Catacombs

[JoeGKushner]

Catacombs is the second supplement for the Dungeon World setting. It starts off with a fairly lengthy, six pages, introduction to the Dungeon World setting and includes notes on what the product is about.

From the get go, I can tell I'm going to have trouble with the book. For example, if you turn to page 9, “This sourcebook details the city Kerse.” No it doesn't. It is the book on the Catacombs. I can only imagine that whole sections of the first sourcebook were lifted whole and brought here. For once again, on page 12, “Chapter at the end of this book entitled Quests.” Uh, there is no chapter like that.

Is this to say that there is nothing worth looking over in the book? Far from it. There are eight new areas to explore, each one mapped out with new locations, NPCs and monsters. You can move through the the Burrows, where drow and mind flayers once battled until overcome by a beholder, explore Mechtropolist, a city of mad science or go to the Realm of the Mad King, among other locations. Most of these are short and could probably fill up a 32 page book in and of themselves so the material here is appropriate for a GM who likes to customize his setting.

One of the things I was surprised at was the new prestige classes and monsters. While there are only three PrCs, Brothers of Aahrun-Tal, Downfallen, and Iclara's Midwife, they don't seem as out of place as some of the material from FFE. The Brothers are monks who find themselves at home in Dungeon World. This extends to survival by ignoring disease, hunger, fear and madness even as they continue to advance in their monk martial arts. The Downfallen are undead, but use d8 for hit dice. Bad FFE. These beings were sacrificed to a god who found the sacrifice not in his sphere and rejects the soul, sending it back to inhabit its body. The Midwives are healers who unlike the Brothers, don't only seek survival, but to bring hope and prosperity to the people in the land.

The monsters run the gamut in origin and challenge rating. It starts off with the Broken Bone, an undead with a CR of 3 that originates from the combined bones in a crypt of other place of death to the mighty huntsman, a construct capable of decapitating its victims with razor sharp swords. Unfortunately, the format isn't followed at all times. Some of the listings show touch and flat footed armor class listings, others don't. Some of the monsters are suitable for players, but no racial traits are broken out, just the ECL and the favored class.

Art in the main book consist of public images like the guy on page 12 digging in the dirt. Now what this has to do with anything in the book I don't know. It's not a bad illustration, it's a classic. It just has no place here. Other art is done by Marcio Fiorito and most of it is good, but a few fall below his standard like the illustration on page 81. The material he provides at the back of the book covering the new monsters and PrCs is more up to his usual speed. Overall art use is light. The inch and a half borders on the outer and top edges don't help things either. Maps are the standard FFG which means no use in the game but an overview of the area on a computer generated map. Not my personal favorite type. They really need to get the guy from SkeletonKey Games over there like MEG and Necromancer have.

I don't follow the whole SRD thing, but know that certain terms are no longer permissible. Stuff like Mind Flayers (p. 13 among others), Beholders, Tanar'ri, Baatezu, and even Lolth (p. 16) so perhaps this book will join the pulpy masses. Declaration of OGL is bad with the standard of FFE which reads something like, “Whatever was out there before is still OGL and everything else is private.” which seems to go against the latter “Whatever we haven't declared as Private, if it's game mechanical, is open.”

There are some worthy ideas to mine in Catacombs and if you've enjoyed Dungeon World, you'll enjoy this book as well. Now if only they could get over the editing errors, public domain art, and OGL issues, they'd be on the right track.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Is it possible to be more lost?
This new hardcover rules supplement for d20 players provides even more levels in the seemingly endless darkness that is Dungeon World. There is a purpose behind the catacombs, a vile and evil purpose that tries to use you and your party as pawns in its pointless game. Ever deeper and more dangerous the levels become. In the back of your mind you keep repeating that it's always darkest just before the dawn, only dawn never comes to Dungeon World. There is war within the Dungeon World, and only you have a chance of stopping it - only a slightly better chance than of you surviving the next few days in Dungeon World.New intrigue, new levels, new races and new rules for playing in the Dungeon World are within the pages of Dungeon World:Catacombs. It's hot in here!

 

[Napftor]

Bad Joe. You don't mean to type "FFG" (Fantasy Flight Games). You mean "FFE" (Fast Forward Entertainment). Good review as always.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Goes into review. Edits... Looks around.

Why Napftor, whatever do you mean?

 

[Sir Trent]

Hey Joe, no comments on the price? $128.00 for a 128 page book? Ouch, that's a buck a page!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Thanks for the errata on the price Sir Trent. That's a product error in the database and I've fixed it.

 

[Psion]

Dungeon World: Catacombs

Dungeon World: Catacombs is a supplement/location collection for the Dungeon World setting by Fast Forward Entertainment. The book covers a specific area in the infinite subterranean world called "the Catacombs." Writing and design credits include Tim Beach, Timothy Brown, Kurt Hausheer, Tim Kidwell, Todd Laing, Gary McBride, Trevis Powell, Geoff Skellams, George Strayton, Christoffer Trossen, and James M. Ward.

A First Look

Dungeon World: Catacombs is a 128-page hardcover book priced at $24.99 US. For this price, B&W hardbounds of this price are historically thicker (176 pages for books by FFG and as much as 256 page by White Wolf published books), but prices are trending up for those thicker books. Also worth noting is that FFE's current hardbounds aren't any more expensive that softbound books of the same size.

The cover of the book has the FFE signature red grainy background. The front cover picture, by Monte Moore, depicts two feral, primitive looking humanoids engaging in combat, one of them apparently with some sort of weapon grafted to its arm.

The interior is black and white. Veteran d20 illustrator Marcio Fiorito is the only cited illustrated, and his interesting and quirky drawings are up to their usual excellent standard. There are other illustrations in the book, which appear to be the same sort of public domain art that FFE has used in the past (and some of it has been used on other FFE books.) One thing I find lacking about the art is that while creatures and individuals are well illustrated, it occurs to me that there is one major function of art in a setting product that FFE is missing out on: illustrations showing major aspects of the setting and giving the setting its own feel.

The maps appear similar in style to those in Dungeon World in that they are computer generated with textured shapes representing various caverns, structures, and other features. Some of the maps look like a bit newer and more visually appealing style, similar to those in Treasure Quest: Tombs of Ra. The maps are somewhat abstract; scales are used intermittently, but are generally rather large. Accordingly, keyed encounter locations are generally far apart in game terms.

The interior body text is moderately dense, and close line and paragraph spacing gives a good overall content density. The layout is a bit on the plain side, but I saw no labeling errors as I did with the Treasure Quests books.

A Deeper Look

The Catacombs are a specific section of Dungeon World among others like The Nex and Kerse (which are described in the original Dungeon World book and Secrets of Enemy Capital respectively.) The book describes the seven major areas of the Catacombs, along with an overview chapter and a general chapter describing the Catacombs, new prestige classes, and new creatures.

The overview section provides a summary of the information book. The Catacombs chapter only talk specifically about the Catacombs for one page. The rest of the chapter is about Dungeon World in general.

The general information on Dungeon World is largely repeated from the Dungeon World book. Some of the wording is changed, often more abstract or otherwise worded differently. Other sections are repeated almost verbatim. However, generally the arrangement of the material is superior to Dungeon World. For example, where before notes about the caretaker where scattered in the original book, here they are consolidated in one section.

Though much material is repeated, there isn't enough here to invoke prevailing rules pertaining to Dungeon World, and in some cases the rules seem slightly changed from Dugneon World. For example, the rules about clerics losing faith are not repeated here, but a number of different implications are here that weren't in the original. The original rules seemed to only talk about clerics, but the text here implies that most or all divine spellcasters (except in certain regions) would suffer the deleterious effects that clerics were described as suffering.

One odd and baffling section of this chapter is entitled "Lifespan and New Births." Similar to the above apparent change, the text here implies that aging occurs at an "almost imperceptible rate" in dungeon world, where the original Dungeon World book states that aging occurs at one-tenth the normal rate, which is slow but not quite imperceptable. More odd, though the section heading promises information on new births, it isn't mentioned in this section.

The first section of the Catacombs detailed here is called the Burrows. The Burrows are a section of the Catacombs inhabited by the typical sorts of creatures that exist underground in the material planes, who sought out this section of for its similarity to those dark halls. I found this explanation a little strange, as it seems to me that creatures trapped in such a dangerous place as dungeon world can seldom afford to be choosy.

The region was once ruled by a coalition of illithids and drow (yes, the non-open term and statistics for illithids are used.) This seemed like an interesting backstory, but as you might guess, this unlikely alliance didn't last and a schism in their alliance allowed many other races to overtake them and all but a handful of each race died.

The end result is an array of caverns not too much unlike standard d20 System fantasy underground settings. Most of these areas are rather dangerous, except for a lucrative but hazardous to reach a marketplace known as the Grand Bazaar, where many goods can be purchased. The Grand Bazaar is currently presided over by a beholder (also not an open creature) with a number of half-orc assassins in its employ.

The creatures in the Barrows are a little flaky. Though some reasonable licences are taken (such as a drow female with a sort of "flame touched" template), the aforementioned half-orc assassins are 5th level fighters/3rd level assassins. This is odd, because there is no way that a 5th level fighter can qualify for the assassin prestige class. The assassin requires 8 ranks of hide and 8 ranks of move silently. A single-class fighter would have to be 13th level (and have a high intelligence) for the assassin class. Further, the assassin seems to have no other skills than those it used to qualify for, as if skills from the assassin levels were not taken into account, like the character's skills were totally ad hoc.

The map to the Burrows section is honeycombed with mazed like passages (which does not sound like the underdark to me, but I digress). If you try to use the maze parts of the map to adjudicate the passage of characters, you will be in trouble, as several sections (including some keyed sections) are inaccessible. This coupled with the fact that the book is pretty explicit that there are no magic portals in this section of Dungeon World, it seems clear that the map is not meant to be used to guide PC movement.

The second location is called The Final Resting Place. The final resting place was once the abode of a once honorable people that fell to evil practices due to their zealotry. Their deity turned their back on them, and the caretakers of dungeon world ripped their city, Tahnir'Bykk, from their world and brought it to Dungeon World. The curse that they have brought upon themselves has left their city riddled with undead, including some new types (like the corpse dust and the sacred servitor template.)

The third area is Mechatropolis. This huge city is a bizarre and chaotic menagerie of machinery built by a new humanoid race called the contraptionists. The contraptionists themselves are aloof. Most visitors never see a contraptionist, and are limited to a foreign area where trade is conducted with the contraptionists' mechanical servants.

In the bazaar, the PCs may have an encounter with one of several foreign NPCs that are willing to hire them to delve into mechatropolis on a number of daunting missions.

The fourth area, the Honorarium. The Honorarium is home to an order of monks called the Brotherhood of Aarhun-Tal. This brotherhoods original members were drow who grew weary of the hostile ways their brothers. Since then, members of other races have joined.

The leader of the honorarium, the so-called "Master", has thirty class levels (20 fighter and 10 in the Brother of Aarhun-Tal prestige class.) Note that this book was released prior to D&D 3.5, and thus is written to 3.0 standards. Since the epic rules were not open until 3.5, the epic rules were not available and were not used. The character is written as if BAB and saves progressed at the normal pre-epic level rate.

The fifth area is called The Kingdom of the Fallen. The concept of the this area is similar to that of The Final Resting Place in that it is the abode of those who were arrogant before the gods. The major difference is that the offender is, in this case, a goddess of fertility who presumed that she should be the leading figure of the deities. This goddess, Iclara, was cast down by the gods, and she and her followers ended up in Dungeon World.

The Kingdom of the Fallen is situated in a single large cavern, dominated by the remnants of the ancient city once home to Iclara's followers. Iclara herself is trapped below the city, cursed to give birth to stillborn children through eternity; her howls fill the city daily. Two other groups contest control of the cavern, a group of human wanderers that have settled in the city, and a group of humanoid creatures living in caves in the cavern roof called the tuskers.

The region known as The Realm of the Mad King is one of the more bizarre sections of the catacombs. The Mad King is a twisted and deranged creature; his realm is a twisted maze of passages with an living appearance. The passages rearrange themselves with the turmoils in the Mad King's mind.

To represent this random rearrangement of the passages, the map of the realm is split into 16 geomorphs. The GM is encouraged to cut these out and randomly rearrange the passages.

This is not the only hazard of the Realm of the Mad King. In addition to the mad king himself, he is served by a construct known as the Huntsman, and other dangerous NPCs lurk in these halls. Further, traps make moving about hazardous, and the use of magic might be greeted with unexpected magical effects.

The Pits of Hell are home to an exiled Marilith (demon) general by the name of Ranke. Upon arriving in dungeon world, Ranke took control of a clan of yuan ti. Like many other areas, this one is contested by multiple groups. In addition to Ranke and her demonic and yuan ti followers, a half-fiend xiptec leads a pack of xiptecs (primitive mind flayers), and a group of humanoid bullettes called the ugru.

In addition to the various areas, there is a variety of ne rules material introduced in the back of the book, including new prestige classes and new creatures.

The three new prestige classes are:
-Brothers of Aahrun-Tal: The Brothers of Aahrun-Tal are the core residents of the Honorarium. Most of their class abilities are defensive in nature, involving immunities to physical frailties such as sleep and hunger. The class also gains continued progression in monk abilities in addition to having all good saves and BAB progression. All told, I think this makes the class a little strong.
-The Downfallen: The downfallen are the zealot exiles of the Final Resting Place. Their rejection of divinity gives them a number of abilities, primarily effective against divine magic. They also gain spell like abilities in a pattern similar to spells; I don't know why they simply didn't provide them with spellcasting abilities. Their final class ability grants them total immunity to divine magic, which seems a little strong. On the other hand, the class's BAB progression seems weak for it's earlier class abilities, giving the class an uncomfortable balance.
-Iclara's Midwife: Servants of the cursed goddess of fertility, Iclara. They have continued divine spellcasting progression and weak BAB progression. Their class abilities are generally beneficial spell-like abilities like cure wounds, calm emotions, and purify water. Of the three prestige classes, this one seems the most balanced (perhaps a little on the weak side), but also the most boring. I didn't see a significant reason that single class clerics couldn't serve the same role in the campaign.

There are a variety of new creatures, including contraptionists (basically tinker gnomes), iclarans (the humanoid race serving iclara), psiborgs (contraptionist brains in a construct housing) and xiptecs (primitive mind flayers), among others.

Conclusion

I did notice several improvements in Catacombs over the original Dungeon World. Some of the maps have more reasonable scales, and the information seems better organized. Further, the various sections have more in the way of information about how the groups in each region interact with each other and outsiders.

While creature statistics and NPC stat blocks avoid many of the problems that were in the original Dungeon World, there were still a few significant errors such as the half-orc assassins in the great bazaar. Also, while the prestige classes seem a bit more palatable than some of those that appeared in some FFE products, they still could use a few tweaks and in some cases, better justification.

I didn't find the regions as interesting as those in the original dungeon world. Mechatropolis and the Realm of the Mad King struck me as the most interesting and unique, but many of these regions seemed redundant to me, and lacked the "Phillip Jose Farmer" feel of the original, and did not seem unlike many normal underground lairs in normal settings. No new caretaker quests, a major element of the first book, were mentioned for the new regions.

Finally, while the background information was better organized, some of it was redundant with the original book. Much of what was not redundant contradicted the first book.

Overall Grade: C

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Arnwyn]

Who is your audience for this review? Consumers or d20 publishers (or both)? I'm not entirely sure consumers care whether a monster appearing in this product is "open" or not.

 

[Psion]

Customers should care, because (like I said) it can impact whether or not they see this book or not, if WotC decides to make them pulp it.

 

[trancejeremy]

Yeah, the first two Dungeon World books were in fact pulped, for OGL violations.

(Which is perhaps why some stuff is repeated here).

Still, WOTC generally lets products written by ex WOTC/TSR slide if they accidently use the I-word. Though now that Mind Flayers have been removed from the SRD, they might be getting stricter.