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[COMPLETE] Looking back at the leatherette series: PHBR, DMGR, HR and more!
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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8289271" data-attributes="member: 8461"><p>So now we come to Vikings II: Electric Boogaloo. Otherwise known as <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110199/HR3-Celts-Campaign-Sourcebook-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>HR3 Celts</em></a>.</p><p></p><p>If you're scratching your head at that, it's because this book seems to take a lot of inspiration from the first entry in the Historical Reference series. Once again, we have a culture from the far reaches of Europe (in this case, the far west/northwest ends of the continent), presented in opposition to a more centralized culture (i.e. pitting the Vikings of HR1 versus the Carolingians from HR2; in this case, it's the Celts versus the Romans in HR5), and have "barbarian" overtones (e.g. berserker warriors, a lower tech-level than the culture they're set in opposition to, etc.). The book even formats itself in a similar manner, not just in terms of only having only one default for how fantastical the campaign should be (unlike other books in the series, which vacillate between campaign modes such as "historical," "fantastical," and/or "legendary"), but even in specific ideas, such as all human characters having potential Gifts as part of character creation.</p><p></p><p>Of course, I'm overstating the similarities (mostly by understating the differences), but it's easy to see how the presentation for these campaigns can be taken as similar. What I found interesting, however, was that there's less of a narrative straitjacket surrounding the idea of Celts than there is for Vikings.</p><p></p><p>What I mean by that is that pop culture has a relatively cohesive idea as to what Vikings/Norse tropes are, which is why no one needed anything explained to them when the first <em>Thor</em> movie for the MCU came out, nor needed a lot of handholding when <em>God of War</em> reinvented itself with a Norse setting. Not so the Celts; besides the name of a basketball team, they don't really occupy much place in contemporary cultural consciousness. A few people might know old Celtic myths and legends, and every so often you'll find a fan of Conan who knows that Cimmeria is analogous to the lands of the Celts, but that's about it.</p><p></p><p>Well, that and <a href="https://youtu.be/6ZhCCu-2gbw?t=90" target="_blank">that Alan Rickman line</a> in <em>Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves</em>.</p><p></p><p>Of course, D&D players will note that the Celtic mythos is a bit stronger in the game. While the Celtic pantheon didn't make the cut in the Third Edition of <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/130333/Deities-and-Demigods-3e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>Deities and Demigods</em></a> (I recall someone from WotC once saying that if there'd been one more pantheon in the book, it would have been that one), AD&D 2E's <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116010/Legends--Lore-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>Legends & Lore</em></a> made no such omission, nor did the god books for previous editions (i.e. <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110198/Deities--Demigods-1e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>Deities & Demigods</em></a> and <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17177/ODD-Supplement-IV-Gods-Demigods--Heroes-0e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes</em></a>). Celtic overtones were also present in <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16803/FR2-Moonshae-1e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>FR2 Moonshae</em></a>, along with <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17034/C4-To-Find-a-King-1e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>C4 To Find a King</em></a> and <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17035/C5-The-Bane-of-Llewellyn-1e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>C5 The Bane of Llewellyn</em></a>. So people picking up this book probably had a slightly better sense of what they were in for.</p><p></p><p>So what <em>was</em> here? Well, after covering the requisite bases - outlining their history, including the conflict with the Romans, noting that the Picts seem to be a separate, possibly pre-Celtic people, and overviewing the eternal debate about whether it's pronounced "Keltic" or "Seltic" - the book jumps right into building Celtic characters.</p><p></p><p>I mentioned the Gifts thing before, but it's worth noting that while the list here is shockingly similar to the one in HR1 (to the point where it quite clearly had to be more than just parallel development), there are several differences, mostly in that several of the results are more powerful than what you'll find in that book. For instance, if you roll a 17, you then roll on the Mixed Blood sub-table, which can get you a +2 bonus to an ability score, infravision, or even the ability to advance as a multi-class character - despite being human - with mage added to whatever character class you've chosen (except druid; you apparently can't mix those two). Oddly, that last option is <em>also</em> what you get if you roll a 20 on your Gifts roll. Did the author run out of ideas, or was this their way of trying to make that option a little easier to get?</p><p></p><p>This appears to be the only way to play a generalist wizard (at least I assume that you multi-class as a generalist), since they're only one of three classes (along with the paladin and cleric) that you can't play in a Celtic campaign. Except you <em>can</em> play paladins and clerics...they just have to be foreigners. Wizards can't learn conjuration/summoning or necromancy spells (or, presumably, be specialists in those classes), but even here the book hesitates to draw a hard line, saying those spells could potentially be learned if your Celtic spellcaster visited a different culture which practiced those magical traditions.</p><p></p><p>The bigger rewrites are for druids and bards, the two classes with genuinely celtic flavor two them; naturally, the changes make them much closer to their historical counterparts (as we understand them, at least). What that means is a fairly substantial reduction in power, with druids losing most of their special abilities and their spellcasting being sharply curtailed (though, for bards, this is also a return to 1E-style divine spellcasting). There's also the new manteis class, which requires that you roll the divination Gift to take, and who have access to all spells of the Divination priest sphere and Divination wizard school...and I'm suddenly remembering the seer class, from <em>DMGR8 Sages & Specialists</em>. Apparently, the Celts did it first.</p><p></p><p>Really, the big winners here are the fighters, because the book then introduces new "heroic feats" which are <em>insanely</em> powerful for what they can do! Not all of them, but enough. That's appropriate to the tone of the old Celtic myths, which sometimes come across like something out of a <em>shonen</em> manga, but even so, letting characters do these things in AD&D 2E, whose power level is decidedly <em>not</em> over nine thousand, is shocking.</p><p></p><p>For example, Del Chliss lets you deal double damage with a thrown spear if you beat your enemy's AC by 2 or more. I know AD&D 2E didn't presume to use critical hits, but that's like an easy-to-get critical hit. Stroke of Precision lets you, with a weapon you've specialized in, potentially land a hit that severs a limb as per a <em>sword of sharpness</em>. And at the top of the heap is the Gae Bolga, where you kick a barbed spear ("gae bolga" being what a barbed spear is called) so powerfully that you <strong>multiply the damage dealt by your level!</strong> I know all of these require multiple proficiency slots to take, some require proficiency checks (with greater-than-normal nonproficiency penalties for unskilled use), and even have modest drawbacks when used correctly, but still...damn!</p><p></p><p>The magic chapter highlights another interesting aspect of a Celtic campaign: it's all about location, location, location. While the book does talk a bit about magic items, there are multiple tables for enchanted places. Seriously, there's Magical Islands, Magical Lakes, Springs, and Wells, Magical Fortresses, Hidden Magical Places, and Stone Circles, though that last one is largely a note about how those were actually pre-Celtic, and then refers you to <em>Legends & Lore</em>.</p><p></p><p>The monsters chapter does what I wish other books in this series would have done, and presents its new monsters using the full-page Monster Manual format. Which isn't to say that it doesn't do the usual "here's what standard D&D monsters are and aren't appropriate for this type of campaign"; it does. But when it gets to the "modify these standard monsters like so" it talks about actual mechanical changes to be made, rather than just presenting the cultural context to the creatures. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this, if for no other reason than it made for some great cherry-picking, as well as presented a few interesting ideas for playable characters: did you know that the offspring of a human and a gwragedd annwn (swanmay) are entirely human in every way, but gain the Healing and Herbalism non-weapon proficiencies for free? See if you can talk your DM into letting you play such a character for a free, albeit very minor, power boost!</p><p></p><p>Speaking of playable characters, the book seems to be uncertain as to whether or not it wants the sidhe, fomorians, and firbolgs to be playable characters or not. The sidhe seem to have enough information presented that they could be, but the latter two races are much iffier.</p><p></p><p>The section on equipment was exactly what you'd expect it to be, and I'd say that the chapters for Celtic culture and a brief gazetteer were the same, but there's some interesting notes on the gods. While we don't get any real expansions to the Celtic pantheon (I was always hungry for new information about D&D deities, since the implication as I saw it was always that such gods were to be found in the wider D&D multiverse), but it mentions several deities who are different from the ones in the aforementioned deity books, and even a few new gods altogether, though they're only given a few sentences of description. Ah, if only we'd gotten a fuller write-up for Epona! Though it's not hard to guess what her avatar would look like:</p><p></p><p><img src="https://media1.giphy.com/media/Nx2bztNF0RcR2/200.gif" alt="the legend of zelda horse GIF" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Interestingly, the book has an appendix about "enech", which is basically the Celtic version of "face," i.e. honor. Much like the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17334/Oriental-Adventures-1e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>Oriental Adventures</em></a> take on the concept, it goes from 0 to 100, where higher is better; if your enech drops to 0, you're character is out of the game! While there aren't any major "lose all of your enech" penalties, try to avoid breaking an oath or slaying your kin (at least until you've got enough to get away with it).</p><p></p><p>Overall, HR3 is essentially following in the footsteps of HR1, but to my mind does a better job of it (albeit only slightly). It not only has greater conceptual space to work in, but presents more usable information that can be potentially lifted for other campaigns. Between one new class and two variant classes, higher-power Gifts, and what's essentially a chapter filled with new and variant monsters (seriously, the variant monsters are a gold mine of new ways to mess with players who are used to typical nixies, vampires, or similar creatures), there's a lot that you can use even if you don't play a strict historical-fantasy game.</p><p></p><p>...which, I'm coming to realize, is quite possibly the most valuable part of the Historical Reference series: how they can <em>enhance</em> the pan-cultural pastiche that is D&D, rather than getting away from it.</p><p></p><p><em>Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 8289271, member: 8461"] So now we come to Vikings II: Electric Boogaloo. Otherwise known as [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110199/HR3-Celts-Campaign-Sourcebook-2e?affiliate_id=820'][I]HR3 Celts[/I][/URL]. If you're scratching your head at that, it's because this book seems to take a lot of inspiration from the first entry in the Historical Reference series. Once again, we have a culture from the far reaches of Europe (in this case, the far west/northwest ends of the continent), presented in opposition to a more centralized culture (i.e. pitting the Vikings of HR1 versus the Carolingians from HR2; in this case, it's the Celts versus the Romans in HR5), and have "barbarian" overtones (e.g. berserker warriors, a lower tech-level than the culture they're set in opposition to, etc.). The book even formats itself in a similar manner, not just in terms of only having only one default for how fantastical the campaign should be (unlike other books in the series, which vacillate between campaign modes such as "historical," "fantastical," and/or "legendary"), but even in specific ideas, such as all human characters having potential Gifts as part of character creation. Of course, I'm overstating the similarities (mostly by understating the differences), but it's easy to see how the presentation for these campaigns can be taken as similar. What I found interesting, however, was that there's less of a narrative straitjacket surrounding the idea of Celts than there is for Vikings. What I mean by that is that pop culture has a relatively cohesive idea as to what Vikings/Norse tropes are, which is why no one needed anything explained to them when the first [I]Thor[/I] movie for the MCU came out, nor needed a lot of handholding when [I]God of War[/I] reinvented itself with a Norse setting. Not so the Celts; besides the name of a basketball team, they don't really occupy much place in contemporary cultural consciousness. A few people might know old Celtic myths and legends, and every so often you'll find a fan of Conan who knows that Cimmeria is analogous to the lands of the Celts, but that's about it. Well, that and [URL='https://youtu.be/6ZhCCu-2gbw?t=90']that Alan Rickman line[/URL] in [I]Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves[/I]. Of course, D&D players will note that the Celtic mythos is a bit stronger in the game. While the Celtic pantheon didn't make the cut in the Third Edition of [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/130333/Deities-and-Demigods-3e?affiliate_id=820'][I]Deities and Demigods[/I][/URL] (I recall someone from WotC once saying that if there'd been one more pantheon in the book, it would have been that one), AD&D 2E's [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116010/Legends--Lore-2e?affiliate_id=820'][I]Legends & Lore[/I][/URL] made no such omission, nor did the god books for previous editions (i.e. [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110198/Deities--Demigods-1e?affiliate_id=820'][I]Deities & Demigods[/I][/URL] and [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17177/ODD-Supplement-IV-Gods-Demigods--Heroes-0e?affiliate_id=820'][I]Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes[/I][/URL]). Celtic overtones were also present in [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16803/FR2-Moonshae-1e?affiliate_id=820'][I]FR2 Moonshae[/I][/URL], along with [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17034/C4-To-Find-a-King-1e?affiliate_id=820'][I]C4 To Find a King[/I][/URL] and [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17035/C5-The-Bane-of-Llewellyn-1e?affiliate_id=820'][I]C5 The Bane of Llewellyn[/I][/URL]. So people picking up this book probably had a slightly better sense of what they were in for. So what [I]was[/I] here? Well, after covering the requisite bases - outlining their history, including the conflict with the Romans, noting that the Picts seem to be a separate, possibly pre-Celtic people, and overviewing the eternal debate about whether it's pronounced "Keltic" or "Seltic" - the book jumps right into building Celtic characters. I mentioned the Gifts thing before, but it's worth noting that while the list here is shockingly similar to the one in HR1 (to the point where it quite clearly had to be more than just parallel development), there are several differences, mostly in that several of the results are more powerful than what you'll find in that book. For instance, if you roll a 17, you then roll on the Mixed Blood sub-table, which can get you a +2 bonus to an ability score, infravision, or even the ability to advance as a multi-class character - despite being human - with mage added to whatever character class you've chosen (except druid; you apparently can't mix those two). Oddly, that last option is [I]also[/I] what you get if you roll a 20 on your Gifts roll. Did the author run out of ideas, or was this their way of trying to make that option a little easier to get? This appears to be the only way to play a generalist wizard (at least I assume that you multi-class as a generalist), since they're only one of three classes (along with the paladin and cleric) that you can't play in a Celtic campaign. Except you [I]can[/I] play paladins and clerics...they just have to be foreigners. Wizards can't learn conjuration/summoning or necromancy spells (or, presumably, be specialists in those classes), but even here the book hesitates to draw a hard line, saying those spells could potentially be learned if your Celtic spellcaster visited a different culture which practiced those magical traditions. The bigger rewrites are for druids and bards, the two classes with genuinely celtic flavor two them; naturally, the changes make them much closer to their historical counterparts (as we understand them, at least). What that means is a fairly substantial reduction in power, with druids losing most of their special abilities and their spellcasting being sharply curtailed (though, for bards, this is also a return to 1E-style divine spellcasting). There's also the new manteis class, which requires that you roll the divination Gift to take, and who have access to all spells of the Divination priest sphere and Divination wizard school...and I'm suddenly remembering the seer class, from [I]DMGR8 Sages & Specialists[/I]. Apparently, the Celts did it first. Really, the big winners here are the fighters, because the book then introduces new "heroic feats" which are [I]insanely[/I] powerful for what they can do! Not all of them, but enough. That's appropriate to the tone of the old Celtic myths, which sometimes come across like something out of a [I]shonen[/I] manga, but even so, letting characters do these things in AD&D 2E, whose power level is decidedly [I]not[/I] over nine thousand, is shocking. For example, Del Chliss lets you deal double damage with a thrown spear if you beat your enemy's AC by 2 or more. I know AD&D 2E didn't presume to use critical hits, but that's like an easy-to-get critical hit. Stroke of Precision lets you, with a weapon you've specialized in, potentially land a hit that severs a limb as per a [I]sword of sharpness[/I]. And at the top of the heap is the Gae Bolga, where you kick a barbed spear ("gae bolga" being what a barbed spear is called) so powerfully that you [B]multiply the damage dealt by your level![/B] I know all of these require multiple proficiency slots to take, some require proficiency checks (with greater-than-normal nonproficiency penalties for unskilled use), and even have modest drawbacks when used correctly, but still...damn! The magic chapter highlights another interesting aspect of a Celtic campaign: it's all about location, location, location. While the book does talk a bit about magic items, there are multiple tables for enchanted places. Seriously, there's Magical Islands, Magical Lakes, Springs, and Wells, Magical Fortresses, Hidden Magical Places, and Stone Circles, though that last one is largely a note about how those were actually pre-Celtic, and then refers you to [I]Legends & Lore[/I]. The monsters chapter does what I wish other books in this series would have done, and presents its new monsters using the full-page Monster Manual format. Which isn't to say that it doesn't do the usual "here's what standard D&D monsters are and aren't appropriate for this type of campaign"; it does. But when it gets to the "modify these standard monsters like so" it talks about actual mechanical changes to be made, rather than just presenting the cultural context to the creatures. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this, if for no other reason than it made for some great cherry-picking, as well as presented a few interesting ideas for playable characters: did you know that the offspring of a human and a gwragedd annwn (swanmay) are entirely human in every way, but gain the Healing and Herbalism non-weapon proficiencies for free? See if you can talk your DM into letting you play such a character for a free, albeit very minor, power boost! Speaking of playable characters, the book seems to be uncertain as to whether or not it wants the sidhe, fomorians, and firbolgs to be playable characters or not. The sidhe seem to have enough information presented that they could be, but the latter two races are much iffier. The section on equipment was exactly what you'd expect it to be, and I'd say that the chapters for Celtic culture and a brief gazetteer were the same, but there's some interesting notes on the gods. While we don't get any real expansions to the Celtic pantheon (I was always hungry for new information about D&D deities, since the implication as I saw it was always that such gods were to be found in the wider D&D multiverse), but it mentions several deities who are different from the ones in the aforementioned deity books, and even a few new gods altogether, though they're only given a few sentences of description. Ah, if only we'd gotten a fuller write-up for Epona! Though it's not hard to guess what her avatar would look like: [IMG alt="the legend of zelda horse GIF"]https://media1.giphy.com/media/Nx2bztNF0RcR2/200.gif[/IMG] Interestingly, the book has an appendix about "enech", which is basically the Celtic version of "face," i.e. honor. Much like the [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17334/Oriental-Adventures-1e?affiliate_id=820'][I]Oriental Adventures[/I][/URL] take on the concept, it goes from 0 to 100, where higher is better; if your enech drops to 0, you're character is out of the game! While there aren't any major "lose all of your enech" penalties, try to avoid breaking an oath or slaying your kin (at least until you've got enough to get away with it). Overall, HR3 is essentially following in the footsteps of HR1, but to my mind does a better job of it (albeit only slightly). It not only has greater conceptual space to work in, but presents more usable information that can be potentially lifted for other campaigns. Between one new class and two variant classes, higher-power Gifts, and what's essentially a chapter filled with new and variant monsters (seriously, the variant monsters are a gold mine of new ways to mess with players who are used to typical nixies, vampires, or similar creatures), there's a lot that you can use even if you don't play a strict historical-fantasy game. ...which, I'm coming to realize, is quite possibly the most valuable part of the Historical Reference series: how they can [I]enhance[/I] the pan-cultural pastiche that is D&D, rather than getting away from it. [I]Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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[COMPLETE] Looking back at the leatherette series: PHBR, DMGR, HR and more!
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