I must confess, I have a weakness for French literature. Or at least certain French authors, including Alexandre Dumas (considering he was sort of a 'pulp' writer, at least by the of his day, it might be a stretch to call his stuff 'literature', but it's fun to read). I've read everything of his I could find, which was surprisingly little, beyond the Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo. Still, with some effort, I turned up such things like Chicot the Jester, who was actually more of a spy.
I don't remember how many books of his I've read, probably around 20-25. Part of the trouble is that I could never get an entire series, or get them in order. (They're even hard to find on the internet..., considering the guy wrote 100s of works). But what I could find, I enjoyed a lot. So, when I heard there was a "Dumas" supplement for d20 from Avalanche Press a couple years ago, I was thrilled, and put it on my want list. However, at the time, it was sorta pricey ($17 for 64 pages, and frankly, their quality isn't generally great) and since my attempts to weasel a review copy out of them were unsuccessful (like 99% of my attempts), I never got around to buying it.
Until, I saw it on sale at Stiggy Baby's for what, I think $6 or so. So I couldn't resist, and it actually turned out to be one of AP's better books (though I also got a couple others that were not their best). And of course, it suffers from the same problem that affects most of their d20 sourcebooks - simply not big enough to cover the subject. 64 pages is better than some of their earlier, 48 page efforts, and it's only about a century or so of French history, but it's still could (and should have filled) a much larger book.
The first 17 pages gives an overview of the setting, essentially 17 century France. Essentially the first half of the century, Louis XIIIth ruled France, along with the sinister Cardinal Richlieu. They both died around the same time, middle of the century, and Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin took over. Mostly Mazarin at first, since Louis XIV was a kid.
It was something of a tumultuous period (though every period seems to be that way in France), what with the reformation and all. France was a Catholic country, and frequently persecuted Protestants, but sort of off and on. For a while they were allied with the Protestants to annoy Germany. At any rate, there's a lot of turmoil and strife and lots of room for intrigue.
The book does a good job of recapping what happened in that period, and is interesting to read. It doesn't really cover the geography of the area at all, which is disappointing, because one of the 4 Musketeers (D'Artganan) went to great lengths to say he was actually a "Gascon". The relevance of this isn't explained in the book.
About half the book is new rules for d20. Something like this probably should have used d20 Modern, but instead it uses D&D 3.0 (I'm not sure d20 Modern was out at the time). It does however, throw out most of the old classes (all but the Rogue, Expert and Commoner) and comes up with 3 new ones: Noble, Priest, Soldier.
There are a lot of different versions of the Noble for d20, all mostly variants of the Aristocrat NPC class. This is no different in that regard, but is a very interesting take, as one of the special abilities of the nobles is "Paramours" - one for every 3 levels of Noble class.
The Soldier is essentially a fighter with some tweaks. The Priest doesn't have spells, but has all sorts of magical powers - healing, blessing, etc. Which really don't fit the source literature or the real world all that well (some could perhaps do it, since the real world legends are the basis for things like "laying on hands" to begin with, but not every single Priest).
There's a host of prestige classes, some rather silly, like "Cardinal", but others are more plausible, like the "Musketeer" class (which is a very good example of what a prestige class is in real life terms)
"Panache" is introduced as a way of making the game more swashbuckling. Unfortunately, the rules are insanely complex, though they have some nice ideas. Basically, by taking a penalty on one roll, the player gets a small bonus (half the initial penalty) on their next related roll and if successful, earns some "Panache Points". Just how much is the most convoluted part - you have to look them up on a series of tables. But then you can spend them on things, the most interesting of which is being able to temporarily purchase a feat.
There are several rules for making d20 deadlier. "Grievous Bodily Harm" is a system introduced to simulate the nastiness of the time. Basically whenever someone takes so much damage, they need to make a reflex save, and if they fail, they suffer from a major wound, and probably have to have the limb in question amputated to avoid gangrene.
There's also rules for a variety of nasty real world diseases/afflictions, including Scarlett Fever, which I managed to catch twice (and is not much fun). Also covered are Small Pox, TB, the flu and Pneumonia.
There's about 6 pages of adventure hooks for possible adventures. Some are based on real life events, which is sorta neat.
Rounding out the book are stats for the 4 Musketeers and the dreaded Cardinal Richlieu.
The cover is by "famed Heavy Metal artist" Lorenzo Sperlonga, and is actually one of his more plausible and fitting covers. While it features the obligatory pneumatic woman based on a playboy model (this time, Tylyn John, if I'm not mistaken. Not that I ever read playboy. Though much more pneumatic than her pictures I didn't see. She's also an actress, she played "The Redhead" in Rising Sun. And IIRC, from the magazine I didn't read, she used to date Barbra Streisand's husband's son. Something or other Brolin. Josh?).
Actually though, most of the cover is of a musketeer, which actually bears a great resemblance to me. At least if I had better hair. And were better looking. But the facial hair is the same, which is deliberate, since I grew it that way because of Dumas.
All in all, a fairly decent book, crippled by the usual problems of Avalanche's d20 stuff - not covering the subject thoroughly enough because of the small page count of the book, and perhaps by using the "base" version of d20 (ie, D&D), which is perhaps not the best suited for real world games. Definitely not worth the cover price, but well worth what I paid for it, which is apparently the "new" list price, since Avalanche seems to have discounted most of their d20 stuff as they exit the RPG market.
It's really probably most useful as a supplemental book for d20 Past when it comes out.
