Cyradon Review
Cyradon
Written by Gavin Bennet, Tim Dugger, Heike Kubasch – it is a 186 pg PDF published by Iron Crown Enterprises. This is a complimentary copy for review and was not playtested.
This product, Cyradon, is the first release in Gryphon World, the house setting for the
HARP (High Adventure Role Playing Game). Other products are planned to supplement the line.
OVERVIEW: Have you seen Stargate: Atlantis? That should give you a good idea of what Cyradon is about… except, of course, it is a fantasy setting. So, while Cyradon and SG: Atlantis boil down to similar core concepts -- what does that mean for your fantasy game?
[Disclaimer – Cyradon has been in development for a long time. Parallel development happens and a good idea is a good idea.]
The players and a few thousand refugees find themselves transported to the lost and currently devastated city of Belynar. The Royal Roads, a dormant teleportation system developed by the legendary Cyrads, have sparked to life and fortuitously dumped a motley crew of elves, dwarves, humans and nearly anything else the gamemaster or players could want on the mighty doorstep of adventure. In conception, this is one of the most inventive and rpg friendly core concepts that I have had the luxury of reading. Really, think about it. You have to adventure and explore… No food, there aren’t any stabilized politics, magical ruins abound, monsters galore, and people who don’t want to be swallowed up by it all. Nearly any style of game can be accommodated within the setting. I’d like to repeat that – while the book labels itself as “swashbuckling,” it is the tone at your table which will determine if this is a political game, a dark exploration game, a dungeon crawl, hack-n-slash, or a sojourning type of game.
However, Cyradon does have its faults. If I could sum them up as an overview, I would say that it tries too hard. The book has three critical detractors - the writing is overdone and occasionally confusing, the editing needs to be toned up a notch or two, and the book needs focus. These problems stem from the scope of Cyradon - the book tries to be a world book, a regional setting, and a local setting all at once. There aren’t any critical failures but each of the sections could have been done better. All of these issues could be solved by a talented edit.
EDITING, LAYOUT, & DESIGN: Cyradon is clean and easy to read. The product is in a standard two-column design with gutter decorations and inline sidebars. There isn’t an over abundance of white space nor do you get lost in busy-ness. The PDF is well bookmarked and includes a 6 page index.
There is a large amount of art within the product including nifty sidebars, a gutter decoration, several different icons, and traditional illustrations. The look succeeds best with the various flourishes, which are top notch. Illustrations range from OK to a few really good pieces. I reviewed an older version of the PDF – the new version is rumored to be ripping with new art.
There are several maps included with Cyradon – two of them are stand alone PDFs for printing. These are solid pieces of cartography but I wanted a little more out of the City of Belynar illustration.
All this artwork comes with a price tag – your toner cartridge. Luckily, for those who just cringed, the book also comes in the dead tree version – ask at your FLGS or LGS for the poor unfortunates.
I have already mentioned some of the editing problems but one mans “poor editing” is another mans “better than Tolkien” so I had best explain what I mean. The writing in Cyradon pushes to ooze flavor and information but occasionally gets in the way of itself. To be clear, there aren’t a ton of flagrant grammatical errors such as fragments or punctuation errors. The editing issues are more benign such as long complicated sentences, referrals to previously undefined terms, and occasionally the overuse of a word within a paragraph or page.
CHAPTERS
Ch 1 Overview – this chapter covers all the basic topics like “how to use this book” and a few more including sections on “the story thus far” and a much needed glossary. The inclusion of the glossary in the overview chapter may have encouraged some synaptic overload with some of the unfamiliar cultures and places. Once you cruise past that and into “the story thus far,” things start to sort themselves out. The chapter ends with a discussion of the races involved in the setting.
Ch 2 The World of Mithra – Here we get all the nitty-gritty facts about calendars, continents, and a detailed history of the world. The chapter also ends on a discussion of the various races involved in the setting.
To distill, Mithria is fashioned in the vein of the Realms or Greyhawk – specifically that it includes most of the standard neo-Tolkien type races with the addition of several new creature-character types. Most anything “fantasy” can easily be inserted or removed from the setting without causing much of a ripple but there are some lynchpins.
Ch 3 The Continent of Anias – This is the first of two regional chapters. Anias is presumably the continent from which most of the characters have escaped. This chapter takes up six pages and includes several map extractions/graphics.
Ch 4 The Continent of Cyradon – This is the second regional chapter and goes into considerably more detail than the one on Anias. One particular rough spot is the very complicated weather patterns of Cyradon that are altered by conflicting and competing magical effects. I had to re-read the page devoted to explaining the weather patterns 3 times before I could really get a handle on it and even now, I am only moderately sure that I understand it.
By the end of the chapter, the world and the conflicts are coming together. From this point on the writing becomes far more realized and clear.
Ch 5 Character Creation – We start off with a discussion about why and who your character might be as well as how they ended up in an abandoned city situated on a volcano which is located in the middle of a magically devastated region. Kinda cool
After that, we get into racial packages, followed closely by professional packages. The nice tid-bits here include sections on languages / language origins, martial arts, and weapons.
One of the dominant races of Gryphon World (Mithra or Cyradon if you prefer) is unsurprisingly Gryphons. Equally unsurprising is that a substantial amount of information is give on running them, including copious notes on aerial combat.
Ch 6 Cosmology – This chapter covers all the standard topics well and deftly avoids the pitfall of a unified conception of cosmology. Races and cultures have their own view of the world including the afterlife. Religion plays a large part in Cyradon, in fact one of the main “bad guys” is a theocratic sect of one of the main good religions. There is a good summation of the numerous pantheons.
The chapter finishes out with religious orders. There are a handful of well thought out religious extensions that just beg to be utilized.
Ch 7 Magic – Like the previous chapter, Magic picks up and runs with a well conceptualized system of magic. While magic comes from a unified source, there are dozens of schismatic traditions and styles that spawn dozens of different possibilities for adventure. Magic finishes out with a fairly robust selection of cantrips and spells.
Ch 8 Belynar, the City of Gryphons – Finally! It took us a 134 pages to get here but laborious paving of the road feeds the atmosphere of the crowning chapter. I am not going to spoil too much of Belynar or its mysterious builder(s). As a side comment, there are hints that at some point there will be a book devoted to the city proper – sign me up!
Chapter 9 Bestiary – If you have ruins, desolation, and dungeons then you have to have some monsters. These range from pretty classical monsters into strange creatures from the magically seal coliseum.
Ch 10 Adventuring – This is a companion chapter to Belynar and is a gem. Things are laid out in a non-binding timeline that gives some of the major events of the first few months and considerations for the gamemaster. The adventure seeds here are enough that you could run an entire campaign off them.
SUMMATION
Still with me? Cyradon’s main faults are in attempting to bite off more than it can chew and some meek editing. To its credit, the ideas and concepts buried in the text are stunning. A book on Belynar, paired down by a brutal editor and buffed up by more extensive local/city coverage would sell me in a heart beat - in any system. I see great things in the future.
As a footnote -- on the www.harphq.com website, readers can find a pdf version of the calendar which includes a few important events noted, as well as moon phases and weather for the entire year in which the campaigns are intended to start. This is free. Also, there is a Tablesmith file for creating your calendars (Tablesmith is a free program from Bruce Gulke, and the website contains links to his site as well).
