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[Mini-Let's Read] The World of Aetaltis
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8778626" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/Qarb8Q6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/tyWsdFM.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>The Gamemaster’s Guide is actually the shortest of the three corebooks, but even then it’s still a respectable 154 pages. Split into 5 chapters, the first half of the book deals with Secrets of the setting not in the player's guide, new setting-specific rules, and new types of treasure generation methods. The second half is one bestiary chapter containing monsters and NPCs.</p><p></p><p><strong>Secrets of Aetaltis</strong> talks about the primary themes of the setting: the classic good vs evil conflict, “street level adventures” which focus less on epic world-spanning conflict and more of the hearth fantasy I described above, the threat of corruption and the rising tide of the Dark Hordes invasion, etc. This chapter also includes a more accurate map of the setting, containing secret locations not detailed in the other books. The “player-friendly” map from the Player’s Guide apes the feeling of a more hand-drawn map. There’s a more in-depth timeline along with common and forgotten technology of the setting.</p><p></p><p><strong>Rules of the Game</strong> is full of optional rules. There are rules for ability score alterations based on age category like in that of 3rd Edition D&D, two new NPC reaction attitudes of Loyal and Violent in addition to the Friendly/Indifferent/Hostile, new tables for determining the relative strength and sturdiness of common construction materials, and a few new diseases and traps. There are pseudo-traps known as Hauntings which represent otherworldly influences of ghosts and other strange supernatural events. We also have a new value known as Resolve, which is a form of mental hit points that represents a character’s desire to continue adventuring. Resolve is lost through traumatic events and gained via things that reinforce hope such as completing personal goals, gaining levels, or paying respects to fallen teammates. If you hit 0 Resolve you have to roll a special saving throw akin to death saves, where “death” causes the character to choose a less risky lifestyle and is retired from play. Or flees the party if in a dangerous area.</p><p></p><p>A few related house rules include Divine Inspiration Cards, cards which are awarded to players from a typical 52 playing card deck. The cards represent certain gods working their influence in the current adventure and can be spent by players to trigger some auspicious event. The suit of a card determines its Influence Level, and the higher the level the higher the equivalent spell effect it can generate. Another rule representing one’s relationship with the gods is Grace, a numerical value representing a character’s relationship with particular gods. A score of 0 is neutral, while positive and negative scores represent varying levels of friendliness and hostility. PCs who gain special abilities, magic items, and class features related to one or more gods can lose access if their Grace score with said gods drops too low. In some cases this can even prevent them from physically entering areas regarded as sacred to a specific Enaros. On the positive side, Grace points can be spent to reroll failed d20 rolls with advantage or regain more HP when spending Hit Dice to deal.</p><p></p><p>When it comes to these new rules I’m rather fond of Grace and Divine Inspiration; they provide a more direct benefit for PCs who entreat favors from the gods without necessarily being priestly classes. It also helps reinforce the feeling of a world where their influence is felt by all in ways both subtle and fortuitous. I’m not a fan of the Aging rules as I feel it will encourage further straitjacketing of certain character concepts, and the Resolve feels more suited in a grittier dark fantasy setting. Combined with Corruption below, there’s two ways PCs can end up “retired,” which may not be to everyone’s standard. However, Corruption is less likely to happen on account that its triggering effects are more easily controlled.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/XiFClvE.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Secrets of Magic</strong> is a shorter chapter, mostly revolving around supernatural corruption and abilities restricted to Endroren’s legions. Corruption is a value which represents a character’s gradual succumbing to Endroren’s influence, which can make them detectable to certain divinations and gain physical and mental changes of a macabre nature from a 1d100 table. Existing corruption is added to the result, and a result of 120 or more transforms a character into the Fallen (or dies a horrible death if a cheebat). The Fallen is a type of evil humanoid who is little more than a slave to Endroren’s will. There’s a list of various ways people can be corrupted; even places and objects can become Corrupted, and spellcasters run the risk of gaining corruption when casting spells in these areas and anyone risks Corruption when using such items. Naturally, a fair bit of classic “dark magic” risks corruption, such as creating undead or using teleportation magic, a type of magic restricted to Endroren’s influence. Finally we get a detailed writeup on the Wards of Alantra, the supernatural barriers that seal Endroren and the Dark Hordes underground. The wards are nodes of a large network of divine magic, and being linked together lets them shield the areas in between. One of the major means of weakening this field is via digging tunnels from the surface as the field is woven into the living essence of the planet.</p><p></p><p>A saving throw is required to pass 10 feet through this field from within the Deeplands, and supernaturally evil creatures including the Endrori and Fallen have disadvantage on the save and also suffer damage as they move through it. Non-evil clerics can bypass these Wards by spending channel divinity, and there’s a 5th-level spell known as the Ward of Alantra which can temporarily raise or lower a ward. Outright creating a new ward is more of a plot device requiring a unique ritual spell learned through downtime along with specific natural material.</p><p></p><p><strong>Coins, Treasure, and Trade</strong> is a reworking of treasure generation in line with Aetaltis’ economy being based more on 1200-1300s Europe. There are different tiers of art objects based on craftsmanship, rules for PCs who invest in a business for potential future returns, tables of specialist merchants and what kinds of items they’re interested in buying (they can pay better prices than more general businesses), and even a table full of “magical baubles” which are magic items designed less for adventuring and more quality of life enhancements. This includes pillows that help one sleep soundly or tapestries with animated artwork. Oddly there aren’t any rules for setting prices for existing magic items in the core rules.</p><p></p><p>I don’t have many strong feelings about these new rules one way or the other.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/3JTJUKy.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Minions and Monsters</strong> is the meat of the book, talking about how both new and existing monsters fit into the world of Aetaltis. The biggest change to existing creatures is that Fey is no longer a creature type, instead becoming a tag for humanoid creatures. There’s also values for Essence Points based on Hit Die for monsters and NPCs that make use of arcane spellcasting.</p><p></p><p>Endrori are the primary villains in the World of Aetaltis. They are evil versions of the enari lineages, the first ones captured by Endroren and twisted into extensions of his will. They are strongly based off of Tolkien’s conception of orcs and are always evil-aligned. Endrori are intelligent, can reason and speak, but they don’t have free will in the traditional sense of the word. Endrori without exception seek out the destruction of all that is good in Aetaltis, and this driving factor raises above all other motivations. Their cultures are thus limited in this sense: orcs were made from dwarves, and virtually every economic and social aspect of orcish cities revolves around endless labor, martial training, and heavy drinking and fighting. Pecks are the twisted versions of sprites who get off on hunting down, torturing, and killing other beings and are basically nomadic serial killers. The Wraethdari are twisted elves and the Ring-Wraith equivalents, serving as the warlords of the Dark Hordes. They are unable to form any sort of bonds or friendships with anyone else and see all relations as a form of exchange with one side being dominant and the other submissive. Wraethdari thus use intimidation to maintain control over others as opposed to other forms of persuasion.</p><p></p><p>It’s better to think of the Endrori as soldiers in a military strategy video game, with Endroren being the player. Endrori, like those video game soldiers, have “idle roles” and can take their own initiative. But they’re limited by the roles they can do, for they were programmed for specific purposes and nothing beyond that. Endroren can effectively hijack direct control over them if he wishes to be more hands-on, as they are all really just extensions of his personal will.</p><p></p><p>The text notes that this is all intentional; Endroren and the Endrori are designed to have a clear-cut evil the PCs can not feel bad about killing en masse, an enemy that cannot be reasoned with or have civilians and noncombatants to raise sticky moral dilemmas. As quoted by the book:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ironically the text later on that very same page creates a kind of contradiction:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So it suggests more depth by showing how not showing mercy is a bad thing… when the endrori are created as a villainous group not to show mercy to? I feel that this may confuse a lot of players unless the DM is explicit about what kind of game they’re running, and what’s considered reasonable behavior in dealing with evil in regards to these expectations.</p><p></p><p>Now as you can imagine, there are some unfortunate implications of an always evil humanoid race. Unlike animals, automatons, or some utterly “inhuman” monsters, most of these humanoids in fantasy are often more or less portrayed as fully-fledged societies of “humans but with X.” In quite a few cases such humanoids, orcs particularly, served as the stand-in for real-world groups the author doesn’t like. Lord knows there’s been lots of discussions about this ever since Tolkien felt religiously conflicted about an entire group of otherwise self-aware beings lacking autonomy to “choose grace or damnation.” Portraying evil humanoids as fully-fledged societies have also raised debates about the Baby Orc Dilemma and what exactly their members do when they’re not doing typical evil stuff such as raiding and murdering. The World of Aetaltis attempts to answer some of these questions by making them closer to video game enemies, looking alive and sentient but more of a crude facsimile of human society stripped of any redeeming parts. As for the Baby Orc Dilemma…well, in Heroes of Thornwall, there is one encounter in the Temple of Modren that provides an answer that is already thrust upon the PCs.</p><p></p><p><strong>Content Warning: Child death</strong></p><p></p><p>[spoiler]There is one room that serves as a goblin nursery; the goblin concept of parenthood is virtually nonexistent, consisting of locking their children in a room and throwing food and water in every so often. Their mothers have no maternal instincts and don’t seek to protect their children from harm. Aetaltan goblins, even as babies, are ravenous murder machines, and will attack the PCs as a surging, biting swarm. They are Chaotic Evil in alignment and will even eat each other if there’s no food around. The book even has an image of the swarm attacking adventurers:</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/0bb6ulI.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />[/spoiler]</p><p></p><p>The Fallen are the other major evil group influenced by Endroren. They aren’t confined to the Deeplands nor was their nature thrust upon them by that god. The Fallen are closer to the autonomy side of choosing evil, for they only spring forth from the enari and Atlan Alliance races who succumbed to Corruption. But once they cross that moral threshold, there’s no turning back, and like the Endrori their minds change so that spreading misery and woe becomes their all-consuming concern. Fallen tend to be specialized in some kind of harm or sabotage: Bloodborn are basically elven vampires, Creepers (halflings) are basically Gollum in being consumed by greed and living in dark places, Darkholders (dwarves) dedicate themselves single-mindedly to serving as laborers for Endroren’s forces, etc. A few can live “peaceably” in society for a time, such as the Shadowmasks which are fallen humans, but even then they seek to bring about ruin and misery from behind the scenes.</p><p></p><p>So you might think that Aetaltis isn’t a setting that leaves much room for moral gray areas when it comes to monstrous races, right? Actually, the beastfolk were made to serve such a role. They are animal-humanoid hybrids created during the Cataclysm, consisting of existing monsters such as gnolls and lizardfolk but including a new one in the form of the ratfolk. Much like the Endrori and Fallen their natures create conflict with the civilizations of the Amethyst Sea. But unlike the Endrori and Fallen they aren’t motivated by a desire to spread harm. Rather, their minds are sufficiently different and animalistic in certain ways that they are unable to understand certain mindsets and mores. It’s possible for enari and Atlan Alliance races to maintain peaceful relations with them or even ally, although such attempts aren’t a sure thing and often have to be done in a means that lines up with how the beastfolk see the world.</p><p></p><p>For example, the ratfolk are scavengers who take whatever they can to survive and often gorge themselves on whatever food they can get on hand. They also lack empathy and cannot understand why people would be upset about this or the long-term implications of things such as famine leading to resentment against them and thus further violence. To the ratfolk, the world is an unpredictable place, and you never know where your next meal will come. Those crops on the farm may just as easily be eaten by someone else who comes by, so may as well take them first to ensure you’re one meal fuller, lest the next opportunity is harder to get and you end up starving.</p><p></p><p>Another good example are the lizardfolk. The lizardfolk can only imagine relationships in a hierarchical way as a means of knowing where everyone stands. They engage any newcomers in a 1 on 1 duel of physical combat. This is preferable to conventional fights as the risk of death is often not worth it. These duels allow lizardfolk to know who can conceivably kill or be killed by them, which allows a degree of societal security and surety. They see this as a straightforward means of testing character, and don’t understand why challenging a human King to a duel may cause the local barony to take up arms against their entire tribe. Everyone’s violent, the lizardfolk view themselves as being honest about what they see as a universal truth.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the new monsters are mostly variations of more “mundane” animals, such as Crypt Beetles who infest graveyards and burrow through flesh, Grey Cats who stalk a mountain range that were once used as mounts by dwarven royalty, and Reavers which are magical worms that can swim through stone like it is water.</p><p></p><p>We end this chapter with a list of generic NPC stat blocks, a lot of which are taken from Heroes of Thornwall and have a heavy influence on noncombatant medieval occupations. We have a Glossary appendix with an alphabetical list of new setting-specific terms, which is appreciated.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far</strong> So the thing with Aetaltis is that it’s a setting that is heavily defined by its monsters and enemies. It veers closer to a certain perception of Tolkien-inspired Low Fantasy, where the primary foes aren’t as much exotic monsters so much as evil mirrors of the homelands the PCs seek to defend. The problem with this is that barring the high-CR Wraethdari the Endrori and Fallen are overall low-CR monsters that aren’t awash with magical power. Thus a more long-running Aetaltis campaign needs more variety of these evil humanoid monster types if they should serve as recurring villains. The setting also takes an explicit stance in regards to the ongoing discussion of evil humanoids, one that veers from the standards of what Wizards of the Coast is doing in their newer material. Much like how a lot of the lineages and cultures in the Player’s Guide feel surface-level, so too do the villains, which makes Aetaltis feel flatter as a setting in comparison to others.</p><p></p><p>Of course, there are a lot of campaign setting with less depth and word count than this one, but oftentimes a key feature of verisimilitude is giving the illusion of depth. Most RPGs aren’t designed as ethnographic simulators, but often include “just enough” to make the world feel real and living. Paradoxically, Aetaltis does have depth, particularly in regards to equipment, economy, and just exactly what specific medieval occupations can do in regards to the game rules via NPC stats. It thus feels like some of the simulationist aspects of 3rd Edition, like how its settlement generation tools can tell you just how many Fighters, Commoners, and Wizards lived in a particular settlement down to the last NPC.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 8778626, member: 6750502"] [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/Qarb8Q6.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/tyWsdFM.png[/IMG][/CENTER] The Gamemaster’s Guide is actually the shortest of the three corebooks, but even then it’s still a respectable 154 pages. Split into 5 chapters, the first half of the book deals with Secrets of the setting not in the player's guide, new setting-specific rules, and new types of treasure generation methods. The second half is one bestiary chapter containing monsters and NPCs. [B]Secrets of Aetaltis[/B] talks about the primary themes of the setting: the classic good vs evil conflict, “street level adventures” which focus less on epic world-spanning conflict and more of the hearth fantasy I described above, the threat of corruption and the rising tide of the Dark Hordes invasion, etc. This chapter also includes a more accurate map of the setting, containing secret locations not detailed in the other books. The “player-friendly” map from the Player’s Guide apes the feeling of a more hand-drawn map. There’s a more in-depth timeline along with common and forgotten technology of the setting. [B]Rules of the Game[/B] is full of optional rules. There are rules for ability score alterations based on age category like in that of 3rd Edition D&D, two new NPC reaction attitudes of Loyal and Violent in addition to the Friendly/Indifferent/Hostile, new tables for determining the relative strength and sturdiness of common construction materials, and a few new diseases and traps. There are pseudo-traps known as Hauntings which represent otherworldly influences of ghosts and other strange supernatural events. We also have a new value known as Resolve, which is a form of mental hit points that represents a character’s desire to continue adventuring. Resolve is lost through traumatic events and gained via things that reinforce hope such as completing personal goals, gaining levels, or paying respects to fallen teammates. If you hit 0 Resolve you have to roll a special saving throw akin to death saves, where “death” causes the character to choose a less risky lifestyle and is retired from play. Or flees the party if in a dangerous area. A few related house rules include Divine Inspiration Cards, cards which are awarded to players from a typical 52 playing card deck. The cards represent certain gods working their influence in the current adventure and can be spent by players to trigger some auspicious event. The suit of a card determines its Influence Level, and the higher the level the higher the equivalent spell effect it can generate. Another rule representing one’s relationship with the gods is Grace, a numerical value representing a character’s relationship with particular gods. A score of 0 is neutral, while positive and negative scores represent varying levels of friendliness and hostility. PCs who gain special abilities, magic items, and class features related to one or more gods can lose access if their Grace score with said gods drops too low. In some cases this can even prevent them from physically entering areas regarded as sacred to a specific Enaros. On the positive side, Grace points can be spent to reroll failed d20 rolls with advantage or regain more HP when spending Hit Dice to deal. When it comes to these new rules I’m rather fond of Grace and Divine Inspiration; they provide a more direct benefit for PCs who entreat favors from the gods without necessarily being priestly classes. It also helps reinforce the feeling of a world where their influence is felt by all in ways both subtle and fortuitous. I’m not a fan of the Aging rules as I feel it will encourage further straitjacketing of certain character concepts, and the Resolve feels more suited in a grittier dark fantasy setting. Combined with Corruption below, there’s two ways PCs can end up “retired,” which may not be to everyone’s standard. However, Corruption is less likely to happen on account that its triggering effects are more easily controlled. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/XiFClvE.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Secrets of Magic[/B] is a shorter chapter, mostly revolving around supernatural corruption and abilities restricted to Endroren’s legions. Corruption is a value which represents a character’s gradual succumbing to Endroren’s influence, which can make them detectable to certain divinations and gain physical and mental changes of a macabre nature from a 1d100 table. Existing corruption is added to the result, and a result of 120 or more transforms a character into the Fallen (or dies a horrible death if a cheebat). The Fallen is a type of evil humanoid who is little more than a slave to Endroren’s will. There’s a list of various ways people can be corrupted; even places and objects can become Corrupted, and spellcasters run the risk of gaining corruption when casting spells in these areas and anyone risks Corruption when using such items. Naturally, a fair bit of classic “dark magic” risks corruption, such as creating undead or using teleportation magic, a type of magic restricted to Endroren’s influence. Finally we get a detailed writeup on the Wards of Alantra, the supernatural barriers that seal Endroren and the Dark Hordes underground. The wards are nodes of a large network of divine magic, and being linked together lets them shield the areas in between. One of the major means of weakening this field is via digging tunnels from the surface as the field is woven into the living essence of the planet. A saving throw is required to pass 10 feet through this field from within the Deeplands, and supernaturally evil creatures including the Endrori and Fallen have disadvantage on the save and also suffer damage as they move through it. Non-evil clerics can bypass these Wards by spending channel divinity, and there’s a 5th-level spell known as the Ward of Alantra which can temporarily raise or lower a ward. Outright creating a new ward is more of a plot device requiring a unique ritual spell learned through downtime along with specific natural material. [B]Coins, Treasure, and Trade[/B] is a reworking of treasure generation in line with Aetaltis’ economy being based more on 1200-1300s Europe. There are different tiers of art objects based on craftsmanship, rules for PCs who invest in a business for potential future returns, tables of specialist merchants and what kinds of items they’re interested in buying (they can pay better prices than more general businesses), and even a table full of “magical baubles” which are magic items designed less for adventuring and more quality of life enhancements. This includes pillows that help one sleep soundly or tapestries with animated artwork. Oddly there aren’t any rules for setting prices for existing magic items in the core rules. I don’t have many strong feelings about these new rules one way or the other. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/3JTJUKy.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Minions and Monsters[/B] is the meat of the book, talking about how both new and existing monsters fit into the world of Aetaltis. The biggest change to existing creatures is that Fey is no longer a creature type, instead becoming a tag for humanoid creatures. There’s also values for Essence Points based on Hit Die for monsters and NPCs that make use of arcane spellcasting. Endrori are the primary villains in the World of Aetaltis. They are evil versions of the enari lineages, the first ones captured by Endroren and twisted into extensions of his will. They are strongly based off of Tolkien’s conception of orcs and are always evil-aligned. Endrori are intelligent, can reason and speak, but they don’t have free will in the traditional sense of the word. Endrori without exception seek out the destruction of all that is good in Aetaltis, and this driving factor raises above all other motivations. Their cultures are thus limited in this sense: orcs were made from dwarves, and virtually every economic and social aspect of orcish cities revolves around endless labor, martial training, and heavy drinking and fighting. Pecks are the twisted versions of sprites who get off on hunting down, torturing, and killing other beings and are basically nomadic serial killers. The Wraethdari are twisted elves and the Ring-Wraith equivalents, serving as the warlords of the Dark Hordes. They are unable to form any sort of bonds or friendships with anyone else and see all relations as a form of exchange with one side being dominant and the other submissive. Wraethdari thus use intimidation to maintain control over others as opposed to other forms of persuasion. It’s better to think of the Endrori as soldiers in a military strategy video game, with Endroren being the player. Endrori, like those video game soldiers, have “idle roles” and can take their own initiative. But they’re limited by the roles they can do, for they were programmed for specific purposes and nothing beyond that. Endroren can effectively hijack direct control over them if he wishes to be more hands-on, as they are all really just extensions of his personal will. The text notes that this is all intentional; Endroren and the Endrori are designed to have a clear-cut evil the PCs can not feel bad about killing en masse, an enemy that cannot be reasoned with or have civilians and noncombatants to raise sticky moral dilemmas. As quoted by the book: Ironically the text later on that very same page creates a kind of contradiction: So it suggests more depth by showing how not showing mercy is a bad thing… when the endrori are created as a villainous group not to show mercy to? I feel that this may confuse a lot of players unless the DM is explicit about what kind of game they’re running, and what’s considered reasonable behavior in dealing with evil in regards to these expectations. Now as you can imagine, there are some unfortunate implications of an always evil humanoid race. Unlike animals, automatons, or some utterly “inhuman” monsters, most of these humanoids in fantasy are often more or less portrayed as fully-fledged societies of “humans but with X.” In quite a few cases such humanoids, orcs particularly, served as the stand-in for real-world groups the author doesn’t like. Lord knows there’s been lots of discussions about this ever since Tolkien felt religiously conflicted about an entire group of otherwise self-aware beings lacking autonomy to “choose grace or damnation.” Portraying evil humanoids as fully-fledged societies have also raised debates about the Baby Orc Dilemma and what exactly their members do when they’re not doing typical evil stuff such as raiding and murdering. The World of Aetaltis attempts to answer some of these questions by making them closer to video game enemies, looking alive and sentient but more of a crude facsimile of human society stripped of any redeeming parts. As for the Baby Orc Dilemma…well, in Heroes of Thornwall, there is one encounter in the Temple of Modren that provides an answer that is already thrust upon the PCs. [B]Content Warning: Child death[/B] [spoiler]There is one room that serves as a goblin nursery; the goblin concept of parenthood is virtually nonexistent, consisting of locking their children in a room and throwing food and water in every so often. Their mothers have no maternal instincts and don’t seek to protect their children from harm. Aetaltan goblins, even as babies, are ravenous murder machines, and will attack the PCs as a surging, biting swarm. They are Chaotic Evil in alignment and will even eat each other if there’s no food around. The book even has an image of the swarm attacking adventurers: [img]https://i.imgur.com/0bb6ulI.png[/img][/spoiler] The Fallen are the other major evil group influenced by Endroren. They aren’t confined to the Deeplands nor was their nature thrust upon them by that god. The Fallen are closer to the autonomy side of choosing evil, for they only spring forth from the enari and Atlan Alliance races who succumbed to Corruption. But once they cross that moral threshold, there’s no turning back, and like the Endrori their minds change so that spreading misery and woe becomes their all-consuming concern. Fallen tend to be specialized in some kind of harm or sabotage: Bloodborn are basically elven vampires, Creepers (halflings) are basically Gollum in being consumed by greed and living in dark places, Darkholders (dwarves) dedicate themselves single-mindedly to serving as laborers for Endroren’s forces, etc. A few can live “peaceably” in society for a time, such as the Shadowmasks which are fallen humans, but even then they seek to bring about ruin and misery from behind the scenes. So you might think that Aetaltis isn’t a setting that leaves much room for moral gray areas when it comes to monstrous races, right? Actually, the beastfolk were made to serve such a role. They are animal-humanoid hybrids created during the Cataclysm, consisting of existing monsters such as gnolls and lizardfolk but including a new one in the form of the ratfolk. Much like the Endrori and Fallen their natures create conflict with the civilizations of the Amethyst Sea. But unlike the Endrori and Fallen they aren’t motivated by a desire to spread harm. Rather, their minds are sufficiently different and animalistic in certain ways that they are unable to understand certain mindsets and mores. It’s possible for enari and Atlan Alliance races to maintain peaceful relations with them or even ally, although such attempts aren’t a sure thing and often have to be done in a means that lines up with how the beastfolk see the world. For example, the ratfolk are scavengers who take whatever they can to survive and often gorge themselves on whatever food they can get on hand. They also lack empathy and cannot understand why people would be upset about this or the long-term implications of things such as famine leading to resentment against them and thus further violence. To the ratfolk, the world is an unpredictable place, and you never know where your next meal will come. Those crops on the farm may just as easily be eaten by someone else who comes by, so may as well take them first to ensure you’re one meal fuller, lest the next opportunity is harder to get and you end up starving. Another good example are the lizardfolk. The lizardfolk can only imagine relationships in a hierarchical way as a means of knowing where everyone stands. They engage any newcomers in a 1 on 1 duel of physical combat. This is preferable to conventional fights as the risk of death is often not worth it. These duels allow lizardfolk to know who can conceivably kill or be killed by them, which allows a degree of societal security and surety. They see this as a straightforward means of testing character, and don’t understand why challenging a human King to a duel may cause the local barony to take up arms against their entire tribe. Everyone’s violent, the lizardfolk view themselves as being honest about what they see as a universal truth. The rest of the new monsters are mostly variations of more “mundane” animals, such as Crypt Beetles who infest graveyards and burrow through flesh, Grey Cats who stalk a mountain range that were once used as mounts by dwarven royalty, and Reavers which are magical worms that can swim through stone like it is water. We end this chapter with a list of generic NPC stat blocks, a lot of which are taken from Heroes of Thornwall and have a heavy influence on noncombatant medieval occupations. We have a Glossary appendix with an alphabetical list of new setting-specific terms, which is appreciated. [B]Thoughts So Far[/B] So the thing with Aetaltis is that it’s a setting that is heavily defined by its monsters and enemies. It veers closer to a certain perception of Tolkien-inspired Low Fantasy, where the primary foes aren’t as much exotic monsters so much as evil mirrors of the homelands the PCs seek to defend. The problem with this is that barring the high-CR Wraethdari the Endrori and Fallen are overall low-CR monsters that aren’t awash with magical power. Thus a more long-running Aetaltis campaign needs more variety of these evil humanoid monster types if they should serve as recurring villains. The setting also takes an explicit stance in regards to the ongoing discussion of evil humanoids, one that veers from the standards of what Wizards of the Coast is doing in their newer material. Much like how a lot of the lineages and cultures in the Player’s Guide feel surface-level, so too do the villains, which makes Aetaltis feel flatter as a setting in comparison to others. Of course, there are a lot of campaign setting with less depth and word count than this one, but oftentimes a key feature of verisimilitude is giving the illusion of depth. Most RPGs aren’t designed as ethnographic simulators, but often include “just enough” to make the world feel real and living. Paradoxically, Aetaltis does have depth, particularly in regards to equipment, economy, and just exactly what specific medieval occupations can do in regards to the game rules via NPC stats. It thus feels like some of the simulationist aspects of 3rd Edition, like how its settlement generation tools can tell you just how many Fighters, Commoners, and Wizards lived in a particular settlement down to the last NPC. [/QUOTE]
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