Book of Strongholds and Dynasties

[Messageboard Golem]

Here you will find not only the castles of lore, but dozens of other strongholds and other buildings, enough to build all the major features of a city. Everything from the humblest farmhouse to the mightiest palace is covered between these covers.

The materials you use are detailed, as well as the places they come from and the way in which you establish your supply. Harvest the resources yourself, or have them delivered to you by professional builders’ guilds. Build anything from a log cabin in wood to a towering fortress in crystal; turn an ordinary manor house into a fortified tower, or set up your home in the skull of a dead god; establish a base of operations in a fortress high in the boughs of a tree, or locate the true heart of your power deep underground in some columned sanctuary.

Once your stronghold is built, there are a multitude of fantastic features that you can add on to it. From the basics of low fantasy such as stained glass windows and simple secret compartments to the lofty magic of trundling juggernauts, levitating platforms and magical energy cannons.

The truly adventurous can now create power sources within their strongholds. Expand your trapbuilding, feature planning and gadgeteering horizons by giving your stronghold a lightning-powered engine, or a central treadmill powered by untiring golems, or even an old fashioned coal-fired boiler. Why rely on magic, when the power of transmitted force can do much of the same work for you?

Most exciting of all, in the second part of this book we unveil the Open Governmental System. This set of game mechanics allows player characters to set themselves up as kings, princes, potentates, dictators, generals, theocrats and governors. Once you have made your fortune as an adventurer, you can now try your hand as a monarch or as a politician. Learn to wield new kinds of power as your various ministers offer you their services; face new kinds of challenge as the people demand satisfaction, or hungry empires eye your land jealously, craving it for themselves. Be a despot, governing with force, a plutocrat using your wealth to buy your way to power, or a High King uniting the tribal warlords of a battle-ravaged country with nothing but your powers of leadership.

Finally, we close with the Open Mass Combat System version 2, an expanded and updated version of the original. After all, we could not give you rules for building strongholds without some rules to help you smash them down again!

The Book of Strongholds and Dynasties is the first in the new ‘Book Of...’ series from Mongoose Publishing, which will all cover one field of central importance to the d20 system in unprecedented depth and detail. With this series, we intend to produce the definitive works on subjects relevant to any Games Master.

 

[Selvarin]

The Book of Strongholds & Dynasties, by Mongoose Publishing, is the first in the Classic Play series and, incidentally, also took the longest to for me to acquire. It's 256 pages, a hardcover with binding no better than that of Sheoloth: City of the Drow--which means it isn't as tight as Draconomicon (good binding matters, trust me on this!). The cover art (by Ralph Horsley) is pretty good, neither cheesy nor overdone. The interior artwork is okay,although I must admit I'm not happy to see artwork that was used in the Sheoloth. Especially considering some of Sheoloth's artwork came from The Quinetessential Drow...
I haven't seen a lot of Mongoose products so I can't say for sure what else has been recycled, but I have a nagging feeling that more of it came from other MGP accessories. A good presentation does count, but this isn't a coffee table book with nice artsy bits. It's meant to be used, so let's get to it...

The Book of Strongholds & Dynasties (BSTD for short) is in its own way three separate but interrelated books merged into one. The first part deals with strongholds, the second deals with government (and running a kingdom, realm, etc.), while the latter deals with mass combat. The first part, taking up half the book appropriately, deals with the stronghold and starts with who might want or need one. The term is used loosely to include institutions such as temples, law enforcement as well as warlords and kings. Strongholds, after all are meant to defend against attacks, and thus serve to protect centers of power. Before getting into actual construction, however, the book gets into detail on matters of importance such as accessibility, food supplies, and whether a chosen site is stable or not. It was in the section on Stability (page 21) that I noticed they're still referring to Winderness Lore checks. Yes it's a minor quibble but hello?! Let's recite over and over now: "Wilderness Lore is now Survival, Wilderness Lore is now Survival..."...Regardless, I found this section on finding/preparing the prospective site to be Worth reading. A few skill checks are included and noted but nothing too complex.

Basic Buildings In Earth and Wood is the first dip into actual construction. albeit lesser structures: longhouses, ditches, embankments, tree forts, rough stone cottages. Each type lists the skills (and skill ranks) required in order to do so, the labor costs as well as the material costs, structure points, and so on. Artistic representations are usually provided, including building or feature diagrams (which range from poor to excellent quality).This format of describing each type follows through into the Intermediate Buildings and Fortifications chapters, and I like it. It's more tangible and comprehensible to me compared to, say, the way parts of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook handled the same mundane bits. I feel more comfortable with how BSTD handles this, because there are enough examples for me to look over and make my own estimates without having to crunch a lot of numbers. The Extraordinary Strongholds chapter handles alternatives such as crystal castles and iron-clad strongholds. It goes further into sites such as cliff villages, tree fortresses, and skull fortresses. the Additional Stronghold Features section runs for 26 pages and adequately handles such items as alarm systems, the cost of carpeting, and much more. Different kinds of glass, creating invisible fixtures, mechanical features, it's all here and it won't overwhelm you. (I especially love the portion on secret doors, the idea of secret doors that work only according to a password never occurred to me until then.) There's more on powered strongholds, which I'm not quite as enamored of, but it's there for you to make use of.

The second main part of BSTD, dealing with governmental/rulership issues, starts on page 129 with The Mechanics of Government. Encompassing six chapters and 92 pages, it's the second-largest portion of the book. First mention is made of regime and province sheets (found in the back of the book), which you can use to write down the pertinent details that relate to the Open Governmental System provided therein. Here are the seeds for developing and running a kingdom, should you so desire, and to turn your campaign into something beyond monster-sacking and into the realms or politics. I've never been that interested in the minutae of running a mythical medieval land but thankfully these chapters are thorough without running on and on. I must say that Adrian Bott touches upon a lot of subjects, such as the section on resources (whale products for coastal communities and so forth). The chapter on power structure is enlightening, and includes special ability checks depending upon a given officeholder's station. And when it comes to the types of governments discussed, each has an effect on the regime's Control and Corruption rating. I would disagree with some of the notions, such as the idea of mages ruling better because of their intelligence, but each form of government has logical disadvantages listed so it's all quite playable.

The third (and last) main section, dealing with warfare and the Open Mass Combat System (v.2). Apparently this is the second revision of the one found in the Quintessential Fighter, and something I've been curious about (I haven't played a wargame since the days of Battlesystem, which I loved). This section is pretty straightforward, nothing I'd point to as 'filler'. I haven't tried the mass combat rules provided in 'Cry Havoc' (nor the D&D version that goes with the pre-painted minis), thus I have little to compare it to. It looks like something I could get into, though, without getting lost in the mess. Following these two chapters are the Designer's Notes and an index.

So, what do I really think about this book? Well, as I've stated before, it's more like three books in one. Most books that handle any single subject found herein cost a minimum of $20 retail. Some may provide a better system, or profuse details, but this is a well-rounded product. My feeling is that the Book of Strongholds & Dynasties handles stronghold-building a little differently than the aforementioned Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, and I love it for that. It handles the more mundane aspects that I found lacking in the SBG and while taking on magic to enhance fortresses it didn't go into excess as the SBG did. And it provided decent examples of that which my party would be more likely to afford to build, something that the SBG seemed to lack somewha. (I know the 2.6 million gp Citadel of the Planes was meant as an example in the latter but come on, that was way too much!). The government-based chapters were decent, if I want to get into detailing a local medieval government I can use that and figure out province stats in a jiff. As for warfare section, it seems workable. You'll have to use your own judgement on that.

In short, the Book of Strongholds & Dynasties is worth getting. I'd prefer more new art (and better binding), but what really counts is what's inside and the stronghold-building bits are sure to solve some of my gaming problems. I hope it sells well in the States despite getting here a bit later than expected.

 

[John Cooper]

Nice review, Selvarin! I finally got the book myself and am only about 60% through reading it, but so far I agree with you wholeheartedly.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

What is with Mongoose and binding? The last couple of products from them I purchased had problems and now this book apparently does as well? I'm really leary of purchasing anything from the company in the future until I hear this problem has been resolved.

 

[Selvarin]

Thanks, John. I was almost certain you'd beat me to this one by the time I got my copy. The stronghold-building section is what made want to get this book but I wound up enjoying the rest of it.

Sirius Black, I'm not completely sure. I had the same problem when the first Relics & Rituals book came out, but the latter was worse because I could actually hear crinkling and cracking when flipping the pages.The BSTD was printed in China, so I'd be tempted to point to that, but so were the recent D20 Dragonlance hardcovers (if I'm not mistaken) and they have tighter, better binding.

Something else came up. I looked over some WotC books on my shelf, I figured they were printed in China or Canada but found that they were all listed as printed/made in the USA. If so then I don't think it's a coincidence that their bindings tend to be tight, nor that they tend to be a little more expensive. It's probably easier for WotC to keep an eye on book quality just by being within a few hours' flight from the printers if things really go bad (sometimes a phone call isn't enough), etc. etc...

The most likely answer is that MGP chose overseas print/ publishing companies with lower production values (in order to increase the profit margin) and this affected the durability/quality of the book. Not that I'm against profits, mind you, just that I can tell the difference between a MGP hardcover and that of other hardcovers without looking at the cover. You can get away with this on softcovers (where the binding is usually just glue) but it makes a difference in hardcovers.

Again, it's a good book to have. I don't feel like it's going to fall apart in the next few months or anything like that, just that it isn't as solid as the Draconomicon so I wouldn't abuse it overmuch. For example, some folks will put a book on the shelf and let it slide down a bit with other books leaning hard against it. This stresses a book's cover and binding needlessly. So's holding it such a way that the the front and back covers flop around a bit. better bindings aren't as affected by such things in the long run, but even they'll start to fail if it happens often enough. To me, every book is an investment so I laminate each one, etc., but then again that may be as much the sign of a compulsive disorder as practial prudence.

 

[Selvarin]

P.S. In case I gave anyone the wrong impression, it was the Relics & Rituals book that I could hear the crinkly-crackies when flipping through. Not the BSTD. (In some ways this is just like dealing with hard drives, if it's making a funky noise you know it's not long for this world.)

 

[John Cooper]

Book of Strongholds and Dynasties
By Adrian Bott
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 8801
256 pages, $34.95

Book of Stronghold and Dynasties is the first in the new "Classic Play" series by Mongoose Publishing, each volume of which (according to the back cover of this book) "covers one field of central importance to any d20 game in unprecedented depth and detail." That's quite a mission statement - fortunately, for this first book in the series, at least, it's not just hyperbole. Book of Strongholds and Dynasties is chock-full of just about everything you'd ever need to know about building a stronghold and running a government, and even throws in a chunk of how to game large-scale warfare to boot.

The cover, by Ralph Horsley, depicts an invading army converging on a multipart castle. Detail is very good on the castle, which is intricate enough (in my mind at least) to relegate it to "fantasy castle" status, although I'm certainly not an expert on the subject. Ralph uses a lot of browns and dark colors in the depiction of both the castle and the army, but this is contrasted nicely against the lighter clouds. The title is nice and legible against its background, something that has been somewhat troublesome in a couple other recent Mongoose books I've seen.

The interior artwork was done by 18 different artists, but surprisingly (in a book this size), there are only 68 black-and-white illustrations. I suppose buildings and government does not necessarily make for exciting drawings, which may explain both the relative infrequency of the artwork and the "best-fit" look of some of it. In many cases, it looks like the Mongoose staff grabbed whatever existing artwork at least "sort of kind of" fit the subject at hand. For instance, the artwork accompanying the details of a government's Admiral of the Fleet is that of a ponytailed sailor at the wheel of a sailing ship. He looks much more like a swashbuckler or a pirate than an Admiral; at the very least he's probably the World's Youngest Admiral. Likewise, the illustration of the Treasurer on page 157 is the same picture of a scribe from Tomes and Libraries. The drow with a chained, fleshcrafted slave from Sheoloth: City of the Drow is used here to depict a "Police Action" of some sort (presumably we're to believe the drow is a member of the police force and the hideous, clawed monstrosity is merely a criminal). The hunted deer from The Quintessential Ranger shows up here in the section detailing food production and storage. None of this is necessarily bad; it merely shows that the emphasis was not placed on the artwork in this book.

I should also mention that besides the 68 pictures, there are also numerous diagrams of building features. Some of these are top-down representations as you'd expect to see on a map; others are mere grids of various sizes. I can understand that it's a great idea to take a "generic approach" and explain how much it costs for (to use an example) an 80-ft. by 100-ft. house without going into detail about how the rooms inside are laid out, but I'm less able to see the advantage of printing a blank, rectangular grid of squares representing such a generic house. (Incidentally, the grid is off: it's only 80 ft. by 90 ft.)

Finally, one last artwork-related comment: it looks like the "Classic Play" line gets its own new "border art" along the top, bottom, and outer edges of the page. Oddly, the artwork here consists of dragons - perhaps the second book in the line, Book of Dragons, was planned first?

Book of Strongholds and Dynasties is laid out as follows:

• Introduction: explaining the "Classic Play" series
• Strongholds: An Overview: a look at who traditionally needs strongholds
• Before Construction Begins: basic considerations to make before building begins - coming up with a plan, finding a suitable site, considering accessibility, defensibility, stability, resources, the advantages and disadvantages of building in a city as opposed to the wilderness, buying labor and resources, clearing the area, and using magic to aide you
• Basic Buildings in Earth and Wood: simple earthworks like moats, ditches, embankments, and mounds; simple wooden structures like palisades, towers, forts, bridges, shacks, log cabins, and tree houses; simple stone structures like walls, cottages, and outbuildings
• Intermediate Buildings: roads, partition walls, metal fences, houses/shops of various sizes, industrial buildings, bridges, bathhouses, windmills, wells, civic buildings, mansions, lighthouses, mausoleums, churches, temples, cathedrals, prisons, and amphitheaters
• Fortifications: the tougher stuff - fortifies walls, gatehouses, fortifies manors, tower houses, square and round towers, border forts, square and round keeps, castles, and stone domes, with a sample "harbor guardian" stronghold
• Extraordinary Strongholds: building with unusual materials, such as near-invisible crystal, ice, or iron, or building in unusual ways, like halfway up the side of a cliff, or filling your castle with clockwork mechanisms, or on a cloud, in a cluster of trees, or even inside an enormous skull!
• Additional Stronghold Features: alarm systems, armories, beacons, carpeting and wall coverings, clocks, combat rooms, doors (secret and mundane), fire escapes, glass features, heatstones (very useful!), ice rooms, illusions, invisible features (like bridges!) ladders, lever and/or magical and/or puzzle triggers, lighting, mechanically or magically powered features, metal features, moving masonry, portraits, sliding poles, statues, stone features, teleportation pads, terracing, torture chambers, traps and trapdoors, turnstiles, voice-activated locks, water features, weightless masonry (now there's a cool idea!), windlasses, and wooden features
• Offensive and Defensive Features: everything from animated weapons to magic barriers, spell-resistant doors and/or walls, force screen generators, and liquid projectors
• Underground Strongholds: building (or carving out) underground structures - from simple tunnels to stone chambers and the importance of columns
• Powered Strongholds: Using a power source (from boilers, elementals, dragon breath, golems, lava, lightning, sunlight, treadmills, or water) in your stronghold
• The Mechanics of Government: using regime sheets and province sheets (provided in the back) to run an empire
• Resources and Goods: the various resources any area might contain, and how to convert them from raw resources to finished goods
• The Power Structure: inner circles, councils, and government positions like Captain of Armies, Admiral of the Fleet, Chief of Defense, Treasurer, Private Secretary, Chief of Police, Foreign Secretary, Minster of Public Works, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Health, Head of Intelligence, Chief Justice, Information Minister, Minister of Magic (shades of Harry Potter!), and Minister of Religion, each with special powers
• The Art of Governing: different governmental systems (despotism, monarchy, high kingship, republic, theocracy, magocracy, plutocracy), the effects of corruption, various actions that a government can take when dealing with its citizens, neighbors, and enemies
• The Seedtime and the Harvest: food production, population growth and loss
• Trade and Taxation: trading with other regimes and the different kinds of taxes
• Warfare: the basics of recruitment, training and deploying soldiers (including mercenaries), plus a section on war machines
• The Open Mass Combat System (v2): a wargame-like system (using miniatures or counters) for determining the outcomes of large-scale battles
• Designer's Notes: Adrian Bott explaining what he wanted to do with this book
• Index a handy, 6-page index
• Regime Sheet for tracking information of a given country or region - council members, taxes, treasury, etc.
• Province Sheet for the DM to track information on a part of the country - resources, structures built, factions, etc.

I'd like to start off by observing that there has been a remarkable change in the quality of the proofreading and editing of this book. I have complained in the past that several Mongoose books had what looked like "spellchecker editing" - if the spellchecker program didn't catch the error, then it made it into the book. At 256 pages, Book of Stronghold and Dynasties is the largest-sized Mongoose book I've seen, and there are only a small handful of punctuation and grammar mistakes; much, much better than Mongoose books half, a quarter, or even an eighth of the page count as this one! Kudos to proofreader Ben Hesketh and editor Richard Neale for a job well done.

Of course, there are still areas that need improved upon. Throughout Book of Stronghold and Dynasties, spell names and the phrases "Core Rulebook I/II/III" are not italicized as they should be. There seems to be some confusion about which is correct, "Knowledge: Architecture" or "Knowledge (architecture)" as both formats are used in the book. (For the record, it's the latter.) There were even several instances of the phrase "Knowledge (Knowledge (architecture & engineering)" being used, leading me to believe that it's a "find and replace" error. Also, there were numerous headings that should have been in bold; nothing too bad, but together they suggest some areas that could use some attention in further books.

As far as the actual material goes, though, Adrian has done a simply outstanding job of producing easy-to-use but comprehensive rules for building just about any structure possible and governing a region. This is (as Selvarin pointed out in his review) pretty much three books in one: building strongholds, governing nations, and large-scale battles. In addition, Adrian wisely declines from covering ground already covered elsewhere, pointing the reader to Tomes and Libraries for details on libraries and the upcoming Encyclopaedia Arcane: Sovereign Magic (both of which he wrote) for details of those subjects, which dovetail rather nicely with this book.

I was very pleased to see some of the "fantastic" ideas thrown into the mix, since Book of Stronghold and Dynasties is primarily for use in fantasy RPGs. There have been several RPG books on castles before, but never before do I recall concepts like see-through crystal, weightless blocks of masonry, or rule systems for powering your castle's traps from a dragon's breath weapon or a golem on a treadmill. The sidebar on using a lyre of building in a construction project, and the dwarven view on such devices, was simply brilliant! Adrian's managed to view the construction process from all angles. He's even managed to get in some humor in what could easily have been a very dry subject; as an example, look at this:

"A freestanding conservatory can be used a s a summerhouse, or as it is sometimes called, a gazebo. This should not be confused with the enigmatic monster of the same name."

I was also pleased to see some maps with gridlines in this book! I don't recall having ever seen gridlines on a Mongoose map - now all we need is a scale and we're all set. (For the record, it looks like they're using the standard "one square = 5 feet" scale in the maps in this book.)

The government section was nicely done; although I've never used such rules in my own games (nor doubt that I will - my campaigns aren't at such high levels that the PCs are rulers of a country), I can see just by reading through them that they look like they'd get the job done. I was particularly impressed with the description of the various high government officials (Captain of the Armies, Minister of Magic, etc.), and the various powers they (and their staffs) wield in a regime. Again, Adrian's found a nice middle ground between "too simplistic" and "too complex," managing to create a ruling system that's both comprehensive and easy to use.

I haven't seen the original Open Mass Combat System from The Quintessential Fighter, so I can't compare the updated version to it (or to other such systems, such as Malhavoc Press's Cry Havoc), but again it looks like a simple system to use, yet covers all of the bases.

All in all, I think Book of Stronghold and Dynasties does a great job of providing what it advertises. I hope the other "Classic Play" books in the series end up this good. I rate this book as a solid "4 (Good)."

 

[Cavalorn]

[No message]

 

[Selvarin]

Good review, John---what a surprise about the relative lack of misspellings. And to think I blamed my bad eyes for not catching many.

Adrian Bott really does have a good mix in there. Some of the 'practical' bits in there beg to be adventure hooks. For example, take the crystal castle section and the idea of 'constructor's crystal', which can be found on the elemental plane of earth (and deep underground). It's both fantastical and practical, compared to (for example) just turning a section of stone invisible as suggested in the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. For those who think too often 'inside the box', he gives a few nudges to look outside it. It's magical and yet not spell-heavy.