There are RPG books and novels you are not searching for. Books and novels that just manage to escape the webs of your uncanny attention for everything that has to do with fantasy. And then, on a lucky day, you find out and tell yourself "Why didn't I notice this thing before?" For me, Thieves' World embodies this kind of ironic encounter for a fan of role-playing games and fantasy.
I didn't decide to purchase the Thieves' World Player's Manual. It was actually given to me as a Christmas Present. This brings an interesting light to this review: I didn't know there were anthologies featuring authors such as Marion Zimmer Bradley and Philip Jose Farmer. I discovered this all with the Player's Manual. This may answer one vital question for the survival of Thieves' World: was I hooked by TW despite my ignorance? Is this handbook sufficient for me to create a TW character and enjoy the game the DM starts? Let's look at this manual more closely.
Overview and Layout
Thieves' World Player's Manual
By Lynn Abbey, Gary Astleford, Patrick O'Duffy, and Robert J. Schwalb
Green ROnin Publishing, #GRR1801
ISBN 1-932442-47-2
192 pages, black and white, hard cover. Cover price: $34.95 US.
The Thieves' World Player's Manual is a beautiful book. Its gorgeous cover instantly appealed to me: dark and sober tones, with an illustration of tavern customers fighting over a stack of gold pieces. For some reason, this illustration puzzled me instantly and took me many years back in time, when I was playing the Dark Eye RPG during the 1980s. I found the Thieves' World logo very attractive as well. All the cover elements invite the reader to open the tome and discover what is so dark about this fantasy world.
The interior layout is sober. All the fonts used are readable and give a clean outlook to the content. The sidebars use some gradually shaded boxes: these are nice, but sometimes the bottom of the boxes becomes a bit dark. It is still pretty readable though.
The book features a table of content, a short story by Lynn Abbey, an Introduction, nine Chapters, two Appendices, a Character Sheet, an Index and the usual OGL License for a d20 product.
This book is intended for use by the players of a Thieves' World (TW) campaign. As such, it presents an overview of the city of Sanctuary and its surroundings, then explains the various options available for Character creation, how a TW campaign may be different from a straight-D&D game, with variant and additional rules, equipment and the like, and details a variant magic system for use in TW campaigns, among other things.
The main questions on my mind for this review are first whether this book presents the Thieves' World well enough to allow players to create meaningful characters for use in TW campaigns, and second whether the rules presented in this book are clear, consistent and usable as they are in a campaign.
The Contents
A Tale of Two Cities - A short story by Lynn Abbey. It reads well and wets the appetite. It features some of the new characters of Thieves' World like Cauvin and Bec. People who are familiar with the setting will like it. Those who aren't familiar with TW, such as I, will like it just as much, I guess. I know I did.
Welcome to Thieves' World - This short introduction presents TW, as well as the books previously written for the setting. This is a nice reference for people not familiar with the setting. It may allow them to search for the different pieces of fiction written by authors as varied as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jeff Grubb, Philip Jose Farmer and many, many others. Yet, I would have appreciated a short summary of the fictions. This is one thing that I find missing as a newcomer to TW.
Chapter One: A Sanctan Primer - This part of the book presents the city of Sanctuary itself: it's people, its laws, its languages, how time is recorded, the currencies used within the city's walls, the basic climate and geography of the region, as well as an overview of all the different districts of Sanctuary. This is fairly well written and very enlightening to a newcomer to Thieves' World. I found the maps (there are two, one of the region surrounding Sanctuary, and one of Sanctuary itself) too small and not complete: scales, legends are missing. Some locations discussed in the text are not visible on the map (such as Pyrtanis street). This is a shortcoming, but the text sort of makes up for it (I'm sure Shadowbane's Guide to Sanctuary, a supplement to Thieves' World, helps tremendously here, but I think mainly the cross-references of maps and text could have been much better for a player's manual).
Chapter Two: Cultures and Background - This is where the elements of character creation really start. In Sanctuary, everyone is human. There are no elves, no dwarves. "Racial" options from D&D don't exist here. They are replaced by Cultures instead: what human ethnicity you are coming from. I found the panel of choices very wide and inspiring to come up with a character concept. You find here cultures such as the very roman Rankans, the nomadic, horse-riding Raggah, the Half Beysib born from fish-eyed, oceanic folks, the artistic merchants of Caronne, and many others, for a total of 13 different ethnicities described here. Each ethnicity presents some advantages and has a list of cultural feats. One of the feats you select as a 1st level human will have to be one of these cultural feats. Nothing negative to say here: this is all well-done: it increases the flavor of characters without overpowering them. Most of the little advantages to this or that ethnicity are minor bonuses on skills and such. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's nice to have a viable alternative to PHB races.
Then, in the same Chapter, come the Backgrounds. These represent the occupation of your character prior to (and during, if possible) adventuring. Your character could be an entrepreneur, an aristocrat, an academic, a constable, a farmer, an entertainer, and so on. Mechanically, by selecting a background, you will add two skills you choose among eight choices to your class skills. You get a +2 bonus to these two skills and they remain class skills for you, no matter what classes and prestige classes you select later on. Nice.
Chapter Three: Character Classes - Thieves' World uses some of the classes of the PHB as base classes for player characters, such as the Rogue (renamed the Thief), the Fighter and the Barbarian. Some negligible adjustments are made, but this sets a standard of balance for Thieves' World: the new character classes have to reflect the PHB's balance, more or less, or you'll have many players running exclusively Thieves and Fighters instead of more flavorful TW classes. The new classes of TW are, in order: Assassin, Godsworn (agent of a deity in TW, akin to the D&D paladin), Initiate (a kind of spellcasting jack-of-all-trades), Mage (a spellcasting specialist), Noble, Priest (a ritualcasting specialist), Ranger (modified, terrain-based instead of D&D's creature based class), Savant, Survivor and Witch (as good in spellcasting and ritualcasting - see below Chapter Eight for more information on the magic system).
My only complaint here is the Assassin. I find this class a bit bland, and underpowered when compared to the Thief. Sure, with an Assassin, you get a d8 hit die and two good saves, but an Assassin is actually not as good as a Thief when it comes to sneak attacks, has less skill points, doesn't have uncanny dodge and such, but a bunch of poison related abilities (mostly skill and saves bonuses when it involves poison) and killing abilities (which aren't that powerful). Don't get me wrong: this Assassin base class is perfectly playable, but why would an Assassin character not take a majority of Thieves’ levels is beyond me.
Overall, though, most of these character classes seem perfectly playable, and each have a nice flavor that fits more or less with what one would expect in a world of thieves and dreaded wizardry. The Ranger seems to be the class fitting the less, but there is advice on how to manage Rangers in Sanctuary's urban environment. So you're not left wondering.
Then come the prestige classes. Some very good concepts here. The PrCs presented here are, in order: Acolyte of Lizerene, Blue Star Adept, Caronnese Merchant, Cirdonian Caravan Master, Crime Lord, Gladiator, Hazard Mage, Healer of Meshpri, Hell Hound, Irrune Raider, Mistress of Red Lanterns, Mrsevadan Sailor, Nisibisi War Witch, Raggah Horsemaster, Rankan Legionnaire, Sacred Bander, S'danzo Fortuneteller and Spellmaster. Of all these PrCs, I really liked the Crime Lord, the Mistress and the Fortuneteller, mostly because they would be easily usable in a straight D&D campaign. Actually, most PrCs are usable in straight D&D without much rules-tweaking. Obviously the spellcasting PrCs are those you'd have to modify most.
All of these PrCs represent a fine range of options for character development. From warriors to professionals of the street and healers, there's something for nearly everyone at the game table. If you're not satisfied though, there are some guidelines included at the end of the chapter to adapt the PrCs of the DMG and Green Ronin's Advanced Classes from the Master Class series.
Chapter Four: Skills and Feats - In this chapter, all the modifications and additional rules regarding skills and feats are explained. There is a new skill: Gambling, which allows you to play for money against other characters in Sanctan establishments. Some rules about cheating are included (always welcome in a world of thieves...). There are new uses for skills such as Craft (Alchemy, Herbalism, Poison, etc), Diplomacy (Haggling, Bribery), Heal among others.
The new feats are either relevant to the magic system of TW or extension of existing feats from the PHB. Nothing really groundbreaking here either.
Chapter Six: Supplemental Rules - This is a really nice chapter. Some of the topics discussed here concern the modification of the Massive Damage Threshold (which makes the gameplay more dangerous), rules regarding severe injuries and infections, character reputations, contacts in Sanctuary. All this could be added to any d20 campaign quite easily. The rules are not overcomplicated and quite sound. Nice work here.
Chapter Seven: Equipment - This covers such topics as disguised weapons, special materials unique to Thieves' World, tools of alchemy and herbalism, drugs, poisons and magic items. All necessary information to know exactly what kind of goods are available to Sanctan PCs, this adds a level of coherence to the setting.
Chapter Eight: Sorcery - Magic works differently in Thieves' World. Each magic-using class in TW is described with spellcasting bonuses and ritualcasting bonuses. These follow roughly a BAB curve. Basically, Mages are very good as spellcasting, Priests are very good at Ritualcasting, and Witches are medium at both.
All effects can be cast as spells or rituals. A spell is quickly cast, but the caster is limited in the number of effects (PHB spells) he can use this way. Rituals take longer to cast, but allow you to cast above your normal limits (in spell levels or intensity of the effect).
All effects work using Mana Pools. You make a casting check using your base spellcasting or ritualcasting bonus plus relevant ability modifier. If your result is above the "Mana Threshold" (MT) of the spell's level, it is cast. If not, you have to keep concentrating and making casting checks until their sum equals the Mana Threshold. A 0 level spell as a MT of 10. A 1st level spell 20. A 9th level spell 100. There are also rules concerning the way you concentrate, the effects of mana (since it doesn't exist in the same amount in different places of sanctuary), how you might fail casting your effect (including spectacular failures), and so on and so forth.
All in all, the system is well designed and understandable. I have mitigated feeling about it though. Here's why: given that combats in D&D/d20 are usually short (around two rounds for an encounter of four PCs versus a CR equal to the average party level), spells become much less useful since they take forever to cast. Sure, you can sneak up to your enemies and start the combat by a fireball, but casting high level effects in the heat of combat will become usually pointless, unless you prepare some of them (that is, you cast them before hand and do not meet the Mana Threshold of the spell. That way, you can keep the spell ready and release it at the last moment) - but you cannot prepare tons of effects that way.
I see how the magic system fits Thieves' World, and flavor-wise, I find it really inspiring and fresh when compared to the renowned Vancian spellcasting system of D&D. But I am not sure it keeps the magic users balanced when compared to Thieves, Assassins and Fighters flanking, sneak-attacking or multi-attacking their opponents. As a DM, you've got to explain to the players wanting to play magic-users that they will have to plan what they're doing in this game, and that their spells are mostly useful between rather than during fights.
Rules regarding Curses and magic items are also included in this chapter.
Chapter Nine: Spells - This chapter presents the spell lists of the different magic users of Thieves' World, over 20 new domains for Priest characters (including domains such as Ancestors, Artifice, Betrayal, Community, Conquest, Desperation, Disease, Eloquence, etc), as well as new spells for your characters to use.
Appendix I: Gods of Sanctuary - An appendix that will prove useful for Priest characters, this is a listing of different deities represented within Sanctuary's walls, including Ilsigi and Rankan pantheons as well as Independent and Outsider deities.
Appendix II: Character Glossary - A list of prominent characters spanning the different eras of Sanctuary. I imagine it can be quite handy if the DM uses official characters heavily.
The character sheet follows (quite standard if a bit dark), then the Index (well organized and clear using normal and bold fonts), the OGL License and an ad for the next TW supplement: Murder at the Vulgar Unicorn.
Critical Hit
What attracts me the most to Thieves' World is the background. Really, the overview of Sanctuary is a pleasure to read, and the whole book "makes sense", so to speak. I like a book that presents a world of intrigue and murders in the dark alleys of a city without using the stale "grim n'gritty" expression as if that answered all the questions (yes, I'm looking at you Warhammer FRP 2E).
Critical Miss
I think the magic system might prove to be a problem for groups of players fond of a tactical approach to the d20 system. It's a setting made for roleplaying and immersion, and sometimes it sacrifices in terms of game balance to fit the mood of the setting. But there is nothing here that cannot be houseruled one way or another.
Another thing: this is a setting dealing with mature issues such as drug abuse, prostitution, slavery and such. This isn't for the faint of heart. You and your players have to discuss prior to the campaign to know if anyone is rubbed the wrong way by any of these matters. This makes for a better gameplay later on.
Coup de Grace
I am satisfied by this Player's Manual. This is a good resource. After reading the manual, I understand what the Thieves' World is and what it's supposed to represent in terms of fantasy style. I know enough to create a character, but this book doesn't replace the Guide to Sanctuary and even less, I imagine, the upcoming Gazetteer. These seem necessary to be able to run Thieves' World.
This Player Manual is not for everyone. It will appeal to a particular type of gamer: the one interested in character interactions over tactical and mechanical interests in the game; the one who likes intrigues and roleplaying instead of dungeon crawling; the one who likes fantasy settings to be more grim and believable than other, more light-hearted worlds. If you recognize yourself in this gamer, you can buy Thieves' World Player's Manual eyes closed. If you aren't afraid to houserule a few aspects of the game, you will get the most out of it and find your own game balance. If for you rules are the end of all and should be consistent from beginning to end, even if it goes against the setting, chances are you won't find everything at your taste.
All in all, in my opinion, an excellent setting served by honorable game mechanics and a fairly useful player's manual. Four Stars.
