Seas of Blood: Fantasy on the High Seas

Mongoose are rapidly becoming one of the most prolific d20 publishers around, churning out books at a rate of one or two each month and with an impressive product schedule lined up for 2002.

Seas of Blood is, as you can probably imagine, a nautical sourcebook. A nautical fantasy sourcebook, because they take care to include the fantastic elements that make D&D...well, D&D. This one is an impressive 128 pages, and feels crammed with information. I'l tell you in advance - this is a good book - I'm finding it increasingly difficult to fault Mongoose these days (although I'll try my best!)

So, what's inside?

Men of the Sea

This chapter begins with a brief look at how the standard classes can be used in a nautical setting, and follows up with a couple of new skills: Knowledge (Seamanship) and Profession (Navigator). Fairly standard stuff, exactly what you'd expect. More interesting are the new core class (Sailor) and the three new prestige classes (Buccaneer, Reaver and Navigator-Wizard). While none of these are particularly innovative, they certainly do what it says on the tin. The Buccaneer, essentially a sea-based rogue, is the most interesting of these, with abilities such as Witty Repartee and Sabotage. The Reaver is a nautical combatant, and has abilities such as Inspire Crew and Instil Fear, while the Navigator-Wizard has various seamanship and weather-prediction skills. This last class strikes me as more suited to NPCs.

This is followed with a couple of pages on hiring crews, stats for various crewmen (Ruffian, Hardy Seaman, Veteran Seadog etc.) and mercenaries (Archers, Shock Troops, Berserkers).

13 feats and two nipples(!) conclude this chapter. The feats range from the expected Strong Swimmer and Sea Legs to the more generic Bargain and Eagle Eyes. This is a good section, and Mongoose have covered the bases well.

Nautical Travel

A thorough chapter covering navigation, movement at sea, weather and other nautical stalwarts such as starvation, disease and mutiny. There's not much I can say about this chapter - if you need rules to govern sea travel, these are them. Reasonably simple but comprehensive.

Battles on the High Seas

Ah, the juicy stuff. This chapter introduces combat between ships. Ships have statistics such as Structure Dice, Hardness, Speed, Turn Rate etc. as well as details on weapons and crew. Combat is much like standard D&D combat - 6 second rounds, initiative rolls) and the ability to perform ranged attacks or close-combat (Ram or Boarding) attacks. Four fire arcs determine the facing of various shipboard weaponry. The chapter mentions that miniatures are not really needed unless entire fleets ar ebeing used, but I imagine that great fun can be had with the use of miniatures.

Crew Combat introduces Mongoose' Open Mass Combat System, which will apparently feature in more detail in The Quintessential Fighter. Despite its clunky name, the system seems streamlined and easy to use. The crew itself has a stat block (in the same way that a single monster would have) and is treated as a single entity. Morale figures into the equation, as do the captain's charisma modifier and relevant feats. PC and important NPC actions are treated separately and can affect the morale of the rest of the crew. There are even guidelines for allowing the crew as a whole to gain experience.

I haven't tested the rules, but they seem pretty useable. I'm certainly curious as to how the full OMCS will pan out (yes, Mongoose' marketing strategy worked!)

Ships of the Sea

This is essentially a Monster Manual of ships, from fishing boats and barges, to gnomish submarines, trading ships, frigates, galleons, battleships, deadnoughts and the Dwarven Floating Fortress. 21 ships in all, of various sizes and from various races.

Then come guidelines on creating new ships, including cursed ships, ghost ships, skyships (hovercraft, really) and details on ship-mounted weaponry and equipment. A fairly utilitarian chapter, and pretty comprehensive.

Ship Deck Plans

A few pages of deck plans with permission to photocopy. These an also be downloaded from Mongoose' website. The plans in the book aren't actually to miniature scale, so you'll need to enlarge them.

Sea Magic

This, as you can guess, is a list of spells and magic items suitable for nautical campaigns. The spells have a couple of themes - those for sailing (Control Currents, Predict Weather, Pacify Storm) and those for fighting (Enchant Ram, Hold Ship, Shellskin, Tsunami). Also included are some other elements such as Teleport Ship and Skyship (turns it into a hovercraft).

The magical items include a few figureheads, magic shipboard wepaonry and a couple of extras such as a magical spyglass and a wyrdstone which allows the ship to fly. A page on intelligent ships follows (Knight Rider by boat...)

This chapter is, as are the others, sturdy. As with previous chapters, it does'nt leap out at you, but it certainly does the job well.

Trade & Commerce

Prices and availabilty of goods, rules for opposed profession (merchant) checks to get a good price (with bluff and sense motive synergy bonuses), rules for fishing at sea... I'm not sure how interesting this will be to the average D&D player, but if you want to really run a nautical campaign with this level of detail, the rules are there for you. Actually, they are fairly simple and easy to use.

Underwater Adventuring

Remember all those sections in various DMGs about combat in unusual envireonments? Well, this is one of them. Exactly what you'd expect - rules on breathing, sight and sound underwater, underwater spellcasting (yay! electricty based spells!). It pretty much retreads old ground, and if you have the 2nd edition DMG you probably won't gain much from this chapter. If you don't have it, the chapter is useful and at least it's 3E (sorry, d20!).

Monsters of the Deep

11 monsters, including one new PC race. The monsters include stalwarts such as the Leviathan, killer underwater plants, undead, a dragon-like Sea Drake, and the new race, the Talorani. The Talorani are an aquatic humanoid race, hairless with webbed hands and telepathic communication. They can change shape into a single type of aquatic creature. They swim quite well. They're the Dimernesti (or Dargonesti, I can never remember which is which) from Dragonlance.

Campaigns on the High Seas

This is 4 pages discussing how to run a nautical game, from single voyages to entire campaigns. A few adventure hooks (not bad ones at that) finish off the chapter. To be honest, if you've read this far, you're already thinking about various possibilities - I was, and I've never considered a nautical camapign before.

Appendices

In the appendices, you get a ship record sheet, a crew roster sheet, a nautical glossary (useful) and a rules summary which repeats versious tables and charts from earlier in the book. And an index. Of course.

In Summary

This one is a hard book to judge. There's no doubt in my mind that its good. My problem lies with a lack of originality balanced by its general comprehensiveness. There was nothing really new there, or particularly outstanding - but then, there was nothing missing or done badly. It seems fairly defintive to me, when it comes to running a nautical campaign. if you do want to do so, then buy this book.

Mongoose are a pretty solid bet. After a slightly shaky start woith their early Slayer's Guides, I feel that they are turning into a reliable and sturdy publisher. Nothing flashy, but you can tell they'll be here for a while and when they do something, they actually get the job done. They're carpenters, not rock stars. And they get a solid 4/5 with this one. If you are intent on running an entire nautical camapign, then you can raise that to a 5/5.

A good stab at the nautical rules but lacking the flavour and panache of previous Mongoose products.

Of all the books put out so far by the Mongoose publishing this is the one that has probably the most usefull rules. See travel and combat is something that happends in almost every campaign and having detailed yet simple rules for handling this situations is a good thing.
Three principal areas for which new rules are given are:
-Regular travel by ships including assembling and maintaining ships
-Combat at sea, which covers both "ship vs ship" and "crew vs crew" scenarios
-Trade

The best of the three and generaly the best part of the book is the one that deals with the combat. Both sets of rules are remarkably simple avoiding the pitfall of turning a mass battle within an RPG into a wargame and yet thet convey excellently the spirit of the nautical combat. Balance between the importance of PC's actions and the combat readiness of their ship and crew seems to be maintained and the interaction between the two is well thought of and interesting. As a sample of the upcoming mass combat systems this rules are leaving me craving for more. I am also very happy that Skulls and Bones - a game I am quite looking forward will be using this rules.

Ship travel section is simple and to the point but presents nothing that a DM would not be able to improvise on without much effort. Having the systematic rules that are not difficult to remeber is, however, usefull and I guess that this ones are going to be as good as any others that cover the same ground.

While I was very happy that rules on Trade were included at all I found them a bit too short and bland. One great feature of Mongoose books so far was that they succeded in making the simple rules that awakened some of the powerfull fantasy concepts within the DnD framework. While seafaring trade is definitively such a concept the rules from this book somehow fail to give it a flair that it deserves. I would be realy happy if the expanded version of these rules were to make its way into the "Quintesential Rogue" but it seems that for the good trade rules we will have to wait till the kingdom-running book is finally made by someone.

To capitalize on this three sets of new rules adittional feats, spells and classes are introduced.

Two prestige classes, Bucaneer and Reaver are, at first glance at least, balanced. Bucaneer is interesting and fills sort of a niche between rogue and a fighter. I am not too big on prestige classes so it leaves me unimpressed. Reaver strikes me as entirely unnecessary being essentialy a seaborn fighter. As a replacement for this class I simply suggest the carefull selection of the feats for a regular fighter.

Sailor class (I believe that it is supposed to be an NPC class) is something between warior and a (rather specialized) expert. I am still somewhat unsure as to how i feel about the NPC classes but untill I decide i will probably be using this one as it does capture the sailing men capabilites.

Feats in the book are usefull in the nautical context but are largely nothing that your characters will be taking if the sea plays only a minorto moderate role in a campaign. They are largely designed to give bonusses to the stuff coverd by the new rules. one or two seem somewhat unbalanced (Amazing Agility) but overall they are Ok if a bit geared towards the NPC's.

Just like the feats, spells and magic items are closely tied in to the new rules. Nothing spectacular here either but they do the job.

Nice touch (in the best spirit of the breathing life to the great fantasy sterotypes) are cursed ship, undead hulk and the ghost ship templates that cover this three rather interesting phenomena.

Ship deck plans (of which there is a lot) are another boring but extremly usefull bit in this book.

There are also sections on new aquatic monsters and on underwater adventuring. They seem OK but as I do not anticipate using them much I have only glanced them over.

Besides the rather skimpy trade rules my biggest objection to this book is that so far it has been the first Mongoose book that I have found almost no pleasure to read. Slayers guides, and particularily Encyclopaedia Arcane, have been true gems among the RPG material in that they were actualy excellent prose. Prose in "Seas of Blood" descends to almost WotC levels in being patronising and dry. The begining of the book is particularily bad on this count with sweeping generalizations and hyperbole making it sound more like an advertisment "look how cool the sea is" then the sourcebook. Fortunately, towards the second half of the book, Mr. Sprange drops this rather contrieved style and reverts to his more natural and much better writing.

Artwork is another fairly low point of the book. About the half of the illustrations, while vaguely nautical in character, have little or nothing to do with the subject matter next to which they are located which I find somewhat distracting. I also find the use of computer generated images rather bad choice as they are almost invariably poorer in the feel and the atmosphere then the hand drawn ones. This holds particularily true for the babe-art, I may be speaking only for myself but I find very few thing as unatractive (or unsexy) as a polygon-drawn naked female (such as one on page 18). Of the remaining illustrations there are few gems but most are average or bellow. The schematics, however, that illustrate the ships deckplans and the new equipment are done very well.

Overall, despite some misgivings I recomend the book to those who are interested in the nautical rules. It has many strong points and I believe that somewhat negative tone of my review has more to do with my, by now rather inflated, expectations of Mongoose products then with some deep failings of the book. On the more fine tuned scale it would be getting 3.7 out of 5 from me.

Seas of Blood is the largest, meatiest most aspiring tome from the Mongoose crew to date.

Seas of Blood: Fantasy on the High Seas
by Matthew Sprange
Cover art by Anne Stokes
$19.95 128-page d20 sourcebook for DM`s and players alike.
ISBN: 1-903980-08-9

Overview: Mongoose Publishing continues to prove itself a very reliable, gamer-oriented company. They consistently deliver quality entertainment. They show no signs of slowing and they continue to somehow get better at the same time. Seas of Blood is the definitive guide on roleplaying d20 Dungeons and Dragons on the high seas. If you have a campaign that will touch on seagoing adventure beyond “you take a ship and get there”, then this book is all you need to introduce the danger of the deep to your campaign world. It also opens up new doors for your campaign by setting the stage for their various “Ships of…” series and the Slayers Guide to Sahuagin, everything a group needs for a nautical campaign.

Review: Seas of Blood opens with an introduction that touches on something so brief but so important it`s worth mentioning here as well. Seas of Blood is a FANTASY supplement. Assuming that a world of dwarves, elves, hobgoblins, spells and divine magic does not effect shipping is absurd, and so Seas of Blood is fully integrated with historical base ships and a host of fantasy-oriented ships that never existed, but would have been cool if they did. Considering way too many sea supplements and adventures for D&D in the past have never touched on this, it`s exciting to see it finally added to game play. Also the book was set up to allow you to integrate the rules fully, into what ever D&D game you are running anywhere, with little or no adjustments or changes. This too, is very important to many.

Next comes Men of the Sea. This chapter sets up ways for all existing character classes to feel at home on board a ship. A sidebar introduces us to a noble design concept: the sea druid. Instead of clogging us with a whole new class, it shows how some of the druids` otherwise straight woodland abilities can be replaced with seagoing talents to show their nautical natures. Following some more great design technique, we`re introduced to additions and further explanations to the Knowledge: Seamanship and Profession: Navigator skills (as opposed to new skills elsewhere). With just minimal rank in these skills characters can feel right at home on a ship. Next comes the Sailor NPC class (in the vein of the Expert, Commoner, etc. NPC classes from the DMG) and the Buccaneer (swashbuckler extraordinaire), Reaver (seagoing combat specialist) and Navigator-Wizard Prestige Classes. These are all very well balanced and offer strong direction to nautical characters with a super bunch of related, useful abilities. (Playtesting showed their true strength, these aren`t fluff, friends). Understanding the new D&D to the fullest, it`s explained how there are no “pirate” or “privateer” classes within. These things are more based off of role than anything else, either you are a pirate or you`re not. A sailor gone bad, a fighter with knowledge: seamanship or an evil wizard who plunders other ships is a pirate! Next up is a small section on hiring different crews. Each grade (green seaman, old salt, etc.) is fully detailed with a stat block, plus notes on their ilk, availability, and costs to hire! Next up is a helping of nautical feats, 13 in all including Amazing Agility, Bargain, Duck and Weave, Eagle Eyes, Improved Underwater Combat, Inspire Loyalty, Master Helmsman, Rapid Loader, Sea Legs, Steady Captain, Superior Helmsman, Strong Swimmer, & Underwater Combat! Again, these are strong, useful feats that will surely prove useful in defining a superior seagoing expert and talent, but not necessary for characters to enjoy a shipboard adventure.

The Nautical Travel chapter next covers all matter of the mighty voyage itself. Full easy-to-manage yet accurate rules and discussion for figuring navigation, the different locomotion available on board, wind and weather, visibility, seaworthiness, preparing for long, long journeys, and even how to handle mutiny are fully laid out so they fit in seamlessly, not adding page after page of charts you`ll never consult during play!

Next comes Battle on the High Seas, the combat chapter! First is detailed and described in full the new Ship Stat Block developed for the d20 system. Similar to Monster Manual blocks for familiarity, each ship is fully defined using familiar d20 terms like speed, hardness and armor class, and seamlessly introduces us to the likes of maneuverability, structure points and special ship qualities, as well as weaponry and cargo stats. Anyone familiar with d20 will feel right at home, and reading the entries is almost second nature. It`s important to remember during all this, that playing with miniatures is all fine and dandy (and darn good-looking!) but not required for play. This is not a miniatures war game, but a way to play out ship battles in a role-playing environment. That said, folks will be surprised to find out how well the rules do hold up to multiple ship combats! A ship`s maneuverability rating can quickly show you it`s design and provides bonuses to crew actions. Turn Rate shows simply how far a ship must travel before changing heading. Weapons such as ballistae, catapults (and, optionally, cannons) are fully detailed with firing arcs and stats, showing damage cause in both hit points for crew and structure points for ship-to-ship combat. It`s important to note that for completeness, the rules assume a non-gunpowder environment, but fully support rules for cannons and gunpowder for campaigns of that design). Sinking, ramming, crew damage, onboard fires and the like are all fully covered. Next comes a good look into Mongoose`s new Open Mass Combat System as they detail how to resolve full-scale crew battles! As I later described to another group, the system almost operates on two different scales. The player characters are operating on one level, fighting the monsters and important adversaries on the enemy vessel, while all around them the battle is raging between the ship`s crews...not just described by the DM but able to be fully played out, taking into consideration equipment, talent, and luck, plus PC interaction and skills! As opposed to dozens of die rolls and ridiculous calculations, a moment of figuring a die roll or three will accurately portray a round of mighty mass combat adding tension and casualty to the day! Playtested rigorously, we found this to be an excellent resolution to high seas combat, and worked into our games very smoothly. What about multiple crew combats? Characters vs. enemy crews? Boarding actions? Morale? It`s all here folks, you`d be hard-pressed to find your favorite details not included here.

Next up is the Ships of the Sea chapter, the wonderfully-realized stat block system of detailing all kinds of vessels with all the data and explanation needed to run them in a moment`s notice. Each ship has an accompanying beautiful image of art to show it off. Over 20 ships are fully detailed, from the rowboat to cargo frigates, elven corsairs, hobgoblin raiders, trading ships, gnomish submersibles, war galleons, battleships, dreadnaughts, and the awesome dwarven “Foundation of the World” floating fortress! You have to see these to fully appreciate them! Next is a section that our whole table really thought was fantastic: ship templates. You can apply a cursed ship, death hulk, ghost, or skyship template to any of the existing designs to enter new realms and expand the rules base. Towards the end all the types of shipboard weaponry is included, including trebuchets, fire projectors, ship screws, rams and other exotic items, with rules for equipping them to customize your ship. New armor, equipment and magic items to add to your vessel means very quickly a hundred different designs can be put together by aspiring DM`s and players! And then, going above and beyond the call of duty, Mongoose provides us with full deck plans, scaled, of every ship style in the book. This answers all questions of scale, measurements, and deck layout. Even better, they promise that you`ll be able to download miniature ship plans from their website to print to scale for miniature use! It doesn`t get any better than that.

The next chapter is Sea Magic, filled with spells to further your seagoing spellcasters! Over 20 new spells running the gamut of all levels for wizards, sorcerers, clerics and druids. The obviously useful Delay Sinking and Enchant Ram spells have immediate use, while spells are also laid out for high-level casters to create a Skyship, Teleport an entire vessel, or create a Tsunami! The spells are professionally done and fit within d20 framework. With this is a host of new nautical magic items, all with full item creation stats. Figurehead of luck, magic ballistae, and the Staff of the Deep are some offerings, and yes, even Intelligent Ships are covered in detail.

The next chapter is Trade and Commerce. This is more welcomed than would first be imagined. As it is, there`s barely any campaign I`ve run that hasn`t touched upon merchant trade details. My memories hearken to a one-page article way back in the early teen numbers of Dragon Magazine that tried to simulate simple sea trade that we`d been using. What a welcome this section is! The Profession: Merchant skill is more detailed, and a huge Master Trade Table lists scores of goods, mundane and magical, that are likely to be of interest to seagoing merchants is provided. Pricing factors such as war, local crop failure, and types of market locations are used. The goods table is very exhaustive but DM`s are encouraged to add to the table to reflect their own campaign, and soon players will have a fantastic choice of business to venture into. At the same time, this system is accurate but not overly complicated, so it`s FUN. Next up is a discussion on bounty from the sea itself, all about fishing, and those making their livelihood from that trade.

Not just dealing with topside games, the next chapter deals with Underwater Adventuring. Sight, sound, communication, movement, and depth questions players will have are all covered, followed by a special look at underwater combat with rules that differ slightly from the “official” WotC simple ruling presented by Skip Williams in the recent adventure Deep Horizon. These are much more thought out and represent the true difficulties involved in combat including special looks at underwater spellcasting and the effect different types of spells can have on that environment.

Need something to fight? Sure! And so next up is the Monsters of the Deep section, an offering of some great new sea creatures to add adventure to any sea journey. Ten new imaginative creatures are fully detailed, all with accurate stats and good purpose. The Sea Giant details a race of aquatic giants to haunt the depths, the Grey Lady is a dangerous spirit who lost a lover to the sea, and the Leviathan and Sea Drake will challenge the most able adventurers. As with other sections of the book, it`s complete, gives you plenty to work with, and yet you still want more!

The book wraps up with a very helpful section on Seagoing Campaigns, including integrating the new rules into your ongoing campaign. As detailed in the beginning, the book works in new rules that nevertheless feel very d20 based, helping players pick them up easily and get playing. Discussion on the types of campaign dangers you can set up as well as a number of cool adventure hooks to spurn a DM`s imagination are given.

Finally we get the trademark Mongoose designers notes, which go a long way toward answering many gamer questions and concerns, including the decision to include “oversized, impossible ships” in a world where elves and dragons and fireballs abound: perfectly reasonable and adventure-ready! The wise decision to not include chart after chart of useless game applications and the friendly way of introducing new Knowledge and Profession skills, instead of a bunch of new skills that don`t fit into the d20 system well. Next comes a ship record sheet to track the details of your beloved vessel, a very nice collection of the most-used charts all gathered together for ease during play, and a very welcome, very accurate INDEX to quickly find rulings during the game!

This is easily one of the most complete, exciting d20 books from any publisher. As if all the content didn`t speak for itself, editing is excellent, layout is beautiful and easy to navigate, and their interior artwork continues to focus on the mood of the book and is both stylish and good. The cover art is attention-grabbing and really helps set the mood. Charts are clearly called out, sections well labeled, and the gray bars throughout offer story-based discussion on the game world through the prose of fictional seagoing folks that both lend atmosphere and are just plain fun to read! Playtesting showed us time and again the excellent simple but accurate design works, and allows the DM and players to work with and expand it, not restricting them! There`s no better resources recommended for D&D players looking to add any aspect of seagoing adventure to their campaigns.

It doesn`t hurt to tell you my group playtested this book. We`d been playing a monthly full-fledged maritime campaign ever since we were playtesting 3E, and we had a LOT of issues to be addressed. This book met and exceeded all of our expectations when it was done.

-Jeff Ibach

From the lowly deckhand of a fat merchant ship to the deadly pirate captain, the men of the sea are an eclectic mix but all have a profound respect for the ocean on which they ply their skills. It is said that one man of the sea may recognise another immediately and without words, from the other side of a smoke-filled tavern, for each shares a bond that links them together in a way those land-bound can never truly understand. To undertake a life on the high seas is, many might say, a vocation and there are veterans of the waves who swear by this – by signing on with a crew of whatever vessel, a man is making a life altering choice and choosing to pursue his greatest dreams as he hears the call of the sea.

For my personal campaign this sourcebook allready has the status: Core Rulebook IV.
It is one of the few D20 books I bought, got home with and read it in one evening from the first to the last page.
The most interesting part for someone with a lack of naval fantasy are the ship types described inside. Even though some of them are (to say it nicely) at least weird, most are easily adapted to ones personal campaign.
There are plenty of new rules, spells, and PC's as well as NPC classes and sample crewmen statistic's.
It's a pearl in the fast growing amount of published D20 sourcebooks. And it's one that is presented, written and pressed with great love for the game.

Seas of Blood

And they're off!

Many publishers are putting out some sort of naval rules of the d20 system, including Living Imagination's Twin Crowns and FFG's Seafarer's Handbook. This is somewhat unusual, because most publishers are a little gun shy in putting out a product that they know will get direct competition. Apparently some publishers think that there is a sizable demand for naval books, or that their product is going to win out.

Seas of Blood is Mongoose Publishing's contribution to this fray. Seas of Blood is a d20 system rules supplement adding classes, feats, and other rules for bringing naval adventures to your d20 system fantasy game.

A First Look

Seas of Blood is a 128 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.95 US. The cover is decorated by a wrap around picture of a fantasy naval battle, with a longship crewed by some sort of gruff looking humanoids.

The interior is black-and-white. The interior illustrations are generally good. I especially like the work of Danilo Moretti, who I am told also did the ship diagrams (his pictures are those signed with the caligraphic symbol that looks like a circle over a “U” and a line.) Some of the illustrations are computer-generated graphics by Luis Corte Real (who did many of the pieces in Mongoose's Gladiator: Sands of Death.) The textures in his illustrations look great, but when he does people, the faces just look wrong.

The interior text density is fairly good, with a compact but readable typeface. Combined with the price per page, which is good for d20 publishers (and much better than the comparably priced WotC classbooks), this delivers a good value based on cost and content density alone.

A Deeper Look

As with prior Mongoose products, Seas of Blood is divided into topical sections too small to be called chapters. Also following the lead of other Mongoose books, there are short stories and flavor text interspersed throughout in shaded boxes.

Men of the Sea

After a somewhat long introduction, the first section is entitled Men of the Sea, and covers adaptations and additions of character creation rules. The first section discusses the existing classes. Most of this part is devoted to discussing the role of the existing character classes in a nautical campaign. However, there are a few new rules. Most prominently, there is a large sidebar showing how to create nautical variant of the druid, the sea druid. The sea druid receives a few abilities replacing those in the PHB for their landbound peers. For example, a nautical druid receives speed of the fish (increases swimming speed) in the place of woodland stride and salt synthesis (allows them to subsist on salt water for short periods) instead of trackless step.

The chapter introduces two new skill specialties, knowledge (seamanship) and profession (navigator). Where I can see the purpose of both of these, I wonder why they felt the need to cast seamanship as a knowledge skill, especially when one of the basic skill specialties listed in the PHB is profession (sailor). Indeed, they state that ranks in the two skills are equivalent, and I am at a loss to why they would want to make it a knowledge skill at all when it seems like a menial profession that a commoner could have, and makes much more sense in the hands of classes like rogue than wizards and bards.

Three new classes are introduced in the chapter, one base NPC-caliber class and three prestige classes. The base class is sailor, and only five levels are listed for it (not unlike the slave class in Mongoose's Gladiator: Sands of Death). Though one can make sailors with the existing expert and commoner NPC classes, this class would make a nice replacement in a heavily nautical campaign as its hit dice, attack bonus, and skill selection are more appropriate to what you would expect from a rough-and-tumble hardworking sailor.

The prestige classes are buccaneer, reaver, and navigator-wizard. The buccaneer is a deft, dextrous, witty swashbuckling sailor with abilities that focus on mobility in a shipboard environment. The reaver is a more combat-oriented seaman type, with class abilities that revelve around shipboard combat and leadership. The navigator-wizard is an arcane spellcaster that receives a variety of abilities that improves their ability to navigate and improve the movement capability of the ship.

A short discussion is engendered on piracy, with some worthwhile thoughts on how such seaborne scoundrels can be used (or played) in the game. Strangely, the author muses of the absence of any sort of pirate class (funny, just what is a buccaneer again?)

The section gives guidelines on hiring a crew, and gives sample statistic blocks and typical fees for a variety of crewmen and mercenaries.

While the selection of new classes is rather thin (and understandably so), the section does provide a number of new feats that should help customize characters to the role of a sailor, captain, or pirate rather easily. Most of them are fairly reasonable and useful, but some are problematic.

Amazing agility lets the character take 20 on balance checks that would not normally allow this. This is nonsensical to me, as "taking 20" is a mechanical convenience designed to simulate being able to retry tasks without consequence. Essentially what this feat boils down to is allowing the character to take 10 regardless of conditions, plus granting a +10 skill modifier while doing so. While this didn't strike me as a game break, I do think that gives you more or a benefit towards your skills than feats were meant to give.

Bargain gives you a +4 bonus to profession (merchant) checks when buying or selling goods. My only quibble here is that diplomacy checks are typically used for such tasks, but the intent is good.

Duck and weave is pretty slick mechanically: you are always granted cover against range attacks while onboard a ship. Sea legs gives bonuses to a variety of skills while onboard ship. Strong swimmer improves your swim speed on a successful swim check (though it specifies no DC).

Nautical Travel

The next section covers the basic mechanics needed for nautical travel. It provides rules for handling navigation of ships, getting lost at sea, movement rates at sea, handling weather, seaworthiness, visibility, long voyages, and handling mutiny. The rules provide good coverage of the types of situations that may arise in a nautical campaign, and most of the rules are fairly straightforward and use the existing d20 system conventions where possible.

Battles on the High Seas

The Battles on the High Seas section covers shipboard and ship-to-ship combat in the d20 system. The section begins with a classification system and statistics layout for ships.

A scale similar to the one used by the d20 system rules is used for ships. However, the ship scale is somewhat larger that the scale used for creatures, but there is a correspondence. For example, a rowboat would be the size of a large creature. However, using the Seas of Blood scale, it is a tiny ship.

Ships are given types and subtypes that help define their characteristics. Again, this somewhat parallels the d20 system method for creatures. The Seas of Blood system defines damage capacity of a ship in terms of structure points, parallel to hit points. Structure dice rolls determine a ship's structure points. The ship type determines a ship's structure dice; warships have a larger structure dice type than merchantmen. Other characteristics of a ship include speed, hardness and manoeuvrability (that's maneuverability to us yanks.)

Essentially, this sets you up to use the existing d20 system combat rules, with a few tweaks outlined herein, to resolve such combats. Special circumstances are covered such as ramming, ship movement, boarding, fires, and sinking ships.

After ship-to-ship combat is dealt with, the section turns its attention to crew combat. The rules for crew combat are an outtake from the Open Mass Combat System detailed in Mongoose's The Quintessential Fighter. Basically, the crew combat system works by treating a unit of men (or other creatures) as an entity and assigning them statistics, and then using a system based on the d20 combat system to resolve combat. Units track damage in terms of unit hit points (which are approximately equivalent to the hit dice of the whole unit) but otherwise are treated similarly to a creature in the d20 system. The crew combat system includes a few details pertinent to naval combat that are not in OMCS, but OMCS has other factors important to army combat.

For more details on OMCS, see my review of The Quintessential Fighter.

Ships of the Sea

Now that a method has been set forth to describe ships in the d20 system, we are ready for a small selection of ships for use in the game. The Ships of the Sea section details a variety of sea vessels, from the tiny rowboat to the colossal dwarven floating fortress. Each ship has a side view illustration. At the end of the chapter are ship deck plans for each, though only the weatherdecks are shown. The illustrations do have a standard d20 system scale 5' grid, but you will have to blow up your copies if you wish to use them with miniatures.

In a stroke of creative genius, the author was not content to stop there with the similarity to creature stat blocks. The Ships of the Sea section includes a number of templates that can be applied to ships, allowing you to make any ship into a cursed ship, death hulk, ghost ship, or skyship.

Finally, the section includes a variety of shipboard equipment, including shipboard weapons.

Sea Magic

This section introduces a variety of new spells for use in your seafaring fantasy campaign. This includes some potentially useful spells such as control currents, delay sinking, distill water, predict weather, teleport ship, and tsunami.

Then the section discusses new shipboard magic, such as a selection of magic figureheads for your ship, enchanted shipboard weapons, as well as items like a spyglass of farseeing and the staff of the deep. Finally, it is possible that a ship itself may become enchanted as an intelligent ship, which gains mental statistics and abilities in a similar fashion to other enchanted magic items.

Trade and Commerce

If you are seeking ways to gold and glory other than by hewing the local dragon to bits and taking its treasure, then the trade and commerce rules may appeal to you. As with real life, the main way to make money is to buy low and sell high. A variety of goods are listed, and the character with a modicum of skill can usually get them at a low price and sell them at a higher price.

Though the rules pay some attention to the conditions in the markets, it seems like there could have been more attention paid to the concept that some places have surpluses of some types of goods and deficits of others in pricing a product. Then you could get some use out of all of those old FR maps with the local goods markings on them!

The chapter also has a few rules on making a few gold pieces on fishing. The rules are well enough done, but I seriously doubt they will see much use. At least roleplaying fishermen isn't my idea of fun. But then, perhaps you had to grow up with my dad to understand that…

Underwater Adventuring

Adventuring underwater is a topic that could fill another book this size, but lets face it: if you have a wild and wooly seafaring campaign, you are going to end up in the water at some point. The rules section on underwater adventuring is brief, but in that short space it does give the topic some good coverage. The section discusses factors that affect characters underwater such as vision, breathing (or lack thereof), water pressure, and combat in a fluid environment. As well, rules are provided for using magic underwater, including effects on several categories of spells and a few notes on specific spells.

Monsters of the Deep

This section introduces a variety of new creatures for aquatic adventuring. The chapter has a great variety of creatures, with a seeming desire to hit as many of the d20 system creature types as possible. Indeed there is a giant (the sea giant), an outsider (the fisherman, a dangerous evil outsider encountered amongst the waves), an oozes (the killer wave), an undead, a plant, a humanoid, a beast, a magical beast, a dragon, and a monstrous humanoid.

Though not credited, Creature Catalog (http://www.enworld.org/cc/ ) gurus Erica Basley and Scott Greene created these creatures. That being the case, you won't find the all to common gaffes you find in many d20 system monster books like undead with constitution scores and woefully off the mark CRs.

Campaigns on the High Seas

This section contains advice and ideas on running games with the seas as a setting. This includes both single journeys and entire campaigns. Topics are discussed such as how seafaring campaigns may affect the characters' role in their game and their interaction with NPCs. Finally, a number of scenario hooks and adventure ideas are provided to spurn your imagination.

Other Stuff

There is a short section on designer's notes, a ubiquitous feature in Mongoose's books. There is also a ship record sheet, a glossary of nautical terms, a rules summary so you don't have to peck through the book for that one table, and an index.

Conclusion

This is possibly the best effort by Mongoose to date. Seas of Blood provides complete and thorough coverage of the topic at hand, and most of the mechanical implementation is very solid. This is a must buy if you plan on running a nautical campaign, and it is hard to imagine that their competitors will outmatch them unless they are just as complete and much more clever.

-Alan D. Kohler

This is a comparative review between this product and FFG's Seafarer's Handbook and has been posted in both places. The score for each posting represents the individual project it is posted under.

If you pay attention to what's coming out for d20, you no doubt have noted that there are a lot of naval adventuring rules coming out. The first two offerings so far are both by companies about as well-established as they come in the d20 field: Seas of Blood by Mongoose Publishing and Seafarer's Handbook from Fantasy Flight Games. These two books cover a lot of similar ground, and a lot of people are wondering which one to buy. This review is not so much for the purpose of telling you which is better as it is for telling you the similarities and differences between the two, to let you make up your mind who gets your gaming dollar. As such, it's going to be extremely long.

Before I get into the meat, let me say that this is not a playtest review - all opinions are based on readings of the rules only. I'd also like to say that both Mongoose and FFG have my respect for turning out some great stuff for d20, including these sets of rules. I don't regret 'double-spending' on these naval rules, because large parts of them can be used to complement each other.

Lastly, the organization of this review does not mirror the structure of either of the books. Since they are so vastly different in organization, mine mirrors neither of them.


Physical Appearance

Seas of Blood is a 128-page softbound with a color cover and B&W interior art, and has a cover price of $19.95. Seafarer's Handbook is 176 pages, sporting a tomelike color hardcover reminiscent of the Core Rulebooks (and the other entries in the Legends & Lairs series) and B&W interior art. Both products use fairly standard 2-column text with artsy borders, although Mongoose's seem to take up more of the page. Fonts and layout for both are very clean and easily readable, with Mongoose's being slightly smaller and lighter.


Races and Classes

Seafarer's Handbook provides us with three new races: merfolk (the undersea equivalent of humanity, down to the versatility bonuses that humans get), aquatic elves, and half-merrow (a crossbreed between merrow - aquatic ogres - and merfolk). None of the races have an ECL, and all recieve tremendous bonuses to swim and improved low-light vision (although merfolk have the tiny rules bobble of having 'low-light vision out to 60 feet', which makes no sense given how the ability works.)

There is also a single new prestige class, effectively limited to aquatic elf NPCs, called the Reef Warrior. Members of the class gain abilities that help them protect their home reefs and other aquatic elves, but suffer alienation from them as they become more and more a part of the reef than a part of elven society.

Seas of Blood has no new PC races, but it does have a discussion of the roles of existing character classes in a nautical or undersea campaign, which Seafarer's Handbook leaves out. Rules for an alternate type of druid - the Sea Druid - are presented, along with rules for normal druis learning their abilities. They also include a new 5-level NPC class (the sailor), which I thought was rather pointless when given the inclusion of the Expert in the core rules. (In addition, I disagree with the implication that all sailors are as well-trained in combat as warriors.)

Mongoose gives us three new 10-level prestige classes as well, all of which are far more applicable to PCs than the Reef Warrior. They are the Buccaneer (focused on shipboard swashbuckling and acrobatics), the Reaver (specializing in boarding actions and combat leadership), and the Navigator-Wizard (whose arcane knowledge increases his naval skill).


Skills

Seas of Blood introduces a couple of new skills: Knowledge (Seamanship) and Profession (navigator). I'm not sure why they chose these classifications, especially when Profession (sailor) already exists in the Player's Handbook. There is a brief note discussing the fact that the DM may make them equivalent, but aside from that it seems to be forgotten.

Seafarer's Handbook, on the other hand, sticks a lot closer to the Core Rules, providing one new skill variant: Underwater Alchemy. It also has an excellent discussion of how current skills are changed when used underwater. (I never would have thought of the difficulties inherent in using the Disguise skill underwater, myself.)


Feats

Ahh, the bread and meat of many new books. Most gamers love new toys, and I am no exception. 32 new feats in the Seafarer's Handbook, and 13 in Seas of Blood.

Seafarer's Handbook has a discussion of how existing feats work underwater - another plus. Its feats are also more varied than those in Seas of Blood, with feats for the aquatic races like Tail Slam (an underwater Bull Rush), new magical feats like Create Manikin (the classic 'voodoo doll', allowing the user to create a doll which will transfer the effects of spells cast on it to the person it represents), and of course general sailor's feats like Sea Dog (+2 to Profession (sailor) and Use Rope) and Swing-by Attack (swashbucklers take note!)

Seas of Blood's feats focus on the sailors. Again Mongoose has a tiny rules gaffe - the Amazing Agility feat allows you to Take 20 on any balance check, which doesn't make sense given what Take 20 is. (I would be leery of a feat that gave an average of +10 to a skill anyway!) The rest of the feats are quite good, including Duck & Weave (lets you instinctively gain the benefits of cover while fighting shipboard) and Master Helmsman. Many of the feats (Bargain, Inspire Loyalty) tie very tightly with the rest of the naval rules presented in Seas of Blood, and so are of much less use if you are picking & choosing.


Equipment and Magic Items

More toys! Seas of Blood has a small section on shipboard equipment, including the aquatic crossbow, the navigator's toolkit, and tarred armor. The magic items section is much more interesting, with magic figureheads that provide bonuses to the ships they are attached to, magic shipboard weapons, and even intelligent ships!

Seafarer's Handbook, with its stronger section on undersea adventuring, provides lots more equipment, including new types of aquatic armor (kelp, shell, bone, and scale) and new alchemical devices. The magic items section gives a new weapon enchantment (waterbane, making it much easier to use underwater as well as doing extra damage to creatures of the Water subtype) and several wondrous items. The ship construction section also has a brief paragraph each on magical armor and weaponry for ships. It's good, but compared to the coolness of Mongoose's offering (what's cooler for a naval campaign than an intelligent ship?) it seems a little lacking.


This is such a long review, I'm going to grab some lunch. Mmm...pizza.


Magic Spells

Both books contain a section on new magical spells of use to PCs at - or under - sea. There's also a brief section in each on how to handle other spells cast underwater.

Seafarer's Handbook gives us the new Underwater domain and 27 new spells total, ranging from aquatic form (gives the character the Aquatic template, permanently) to whirlpool (no, it doesn't create a hot tub). Some of the spells are very clever - message in a bottle, for instance, lets you send a brief message to someone near water, while wisdom of the watery grave is a naval version of speak with dead that does not require you to possess the corpse of the target creature. Some are not very nautical at all - iron fists lets you do normal damage and be treated as if you were armed when using unarmed strikes.

Seas of Blood has 22 new spells, from control currents to whirlpool (yes, again! It's a different varient though). The spells are more focused (just like the rest of the book) on sailors and ships, and include the wonderful skyship spell (turns your ship into a flying ship for 1 hour/level) and raise death hulk from their Necromancy: Beyond the Grave supplement. The spells in Seas of Blood seem more powerful, with teleport ship and tsunami among the possibilities.


Brief OGL digression: The beginning text of FFG's whirlpool spell is identical to Mongoose's. I originally thought it was a bit rude of FFG not to credit Mongoose or Matthew Sprange, but then I discovered that they had both nabbed the text from the whirlwind spell in the PHB. I thought I'd point that out so nobody else made the same mistake I did.


Naval Adventuring

Seas of Blood features extensive rules on sea travel and trading - weather, length of travel, what kind and what quantity of goods are available in a particular port, and how much you can sell them for when you reach your destination. If you want to earn your character's fortune through commerce rather than combat, these rules are exactly what you want - and they can be adapted to overland caravans as well. The book also features two pages of detailed rules on fishing (both line and net). I'm not sure I know what to say about that, although they could be useful after you've wrecked your ship and are floating in a lifeboat searching for land.

Oddly, the Seafarer's Handbook doesn't focus nearly as much on the actual seafaring - at least, not in a crunchy rules-sense like the Mongoose book does. Instead it provides an extensive chapter on the atmosphere and feel of seafaring adventures, which is quite welcome. The section on the varied functions of the ship's crew will be especially helpful to DMs. There's also an extensive section on life in a port city, and an example city has been provided.


Underwater Adventuring

Seas of Blood has a brief (~4 pages) section on underwater combat and adventuring, with harsh penalties for the poor surface-dwellers who decide to fight below the waves (-4 to initiative, attack, damage, and Dexterity-based checks!)

Seafarer's Handbook devotes almost twice as many pages to the subject, with simple rules for three-dimensional maneuvering and buoyancy. Penalties for surface dwellers are far less harsh, at least on some weapons, which might make underwater adventuring a little more playable for your PCs.

There's also 19 pages devoted to the undersea envionment, from undersea terrain and environments (kelp forests, coral reefs) to undersea "dungeons" (like shipwrecks and lost cities) to the Underdeep, an aquatic version of the classic Underdark. The Underdeep has a wide variety of interesting things contained within it, including a dwarven version of Atlantis (the Sunken Mountain), the "deep drow", and Silentdark, a trade city and safe haven for all undersea dwellers.


Monsters

Finally - toys for the DM! Both books supply a variety of new beasties to torment one's players with.

Seafarer's Handbook offers only a few: the Abyssal Shark (an outsider with a ranged bite!), Coral Golem, Drowned Dead (sailors who died by accident and hate the living), and Hippocampus (a literal sea-horse. I guess that merfolk knights have to ride sidesaddle?).

Seas of Blood presents almost three times as many creatures: the Fideal (a monstrous humanoid that haunts shorelines and small islands), the fisherman (a giant outsider who fishes for the spirits of the drowned), Sea Giants, Gnarled Eels, Grey Lady (undead spirit of a woman who died pining for a love lost at sea), Jastra Root (carniverous seaweed), Killer Wave (aquatic ooze), Leviathan, Sea Drake (classic sea-serpent), Talorani (humanoid water-dwellers), and Undine (water fey).


Ships

OK, I've left this and Ship Combat to the last, simply because I know that it's what you've really been waiting for.

First off, the Seafarer's Handbook has it all over Seas of Blood in terms of ship construction. That's because it actually contains rules that go beyond "look at the sample ships and make something up". That was probably the most disappointing thing about Seas of Blood. The construction rules are fairly simple (pick a hull, pick propulsion types, pick weaponry, and there you are) but include some nice stuff like 'ship qualities' to individualize your ship - things like Built to Last (more hull hit points), Tough Old Girl (increases the hull's Hardness), and Wave Rider (the ship is faster than others of its size).

As for designs, the Seafarer's Handbook gives us 19 different designs (many with variants) as well as a template for a 'ghost ship' - really an actual ship crewed by the undead. These designs range from the mundane (cogs, caravels and barges) to the esoteric (triton chariot, wizard's towership and the dwarven ironback, an iron-clad warship strongly resembling the USS Monitor of American Civil War fame.) The descriptions are very detailed, with deck plans for all decks of the ships and discussions of how each are used. A 'Ships in Service' section provides names and ideas for famous (or notorious) examples of the ship type.

Seas of Blood has 21 new ships and 4 templates - the cursed ship, the death hulk (akin to FFG's 'ghost ship'), a ghost ship template of their own (the literal ghost of a ship), and skyship (for those who would rather brave air currents than ocean ones). Their designs cover a similar range but focus more on warships than any other kind. The ships are not presented in nearly as much detail - only the top decks are shown on the deck plans, and each ship gets only a paragraph or two.

Both books feature submersible craft created by gnomes. I don't know about the rest of you, but given the apparent invasion of other settings by Krynn's tinker gnomes, I'm not sure I'd want to trust them to build me a ship to go underwater.


Ship Combat

The naval combat system in Seas of Blood is one of the book's strongest points. Using a stripped-down version of their Open Mass Combat System (OMCS), it is both easy to learn (basically treating ships and crew as single creatures) and compatible with the OMCS presented in The Quintessential Fighter. At least one other publisher has also decided to use Mongoose's rules for their games.

Ship combat in the Seafarer's Handbook has slightly more complex maneuvering and control rolls that depart a bit more from the d20 standard - only the captain's Profession (sailor) is directly taken into account, although the quality of his crew as a group is also measured. Maneuvers are handled by spending 'command points' which are based on the captain's skill and Charisma, the crew's quality and numbers, and the conditions at the time. There is a very sketchy squad-level resolution mechanic for boarding actions (which doesn't even take the crew's armament into consideration), but a nice section on swashbuckling actions and swinging from ropes.


Organization

I love books with indices. Without them I am left to flounder - "Um, i think that rule was in the chapter on characters...no, maybe it was in underwater combat." Fortunately, both products seem to have a good index - Mongoose even goes so far as to include the terms from their nautical glossary. The true test will come when I need to looks omething up during play, of course, but both books are logically organized enough that I think I will be fine.

The one problem I have with the organization in Seafarer's Handbook is that there are rules for underwater adventuring scattered all throughout the book. The effect of being underwater on skills is in with the new skills, underwater combat is in a separate section, and discussion of underwater campaigns in a third. I can see the logic behind the organization they chose, but it wouldn't have been my first choice.


Other Stuff that Didn't get Mentioned Before

Seas of Blood has a short naval glossary which can be very helpful to DMs not familiar with oceangoing terminology.

Seas of Blood also has some ongoing support in the form of the Ships of the... series. These include details of the different races as sailors as well as many new ship designs.


Summary/Wrapup:

Seas of Blood (Mongoose):
* trading and travel rules
* ship combat uses Open Mass Combat System - easy to learn,
used in products by Mongoose and others.
* intelligent ships. How cool is that?
* grittier, more realistic feel

Seafarer's Handbook (FFG):
* stronger focus on underwater adventuring
* more detailed ship-to-ship combat (but less detailed crew combat)
* more discussion of campaign settings - port cities, underwater
* detailed ship construction rules
* more fantastic/looser feel overall

Look, these are both great books. Together, they're even better. But what if you only want one? Well, it depends on why you want it.

If you're going to stay above the water, Seas of Blood is probably what you want - especially if the campaign is going to revolve around the ship and sea travel. The travelling and trading rules could be the focus of a campaign or mini-game in themselves.

If you want fantastical adventuring, though, I have to recommend the Seafarer's Handbook. It's much stronger underwater focus opens up whole new vistas to explore, and if you're not going to focus on travel and trading than Mongoose's detailed rules won't be nearly as much use.

....Okay, so others like this book. Big deal.

After reading through it a few times, I was left cold. There's good stuff in here on some of the game-relevant mechanics of sailing the high seas. And there are plans of ships (if crude and of only one deck). Spells, feats, Prcs, yada, yada. (Do we really need a sailor core class? Nope.)

But nothing felt particularly inspired, here. And....I can't say this enough....there was just NOT ENOUGH CRUNCHY BITS! To be clear: Flavor text and "setting th' mood" is great, but not that helpful to me, either as a player or a DM. Game mechanics stuff, "how to use this" stuff, detailed ship maps and building rules; that's the stuff I need. That's th' crunchy bits people keep talking about.

Think about it this way: Most people (like me!) are buying supplements to fit into existing campaigns. I need the structure and raw mechanisms and game-mechanics to do that. For example: How does a ship work in a fantasy setting? What do I need to know to make it act (game-rules) and seem (game outcomes) real to the players? What kinds of things might I use this ship for? Show me some stat blocks, show me some combats, show me some merchant trade set-ups. Armadas...how might those work? Give me some way to stat that stuff out: What do I need to pay attension to, and what can I leave behind or make-up on th' fly? (Think DMG town generator, for example.)

Now, to be fair, Seas of Blood does much of that. It just doesn't do enough of the work for me. (Yep, I'm lazy....that's why I buy the book! Otherwise I'd jus' get on-line and go into research mode. I'm a University-library regular.) The art is decent, the lay-out nice, and the content is okay.........but it jus' doesn't go th' extra mile to make it a "4" or a "5". To use it, I'll have to fill in th' blanks.

I was also more than a little dissapointed at how magic was handled. It seems people in a fantasy world with real magic and combat spells build and man ships the same way as they do in the real world. (I have the same beef with castles and fortifications on land.) I wanted to see a section like: What do non-magic-users do to protect themselves against magic-users? (you know, the flying, fire-ball casting kind your PCs like to emulate.) Covered ships? Bound dire sharks? Attack seagulls? Anything?

I'm giving this an "average" score, that is, this book does an fair job at covering it's assigned niche. But to be great: More crunchy, please!

(inside joke: Do I sound like the Hasbro Bean Counters, or what?)

-Nail

Yeah, you do.

Actually you sound like a guy that wasn't satisfied with a product, thats all. That is what these review boards are all about.