Wizards of the Coast's Dungeon Tiles DN2: "The Witchlight Fens"

I have to admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for swamps and bogs, and so when Wizards of the Coast announced that they were releasing a Dungeon Tiles set along those lines, it was just about a given that I would be buying them. The set in question, Dungeon Tiles DN2: The Witchlight Fens, however, ended up being not exactly what I had in mind.

This is my first dungeon tiles set, so I didn't exactly know what to expect, but it was largely smaller pieces that one would have to fit together with some degree of precision in order to keep any sort of continuity with fitting together larger tiles; in other words, you have the option of either dropping a smaller tile directly on top of a larger tile, making a difference in height (and allowing for the possibility that it could slip around), or else take a good number of smaller tiles and match them to the length of the side of the larger tile they're up against, rather than just use one. One would have to do a lot of pre-planning with fitting these together, because you can't just drop one and have that be the encounter location. Once you pop them out of their sheets, they immediately become unwieldy, so it would be very well worth it to have another of the Essentials tile sets that came with a box to store them in, otherwise I've been sort of popping them back in to the sheets wherever they fit just so I can keep them on the shelf like a book; not an ideal solution. How do most people store their dungeon tiles? Freezer bags? I honestly want to know, I'd like ideas.

For being a tile set for a "fen," there is not much water space. Every single tile has land on at least one side, so there is no way to create a large expanse of boggy, brambled, waist-deep water to trudge through, nor is the water by and large marked as "difficult terrain" (which seems reserved for small brambly patches). It would be difficult to create any sort of feature like a path with water on either side, either. The set lends itself to small dry paths around smaller puddles of water. Even most baffling, there are several tiles that don't have anything printed on them at all in some places, and it's just black. I have to assume that that's standard dungeon tile topology for a "bottomless pit," but that doesn't make much sense in a bog because it's a place where the water table is very high. There wouldn't be a pit if there was an expanse, it would be filled with water. I therefore consider any of the tiles with black on them to be useless, since why would you use them? It makes no sense. Most of the tiles with black attached to them also just have stone paths on them, which is completely inappropriate to a "fen" as well; give me more squishy tiles, and leave the black pits and stone walkways for other sets where those features are more appropriate. Why would I want a pit... in a swamp? I want a swamp.

There are also quite a few tiles that don't have land OR water on them, but instead have constructed objects like a house, a boat, a bridge. While these are cute little flourishes, it seems like there's probably enough tiles like that in other sets that you could combine with this one for those sorts of features that it ends up feeling just like you've been cheated of yet another useful square for creating an ample amount of boggy terrain. I've read that many people end up buying two or three sets of the same tiles, and that's why: they don't give you enough useful tiles of any one thing to really make it really useful. Maybe if I had a lot of money and I felt comfortable buying multiple tile sets I would be happier with this product... or if there were a couple more sheets of tiles?

While I don't want to leave a purely negative review, I will note that the art, overall, is very nice. I wish I did have more tiles in this set so I could build larger things with them. Each of the tiles is double-sided, so most often if you don't like what's printed on one side you can flip it over and hope that there's something more useful on the other. They also seem quite well made; I can't envision them fraying or falling apart too quickly, barring water damage or cat attack. I can imagine that for one or two encounters, these tiles would work really well and you'd probably be able to do really fun things with them. But after more than two, the terrain might get a little repetitive because there's just not enough there.

I fully expected to love this set, and being my first tile set, sort of colored my opinion of the usefulness of Dungeon Tiles overall. If somebody offered me money to take these off my hands, I would take it, but if somebody offered me another set of the same tiles, I would take that too. I don't plan on buying any more dungeon tiles, either. Perhaps what I was expecting were tiles that were more like geomorphs, where you could stick any tile next to any other tile and have a more or less consistent topology? Regardless, I can't say that this product really knocked my socks off and, in the attempt to be too varied in features, ended up having too little of anything. They sort of dashed my dreams of having a large adventure that took place entirely within the Witchlight Fens (or some other bog that was considerably less witchy)... but just as easily all of these problems might be a non-issue to people more experienced with utilizing dungeon tiles to their fullest capacity, and in which case I'll sound sort of like a deranged lunatic for all these complaints. That's fair too.

Etherkai, the Nightmare Dragon review

Etherkai, the Nightmare Dragon is the first in a series of "Worldbreakers," enemies that are so powerful that they can actually change the terms or conditions of the encounter or even literally affect the terrain. Written as modular sorts of enemies, they are designed to be able to be easily dropped in to any type of adventure with minimal or no re-skinning. That being said, as I was reading Etherkai for the first time I knew, instantly, exactly where I would use it in the forthcoming campaign, without any modification whatsoever.

The background text, which constitutes the first few pages of the "book," is very well-writen, evocative, and interesting. I don't know what else to say about it without giving details away, but the story of Etherkai, and how he became what he is, is very complex and even a little bit sad, in a way. What is clear is that Etherkai is very frightening, compelling, and obviously needs to go in a major way.

Etherkai's stat block constitutes a whole page of content, as does his worldbreaking effect when it comes into play. As a level 10 monster, Etherkai is perfectly fit for a culminating encounter at the end of the Heroic tier, and he is powerful enough that it will likely have the overall effect of a "boss battle," even if Etherkai is not, in fact, the "big bad" of the tier. Perhaps the dragon is being manipulated by an even stronger power; perhaps he is just an accidental obstacle that turns out to be far more dangerous than anticipated. But I think regardless, the strength of the worldbreaker is that, since they have the ability to change the setting of the encounter, they act as a liminal space between one kind of storytelling and another and provide a literal, as well as a metaphorical, break between two arcs.

I look forward to future releases, as the author, Quinn Murphy, has proven himself a very capable and creative writer, and I really have nothing bad to say about this invention. I only wish I could run the monster sooner.

Postmortem Studios' "6-Pack Adventures: Black Rock Bandits" by Tracy Hurley

Black Rock Bandits is a standalone mini-adventure written by Tracy Hurley as part of the "6-Pack Adventure" series, which I can only assume means short adventures that one can run and play over the course of drinking a six pack. I mean, at least that's what I'd do. All 6-Pack adventures are short, 2-3 encounter adventures, and they can be finished likely anywhere within 3-5 hours; in other words, in a reasonable night of play.

The adventure begins with a quick (1 page) overview of the setting, the town, and some of the major locations and NPCs associated with those locations, then it launches very quickly into the first scene, in which the PCs are given their quests and have the opportunity to interrogate one of the eponymous bandits, who has been captured. Wasting no time, after availing themselves of what the town has to offer, they are pointed to the ruined temple where the bandits are supposedly making their hideout, and offered a monetary reward for each bandit whom they can prove they've defeated.

It is a straightforward enough setup, but what the players discover in the temple is quite surprising and a very good twist. It is an unexpected turn of events and a quite good introduction to the world of Dungeons and Dragons as a level 1 adventure. If I had a prospective new player who had never played D&D before, I suspect that this module would easily rise to the top of my mind as something I could quickly run as an introduction to the game and to the world in which the game exists.

Just shy of half of the overall page count of the module are numerous pregenerated PCs, so the module can literally be printed and set up within minutes. If the point of 6-Pack Adventures is to have a fully-contained mini-adventure which can be played with little or no preparation on behalf of either the DM or the players, I would consider Black Rock Bandits a resounding success.

I have but one complaint, and that is at the beginning there are two blank pages, and at the end there is another blank page, which reduces the "printer friendliness" by a little bit. The blank pages make it exactly 30 pages long, front and back covers included, so it's a tidy number. But if I were to actually print it out, I would likely remove those blank pages and put them back in the paper tray; it's a waste, paper is expensive. I'd probably print it double sided as well, and exclude the front and back covers because they're very ink-heavy. Either that, or have it printed at kinkos.

VSCA Publishing's "Diaspora: Hard Science-Fiction Role-Playing with FATE"

I first learned about Diaspora directly from one of the authors, Brad Murray, via the excellent At-Will 4e IRC channel, hosted by Quinn Murphy. You might have heard about him recently for his first Worldbreaker, Etherkai, which I will be reviewing soon. Diaspora is a more "gritty" approach to science fiction roleplaying, which is, to say, very unlike other new(ish) sci-fi RPGs such as Eclipse Phase. In the introduction to the book, the authors mention that they wanted to create a Traveller-style experience, using the FATE system, and updated for modern players.

Alas but Traveller is a game which I have never had the joy of playing, so I can only speculate as to the relative faithfulness of Diaspora to that kind of experience, but I have had a bit of experience with FATE, albeit only theoretically. Meaning, I've read a lot more books based on FATE than I have any sort of material concerning Traveller. FATE is ultimately a very modular sort of system, concerning a slightly nebulous "core" of mechanics, which then can be dressed up with all sorts of other mechanics for flavor and ease of use. This is a strength of the FATE system, in my opinion, and one of the reasons why I keep returning to it. While Spirit of the Century, the Dresden Files RPG, Diaspora, and Strands of Fate all use the same core mechanic, in other words, they nevertheless end up "feeling" like very different games because of the peripheral details.

The biggest problem with FATE, however, is the learning curve. It is a very abstract system at first, and it uses a healthy supply of its own jargon which can feel a little overwhelming to the new player. Also unfortunately is the fact that FATE books are written, by and large, by authors who already presuppose that readers will, like themselves, be able to parse that jargon. I tried to read the Diaspora book as agnostically as I could, assuming ignorance of the system, and that is where I believe the book's primary weakness lies: it does, in my opinion, an inadequate job at explaining the jargon. In the chapter on mechanics, it explains some of these terms like "tagging" or "compelling" aspects, or invoking "maneuvers," but does not explain fully the methods and ramifications of those things. For instance, a new player might ask "do the player characters get to see what Aspects their enemies possess?" or "can enemies just as easily compel Aspects on the player characters as vice versa?" To the authors' credit, these sorts of issues become less pressing as the book goes on, and the reader can absorb more information about how the system works from context, but at this point early in the book, a sketchy overview could potentially serve as a hurdle for a prospective player. One has to imagine, though, that this was intentional: expending too much time and effort on the abstract mechanics early in the book would probably also have the effect of making the game seem trudging and tedious, and it makes for a better read without dwelling on minutiae. It really isn't until the chapter on combat that the Aspect system really becomes clear.

That all being said, on to the good bits. Diaspora is set in a universe which assumes that there are weaknesses in the fabric of space that, when compelled (usually by artificial means), open a sort of wormhole to another solar system that is an indeterminate distance away. These weak points, which are called "slipknots" in game, are the key feature to the entire game universe, and are what enables a "diaspora" to become possible. Namely, one creates a "cluster" of systems linked by "slipstreams" that could be neighboring solar systems within the same sector of space, or may just as easily be systems in another galaxy billions of light years away. Travel between them via slipstream renders distance, in this special case, meaningless. However, points not linked by slipknots still suffer under the burden of sub-relativistic speed.

Diaspora also assumes that human civilization can only advance so much before imploding in on itself; therefore, technology is dangerous, and systems which are at the "T4" (pinnacle of advancement) stage, are also on the verge of collapse (or may have already collapsed), and have strange consequences. As the book describes it, "[T4 civilizations] are on the verge of collapse—they are about to unfold one or many failed dreams, spiraling into a transhuman ascension indistinguishable from a multi-billion death disaster." Heavy stuff. Diaspora therefore assumes that most (playable) civilizations are in the T2-T3 range, which is to say that they are "masters of their domain" in that they can exploit slipstream technology and travel between systems. For perspective, the ratings go from -4 to 4, and present-day earth is T0. Given what the authors describe in the introduction, this "limit" on technological advancement is intentional as a key feature of the game universe, as they want to constrain the game within the bounds of "gritty and dangerous," and steer far clear of the Star Trek vision of the future.

The default type of player character by and large seems to be human characters, but it does allow for alien characters, alien civilizations, and alien technology. Pair a T4 system with an ancient alien civilization, for instance, and you have the opportunity to create a situation like Ivanova's encounter with the Walkers of Sigma-957 in Babylon 5. Or have an encounter with one of the most distant systems of another player's cluster, and reenact your favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (hint: it's Darmok).

The book rounds itself out at the end by providing good examples of how to start a story arc, what sort of interactions one might expect between cultures, and, to quote the title of the last chapter, "making it work." This is far and away the best chapter in the book, and it was only at this point for me when the game stops being an abstraction and really does feel like something that is playable. My only regret is that while there were many examples of spacecraft (which was helpful), there were not really examples of player characters. What I would have liked to have seen is, just like the sheets for example spacecraft, to have a layout of around the same number of characters, which could be used as PCs or NPCs, or just hashed out examples of what a character sheet looks like after it's all filled out.

Additionally the combat rules regarding range were a bit baroque, but I suspect strongly that once one actually tries to play it out it will become a lot more obvious. But that's just a minor complaint.

Overall, it seems that Diaspora is a very flexible system which allows for a very wide variety of gameplay, from harrowing paramilitary thriller to Firefly-esque space cowboy hijinx and anything in between, and I look forward to eventually getting to test it out with a group of real people. One of these days.

Arrostekomiston Elder, preliminary stat block

Comment if you think anything's off/could be improved. :)

The Arrostekomistes

The Arrostekomistes (Ar-roast-ay-koh-mist-ees) are (believed to be) an order of itinerant physicians, not yet very well known in this part of the world. Where they originally hail from, however, they are very respected and feared. Their true name, if they have one, is unknown, as "Arrostekomistes" was likely, at some point, derogatory. In line with that, their common names do usually follow the format of "weakness walkers" or "illness-bearers"; a reflection of their vocation. It is said that they carry with them vials containing every disease, illness, and malady known, and some that are not known, and make it their mission to assist people afraid of disease by inoculating them with less severe or virulent forms of those diseases so as to prevent them from contracting the more deadly form later in life. They only offer this service to willing patients, and always move on as soon as they are no longer wanted.

Their appearance is as shrouded in mystery as their origins. They are never seen without their cloaks, masks, and gloves, as these are the chief identifiers of their station. The masks are akin to those of crooked-beaked birds, cast in silver, with strange carvings all over them. Their gloves appear to be the finest in dark calfskin leather, almost vanishingly thin, but never tearing, and upon their left index finger they wear a silver ring, shaped like a bird's talon, and just as sharp. Over their mask, they wear an oilskin cowl, and over their cowl, they wear a heavy oilskin cloak. IF any member of the Arrostekomistes would be seen outside of their uniform, they would not be recognizable; therefore, no member of the Arrostekomistes has ever been seen, only the uniform they wear.

The Arrostekomistes seem to abide by a philosophy of "a little harm now prevents a later calamity." They do not seem to have any ability at all to heal diseases once they have attacked, and have no interest in being around the diseased. Therefore it is unclear whether they themselves have already been inoculated against all of the diseases in their bandoliers, or whether they do their job, and move along as fast as possible in order to avoid infection, utilizing their masks and gloves as ways to further protect themselves.

The method itself is straightforward: The plague-bearer picks a vial from his wide bandolier, the disease to be inoculated against, and very deftly and carefully pries the silver lid open just enough to fit the tip of his ring down into it, to rub against the small lump of something that is inside. Then, he grabs the patient's arm, and scratches small five parallel lines into it, just barely enough to draw blood. The result looks much like a cat scratch, though the lines are unnaturally uniform. As soon as the scratch is complete, he stands up, and walks away. Arrostekomistes accept no payment, do not bargain, speak very little, and do not linger. They have also never been observed eating or sleeping, though they obviously have to do those eventually.

In their own lands, Arrostekomistes are treated as bogeymen among children: a visit from the Arrostekomistes is a fearful and potentially deadly thing, yet many parents still take the risk in order to prevent greater harm from coming to their children. Young children are never inoculated, only once they reach a certain age. It does not matter if they are human, elven, dwarven, or even dragonborn, orcs, or tieflings. Anything that can contract a disease, the Arrostekomistes can try to help. To have the scar from the inoculation has subsequently become a rite of passage among children in some places: it means you have survived the infection, and become stronger.

Inevitably there have been those who have harassed and manhandled members of the Arrostekomistes, but they do not usually live for long; usually coming down with all manner of strange diseases. It is as if the Arrostekomistes are able to create a deadly aura of pestilence around themselves when they are at risk, since none have ever been reported murdered or seriously injured, only the aggressors. Furthermore, those who would attack one of their order are shunned, and their families shunned, and their family's families shunned. Some doors they will pass by no matter what sort of payment is offered them. Nobody has known any of their order to lash out or to make someone sick who wasn't deserving, but the mystery and silence about them is so complete that one wonders whether one would ever know if they had.

[Spoilers] It is a secret fact that many of the older Arrostekomistes are actually undead, continuing to perform their duties even beyond the grave. Members of their order go through many magical rites where they cut all ties to their families, their countries, and their identities, and become one of the order irrevocably and permanently. Many will still grow old, feeble, and infirm as normal people do, but some are changed in unexpected ways. Instead of growing older, they grow stranger: slowly the life disappears from them, yet they continue on their missions, traveling from land to land, administering their inoculations, sometimes for hundreds of years. When it is time to retire, they return to the secret base of the order, where they are magically put to rest.

They have in fact been rendered immune to most diseases and most poisons, and necrotic or weakening attacks do not affect them. Their oilskin uniforms are slightly resistant to fire (resist 5) but repeated attacks will eliminate that resistance. The magic that binds them to the order also gives them certain exceptional abilities, such as resistance to sleep (they don't ever sleep) and inability to be dazed, blinded, or stunned. Additionally, they give off an aura 1 Miasma of Pestillence, which will be outlined in a later stat block.

If one is actually killed, its body will begin to decay immediately, crumbling into powder and poisoning the ground around it. Anyone nearby will be very likely to contract a serious disease. If it manages to escape, other members of its order will avoid contact as much as possible, and towns where they are staying will not be visited by Arrostekomistes. Likewise, if one is killed and its accoutrements are taken, others will quickly find out about the crime and regard the party suspiciously. Those who mistrust and fear the Arrostekomistes, however, will be very interested in any information about them that can be shared.

Most Arrostekomistes are within low- to mid-Paragon level, but very old undead members can easily rise into low Epic level.

Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani: Brief Thoughts

After having discovered the Vistani for the first time over the course of reading the Shadowfell book, I endeavored to learn a bit more about them. The main source for 4th edition seems to be Dragon 380, which mentions a bit of history about the Vistani and also provides a few character options for playing as the Vistani.

After reading these few pages, one sort of immediately regrets the loss of the occasionally very high quality material presented, even in the digitally presented, DDI-exclusive editions of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, since they broke the magazines apart and now just post things as individual articles on Wizards' occasionally very difficult-to-navigate and advertisement-laden website. Nevertheless, I do have some thoughts on the Vistani where I briefly compare the 2nd edition/Ravenloft version and the sketchy model presented in Dragon 380. One immediately wonders why the authors didn't spend at least a little bit more time providing any sort of additional background for the Vistani in their context in the Shadowfell, since they felt like they were important enough to the setting to mention at all. I certainly had no idea what Vistani were going in to it, and I imagine that there are probably a good portion of people who, even if they pay for a DDI subscription, won't have read Dragon 380. It seems like a... conspicuous... omission. Perhaps I missed the section on th Vistani entirely in the book, in which case I will consent to wearing the dunce cap at least 4 hours a day for one week.

As it was, I could only gather by the words used to describe them that they were like gypsies that had the ability to travel, seemingly at will, between and throughout the planes, and had at least some small degree of magical power which protects them from serious harm from the more... unsavory sorts of things that they might encounter along their way. The Dragon articles confirmed that they are, in fact, the D&D equivalent of gypsies. However, one of the major differences from the earlier edition Vistani is that in 4th edition, membership is evidently open to all races through a sort of induction process, whereas Vistani in the Ravenloft context seem to have been exclusively human, and the best one could ever come to joining the Vistani was to become a Giogoto, which is to say, someone the Vistani tolerate. All in all, the 4th edition approach to the Vistani seems to take away the magic and mystery of the Ravenloft Vistani a bit, at the expense of making them more interesting, more realistic figures.

In Van RIchten's Guide to the Vistani, one is presented with just about every stereotype about gypsies one can imagine. All of the "negative" stereotypes about Vistani are justified, and all of the "positive" stereotypes are mythologized. There is still a limited amount of this in the 4th edition interpretation: we learn, for instance, that the Vistani swindle people only when it is "fated" that their money should change hands to begin with. A bit of the mysterious fortune teller with untold and limitless magical power details that are so salient in the Ravenloft edition, are softened or flat-out omitted in the 4th edition treatment. In 4th edition, VIstani are a D&D race similar to gypsies; in Ravenloft, they are gypsies, all stereotypes in tact.

In conclusion, briefly, I believe that Dragon 380 will be more of use to utilizing the Vistani in a 4th edition Shadowfell adventure than the entirety of Van Richten's guide would be. It is not to say that there is not anything of interest in Van Richten to add color or flavor to the depiction of the Vistani, but the vision of the Vistani in Ravenloft is too different from the modern type to be of too much use.

The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond D&D Roleplaying Game Supplement

Thanks to the 4th Edition D&D Webchat hosted by the brilliant minds behind At-Will, I've been able to rub shoulders with some very interesting folk in the online D&D community at large, including one of the co-authors of this box set, Matt Goetz, who convinced me (I didn't need much) to pick up the box and check it out. I apologize in advance for the verbose review, but I hope that after I am through I will have done the set justice.

First, the superficial stuff: like many WotC products recently, it comes with tokens. I am less than lukewarm about tokens; I just don't use them. But if you've seen other WotC tokens, they're more of the same: ≈1 mm thick cardstock, artwork recycled from this and previous products, you know the drill. What I'd prefer, just because I don't use tokens, is if they'd instead include some Dungeon Tiles that some of the encounters utilize; wouldn't even care if they were reprinted from other sets. But that's just me.

Then, the map: Large map of Gloomwrought on one side (useful, point a finger and say "you are here"), and a generic city-street-and-some-houses scene on the other side (less useful, but hey, they had to put something there, I'm not complaining).

Lastly among the incidentals, the Despair Deck. What can I say about the Despair Deck that has not already been said? Not much. Mechanically, you draw a card every time you take an extended rest and you are bound by what it says until you can shake it off, and these build up the longer you stay in the Shadowfell. Once you shake it off, you get a temporary boon from overcoming the effect. They're split into three categories: Apathy, Fear, and Madness, with examples like Craven, Frail, Clumsy, Reckless, Quarrelsome. It's a sort of neat idea to remind players that this realm is different from the real world, and that living people dwelling in the world of the dead has consequences; one can empathize, if only a tiny bit, with races like the Shadar-Kai, who have not really gotten terribly much character development in the published materials.

In to the meat! The encounter book, I am relieved to say, actually has some substance to it, and has battles and skill challenges for levels 7-23, although so much of the material in the Encounter book and the Campaign Guide is for low-to-mid Paragon levels that I'm just going to call this entire collection a Paragon-level setting guide. It's pretty easy to scale the 7-10 encounters up to Paragon levels, anyway. One of my favorite challenges in the Encounter book is "Scouring Undercity" which, as the name implies, involves going underneath the city of Gloomwrought. Undercity is described as a labyrinth of old buildings that have sometimes literally been sucked underground by cataclysmic events, but more often seem to have been "replaced" by newer buildings by the mysterious and ineffable Keepers. I'd like to imagine that there would be a fair amount of seepage from the Shadowdark into the Undercity, making it even more dangerous and strange than Gloomwrought above.

I'm also quite a fan of the "Rooftop Chase," which I can imagine could be run very tense and frightening, not unlike the hotel escape scene early on in the Xbox game "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth." There are also very neat enemies in the Encounter book such as the Hearth Golem and the Oblivion Wraith. Unlike a lot of the prefab encounters published in various WotC materials, these encounters give life to certain areas of the realm, above and below, and are useful, even if one doesn't plan on running them as they are written, to give those areas described in the Campaign Guide more flavor.

Lastly, the largest book is the Campaign Guide, which is also the best part about this whole set. If I'd have bought this second hand and not had any of the other material except for the Campaign Guide, I would still feel like I'd have gotten my hands on a top quality product. Also for the most part the art in this book is exceptional. Oftentimes I don't have a lot of high hopes about art in an RPG product, but here with very few exceptions (13, 36, 93, 101, 106) I am genuinely impressed. The last book I bought that had this level of artwork overall was the Cthulhutech core book, which I still think is a really great example of a small company being able to pull of top quality work.

Chapter one gives us a rough overview of the Shadowfell at large, a much-needed expansion from the depressingly small amount of information contained in the Manual of the Planes, as well as explains some of the game mechanics introduced by this set (including the Despair Deck).

Chapter Two is dedicated to Gloomwrought and is formatted just like any other location guide (such as Hammerfast, Vor Rukoth, etc.) where it gives you a map of the city, divides the city into districts, and then gives you notable locations within those districts, as well as "hooks" to help the DM come up with ideas of what sort of game ideas can come out of each of these locations. And, unlike Vor Rukoth (another of my favorite D&D products), gives a lot more detail than is usual with location guides and really helps to set the flavor of the whole city. After finishing the chapter, Gloomwrought feels like a real, living place. Of course there are some aspects that require a bit of suspension of disbelief (like the Dust Quarter, to me, seems just a little bit hokey, but given the right treatment could be done well), but overall the sort of strange and alien mood the city as a whole receives is right in tone with what a location like this should have. There are also descriptions of "factions" at work in the city, that the DM could throw in to add a bit more "local flavor."

Chapter 3 moves out to the wider world of the Shadowfell, including what I think are really neat locations like the Oblivion Bog, the Dead Man's Cross (what a way to enter the Shadowfell), the Darkreach Mountains and, to me the coolest, Letherna. Letherna seems to be a sort of "pocket dimension" not unlike Ravenloft that is the personal domain of the Raven Queen, where high enough leveled adventurers could even potentially have an audience with her. A conversation with a god? Yes, please. This is so cool I can't even really describe it well. My only complaint is Vorkhesis, but that's probably just because I don't think he's cool enough and I'm jealous.

The last chapter, Chapter 4, introduces more more factions and mostly just serves as a new enemy list (gotta provide stats for all those tokens somewhere, right?). The list is mercifully diverse: you've got domestic terrorists (the Ghost Talon), murderous zealots (the Ebony Guard), Golems (man do I love golems), and, finally, the Keepers. The chapter is rounded out with some stat blocks for some heavy hitters in the city; nobles, the ruling prince, and their ilk.

Some final observations. Gloomwrought, as a whole, seems to be overwhelmingly influenced in its tone by the film Dark City, which is not at all a bad movie and if you haven't seen it, especially if you want to run a Gloomwrought adventure, check it out. The Keepers of Gloomwrought seem very influenced in appearance and function by the Strangers, and the city rearranges itself at the will of the Keepers, again just like the Strangers from Dark City. However, this is not any sort of complaint about riffing on other content, as I think that the influence serves its purpose well here. The fact that they are called "Keepers," and nobody knows what their true function really is (but it is also a crime to bother or attack them) was also reminiscent of the Keepers aboard the Citadel in Mass Effect, who also turned out to have a sinister purpose. These are very neat concepts which I think would make it very easy to write a compelling overarching story for a Shadowfell-based campaign to exist within, and the set as a whole seems to do the realm of the dead great justice. I am very pleased with this product, and easily ranks up there among my "top 4th ed products ever" list.

Although I must add that, like so many of WotC's other books, the binding is atrocious and the book is already showing signs of strain after having being opened and laid flat only about 10 times, in total. Be gentle with this one, friends, as it may suffer an untimely decay like so much else in the Shadowed Realm.

Gamma World encounter setting idea

This article is titled "25 Abandoned Yugoslavia Monuments That Look Like They're From the Future" and, as the title implies, they are crazy war monuments that do look like they're from the future. The first thing that popped into my head though would be to use them as crazy terrain or settings for Gamma World encounters, or even areas that can be explored (or have been occupied as bases by enemies like in Fallout). You could probably approximate knockups of the overhead view for the map, and then use the photos as a play aid to show what the characters are actually gathered around. I love using real monuments and locations to add spice to an encounter, and I love objects in an encounter map that can be used as cover or concealment to keep the fight more interesting.

Gamma World character sheet, Savage Worlds character sheet

I said before that the previous GW character sheet should be considered a "version 1.0" copy, and here's why. I wanted to fit in vocations onto the sheet itself, figuring that cryptic alliance would be taken care of by the card. I've also tweaked a few other things, but it's all in all pretty similar. You can download that here.

In the same spirit of creating a very stripped down, printer-friendly version of character sheets, I also made up a printer-friendly Savage Worlds sheet, color optional just to designate where in the experience track one initiates a new tier. That can be found here.