2nd Age of Walkers

[JoeGKushner]

Giant Mechs Walk The Earth

An age of destruction paved the way for the Second Age of Walkers. Life in DragonMech depends on the gigantic mechanized walkers that provide safety, shelter, and transportation. Behold a world reshaped by the mech!

A Fantasy World Unlike Any Other

This hardcover campaign sourcebook offers the first detailed look at the world of DragonMech. Learn about the autocratic Stenian Confederacy, the mysterious Irontooth Clans, the ambitious Legion, and the ephemeral L'arile Nation, including new feats, mechs, and classes that allow you to personalize characters from those factions. Along the way, find your own answers to the mysteries of the Gearwrights Guild: Was there really a First Age of Walkers before the dawn of magic?

Designed for use with DragonMech, Second Age of Walkers includes:

A comprehensive look at the four major factions shaping the world of DragonMech, including maps of their territory, descriptions of major personalities, and gazetteers of three important city-mechs: Durgan-lok, the first city-mech ever built; Haven, the human city-mech that threatens dwarven dominance; and Tannanliel, the reclusive magic-fueled city-mech of the elves
Everything a GM needs to shape adventures around the major themes of each faction: the Stenian military, the itinerant human tribes that now make up the Legion, the myriad individual clans of the Irontooth, of which 10 are examined in detail; and the strange magical secrets of the elves and their well-protected forests
Stats for dozens of important NPCs, including Shar Thizdic, Tannan, and the most notorious of the Irontooth raiders
Everything a player need to build characters from each of the major factions, including 5 new prestige classes, a new core class variant, and 49 new feats, organized according to the faction in which they originate
56 new spells, including the magic used by the Irontooth to steal spirits and bind them to mechs, the agricultural magic of the Legion tribes, and the mech-augmenting spells of the elves
And more: rules and background for mechanical sculpture; details on the inner workings of the Gearwrights Guild; background on the dwarven clans; rules for spirit-powered mechs and the shintaji spirit-stealers of the Irontooth; new equipment; 13 new mechs (not counting the city-mechs); and more!


Preview
Gaming Report Review

 

[JoeGKushner]

Hold the crunch and bring the fluff

2nd Age of Walkers
Dragonmech
Written by Neal Gamache, F. Wesley Schneider, Andrew N. Smith, etc. al
Published by Goodman Games/Swords & Sorcery Studios
http://www.swordsorcery.com
http://www.goodman-games.com
ISBN: 1-58846-782-1
WW17603
192 b & w pages
$29.99

So you went out and bought Dragonmech and while you’ve looked it over, you feel that you don’t have enough information on the various factions and people to run an effective campaign. Kiss that excuse goodbye as the 2nd Age of Walkers provides details on all the major power players as well as the major NPCs of the setting, allowing the GM to focus on the campaign.

When first looking over the book, I’m struck by how tiny the print is in the three columns. Some asked me why it took me longer to review this book as opposed to Steam Warriors and it’s because the text is smaller. Make sure to read it in a well lit area and take your time. There’s a lot of information here to digest. The art is up to the standards set by every Dragonmech book but the first, meaing good with some notable illustrations, especially those found in between chapters as full page plates, but not quite up to the awesome illustrations provided in part by Super Unicorn in the core book.

There is no index, and a page is used up on the appendix of legal jumbo, and another for the OGL, and then we get the ads. The bad thing about this being a joint production is that we get Goodman Game ads, Complete Guide and Dungeon Crawl Classics, as well as White Wolf ads, but ironically, it’s for the fiction line of Exalted and Vampire. Ugh, at least give us some ads for game products.

Despite the lack of an index, the two-page table of contents does an excellent job of helping the reader get to where he needs to go, including a sidebar collecting all the tables.

Each section or chapter, covers one of the major power groups. While that means we don’t get to see how the orcs or drow are adapting to the world, we do get the following: Stenian Confederacy, Legion, Irontooth Clans, and L’arile Nation. Each section starts with “Everybody Knows…”, noting the common knowledge about each faction. It then moves onto the history of the faction, then religion, magic, diplomacy, geography, internal factions, mechs of the faction, life among the faction, rules information, and secrets.

I can see some people smacking their heads at reading about rules information. I assure you that the rules are minimum in contrast to the meat of each section, which is ‘fluff’ of the game world. They’ve saved the majority of the crunch for their Steam Warriors sourcebook.

When looking at Dragonmech as a whole, it’s important to note that like real life, there really aren’t any ‘good’ guys and ‘bad’ guys as traditional fantasy elements see them. For example, while the Legion is not friendly or even accepting of non-humans, they are providing a great service to those who humans who need help and shelter in surviving the lunar rain. They are dedicated to removing lunar creatures and establishing that this is a time of man.

Some might see this as a rip off of the Coalition from the Rifts game setting, it’s important to note that unlike most fantasy campaigns, humanity was never the major ruling power here and most of these humans were living off the range so to speak as opposed to gathered in huge cities. They were also turned away from the shelters that the dwarves had and had to fight to survive.

How about the Irontooth clans? Aren’t they just a thinly veiled Mongolian raider rip off? Highly mobilized forces that are better than those they face? Well, if they were all one tribe or all fought under one banner, perhaps, but as you read through the different clans, you see that there are many factions within the Irontooth. Some see themselves as protectors and the authors acknowledge this by crafting new mechs like the Samurai. Others are in essence bandits who, while accepting payment not to attack, may grow bored and attack anyway.

One of the nice things about this book is seeing how the authors have imagined the setting. For example, when looking at the secrets of L’arile, we’re given game stats on the man who made it all possible, Tamnan, the creator of Tannanliel. We also find out how he manages to keep that mech, the most powerful one in the whole setting, afloat and why there aren’t multiple mechs of that nature around. I’ll not spoil the secret here, but it’s of the type that makes sense from one point of view, making one wonder what’ll happen once Tamnan is no more.

Other secrets aren’t quite as dramatic. For example, the Irontooth have details on the Moonwatcher Clan, a group of druids that watched lunar activity long before the lunar rains started falling. This allowed them to negate the effects of the lunar fall slightly, as after all, a heavy meteor shower isn’t something that can just be skipped through, and they now share their knowledge with a select few of the Irontooth clans.

The Stenian Confederacy, while having a great respect for “The Law”, an unwritten set of rules that dictates how people can life, are not above moving past those laws themselves. For example, they have a specialist guild of mech pilots, the Dragon Mechs, and one of the informal requirements for the, is training among the Irontooth Clans. Now because loyalty to the Confederacy is supposed to be paramount and because it’s not seen as self sufficient, it’s not a good thing to allow this training.

However, reality steps in and it’s noted that the Irontooth Clans do know what they’re doing and that because these members, the Dragon Mechs, have remained loyal to the Confederacy, it’s been allowed to continue.

By including numerous NPCs, the authors have allowed the GM to focus on using those NPCs without the dreaded task of writing them up. However, the authors really don’t seem to be reading the backgrounds they give the characters as they often don’t have matching abilities as dictated by their background. For example, Gryzin Argyle is noted as “far more useful as the steam-tech he already was”, you note that in his game abilities, he has no such abilities. Sense motive and combat reflexes are useful in the right place, but perhaps a level or two or expert or some other non-combat class could be included?

Because there is so much information packed into this book, the GM should have no trouble coming up with any number of threads. For example, the shards first mentioned in the Shardfall Quest, are a part of some of the Irontooth Clans plans. The GM could easily have the players seek out further lunar dungeons that have crashed to the ground. On the other hand, perhaps he wants to run battles against lunar dragons using the Dragon Mechs from the Confederacy? Heck, I could almost see a 15mm game evolving from that as the lunar opposition seeks to consolidate it’s holdings on the world and the survivors continue to push their way out.

Because it’s written in a faction style as opposed to a world style, there is no real information on Edge, the last city, which is okay as it has it’s own book coming out, nor are there any up close and detailed maps of the city-mechs, which is a shame as those could really help a GM out. I’d love to see Skeleton Key Games come out with a few attempts at this as it would enable a GM to have even more of a visual idea on how these mechs operate and more importantly, how much room he actually has to play with in creating gear forests and other hazards for the players.

The 2nd Age of Walkers isn’t the last word on Dragonmech. There are too many other interesting areas to explore. However, for those looking to expand their understanding of the core four factions and see examples of how they may want to create their own Irontooth Clans or see how the Legion works, this book is a great sourcebook.