I'm not bashing this published product. It's solid in its own foundations and still has many space for going beyond to be a much more interesting setting which is probably where the readers come in. While sufficient to be playable, there are areas that can be lacking or could have benefitted more with a little more detail and flavoring even though it sticks to the fantasy 'vanila' setting.

As for using the setting itself based on primer, there's plenty of room for creativity and DMs to lay their own mark. Introduction to Irrin provides a really large framework to work with and you don't really feel any compelling underlying elements to stick to Zach's version of the setting despite having gone through its own evolution since the current timeline of the setting is a result of his players' tempering (and untempering) over the years.

For a first time product, I would say that Zach is still learning the ropes of self-publishing and also lack some resources to make the product better presented. However make no mistake, it has solid content and has all the foundations of a good setting planted. I would love to see future improvements of the product followed by an increase in content (and perhaps a few more maps or two).

Overall, this is quite an inspirational piece to anyone who is thinking of taking their homebrew world and venture into self-publishing. It even encourages the readers to do the same with theirn own homebrew which is something I really respect.

If you're interested to find out more about Introduction of Irrin or want to get yourself a copy (available in print and pdf), you can visit Zach's Lulu storefront (you can also download a couple of freebies like the aforementioned map and a heraldry set).