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Well done and easy to use. The profession templates (including those from The Complex!) are a nice addition, making character creation that much simpler.
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This scenario presents a haunted construction site with loads of detailed NPCs to interact with to solve the mystery. It's a creepy follow-up on the Lovecraft short story "The Horror at Red Hook" with a lot of potential to tie in with The Labyrinth's Center for the Missing Child.
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While dealing with dark subject matter, this series of scenarios is not exploitative or gratuitous. It also provides a great framework for a long-running campaign. Starting in 2001 and ending in 2020, it is insert other scenarios to run a long campaign where the issues of the first scenario come back to haunt the Agents years later after they've been long forgotten.
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For all intents and purposes, this is an apocalyptic setting. Not post-apocalypse. No, it is happening right now. In progress. The gods are dead and their replacements are still getting their bearings and flexing their divine muscles. The world is in chaos and nobody understands just how bad things are going to get. The best hope is in the regular people who have gained a shard of destiny from the slain Fates.
It is really compelling stuff. The rest of the setting is jam-packed with fresh and innovative takes on a lot of common fantasy tropes. The art is as disturbing as the concepts. I love it to death. That said, the lore about the world is scattered throughout the book and you have to assemble it like a puzzle. I've read through it twice just to make sense of it. I feel it would really have benefitted from a succinct but detailed chapter on the world as a whole. Two cities are detailed, but the rest of the world is only hinted at so there can be a lack of context. Similarly, some content just isn't there (e.g. there are rules for how many languages you know but no list of languages or rules for gaining new ones). I feel like another editing pass from fresh eyes would have benefitted them.
The system is based on Zweihander but is a leaner implementation. Overall, I think it does a fine job. The ancestries, in particular, are rich and compelling. The Talents and Techniques are a neat mechanic and the Extinguish abilities of the latter make for awesome gaming moments. I also very much like how curses hijack Techniques, replacing them with new and disturbing abilities. The Patronage system is a good way to tie the characters to the world and its inhabitants and gets the focus away from counting coin. The Alignment system is the only bit whose adaption is lacking. Without Zweihander's core Corruption mechanic backing it up, the implementation is arbitrary and there is insufficient guidance on how to manage it when you are running the game.
Flaws aside, I still heartily recommend the book. It is a unique mix of fantasy and horror and I can't wait for future additions to the setting.
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Beautiful art, fantastic layout, and stellar game design! I have nothing but good things to say about this game.
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Unlike the uniformly excellent Spire of Quetzel, I found the adventures in this collection lacking, which was frustrating given their interesting concepts. I was really prepared to love the Crypt of the Mellified Mage but found myself frustrated by a map that doesn't match the text in half a dozen or more places. Also, its Events section is a simple list of encounters rather than the handful of plot ideas that other Forbidden Lands adventure sites offer. The second site, the Firing Pit of Llao-Yutuy, suffers the same sort of issues, except that this map has several locations misnumbered or unnumbered. The main issue is that the usual Events section does a lot to explain the agendas of the characters within and turn simple description into plot. Without that, the site is lifeless. Between that lack of guidance and the poor maps, these two sites aren't terribly usable. Temple of the Six-Limbed Lord, on the other hand, has a proper Events section and a functional map but suffers a bit from just being goofy. The site and its characters seem less like people and more like a series of jokes overstaying their welcome. I can't see myself seriously using this site in a campaign, which is a shame because there are some good ideas here and it is ambitious. The last "site" is more a toolkit to build your own dream-realm populated by aspects of a dead mage. There is no map (but locations are listed), the mage in question is meant to be designed by the gamemaster with the help of a series of tables, and the events and locations are mostly just a series of roleplaying prompts and suggestions. While I appreciate what the author is trying to do, I really would have preferred a pre-built scenario with details already supplied. The core books provide plenty of material for me to build my own sites, I bought this book to get places I could drop into a game with a minimum of work. Overall, I was disappointed. Most of the material I've purchased for Forbidden Lands has been top notch and this just isn't up to that standard.
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Given how closely this ties with the items and characters in the main book, it counts as a companion volume the further details its central characters and events. In addition, it presents a rough plotline centered around a multi-part elf MacGuffin that offers a lot of flexibility in how things progress. While I haven't run it yet, as a seasoned gamemaster I can easily see how the sites and events of the book flow naturally from the sort of adventuring the game is based on. There is less reliance on tropes like being hired or set on a quest by some important figure and more on the characters discovering things one piece at a time until they are swept up into events. I am really impressed with this kind of campaign design, it really serves well for "open world" gameplay. As for the plot itself, it ties to the history of the region and its key players and allows the characters to really influence the future of the realm. I'm looking forward to running this when my current campaign comes to an end.
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Four excellent adventure sites for the Forbidden Lands with different feels but all contain compelling characters, interesting concepts, and several different ways events can develop. In addition, despite having different authors, the format is consistent, which makes it very easy to use.
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Very pricey PDF for just the screen. For comparison, the just released RuneQuest screen is $14.99 and includes 160+ pages of additional reference material and four full-color maps. Also, I can't fathom why they wouldn't put all of the basic moves on it. The "Creating a Non-Player Character" panel is neat, but I'm not sure how much I'd actually reference it compared to the basic moves. Similarly, the Unique Moves list seems unnecessary, since these options are generally already spelled out for a specific creature, so it is only useful if you are creating new creatures on the fly. Again, not sure how much I'd use it. The other two panels are fine and what I'd expect on a screen.
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A fantastic update of a great game. The new mechanical additions go a long way to supporting the sort of games that this setting has always excelled at: desperate agents trying to save the world as their life, careers, and sanity slowly buckle under the strain. Everything you need to run an awesome Lovecraftian campaign is in these two books!
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These are very useful, but my main complaint is that all of the conditions related to ephemeral creatures (Urged, Open, Anchor) aren't included.
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