2 out of 5 rating for Demon Cults & Secret Societies
Disclosure: I backed both the hardcover and PDF version of this product during its kickstarter run.
Demon Cults and Secret societies was a product I was really excited to see, given how much I enjoyed Kobold Press's prior work the Tome of Beasts and I had hoped for more of the same quality in this offering as well, but was left far less enthused after only a short while. Having had some time to read into the product at length, the flaws really outweigh the strengths in the end. That said, let's start with what the product does right:
- The organizational structure of each cult, along with their varied endgames, is probably the strongest aspect of the book. They run the gamut from worshipers of eldritch, lovecraftian monsters to organized crime syndicates whose supernatural goals are only privy to their highest members, to desert assassins seeking the resurgence of their dwindling faith. These descriptions really do a good job of painting the cults in different lights and also do a solid job of describing points at which both the players and the general public are targeted or brought into the fold of their twisted groups. You definitely get the impression that they are a pervasive, nefarious influence permeating the underbelly of society, and that's exactly what I would expect of a book on the subject in question.
- The artwork remains solid throughout, though it is sadly more sparse than in ToB.
- Much like ToB, the pdf is of good quality and I had no problems using or reading it on my personal tablet.
Now, we move on to the negatives, which are certainly more numerous and in some cases pretty severe.
-Let's get the big one out of the way first; this book relies on you having purchased other supplemental material from Kobold Press, namely the Deep Magic books. These new spells are frequent throughout the work, appearing on both enemy spell lists and on new magic items, and this is a HUGE deal-breaker for me. Had I known this would be the case I likely would not have backed the product at all, as I find it ridiculous that a 40$ book should mandate I spend an addition 5-10 dollars just to make full use of a product I already purchased. The end result here is that if you have not purchased those products you will need to do significant revisions to enemy stat blocks and magic items to make them functional.
- The artwork, while well done as mentioned above, is also copied from other Kobold Press works, namely Tome of Beasts. It's not a crushing number of instances, but given that 2 of the kickstarter goals reached were related to additional art commissions, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It doesn't help that some of these are some of the more interesting ones, like shadow drakes and Smaragdine golem.
-The vast majority of new enemies in the book are humanoids, and most of those are casters of some respect. While it's not terribly surprising for a book about cults to necessitate the villains be sentient, there are so many non-standard options in Kobold Press's Midgard setting alone that this feels like a really big missed opportunity, and makes reading about these manipulative demagogues far more boring than they should be.
-The Adventure hooks the book provides for each cult are numerous, but they're so light on details (let alone fleshed out encounters) that they're really of questionable usefulness. Each one is about 1-2 paragraphs in length and barely goes over the who and the what, which typically revolves around a transparent "the PCs were really working for the evil guys, and if they don't do as expected, the evil guys target them for retribution" ploy that gets old quick. This section would have been vastly improved by culling about half of these and using that space to improve the remaining ideas.
Overall, Demon Cults and Secret Societies is the most frustrating kind of product, one with tons of potential and glimmers of brilliance dragged down under the weight of filler content and bad design decisions. I would recommend spending your money elsewhere unless you're super into the subject matter and are planning a campaign around it, and even then I'd recommend waiting for a sale.
