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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tuerny" data-source="post: 2008324" data-attributes="member: 674">Originally reviewed by Jesse Dean of AtFantasy.comDragon Lords of Melnibone, written by Lynn Willis and Richard Watts, and edited by Charlies Krank, is a d20 System adaptation of the Melnibone setting described in Michael Moorcock's Elric stories.  It is the third campaign setting produced for the d20 system, and is the first d20 product by Chaosium, Inc.Presentation Dragon Lords of Melnibone, a standard laminated, perfect bound booklet, is two hundred and eight pages long. The margins are one half an inch wide.The cover illustration, by Frank Brunner, depicts a man sitting on a dragon before a fantastic city built above a network of caves. The interior artwork is composed of a range of different black and white drawings detailing either different scenes from the Elric Saga, or representations of items described in the text. Fifteen different artists contributed to the interior artwork, and it is generally good.The only map included in the sourcebook is of the Young Kingdoms. Stylistically it is well done, but it does not convey distances in anything more than a general sense. Luckily a travel timetable is included, giving a good idea of the travel times between various settlements. Overview and Analysis The book is divided into seven sections: Introduction, The World of the Young Kingdoms, Adventurers, Game System, Magic & Religion, Demons, Monsters, Folk & Heroes, and The Dungeon Masters Companion.The Introduction introduces the Young Kingdoms and the Elric Saga. The core tenants of the setting, including the eternal champion and the conflict between law and chaos, are introduced. The major rule alterations that are presented in the book are summarized. A list of the Elric stories to date, and their continents, are also summarized, giving a reader who is new to the Saga a good overview. This section provides a sufficient introduction to the setting, providing a firm basis for moving on to the book.The World of the Young Kingdoms provides a history, map, and gazetteer of the Young Kingdoms. The history is brief, providing details of the rise and decay of the Melibonians and the emergence of the Young Kingdoms. A brief discussion on the Young Kingdom's magic, technology, economy, and language are also provided. The majority of this section is devoted to the gazetteer. Each nation has at least five paragraphs providing information about the rise of the nation, its topography, its current politics, and its religion. Near the end of the chapter a page discussing the coinage of the Young Kingdoms is present. The World of the Young Kingdoms section serves its purpose well, conveying enough tone, mood, and understanding of the setting to provide a firm basis for the political and social aspects of a campaign in the Young Kingdoms. Adventurers contain information for creating adventurers in the Young Kingdoms. Characters classes, races, and national origin are also discussed. Several features of Young Kingdom characters are also introduced. In the Young Kingdoms, a character’s class is linked to his land of origin. He must pick a character class from among those listed for his homeland. The standard d20 character races are, for the most part, absent with the debauched, elf-like Melniboneans, the mixed blooded half-Melniboneans, and the avian Myyrrhn replacing them. Half-orcs are the sole exception to this, existing in the form of the degenerate humans of Org. Nationality is very important for Young Kingdom characters. Each nation is listed with a number of factors that influence the traits of an individual character. Included are its ruler, race, language(s), classes, available religions, favored weapons, armor, cultural skills, cultural feat, allegiance, and additional gear. Cultural skills are granted to natives of a nation as class skills. Allegiance determines how many points each character has dedicated to law, chaos, or balance. The other items are either self-explanatory or present mostly for flavor. In addition to these items, their are several new feats (Pounce & Strike, Close-Order Fighting, Set Spear), new rules for determining distinctive features, special gear, sample characters, and the front side of a character sheet. For the most part the Adventurers section serves its overall purpose of providing the basis of altering characters to fit the Young Kingdoms. The new distinctive features table is a useful and interesting idea that can be easily transplanted to other settings. The section's main flaw lies in its defiance of well thought out d20 conventions for no apparent reason. Half-Melniboneans and myyrrhn both have +1 ability adjustments, aiding in the ease of minimizing and maximizing their ability scores, and the new weapon's damage ratings including pluses rather than a raw roll. Game System, the fourth section of Dragon Lords of Melnibone, provides an overview of the new rules created for use with the Young Kingdoms setting. New systems for heroic actions, actions that a character may complete to avoid death after falling unconscious, allegiance to the forces of law, chaos and balance, fumbles, major wounds, and skills are provided. The most extensive portion of this section is on Allegiance, the Young Kingdoms replacement for alignment. The game rules give applications for allegiance, how to acquire allegiance points, and how to become the champion of a law, chaos, or balance. The fumble rules are basically the reverse of the critical hits, with a chance of gaining one whenever you roll a one. Major wounds are an expansion of the critical hit rules, causing substantial damage to someone who is hit by a critical hit or suffers more damage than their con score with a single strike. The new skills are Conceal Object, Fly, Perform (Oratory), Sailing, Scent/Taste, and Trap. Game System is a useful section, with plenty of material useable regardless of whether you are running a Young Kingdoms campaign or not. This use is expanded even further due to the entire chapter being open gaming content. The major flaw of this section is the lack of designators when describing the effects of fumbles and major wounds. Knowing whether a loss of ability score points is temporary or permanent is fairly important in determining what sort of spell is needed to correct the damage.Magic & Religion, the largest section of the book, details the mystical side of the Young Kingdoms, including the nature of the universe, the gods of the Young Kingdoms, demons and their kind, elementals, spells, and religions. The Young Kingdoms are metaphysically dominated by the conflict between the Eight Lords of Chaos and the Nine Lords of Law, with the Beast-Lords, Plant-Lords, and the Elementals on the sidelines. Guidelines for invoking these entities are also presented. Demons are servants of chaos, extra-dimensional creatures that are summoned to the Young Kingdoms to serve as bound minions of sorcerers and wizards. They are summoned using a spell called Invoke and Compel, and can be compelled to perform a short-term task, become a long-term servant, or be permanently bound. Doing either of the latter requires experience point expenditure based on the powers and abilities of the demon. The rules for the creation of demons are largely balanced, with the experience point cost and the inherent chaos of individual demons making up for the gaining of a permanent, magical servant. Young Kingdom elementals parallel their standard counterparts save for their appearance and basic personality. Magic in the Young Kingdoms is considered to be basically, chaotic, as they are mutable and temporary. Even learning spells dedicated to law result in a gain in chaotic allegiance. Thirty-six new, largely balanced spells are presented. A brief overview of the churches of each of the deities, with information on the domains of each finishes off this section.Demons, Monsters, Folk & Heroes details significant inhabitants of the Young Kingdoms. It covers demon breeds, a bestiary of monsters that are native to the Young Kingdoms, reconstructed generic non-player characters, and personalities from the Elric Saga. This chapter is in many ways the poorest of the book, with semi-frequent statistical omissions, the occasional inclusion of alignment, which, according to earlier sections, does not exist in the Young Kingdoms, and incorrect assignments of the number of skills and feats. The reconstructed generic NPCs are useful for on the spot statistics of NPCs that derivate from the class standards presented in the DMG, as are the stats and notes on the significant NPCs from the Saga for those who wish to have their group interact with them.The Dungeons Masters Companion is the final section of Dragonlords of Melnibone, containing tips for bringing together and maintaining a campaign, the use of allegiances, new magical items, and a large list of rumors. The advice contained within this section is a solid addition to that found within the DMG. Unfortunately the magic items presented lack information for creation, or at least gold value, making them less useful than they could beConclusion Dragon Lords of Melnibone stands well compared to the other worlds released for d20 and Dungeons and Dragons thus far. Despite a few rule problems, it is largely a complete setting, providing a firm basis to run a campaign in any part of the Young Kingdoms. Even if you are not interested in running such a campaign Dragon Lords of Melnibone is a worthwhile product. The majority of its rules information is easily useable in most campaigns with little change, and could help to provide a darker tone to a campaign.</blockquote>

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