A Red and Pleasant Land: The good, the bad and the interesting

[Votan]

So what do people think of R&PL? Since it seemed to place well in the Ennies list, I thought that I'd give a few quick thoughts from my reading of it.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!


















The GOOD

The customs and culture of the world. It is amazing and captures the feeling of fairy tale logic exceedingly well. For example, croquet (page 18) is a nice twist on a familiar game and will drive players crazy trying to figure out the rules (which really are rules, so it is a possible thing to puzzle out). Or duels, where the decision to wear a glove is crucial to being able to challenge people. It's good a thousand little details that give the atmosphere of being in a truly foreign and unique culture. This is the best thing a gaming book can do -- provide the thousand little details that let the GM make the world and unique and wonderful.

The BAD

Vampires. Okay, they don't sparkle and I have done an entire campaign based around fighting vampires. But why couldn't we have had wraiths or mummies or amazons or devils. That said, the vampires are at least the strange and flavorful kind. And it might end up as a terrible twist for players who think they have it all figured out (it's just Alice in Wonderland, right?).

The INTERESTING

The Alice class is a complete mind bender. It is the opposite of the whole modern trend in gaming towards making classes things you design like planning a campaign. Instead of planning the class out, you roll at every level to see what you get. These things are accompanied by quotes.

[for example: a roll of 88 gives an extra language and is accompanied by a flavorful quote]

What I don't understand is how well this would work with more typical classes. Could good rules lead to a character who is too strong or too weak, relative to an OD&D Fighter or Cleric? On the other hand, the table looks like a great deal of fun to roll on and adds an element of interest to leveling up.

It's be cool to see the same thing for a Fighter or Wizard to compare.

Overall: This is definitely worth reading for inspiration of how to make an alien and interesting world. Like a lot of high profile products, the players may know all of the twists. But it might be fun, anyway, and knowing the rules doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to exploit them. How hard might it be to find a glove, anyway?

This review was from the PDF

GRADE A

 

[jagerfury]

Zack Smith's A Red & Pleasant Land is extremely good. If you play or run rpg's it is currently the most useful, informative and attractive game product on the shelf right now and should have your interest.

I was grabbing gruesome gaming gobbets immediately. Here is my splash list of favorite first impressions;

Guests )in' hell this monster is beyond totally Pearl Jam before they went big in '89 cool), Instant Dungeon Template, Foreclusions, Sample Locations, The Alice, The Slow War, Conversation Openers...

These are what I found in, I don't know, first two minutes of flipping pages. Innumerable elements from the book which can be just lifted out and used by the enterprising game master in their own campaign. I want that, I pay money for this kind of product. I should say I've put money down on game products many times and rarely get any return like this. The table resources and optional rules section are outrageous gears in which you can learn to drive your games. If you look at these in the book and are lost and mystified on how to utilize them you need to accept the fact you don't know what the point of an rpg is and need instruction. The good news is this instruction is available, for free, in the avalanche of gaming blogs talking about how table top rpg's are awesome and here is why. Just requires cursory note taking.

The hard coded setting material provides endless fuel for players and game master's imagination. Obvious superiority of the campaign material outlined in the small, dense book to anything currently in your library will provide all the hooks you need to enter the adventure into your current game.

 

[le grand fromage]

I bought a hard copy from the LotFP website, it's intelligently written and a good source of inspiration. I'm not sure I fully understood the mirror universe concept but I'm thinking of combining it with a Slumbering Ursine Dunes campaign...The reading's on hold for the moment until I finish the Arkwright Integral but can't wait to get back to it...too many books too little time. As to it being vampire based, well there's plenty of flexibility in OSR systems to "individualise" these as unique NPCs...