Burok Torn: City Under Siege is a city supplement for the Scarred Lands campaign setting, by Sword & Sorcery Studios. It is a 112 page, softcover book, retailing at $17.95. I got my copy from a bargain bin at about $5. The book uses 3.0 rules and conventions.
Burok Torn has seven chapters. The first chapter is a detailed look at the history of the underground dwarven city of Burok Torn, the neighboring dark elves (drendali in Scarred Lands parlance), and the tragic misunderstanding and betrayal that has fueled an interminable conflict between them. As a complete newcomer to the Scarred Lands (this is the only S & S book that I own), I found this chapter to be fascinating. The S & S team has created an innovative and intriguing world, of which Burok Torn itself is only the smallest part, I'm sure. The history and backstory of Burok Torn, it should be noted, is very world-specific, and it will take a fair amount of effort to integrate into other campaign worlds.
Chapter Two looks at the dwarves of Burok Torn, including statistics for mountain dwarves that are somewhat different from those in the Monster Manual. Aspects of dwarven culture, religion and politics are touched on here, and a few key areas of the city are detailed.
Chapter Three details some of the major NPCs of Burok Torn. There are full statblocks for about a dozen dwarven NPCs here. I have not examined them very closely for accuracy or d20 rules adherence, but at first glance they appear to be well done.
Chapter Four introduces the enemies of Burok Torn, the dark elves. Their mobile city, Dier Drendal, is fleshed out slightly, as are the politics and culture of the place. This section, unlike all the other chapters, is written mostly in-character for some reason (likely a different author).
Chapter Five is the "crunch" section. Here we get four new prestige classes, a half-dozen spells, and a group of magical elven tattoos.
Chapter Six contains the skeletons of a pair of adventures set in and around Burok Torn. Essentially, these are just story ideas. No maps are provided, only a couple of encounter areas are detailed, and only a few monster statblocks included.
Chapter Seven introduces a few new monsters, including the cairn hunter (a magical beast used as a guardian by the dwarves), sentinel drendali (constructs which make up the mobile city of Dier Drendal), and the nalthalite template, which is similar in concept to the half-golem of the Monster Manual II.
***
After reading the first chapter, I was all set to give this book a solid 4. I found the history and features of Burok Torn very original and interesting, even if it would be difficult to incorporate into my highly generic and unoriginal homebrew campaign world. However, as I got further into it, my enthusiasm waned considerably.
There are a number of areas where Burok Torn falls short. First and foremost are the maps, or the lack thereof. Only a few small sections of the city are mapped. This book really needed an overall map of the city and surrounding areas. It is very difficult to visualize the geographical relationship between the various encounter areas, or to simply get a scope of the place. For a city book, the map is usually half the appeal, so its absence is particularly striking.
Second, for a book like this to be useful to non-Scarred Lands players, the crunchy parts need to be very good. This is not the case. The prestige classes, put bluntly, are terrible. The Rune Master has almost no requirements (it can be taken by a 2nd level spellcaster), grants full spell progression, good Fort and Will saves, a robust class skill list, and it gives some seemingly overpowered benefits, such as the ability to cast two spells in one round. The Iron Guardsman requires levels of dwarven defender (a design gaffe), and a few obvious feat choices (Power Attack, Cleave, and Combat Reflexes, plus all the feats already in the dwarven defender requirement list). It provides some very strong class benefits. The Stone Guardsman also requires levels of dwarven defender, but provides far weaker abilities than the Iron Guardsman. It is simply an inexplicable design. Finally, the Tattoo Adept may well be interesting, but there is not enough information in this book to actually play one; one also needs Relics & Rituals. This is actually a problem throughout the book. A great many rules from other Scarred Lands books are referred to, but not republished. This is understandable, given the target audience of Burok Torn, but it severely limits the utility of the book for those who are not already Scarred Lands devotees.
The spells and monsters are not as bad as the prestige classes; they are merely uninspiring.
I was also unimpressed with some of the flavor outside of the initial history chapter. One would expect that the evil dark elves, lawful though they may be in the Scarred Lands, would have a political history filled with intrigue, backbiting, assassinations, and the like. Apparently not. In the three-millennium history we are shown, there have been only three kings of the dark elves, all from the same line! Aren't there any schemers with ambition? Hostile factions? Are there any politics at all? The dwarves of Burok Torn have a similarly drab political history, having more and varied rulers only by virtue of their shorter lifespans. The underground city of Dier Drendal itself shows a lack of imagination, laid out in perfect geometric style, with no interesting locations or features, other than the fact that it moves (which I find a little silly, and simply a contrivance to keep the dwarves from finding the place).
On the positive side, the artwork is all top-quality, the writing and editing of the book are excellent (I found only a few minor typos), and the backstory of the city of Burok Torn is extremely interesting and thought-provoking. However, for those who don't play in the Scarred Lands, this book will likely not be very useful. The flavor is very, very world-specific (gods are literally running around the countryside), and the crunch very badly designed. If you play in the Scarred Lands, this book is a 3. Otherwise, a 2.
