Darklore Campaign Primer

[Messageboard Golem]

The world of Krynas is a dark place. It is a world of blasted heath, murky bogs and desolate moors. Thick clouds cover the sky and little light gets through. Rain and storms govern the people more than any laws imposed by petty rulers. This is a world engulfed by darkness and wracked by powerful winds and strange multi-coloured lightning. It is a strange, hostile world where the forces of nature have been spun out of control, disrupted by magical forces. Dark magics are encroaching and there is a feeling of impending doom.

The DarkLore Campaign Primer is a massive pdf product from Malladin's Gate Press. This 80 page pdf includes all you need to get cracking with you own DarkLore game.

Darklore is a dark fantasy D20 system game developed using a combination of the D&D and D20 Modern systems. This creates a lower powered game where combat is deadly and magic is useful rather than powerful.

In this huge product you will find:
- The six basic classes for dark fantasy gaming
- Twelve career classes to develop your characters
- New skills and feats
- New gunpowder weapons and other renaissance style weapons
- Adapted spell lists for all types of spell caster
- New combat systems to capture the dark and deadly feel of the DarkLore world
- New caracter traits to explore interactive storytelling throughout the game

 

[Crothian]

Review of Darklore Campaign Primer

Darklore is a land where the gods warred. The land has been altered, become a harsh environment. It is a time where many of the older civilizations of been destroyed and replaced by tyrants ruling petty city states. The world is still recovering even though it is over 500 years after the event of the god’s war. The land is filled with paranoia as people do not know how the war ended or what is happening around them. Darklore Campaign Primer is a new campaign setting by Malladin’s Gate Press. It is a dark world filled with mystery, adventure, and conflict.

The Darklore Campaign Primer is a pdf of eighty three pages in length. It is filled with the lands, the races, the history, and the classes of this world. It offers many new rules to fit the way the game is run to the feel of the setting. The pdf cost five dollars and is received in a zip file of almost 9 megs.

One of the first things I look at with pdfs are the bookmarks. They are an index that one clicks on a subject and the pdf goes right to that page. They make it easy to use if one needs to find something fast like when using pdfs at the gaming table. The Darklore Campaign Primer has an excellent set of bookmarks.

The art in the book is rather sparse and of average quality. There is a map of the described region done by Clayton Bunce. The map is clear and easy to use. It is a full page in size making the details easy to see. The layout of the book is well done in the standard two column format. The book is done in black and white and prints well.

The setting is fantasy based but has more in common with d20 modern. Classes are presented in this book and are written up like d20 modern classes. They are ten levels long, have a defense armor class bonus, and talent trees. Characters are able to multi class without restriction. There are also carrier classes that serve as short prestige or advanced classes. They are all three levels long and easy to get into. They serve to offer some good focus of a character concept though.

The book starts with a good, through overview of the world. It explains some things of the history and what the campaign world is like. It sets atmosphere a little with discussions on how bad things are for many of the peoples. It covers a little bit of history but stresses that many things are just not known.

The first chapter goes into the history, well known history, of the world. It goes over some major events and covers quite a bit. It does a good job of further setting up the atmosphere with its tone and descriptions.

The second chapter goes into detail on the different regions. It talks about the geography of the lands, the politics of the people, organizations that have power and influence there, and the languages the people communicate with. Each region has a close up map of it, though no more detail is given. There is a lot of depth to this section. The setting comes together here and the present is presented in a way to spark ideas and campaigns. There are many things hinted at that I hope to see expanded upon in future books. The ideas are solid and easy to use in this setting or to be used to influence ones own game setting.

The third chapter goes into the races. Each race for the Players’ Handbook is redefined to reflect the influences and history of the world. Each race gets a bonus feat at first level as well as bonus skill points. There are no favored classes since everyone is allowed to multi class freely. Most races for a series of sub races that further define the character. Each race has some sort of attribute modification. Some of these are odd numbers which is seen as a problem by some gamers. Odd attribute modifiers can be used to gain a bonus and hide a penalty. Each race is also given a class skill, and if their class already has it they gain a +1 competence bonus very much like in d20 Modern. There is also a availability of each race presented as common, uncommon, or rare. To pick a race of uncommon or rare availability the character has to sacrifice one or two or their advantages. Advantages are a new game mechanic that is explained later in the book.

The fourth chapter goes into the basic classes. Like d20 Modern each is associated with a single attribute. The classes the books has are the Warrior (Strength), Thief (Dexterity), Outlander (Constitution), Scholar (Intelligence), Devout (Wisdom), and Destined (Charisma). Each class is ten levels in length and have many talent trees as options to them. The classes are very flexible and can be used to create a wide assortment of different concepts. With the free multi classing the flexibility is increased dramatically.

The fifth chapter deals with skills, feats, and equipment. There are a few new or redefined skills. The most important is the new fighting styles. Some of them have feat requirements but as one gains ranks in them they get certain bonuses when fighting. While the mechanical part is well done, I am more impressed with the descriptions and the feel the fighting styles have. They can add reinforce the tone of the setting and the particular groups that use them. The campaign world also has gun powder. Guns have two new mechanics with them. The first is penetration and it allows the weapon to ignore X points of armor or natural armor bonus to armor class. The second is misfire chance. If the character rolls bad enough he has a chance to inflict damage upon himself.

The sixth chapter has the carrier classes in them. These work like the advance classes of d20 modern except they are only three levels in length and very easy to get into. There are a dozen carrier classes presented here. Many are simple specializations like Archer or Scout. They offer unique abilities ands serve a great way to help define characters.

Overall this is a world filled with danger and intrigue. The setting is darker then most standard fantasy games, but the tone is well defined. I found myself getting some great ideas while reading this book. As a campaign primer it does a good job of covering all the bases and given plenty of information about the world. It would be easy to start a campaign with just this. But as I read I found myself wanting more detail as there are a few things that are hinted at and mysteries that are presented. The descriptions are well done and serve the setting well. The new rules I think will do a great job of showing the players how the game feels. I really like the classes as they are presented. This is the way to do fantasy in the model of d20 Modern. The carrier classes are a nice addition, simple to qualify for, and will enhance the characters greatly. The races are interesting and are not the cookie color variety that is seen in so many settings. The races are familiar enough to be used with comfort, but different enough to really stand out in someone’s mind. Too many times I see new races used, when the current ones can be altered a little to fill the same role. Darklore does a great job in showing how that can easily be done.

 

[GameWyrd]

DarkLore is really good. It’s really good. Don’t say, "Malladin Who?" or "Who’s Gate? What? Where?" say, "DarkLore is really good".

This isn’t Malladin’s Gate first product. The small company has been praised for their sharply designed Forgotten Heroes and Academy Handbook series. I’ll be amazed if a fulfilment house/imprint deal isn’t set up for them by the end of the next year. Why would I be amazed? I’d be amazed because DarkLore is really good.

DarkLore is, as the name suggests, dark. It’s a d20 game too. Oh now. Stop laughing. It might be possible. In fact, it is possible, Malladin’s Gate have done it. Out goes the stratospherically high fantasy of most D&D and inspired games. In comes Dark D20. DarkLore isn’t dark in the sense that you’ll be playing a weakling street thief desperately trying to earn his first silver by creeping into the fat’s merchant’s house, the one with a guard, at night. No. DarkLore is dark in the sense that the whole world has gone to hell in a hand basket and stayed there. The gods are dead. At least, the gods have gone and they didn’t go easily. Maelstroms, complete with purple lightening, shred the landscape whenever they touchdown. Rumour has it that the maelstroms even go after people. It’s dark too, not dark in the atmospheric sense, it’s dark due to the thick cloud known as the Cloak of Acheron, that keeps the sun at bay. It’s either night or twilight and as you might image the undead are a problem.

Player characters in DarkLore tend to be more powerful than normal. There’s an easy explanation for this, survival of the fittest. You have to be pretty damn fit to survive in Krynas, the DarkLore world. The bump up in power also gives the game mechanic maestros of Malladin’s Gate room to introduce new rules without loosing the abstraction d20 was designed for. I like the abstraction! I also like dark fantasy. The fighting techniques that characters can learn or the short three-level career classes are both good examples of what can be achieved with this extra room.

This is a review of the DarkLore World Campaign Primer. I’m pointing out the "Campaign Primer" bit. The 83-paged PDF is designed to give you only the basics, just what you need to know about Krynas, to get going. It’s actually two books in one; a standard way to do Dark D20 and an introduction to DarkLore. I also get the feeling that the Primer was going to be free. It’s not free any longer. It costs a whopping $5. I know. Bank breaking. All the money raised by DarkLore goes to keeping ENWorld alive. Okay. ENWorld raised a small fortune but this still counts as good reason to buy DarkLore and is a good indication of how Malladin’s Gate really do have their finger on the pulse of gaming.

If you’re still giggling at the suggestion that the d20 system can be used for an atmospherically game then I’ve an important admission to make. DarkLore isn’t quite the fantasy edition of d20 that you know; not quite 3.0 or 3.5. DarkLore is heavily inspired by D20 Modern. I think D20 Modern makes some important improvements on the core mechanics and I’m more than content to see them taken onboard here. The core classes in DarkLore are based on D20 Modern. No, we don’t have Strong and Fast heroes; we have Outlanders, Scholors, Thieves, Warriors, the Devout and the Destined. These classes are associated with one of the ability scores. The Warrior class, for example, is associated with Strength. The simple but effective way to summarise which bits of D20 Modern DarkLore takes and which bits of 3.5 it stays with is to say "DarkLore takes the best of both". There are talent trees to enjoy.

I like the way DarkLore does magic. It doesn’t awkwardly tinker with the system; it manages to cleanly swap old and boring with new and interesting. The elements, the purest forms of the fluctuating magical mix, are blood, lightning, metal and shadow. If you want to translate normal spell descriptors then blood correlates to fire, lightning to electricity, metal to acid and shadow to Cold. There are also planar associations for each. The gods might not be active in the DarkLore world but devils and demons are. In turn the planes fuel different sorts of magic. Wizards use shadowmagic – and most are evil, many hunting down sorcerers, who use Dragonmagic, out of nothing more than jealously. In a world that’s been ruined in a godswar you might expect many people to turn to Druids and their earthmagic. Although there aren’t clerics who receive their magic from gods there are still pure hearted saints who are able to empower a celestial magic through their own conscience and heart.

DarkLore handles races well. It isn’t just humans who gain extra feats. There are different types of human too; breaking the race down into geographical sub-races. Why not? It’s been down with dwarves and elves throughout fantasy games. Not all the player character races are as powerful as others. DarkLore makes the call that rare races are more powerful than uncommon races and that uncommon races are more powerful than common races. They’ve game mechanics to balance it all up and level the playing field.

Whereas its a bit of a cheat to assume rare races are better than the common one it seems to be the unspoken rule in many RPGs and fantasy novels. DarkLore purposely goes after the fantasy novel feel. The world shattering end game plays shouldn’t be par for the course here; they should be the campaign end game play.

And there’s politics. I’m far too interested in politics for my own health. Krynas is a world where politics and secret societies have come to power. Life is so tough that raw goods and skills are more important than money. This quickly promotes "peasants" to "citizens" very quickly. There’s one society, for example, that keeps the lines of communications open between the different cities and this service has made them very powerful. DarkLore introduces the new Advantages mechanic that keeps track of where the PCs or NPCs are in these societies and where they stand.

The Campaign Primer doesn’t just mention the new way to think of spells, the new system to deal with races and new classes – it gives them to you. You’ve pages of spells. You’ve the complete rules for the basic classes and a dozen career classes. Career classes are short, 3 level, advanced/prestige like classes that are easy to qualify for and complete. The primer is packed with useful stuff.

Let’s not use the word "primer" lets use the word "tease". The DarkLore Campaign Tease just leaves you wanting the full DarkLore book. Some time tomorrow please. Thanks.

* This DarkLore review was first posted at GameWyrd.

 

[cthulu_moose]

Well here I go again with another Malladin's Gate Review. Since my last one a couple of weeks ago I have been back in touch with Ben and he's asked me to review a few more, so here's the first review done on a complimentary copy send to me for expressed reviewing purposes.

Okay lets not beat about the bush too much with this one. Other reviewers have said it already, and I can only agree. DarkLore is excellent! It's dark, it's got fantastic games mechanics and it's a damn good world in its own right

This is Malladin's Gate's latest product, an 80 page campaign 'primer' that is only a couple of chapters short of a full campaign setting book. This brings me to the book's value. At $5.00, it's a great buy. Most other PDFs seem to be around the $1 +10c/page mark. That would put DarkLore at $9, so its almost half price the going rate.

But I don't want to get too carried away with simple economics, I want to talk about the game.

Firstly, I'll look at the game mechanics. I'd like to say that these are the strongest part of the book, but that would be a diservice to the setting itself. That said, I'd give the book a 5* review if it were a simple toolkit, without their added campaign world thrown in. The idea of using D20 Modern for a dark fantasy game is not entirely original, I seem to remember one of the first posts onthe WotC website intimated that someone on the wizards' staff was doing this already. However, Malladin's Gate's real coup de gras is the was in which they take this principal and apply it properly to the fantasy world.

We're not stuck with anachronistic D20M hero classes and a bunch of advanced classes derived from the basic D&D classes. Instead we've got 6 new core classes that allow us to explore the details the kinds of fantasy crunch that you want from the early levels. These classes have talents and feats like in D20M, but they are played around with to a much greater degree. Hence the Warrior class gets few talents whilst the Scholar (who can become the wizard types of the game) get more, with which to expand their spellcasting ability. The talents are brilliantly simple and, with free multiclassing, you can really develop whatever character concept you like. I've been designing characters ever since I got hold of this; its a really good system and fun just to get out the pencil and paper and have a play. I particularly like the Destined class. As I read through the book I wasn't sure how they were going to tackle Paladins, Bards and Sorcerers. From reading the world background it didn't surprise me that paladins are not part of the Wis based Devout class, and to find how all three such different classes can be skillfully handled through the different talent trees of the same class was a real eye opener. Malladin's Gate are real masters of this kind of game mechanics manipulation, as shown by their strong pedigree of class books.

Another point to mention here is the races. They take the standard fantasy races and make them a bit better, even the humans, by the application of a sub class. Other races are just plain better (a very tolkeinesque approach). This is something that really captures the dark fantasy feel, and is not just a symptomn of the setting. In dark fantasy games, where your character is from is very important; this system makes you think about it more and forces you into playing the racial streotype, or someone who its trying to break away from it.

The races ties in with a new Advantages system, which captures the political aspects of the dark fantasy genre, as well as providing options for magic items or a mysterious 'destiny' for those how want to simply hack and slash. Being a more powerful race, such as Elves and Dwarves (and they use the tolkein spelling, too - great), means that you're short of Advantages and will be at a disadvantage compared to your human and halfling companions. Advantages are a really interesting system that I can't wait to try out. They actually let the players partially modify the story, allowin them to ask for a specific NPC to appear or a riot to start at an opportune moment. I really like this idea of playing with fate and with right-minded players I'm sure this will add a lot to the gameplay.

Other systems that emphasise the darkness of the setting are found in teh apporach to magic. No character is able to cast higher than 5th level spells, and add to this that any spell worth casting is usually a level higher. At level 1 your character isn't going to be able to cast anything better than cantrips, so you're goingto have to work at your spellcasting if you want to become a wizard par-excellence. That said, Necromancy spells, particualrly the offensive ones, are readily available to wizards, but beware the dark path, as it can send you insane! A lack of information on what actually happens here, simply stating that they develop derrangements, but none are listed. I suppose something had to give in this 'primer' I'd normally be more critical here, but I think it's important to see why the publisher has done something and I think that overall we don't suffer for missing these rules, I just think, well, it's only $5 anyway.

Okay, that's not everything, but I need to press on to the world background. The DarkLore setting is a beautiful blend of a different fantasy staples. I'd liken it to a fine blended malt whiskey (not any of that nasty grain-mixed rubbish). There is some alternative european elements, some typical 'fantasy merchants', an oriental setting and then some really unusual stuff thrown in on top. Asholm seems to be a fantasy version of the Logan's Run world, and the Kingdoms of Spice are an indionesian-type setting. It may seem strange to put all this together, but it's done really well. And the thing that holds it all together is the History. It's history that holds Middle Earth together and makes it such a great fantasy world, and whilst it would be daft to say that DarkLore is in the same League as Tolkein, it's certainly laudible to see that they have made a good attempt to stick to his rules when creating their world. You can just see how it all fits together and how the balance of power has moved over the centuries and how it now hangs in the balance. The world is almost a renaissance fantasy world and has black powder weapons and an emphasis on rapier styles of swordplay. This goes hand-in-hand with a deep level of intrigue in the world and really helps to keep players on their toes. There are secret societoes plotting throughout the world and, it seems, hundreds of hidden secrets - you could almost say the the setting is made not by what we are told about the world but by what we are not told. There's a real air of mystery about it.

Anyway, I'm going to end it there. There's much more to the book than I've had time to write here, too. Fighting techniques, exopanded and adadpted from Unearthed Adventurers, small career classes to develop your improving character.

Lets hope we get a supplement for it soon - I NEED to know MORE!!!

 

[jbloveatl]

I bought the book on the basis of this review and I wish I hadn't. While there is undoubtedly some interesting information in here, the prose style is terrible. Most of it reads like a bad Tolkein parody. If a decent editor did some work on it the book would be very nice, otherwise I have to reccomend a pass.