By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer and Co-host of Mortality Radio
Sizing Up the Target
Green Races is a 219-page hard cover adventure/accessory published by Fast Forward Entertainment. Tim Brown is the author. No artist is credited for the cover but shows a variety of non-human races superimposed on a map, interior work by Tina Hoffman, Chris Arneson, William W, Connors and Tony Parker and retails for $29.99.
First Blood
Welcome to
Green Races, a campaign setting that allow you to play non-human races as player characters, such as kobolds, troll and dragons. This work preceded Wizard of the Coast’s
Savage Species by a few months and is an actual campaign setting as opposed to just being a player’s handbook for non-humans.
As with
Dungeon World, Tim Brown states this is the type of campaign they wanted to do at TSR but never were allowed to. The advent of the d20 system and the Open Gaming License made this production possible.
This setting is the planet Elara, a world where evil and treachery are prevalent. Referencing back to the old
Spelljammer days, Elara can be placed in any Crystal Sphere or among any Plane. Elara is referred to by its indigenous life as the Green.
Fifteen non-human races dominate the Green and there are 15 Prestige Classes, one for each race. This setting was first shown in the adventures:
Fortress of the Ogre Chieftain,
Temple of the Troll God,
Demonic Lairs and
Slave Pits of the Goblin King by Fast Forward Entertainment. Other FFE products such as
Rings of Power,
Swords of Power and
Wondrous Items of Power are recommended to be used here also. These are older adventures from a couple of years ago and can still be found at your game store.
On the main continent of the Green, humans and elves live to the north, dwarves to the south, on the edges of the continent with the non-humans dominating the fertile center of the continent.
The races inhabiting the Green include: Bugbears, Derro, DragonGoblins, Drow, Duergar, Gnolls, Northern Goblins, Southern Goblins, Half-Orcs, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Ogres, Orcs. Eastern Trolls and Western Trolls. Good creatures do exist here but they keep hidden and to themselves, waiting.
Elves and Dragons originally dominated Elara. The dragons, not native to the world are greedy and rapacious began to take over in surreptitious ways. Political upheaval overseas sent dragons raiding into bronze-men lands. Subjects to the elves, the bronze-men pleaded with the elves for aid and were ignored. Finally the elves, after centuries of civil war and upheaval negotiated a treaty with the dragons. This pact created a mystical bond between elf and dragon and with each mystic casting, the elf becomes more and more dragon-like Demons and Devils are also starting to influence the political clime of the world.
Humans or Bronze-men are limited to small nations and take their names from their classical age but they are still dealing in traditions from that time period although they have advanced to expert craftsmen of iron and steel. They have several small nations around the continent.
After describing the remainder of the good races, dwarves and good dragons, and the evil dragons and demonic influences, the book moves into describing the 15 races of the Green. Each race is given a historical treatment as well as it’s home territory and culture. This will include a short (and I mean short) description of a typical settlement or outpost or similar encounter point of each race before describing the Prestige Class of the race.
Bugbears have the Heartless, Derro are Slavers, Dragongoblins have Dragon Trappers etc. Each race also has an army entry called the Hundred to describe their military as wars are constant across the Green.
Many races of non-combatants are also described in this tome. Giants, Efreet, Kron (an insect-like hive creature), liches and necromancers, swamp folk before it move into outlining areas of special interest like Dungeons, Caverns, Ruins and Lakes.
Critical Hits
An interesting twist allowing monstrous races to rule a planet and confining the usual races to the far corners of the world. It can give a serious moral lesson to some. Such as would the evil races remain evil or, as intelligent races, would they not come to a realization on how they must contain their baser natures to prosper and slowly shift alignment towards Neutrality at minimum.
Critical Misses
Sparseness of detail in the descriptions is a hallmark of Fast Forward. There is a lot of information in this volume. Most of it is very vital knowledge used by either the characters or DM. But it is the area descriptions that FFE needs to improve upon. The lack of intricate detail is what has always had me put an FFE product to the back burner over another product. Personally I feel that they have some of the best ideas in the business but they need to improve their delivery and get a little more detailed. FFE doesn’t suffer from this problem in their creature or item descriptions, only when detailing a map or encounter does it seem lacking. Recently this book was also one of the FFE product found in violation of the OGL by use of Lolth and Gruumsh in some of the race descriptions.
Coup de Grace
I got a very first edition feel with
Green Races. Thay was a big selling point to me. Had this been a TSR product, I think it would have the same cult status as
Ravenloft or
Dragonlance has today. It has an unusual twist for a premise and could make for a great campaign. Or if you are running a plane hopping or
Spelljamming game, this can be a great source to return to or develop plot hooks or antagonists from.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
