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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009533" data-attributes="member: 9860">This is not a playtest review.The Book Of The Righteous is the third in Green Ronin's Arcana series and gives a comprehensive set of churches and cults, holy orders and mythology, in a form designed to be used in any fantasy campaign setting.The Book Of The Righteous comes in at $39.95 for 320 pages. This is the same price and page count as the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, though Book of the Righteous is not in colour (both are hardcover). Use of space is good with a decent font size, small margins and very little white space. The mono internal art runs from poor to good, with most being at the upper end of the scale, The cover art is also good, depicting a petitioner in front of a huge warrior god seated on a giant throne with an owl on his shoulder. The writing style is elegant and engaging, whilst the editing also appears extremely good, especially considering the size of the book.The Book Of The Righteous states a fairly challenging goal in Chapter One: Introduction - to provide a number of extremely detailed religions with deity, organisation, beliefs, clerics, fighting arm, and prestige classes, each of which can be plucked out for use in a homegrown campaign. In addition to this, the aim is also to show the interrelationship between each of the gods and their followers with an uber-mythology/cosmology to tie the whole pantheon together, so the book can be used in its entirety if desired.Chapter 2: The Mythology, presents the mythology and cosmology that ties all the gods in the future chapters together. The chapter begins with a listing of the twenty three gods detailed in the book (the term god is used for both male and female deities here). Each deity is given a title reflecting their areas of power - e.g. The God of Valor, God Of Slaughter, God Of Learning, etc., which makes it easier to relate a certain god from the book to one in your own campaign, ignore the actual names of the gods, and look in the right place to steal material to round out information on the god in your campaign (or for players, the god their character worships if OK'd by the GM). There follows a 3-page mythology of the creation of the world, the birth of the gods, the creation of celestials and demons, the war of the gods, the birth of PC races, and on up to the present situation. There is also a timeline chart showing this in pictorial form. The chapter ends with a short section on cosmology, looking at the different planes (which include versions of Heaven, Hell, planes of energy and elements, and transitive planes). There is an interesting clockwork-like picture of the relationship between the different planes by Todd Gamble.Chapter 3: Practicing The Faith: The Great Church, begins with an overview of the template the book uses for each of the detailed religions within the Great Church, a religious body that worships all the gods. Each religion in chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and (to a lesser extent) 8, gives the following information: * The God - Name, Myths, Associations (including related animals and favoured races), Alignment, Representations (symbolic/iconic imagery), Purpose, and Servants (usually powerful celestials)* The Church - Description, Structure, Doctrine, Common Prayers, Holy Days, Saints, God's View Of The Church, and Preferred Weapon* Holy Orders - Clerics, the role of the new Holy Warrior core class introduced in the book, and Prestige Classes and Other Orders A nice touch is that where campaign-specific information is required to be input from the GM (such as placing a Holy Day in his campaign calendar, these sections are highlighted with an icon. Additionally, the book develops a number of plots and conspiracies in some of the churches that would be normally of less interest to a PC (e.g. comfort and peasants) than others (e.g. war). This theoretically should increase the level of interest in these normally mundane religions. The remainder of Chapter Three is dedicated to the Great Church, and covers the information listed in the template above. The Great Church tends towards law and good, and has a lot of worldly power.Chapter 4: Practicing The Faith: The Old Gods, discusses the faith of the five powerful religions that follow the oldest gods. * Urian is an archetypal sky god with power over the sun, moon, stars, thunder, lightning, and wind.* Rontra is an archetypal earth goddess with power over plants, gems and metals, farmers, and miners.* Shalimyr is the archetypal water god with power over rain, the seas, lakes, rivers, and fishing.* Eliwyn is the archetypal goddess of nature and is worshipped by druids and rangers (there is no church as such).* The Nameless One - the archetypal distant creator god who is 'worshipped' by monks (again, there is no church as such).Chapter 5: Practicing The Faith: The Gods Of The Tree, covers the children of Eliwyn:* Morwyn - goddess of mercy, healing, forgiveness, mothers, and peace. * Terak - god of valour, war, and physical strength.* Zheenkeef - goddess of inspiration, wine, madness, and prophecy.* Tinel - god of magic, knowledge, and truth.* Mormekar - god of death, rebirth, and the destruction of undead.Chapter 6: Practicing The Faith: The Gods Of The Womb, are the children of the gods of the tree, and are more popular with the mortal races as they concern themselves far more with the world than their parents or grandparents:* Maal - god of justice, law, and the dead.* Darmon - god of travel, trickery, joy, luck, diplomacy, and thievery.* Aymara - goddess of love, music, marriage, and bards.* Korak - god of smiths and artisans.* Anwyn - goddess of the hearth, the home, servants, and peasants.Chapter 7: Practicing The Faith: The Three Sisters, covers a single church with three goddesses:* Naryne - goddess of nobility, royalty, and leadership.* Canelle - goddess of victory, athletics, and competition.* Thellyne - goddess of the forest, hunting, and tracking.Chapter 8: Putting Your Faith In Evil, covers four evil churches and a number of evil sects. The information in this chapter is far less detailed than in the previous chapters. A direct quote may be useful here as way of explanantion - GR say "There are a few reasons for this: 1) This book is intended to be useful for any campaign, and we know that a lot of GMs prefer to flesh out their own evil conspiracies; 2) Green Ronin offers a fair amount of evil already, in Legions Of Hell, and Armies Of The Abyss, and not coincidentally those books complement this one nicely; 3) while some people do play "evil campaigns," our experience is that most divinely powered characters are aligned with good, or at least non-evil, gods...". Though I'm not in full agreement with these arguments, there is enough detail for each deity for a GM to use the faith as an enemy of the PCs and as part of the logical pantheon that Aaron Loeb has created here.* Asmodeus is the lord of Hell, god of fire, power, lies, and revenge.* Canarak is the god of rage, violence, and destruction.* Thellos is the god of greed, gluttony, and desire. * Naran is the god of tyranny, pride, and cunning.There are also six evil sects:* Cult Of The Bloody Blade - a sect of Maal who believe that the end justifies the means.* Cult Of The Bounded Rod - a racist sect of Terak.* Cult Of The Icy Breath - a sect of Mormekar that raise and become undead.* Cult Of The Bloody Libation - sect of Zheenkeef who practice immoral acts to excess.* Cult Of Everlasting Night - heretical sect of Urian, insanely bent on destroying the sun and moon.* Cult Of Possession - sect of Darmon who gain wealth by any means.Chapter 9: Campaigning, looks at ways to integrate the ideas in previous chapters into your campaign. This is for those who say - "this is cool, I want to use all of it". The chapter takes a look at the meaning behind the nine alignments, the relationship between the different churches (including a cross-referencing table), how to integrate places mentioned in previous chapters, and a number of adventure and campaign ideas. The remainder of the chapter discusses some game-related and philosophical issues such as the definition of evil crimes, heretical teachings vs. blasphemy, and questions a GM should ask herself when incorporating the information in previous chapters into her campaign world (What are services like?, Who runs the churches?, etc.) with accompanying advice. One thing to note is that the book takes a very dogmatic stance on racial gods - there are none.Chapter 10: Do It Yourself, is more for those GMs who already have their own campaign world, and gives ideas for integrating and modifying parts of the book they like for use within their own campaign world. This is done by first listing the underlying assumptions of the world view presented in previous chapters. This should quickly identify the conflicts that exist between the cosmology, mythology and religions presented in The Book Of The Righteous and those of the GM's campaign world. The rest of the chapter then looks at ways of amending and changing aspects such as planes, names, churches, and mythology. Advice centres on the idea that there is something in the book for everyone, so there is even advice for integrating some of the ideas for use in an already well-detailed mythology/cosmology/pantheon. There is also advice on amending some gods to be racial deities, though the book strongly veers away from this idea elsewhere.Chapter 11: Additional Rules, introduces the concept of the holy warrior. This is a new core class, replacing the paladin. The concept is an interesting one - each religion has holy warriors, who receive powers according to their god and relevant domains. For example, at 1st level, a standard paladin receives four domain abilities related to the Champion and Guardian domains: detect evil, lay on hands (from Champion domain) and divine grace, divine health (from Guardian domain). At 2nd level, he receives two more domain abilities (smite evil from Champion and aura of courage from Guardian). At 3rd level, he receives a Gift Of God (chosen from one of the abilities detailed in each church section for Holy Warriors). He continues to receive further Gifts Of God as he rises in level, and also gains a Special Mount/Companion at 5th level. Holy Warriors from different churches gain abilities from different domains and gain Gifts of God relevant to their church. Apart from these changes, the BAB, saves and spell progresion are the same as a paladin. What you end up with is essentially a paladin specialised for each church in a similar way to a cleric. There are guidelines for using the Holy Warrior as a prestige class if its use as a core class is anathema to you. The various holy warrior abilities are listed and summarised in tabular form. Eleven new feats and a new skill, Famous, are then offered. The Famous skill is tied to the Famous feat, which has a prerequisite of having performed a heroic action publicly, but it still doesn't quite work for me that you can just pump points into being famous without having to perform more than one heroic action. Nine new domains (beauty, the Dead, the Forge, Home, Inspiration, Justice, Night, Oracle, and Truth), 22 new spells, and a few minor and major artifacts are also presented. The chapter ends with seven new creatures, including an archangel of divine retribution.Appendix I: A Treatise On The Divine, is a history of the gods, written 'in character' by a famous sage. This provides a total mythology which can be given verbatim to the players or used sparsely to add mystery and revelation to the campaign world.Appendix II: Gods And Races, gives a chart showing the genealogy of the gods, and a fairly exhaustive glossary.Appendix III: Religion Reference Guide, gives a table summarising the deities, their alignment, and cleric and holy warrior domains. It also includes the correct way to address clerics from the various churches - e.g. a 7th-level cleric of Rontra would be called a Grand Prelate, and addressed as 'Mother Isabella' and introduced as 'The Grand Prelate, Mother Isabella, of the Sowers of the Foundations Of Rontra'.The book finishes with an index.Conclusion:This is a very impressive book, perhaps most notably in the detail with which each god, its church, its clerics, holy warriors, and its doctrine are presented. If nothing else, it should act as a benchmark for the kind of detail we would hope to see in future texts covering religions, and a template for specifying information on your gods in your own campaign. At its most useful, it provides a total and complete pantheonic world-encompassing religion for those who are begining their own campaign world. There are a few dubious crunchy bits here and there, but nothing that can overwhelm the epic scale of the book and its huge potential for both GMs and players.</blockquote>

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