Valus
By Ryan Smalley
Different Worlds product number DWP-3001
176 pages, $29.99
Valus is a campaign sourcebook detailing the island of Valus (and surrounding environs) on the world of Ostia Prim, the homebrew campaign featured in EN Worlder Destan's "Sins of our Fathers" Story Hour. (I must admit, I haven't read this Story Hour yet, although I've heard very good things about it and I think I'll be checking it out as a result of having read this book.)
The cover art is a full-color map of Valus by Chuck McCann. As maps go, it's very nicely done; I like the illegible, cramped writing in the margins - it helps make it look more "authentic" somehow. And, of course, while some people might have preferred an action scene or something, I think a map is perfectly natural for a campaign setting book.
The interior art consists of 21 black-and-white illustrations and 7 black-and-white maps by 4 different artists. The art is for the most part pretty good, with a few real gems thrown in for good measure: I love the haughty, sneering expression on the snooty elf on page 30! (That one was done by Scott Ruggels, who also did some of my favorite pieces in this book; I'm unfamiliar with Scott's previous work, but I'll be keeping an eye open from now on.) Whoever did the drawings of the buildings (the city of Tarn Cal on p. 97, the castle and town of Mon Mith on p. 121, the trull enclave at Kesh on p. 134) did a really good job as well. Overall, I don't have a problem with the art, although I was surprised to see so little of it in a book this size, especially considering that most of the last pages of each chapter had
considerable white space (in some cases, over three-fourths of the page was blank). Those would have been good places to stick in some extra artwork.
Valus is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: a breakdown of what each chapter will focus on
- Ostia Prim: a brief examination of the part of Ostia Prim where the island of Valus lies, plus a history of the world, the multiple calendar systems used by various folk, a section on languages and alphabets (most Valusians are illiterate), and a look at the peoples of Valus (complete with a chart of common racial epithets!)
- Characters: Races (humans [broken down by different regional cultures], durven [dwarves], drel [two different subraces of elves], half-orcs, halflings, pardadrel [half-elves], pems ["burrow gnomes"], roven [humanoid canines], and trulls [an offshoot of the troll race]); classes (the standard 11, although there are three subcategories of bard); a prestige class (the covenguard); and 7 new feats
- Religion: Divine history, the 12 Risen Gods (who are worshipped as a whole pantheon by the general populace, although clerics must focus on one specific deity), and the Old Faith (who are worshipped by druids)
- Magic: Changes made to clerical magic (restricted spells, ascendant and suppressed powers, bringing back the dead, and cure and inflict spells), and restrictions on summoning and calling spells
- Northern Valus - Hor Valu: Geographic features, sites and settlements, and people and nations of northern Valus
- Central Valus - The Loamlands: Geographic features, sites and settlements, and people and nations of central Valus
- Southern Valus - Luc Valu: Geographic features, sites and settlements, and people and nations of southern Valus
- A Valusian Campaign: Rules for character generation, character advancement and wealth, spells and magic, social classes, monsters, and suggested campaign plots
- Appendix A - Introductory Adventure: a short adventure for four 1st-level PCs, to get the "feel" of a typical Valusian adventure (which tends to focus on humanoids as antagonists and have several shades of gray rather than a typical black-or-white, right-or-wrong setup)
- Appendix B - Custom Items: Custom weapons, fine alcohol, gourmet foods, narcotics, rare furs, and Valusian flora, with suggested prices and availability of each
- Appendix C - Mileage Chart: A chart showing the distance between major cities on Valus
In addition, sprinkled liberally throughout the whole book are little quotes from local inhabitants and printed works from books and journals in the campaign. These are exceptionally well done, and in fact it is these short snippets that, more than anything, have convinced me to go check out Destan's Story Hour - I love his flavorful writing style!
Valus is that rarest of gaming books that finds a very comfortable niche on the "fluff/crunch" spectrum. The background and history of Ostia Prim is a very rich one, filled with all sorts of fascinating details that mesh wonderfully into a unified whole, and the d20 rules and mechanics that flow from this rich background follow logically and consistently. And really, there aren't a whole lot of things that author Ryan Smalley (or "Destan," take your pick) actually changed from the standard D&D rules set. Let's see, off the top of my head, having read through
Valus once: clerics must choose one of the 12 Risen Gods to focus on in their worship, and these Risen Gods go through a yearly cycle of waxing and waning in power; as a result, there are things a cleric can only do when his god is at the peak of his power (for example, return life to a dead body; with 12 Risen Gods and 12 months in the year - one month for each god - no matter when your PC happens to die, only the clerics of one particular god can
raise or
resurrect him). Druids, on the other hand, worship the Dead God-Children, the "original" pantheon who were allegedly slain by the original creator god and whose bodies, when they fell to the prime material plane, created the continents of Ostia Prim. It makes sense, doesn't it, that if druids worship nature, and nature itself is made up of the bodies of a distinct pantheon, that druids would worship that pantheon? Paladins, on the other hand, worship angels, not the gods - and this also makes perfect sense, since the Valusian gods each contain aspects of Good and Evil, whereas the angels (who were created by the gods) are purely good. So, everybody has their own opinions about who should be worshipped, there are good points to each argument, and while the three distinct "camps" all pretty much hate the other camps, it's hard to say who's actually got it right.
There are all sorts of great ideas in
Valus. I really like the fact that
resurrection is so difficult: when your PC dies, you have to get his body to a cleric of the Risen God who's currently in Ascendancy (at the peak of his powers), and even then it had better be in both the cleric's and the god's best interest to restore you to life, and even then you return bearing a physical mark of your return to life (if the God of Winter restores you, for instance, you may come back with pale skin that's always cool to the touch) and probably owe the cleric and god a big favor, often payable immediately. Tack on the concept that each Risen God has a rival god, and if you die in the wrong month there's no way you're going to get raised anytime soon!
It was nice to see a bit of a shakeup as far as the player character races go; while all of the main
Player's Handbook races are there in one form or another, some of them are quite different from the norm. Elves are all extremely haughty, and are actually taller than the average human. Gnomes, called "pems" in Valus, are more fey-like than is the norm. I also appreciate the fact that the new races were each given a favored class that doesn't show up on any of the "standard" race's list (roven are most often rangers, trulls often become monks, pems favor sorcerers), and that there are a lot of "useful only as interesting facts and as roleplaying fodder" features about the new races, like the facts that trulls cannot breathe quietly and vomit uncontrollably if they try to eat fruit or vegetables. On the other hand, while I was glad to see some new names used to differentiate the races from their "standard D&D" names, some of the names Ryan came up with don't do much for me. If you want to call a hill dwarf something completely different from "hill dwarf," I think you could probably do better than "hulldurv." That just sounds like somebody saying "hill dwarf" with a stuffy nose. And for a humanoid dog race, "roven" sounds too similar to "Rover" for me to take seriously.
A big section of
Valus is devoted to the geography of the island - a good third of the whole book's 176 pages. This is not surprising in a campaign sourcebook, and I often find those sections to be the dullest parts of campaign sourcebooks (in fact, that's the only part of the
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting that I still haven't read, despite having owned the book for over two years now).
Valus is no different in this respect, but while I found it to be the dullest part of the whole book, it is in fact a necessary one (as is true of all campaign sourcebooks, really - they're a necessary evil!), and I appreciated the little bonuses that Ryan sprinkled throughout these sections. You'll get a couple paragraphs on a city, some more paragraphs on another city elsewhere in the same general area, and then wham! - out of the blue you get a page and a half detailing the strange goings-on a particular religious holiday in a city devoted to the God of War. As it turns out, on the last day of the God of War's Ascendancy, the people of the city of Farthis lock up their homes and abandon their city. A good thing, too, because the celebrants - many of whom have travelled a great distance to participate in the event - spend the whole day revering the God of War by slaughtering everyone they encounter that's not wearing their team's colors (the participants in this day-long battle are split into four different teams). Ryan details all of the rules of the "Farthis Fight," right down to each participant also being given a yellow jersey to quickly don if they suddenly come to their senses and realize "What the hell am I doing in this crazy ritual -- I'll get my fool self killed!" (Of course, anybody in a yellow jersey is a coward, and while you can't kill them, there's nothing stopping you from making their lives miserable as they slink out of town. Just don't expect the God of War to
resurrect you if you "dishonor" him by quitting in the middle of a Farthis Fight!)
If I had any problems with
Valus, it's in the two areas that I usually find problems, no matter which publisher produced the book in question: proofreading/editing and game stats. This is the first Different Worlds product I've seen, and while I know editor Allan Grohe as "grodog" on the EN World message boards (where he seems like a really nice guy), he could stand to put a bit more effort into the editing - and particularly proofreading - department. (There's no proofreader listed, so I'm going on the assumption that the proofreading is left up to the editor. If I'm wrong about this, Allan, then please forgive the poor assumption on my part.)
Valus has what looks to me like a "spellchecker proofreading job" - that is, the book is riddled with errors (hmm, maybe "riddled" is a bit too harsh - "liberally sprinkled," perhaps?), almost all of which form a new word that a spellchecker wouldn't catch. It seems as if running a spellchecker was pretty much the full extent of the proofreading job, as there are far too many errors not to have been gotten caught by someone actually reading through the manuscript. Examples abound: "party" instead of "part," "drear" instead of "dreary, "Thorcian" instead of "Throcian" (as in "from Throce," a region of Ostia Prim), "lead" instead of "led" (this is the single most common mistake of its type in the whole book, showing up no less than 8 times), "affect" instead of "effect," "you" instead of "your," "weight" instead of "weighty," "realties" instead of "realities," "sad" instead of "said," "toches" instead of "torches," "male" instead of "mail," and so on. (Also, is "redound" a word, or do they mean "rebound?" They use it several times, and "rebound" seems to fit in each instance.) There is also a smattering of incorrect apostrophe usage (usually in the pluralization of acronyms, like "DM's" or "PC's), several instances of breaking a word incorrectly between two lines (the rule is to break it between syllables: "role-playing," not "ro-leplaying," and "leaf-lord," not "lea-flord") and some sentences missing words (which, again, wouldn't be picked up by a spellchecking program). While none of this is going to adversely affect your ability to understand the concepts provided in
Valus, it doesn't do much for the book's (and game company's) professional appearance. There's definitely some room for improvement in the proofreading department.
As for the editing, I have fewer complaints. However, I believe it's one of the editor's duties to make sure the material is accurate and doesn't conflict with itself, and there is one place in particular where I think something should have been changed. On page 75, discussing the cleric's various abilities during his Risen God's Suppression, it states that a cleric must spend twice as much time preparing his spells, unless he is within an area under the effects of a
hallow/
unhallow spell cast by himself or a member of his faith. But wait a minute...the spells
hallow and
unhallow are two of the ones that can
only be cast during that Risen God's Ascendancy! Are you following all that? Let me translate, using the standard calendar. I'm a cleric of a particular Risen God, and every January my Risen God is extra powerful, but every July he's at his weakest. So, in July, I have to spend twice as much time as normal to prepare my spells, unless I'm in an area that I've cast a
hallow spell on. Of course, since it's July, I can't cast a
hallow spell, and neither can any other cleric who worships my Risen God, and neither can any other cleric of 10 of the other 11 Risen Gods who aren't in Ascendancy in July. Worse yet, the only clerics that
can cast a
hallow spell worship the one Risen God that happens to be my own Risen God's main enemy! So basically, in July I have to spend twice as long preparing my spells, unless I can cast a spell that I can't cast. The only loophole I can see is if I managed to cast a
hallow spell in January, followed immediately by a
permanence spell, but if that was the intention of the rule it should have been made a bit - no, quite a lot - clearer. (By the way, for the sake of the above argument I ignored the fact that during each of the 10 months that is neither my Risen God's Ascendant nor Suppressed month, there's a week where he's ascendant and another week where he's suppressed, but that doesn't affect the outcome.)
[EDIT: The above paragraph was written based on an incorrect assumption on my part. See the comments below for resolution.]
Finally, there were some problems with the game stats. I'll only mention the ones I'm sure about, but one of the PC creation rules that's different with
Valus is that everybody gets a bonus feat at 1st level (besides the normal one you get at 1st level, and in addition to the bonus feat a human gets at 1st level, so yes, a 1st-level human PC in
Valus starts off with 3 feats!). However, this rule was not followed with the NPC stats. On the other hand, I'm not really sure if only the PCs get the bonus feat, so I can't really say whether the NPCs got ripped off or if that's the way it's supposed to be. These, however, need fixing for sure:
- p. 161, Lordling Mobray Restan: Flat-footed AC should be 13, not 12 (+3 for studded leather armor). He only has one feat listed, so even if the "Valusian bonus feat" only applies to PCs and not NPCs, he still should have 2 feats - one for being 1st level, and one for being a human.
- p. 161, Sergeant Cargyl: Flat-footed AC should be 12, not 10 (+2 for leather armor).
- p. 161, Hugh, Jak, Moot: These three don't have any feats listed; as 1st-level human commoners, they should have at least 2.
- p. 163, Tavis, Ross: These two don't have any feats listed; as 1st-level human commoners, they should have at least 2.
- p. 163, Linzi, Danwen: These two don't have any feats listed; as 1st-level human commoners, they should have at least 2. Also, their Grapple bonus should be -2, not -3 (+0 BAB, -2 Str).
- p. 164, Burnyc, Deffyd: These three don't have any feats listed; as 1st-level human warriors, they should have at least 2.
- p. 168, Korak'kun, Heavy War Horse Paladin Mount: Hoof attacks should be at +10 melee, not +11 (+6 BAB, +5 Str, -1 size). Bite attacks should be at +5 melee, not +2 (+6 BAB, +5 Str, -1 size, -5 secondary attack). Also, for some reason, both Korak'kun and his paladin master, Beggum Borskborn, have their ability score abbreviations in ALL CAPS, unlike the rest of the statistics. Odd.
- p. 168, Wulfwyn Godricson: He doesn't have any feats listed; as a 1st-level human commoner, he should have at least 2.
Still and all, despite these problems,
Valus is in whole a good campaign setting, one that stands apart from most by the flavorful rules changes that makes for a much murkier world than is the norm. When good and evil aren't quite so clear cut, every action must be thought out ahead of time, and consequences will surely follow, one way or the other! It's worth noting that most of the rules tweaks are not only pilferable for other game settings (so you could apply some
Valus rules in, say, a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms campaign), but also largely optional even if you want to run a
Valus campaign. For that matter, you could easily insert the entire island of Valus into just about any fantasy game campaign; there's no reason why the Risen Gods couldn't hold sway over just that part of the game world. I give
Valus a high "4 (Good)," and if I wasn't such an anal retentive type when it comes to proofreading and game stats it would probably get a low "5 (Superb)." (So if you're not quite so anal retentive as I am - that is, if you're more "normal" - go ahead and consider this a "5." I won't mind.) It's also worth noting that after having described
Valus to my D&D players (I DM a "mostly Greyhawk" game), they not only expressed interest in reading my copy of the book but are also leaning toward using it as the basis for our next D&D campaign, once this one finishes up - which, at the rate we play, probably won't be until next summer. (They're particularly intrigued by the notion of playing a band of paladins that are despised by the general populace, and the concept of having a special "guardian angel" that they're attuned to also appeals to them greatly.) All in all, nice work, Ryan - and I'll definitely be giving your Story Hour a read in the near future.