World of Arkara: Gazetteer of the Known World

World of Arkara

The World of Arkara is a new setting designed for the OSRIC game system which is basically saying it is designed for first edition Dungeons and Dragons. The twenty five page PDF is basically in three sections. The first part details the many gods of the setting, the second part gives an short overview of the areas of the world, and the third section has a new class and a few variant classes.

The book is focused on the setting but it does have some interesting variant rules. The first one is that each god grants additional spells not on the cleric spell list to their clerics. The intention here is to make the choice of god matter in a more mechanical way. Normally the choice of a god has no effect on a cleric mechanically as the options and abilities of the class are not deity dependant. I like the idea and it is simple to have in the game. It also gives a little more variety to the clerics of different gods.

The main focus of the book even though it is not a large section is the description of the lands themselves. I find it a bit odd that a book of a new setting has just four and a half pages describing the parts of the world. Normally, in good setting books I find myself wanting to learn more about the setting as I do here. However, unlike a lot of other books there is just a small section and it makes me wonder why this is. Charles Rice, the writer of the setting, does a good job as usual. The areas are a bit briefly described but interesting. Some of them are a little clichéd and unoriginal. A lot of settings when areas are just briefly looked at seem this way but when the details of the areas are shown the differences become more important then the basic likeness. Here with such a brief overview the possible creativity of the places is not seen. Having read different game books they have published I am sure that when (if?) the areas do get their own books they will be worth looking into.

The setting reminds me a bit of the old Greyhawk box set. It gives a brief blurb on the many parts of the world. It is designed for sandbox campaigns or campaigns with little to no over arching plots allowing the characters to go anywhere they choose. The map is a full page color map but it does not have a great amount of detail. It serves its purpose but a larger map with a key or even a black and white hex map would be helpful.

Of course there are also new class and class variants. The new class is the Crusader. It is like a Paladin but does not have the alignment restriction and the attribute requirements are more relaxed. They also do not have the spell casting. The Crusader gains levels a little slower then a fighter, can turn undead like a cleric a couple levels lower then themselves, and do get multiple attacks. It is a good class because it does fill the void of a more religious fighter character especially for non lawful and even non good deities. With the large amount of space in the book devoted to the many new gods the class is a good fit thematically in the book. The class variants are also of a martial nature. There is the ever popular anti paladin. I say that because in my experience with 1e D&D it is one of the most common house rules and new classes people create for their games. There is also the Bounty Hunter, Hunter, and Poacher. All three of them all variants of the Ranger class. They seem well done and serve a purpose if these type of characters are important to one’s game. One on hand I can see the important of a Bounty Hunter character type and it could be fun to play but on the other hand at least for my groups it has never been something we missed or felt we needed.

A nice feature the book does have that I would love to see from more settings is to explain the roles of the different classes play in the setting. It is some good information on how the classes are seen or how they fit into the setting. There is some good setting information hidden in this section so I suggest that people read all of it and not just the classes that the group is using. In the appendix the same thing is done for the classes that are in OSRIC Unearthed so one should read through this as well even if they are not using this particular product.

The last thing I am going to talk about is the Crime and Punishment section. A number of settings seem to kind of gloss over this but in Arkara it is well spelled out. There is a rank system and it does matter who the crime was committed against. People of a higher rank do have more privileges and have faster trials as well as getting an appeal. There are some interesting crimes on the books like failing to stay if you are a witness to a crime. There are only seventeen crimes on the books and a larger list would be interesting to see.

The world of Arkara is interesting but the book I feel spends to little time on the actual world. There is lot of information on the many gods and how classes fit in the setting; more so then on the setting itself. The variant class of the Crusader is good and useful and the variant classes look to be entertaining and fun as well. So, while pieces of the book are good as a whole it just does not deliver. The one saving grace might be the price. For three dollars it becomes more tempting for me to suggest take the risk on the book.