Posted on by Magnus Seter

FAL Review: The Giant’s Skull

Publisher Fiery Dragon. Released 2001. Format Softcover. Game system d20. Pages 40. Price $9.95.

Designer James Bell.

In this installment of Fanboy At Large, I cast my net back through the years, searching for the hidden gems of the vibrant and exciting beginnings of what will go down in history as the d20 era. After trawling a bit I hauled in my catch of the day; The Giant’s Skull, an adventure that clocks in at 40 pages, published in 2001 by Fiery Dragon. The flaming draconian was one of the first pioneers of the d20 market and brought to market several interesting and innovative adventures, but today they are mostly known for their counter collections. Although they do offer adventures as well through their web site, now that I took the time to check it out.

The Giant’s Skull is a remarkable adventure for one single reason: you get to play both sides of the story. Apart from that, not much stands out. Between the covers you find 40 pages of adventure material, split into two sections concerning The Giant’s Skull, a fairly powerful magic item. The text is reasonably well organised, but suffers from a confusing and somewhat back to front approach to explaining the plot. Apart from a very good cover, the art and maps are clear but nothing evocative. They do their thing, nothing more and nothing less.

The first thing that marks this adventure as something other than a run of the mill offering is that colour counters are included. The counters show pictures of the monsters and heroes of the adventure, and they can be cut out and used instead of regular minis for resolving combat. A great idea, and something Fiery Dragon later developed into a product line of its own.

The duality of the plot is of course the star of the show. The first time the players play the part of a gang of ogres bent on reclaiming The Giant’s Skull from the evil and nasty humans. The second round casts the players as their regular PCs tasked with retrieving the artifact from the evil and nasty ogres. Unfortunately the adventure in itself falls short of its true potential, and is basically an average dungeon romp. I feel that it is a wasted opportunity, but a GM who works with the format can spin the ogre versus humans conflict into something truly memorable.

Worth checking out, but expect to work with the story to bring out the adventure’s full potential!

Magnus

Posted on by Magnus Seter

FAL Review: Shackled City

Publisher Paizo. Released July 2005. Format Hardcover. Game system Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. Setting Core. Pages 416. Price $59.95.

Designers Jesse Decker, James Jacobs, Tito Leati, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins, Chris Thomasson. Cover artist Mark Cavotta. Interior artists Attila Adorjany, Tom Baxa, Peter Bergting, Matt Cavotta, Jeff Carlisle, Christine Choi, Stephen Daniele, Omar Dogon, Tom Fowler, Andrew Hou, Ben Huen, Eric Kim, Chuck Lukacs, Val Mayerick, Mark Nelson, Ramón Pérez, Chris Stevens, Jim Zubkavich. Cartography Chris West.

Spoiler altert! This review contains information about the plot of this campaign. If you are planning on playing Shackled City, don’t read any further!

Shackled City is a collection of adventures from the same company that publishes Dragon and Dungeon. Since they have a license from Wizards of the Coast this book is officially D&D. Also, given the ties and connections the people at Paizo have with WotC, and their history of working on the official game before and during the Paizo era, they have a good grasp of what makes or breaks the D&D expericence.

Shackled City was the first long adventure path that I read in Dungeon. As far as I know the term originated with the launch of third edition D&D, with the Sunless Citadel and following adventures. Paizo ran with that idea and published 11 connected adventures in Dungeon. They started at level 1 and worked their way up to level 20, all with an evolving plot line and within the same setting. The Shackled City adventure path ran in issues 97-98, 102, 104, 107, 109, 111 and 113-116. Now comes the hardcover, bringing these adventures together in one book. To play the campaign you need the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual. Other books such as the Planar Handbook or Manual of the Planes could come in handy, but are not at all necessary.

The book collects and expands somewhat on the original 11 adventures from Dungeon as well as adds a 12th to ease transition between adventure one and two. This all clocks in at 416 pages, presented in hardcover with full colour and comes with a fold-out map and 24 page map folder attached to the insides of the covers. All illustrations in the book are related to the campaign and includes action scenes as well as portraits of important NPCs and monsters. Appendices describe the major villains in detail and present new monsters. It is also important to note that even though the main gist of Shackled City is adventures, there is plenty of information on Cauldron and its people as well, which is important given that the campaign mostly takes part there.

The price tag might feel a bit steep but considering the amount of information and the high quality presentation, as well as the hours and hours of gaming to be had from this path, 59.95 is a reasonable price. The book feels heavy and solid, and the physical aspects of it are immaculate.

Ok, but what about the plot? The shackled city is called Cauldron. It has been chosen by evil forces as the site where a gang of villains are to open a dimension gate to Carceri. Obviously, this is not good for the people of Cauldron. The reason for choosing this city is because it is situated in a dormant volcanoe and has various links to the planes through some of its inhabitants. This is of course all unknown to the PCs as the campaign kicks off, and as the action unfolds this is revealed to be only a part of a bigger plan to free a powerful captured demon prince. There are plenty of action to be had, but also investigation and interaction with various NPCs. The PCs end up serving the people of Cauldron and must deal with their politicians as well as the monsters bent on their destruction. The consequences for failure are dire; Cauldron and its people are devoured in a storm of flames and brimstone.

Shackled City has quickly become one of the famous shared experiences of players of third edition D&D, along with the Sunless Citadel and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. And it is easily one of the best roleplaying products I have ever seen for any system. It has its ups and downs, but the downs are mostly inconsequential editing errors. Shackled City rivals my long standing favourites Masks of Nyarlathotep (for Call of Cthulhu) and The Enemy Within (for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) for the top spot of best campaign ever. While it won’t touch Masks of Nyarlathotep, it is a more consistent experience than The Enemy Within, which floundered after the first three installments. I am convinced that this adventure path will be a true classic for D&D, and also a milestone in the history of our hobby.

Magnus

Posted on by Magnus Seter

FAL Review: Elizabeth

Genres: Historical drama, Romance, Suspence. Main cast: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Fiennes, Richard Attenborough, Kathy Burke. Director: Shekhar Kapur. Writer: Michael Hurst. Length: 119 minutes.

Elizabeth is a visual feast, and a tour de force of convincing acting from many of our times greatest stars. Fantasy fans and roleplayers will recognise Cate Blanchett from The Lord of the Rings and Geoffrey Rush from Pirates of the Caribbean, to mention just a few. Fans of football will recognise Eric Cantona as a french emissary … and cringe at his awkward and stilted acting.

The events of the movie begin in 1554. The reigning queen of England is Mary Tudor, but she is done in by cancer pretty quickly, putting Elizabeth previously declared a traitor, on the throne. What follows is a very compressed version of historical events. The story of Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne and her struggles to maintain it along with her own independance moves at a fair clip, and the plots and schemes to put her down add an interesting edge to the events unfolding in front of our eyes. It is a straight historical movie, no elves, goblins or dragons in sight and no overenthusiastic sword fights that stretch on forever and ever, as is too often the norm today. And that is refreshing. The focus on the people and their interactions fire up my brain with ideas for my games, and should provide many players with plenty of ideas for hamming it up at the table.

So is there anything to lament? Well, yes. I mentioned Eric Cantona, who is a blight on the acting profession. And if you’re a fan of historical accuracy, chances are that you will be disappointed. There are several deviations from actual events, several of them for no readily apparent reason apart from fitting some events into the movie a bit easier, such as the death of Mary, Queen of Scots. And even if I myself didn’t notice it, I have read that the costumes, while beautiful, are sometimes wildly anachronistic as is the dialogue which has a much more uncouth and modern tonality than that which evidently was used during the actual time period.

Still, to me Elizabeth opened up a deep well of interesting history. I looked up several of the people portrayed in the movie, and found an abundance of inspirational material. Just take a look at the Wikipedia entry of Sir Francis Walsingham! If you don’t come away from that page without your mind brimming with ideas, I don’t know what would enthuse you.

To sum it up, I loved this movie. As some of you know, and every one else will learn after reading my reviews, I’m a sucker for great visuals and this movie delivers in spades. Its tonality fits WFRP better than D&D, but I believe that Game Masters and players of both games will find great inspiration for plots and characters among the multitude offered.

Magnus