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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010635" data-attributes="member: 172">Epic Tales Volume I: Race for RetributionEpic Tales Volume I: Race for Retribution is a mini-campaign or collection of linked adventures designed to take characters from 1st to 5th level. The adventures revolve around the attempts of a wronged half-orc cleric to gain retribution against a town which passed wrongful judgement on him.Epic Tales Volume I: Race for Retribution is written by Jeff Colledge and published by Bard's Productions.A First LookEpic Tales Volume I: Race for Retribution is a collection of four uncovered staple-bound booklets ranging from 24 to 32 pages, packaged in a shrink-wrapped wrap-around color cover. The whole package is priced at $21.95 US.The cover has a simple depiction of a wilderness outpost, apparently computer generated. The inside of the cover contains a region map and maps of the settlements of Stahl and Laendersburg. The maps are full color, but are rather blocky, and appear to be made with some sort of tile mapper.The booklets themselves are black-and-white. Cited illustrators include Fredric Simons, Alex Bradley, Marco, and Marcio Fiorito. The art varies in quality from mediocre to good. Unfortunately, some of the art (including some of the best art by Marcio Fiorito) appears rather pixilated.Each of the four booklets also has black-and-white maps. The maps have similar composition to the color maps. The maps do have keys and scales. The indoor maps are readable and attractive, but the outdoor maps appear a little blurry in black-and-white.The font sizes used in the booklets varies from modest to somewhat large for the segments of an epic poem entitled "The Tale of Grakis." In addition to the fonts, a bit of space is wasted in that the title page information is repeated in each of the four booklets, even though it appears identical for all four booklets. Further, some setting and summary information is repeated nearly verbatim in all four booklets. The production values of Epic Tales Volume I: Race for Retribution are mediocre, and the organization could have been much more efficient.As a side note, the cover states that Race for Retribution should appeal to role and "roll" players. I hate to keep harping on this point, but the term "roll-player" is a slam that is not going to endear the author to anyone.A Deeper Look(Warning: There are some spoilers to secrets behind the adventures.)The four booklets that compose Epic Tales Volume I: Race for Retribution can be run separately or together as parts of a linked adventure, though in general it would make far more sense to run them together.The backstory behind the adventures is that in the regions, a party of adventurers with an anti-orc racist at its core went on a campaign that forced three orc tribes out of the immediate area. The party formed a settlement in the abandoned orcish village. One of the first settlers in this village was Degarn, a just half-orc cleric that was implicated in a crime he did not commit by the racist hero who helped form the village.Degarn appealed to his deity of just retribution to strike down the town, but as only one man, not the village, was responsible, he was rebuffed. Determined to take out his vengeance, Degarn turned to a dark god of destruction and struck a pact with the ousted orc tribes to take out his vengeance.This story creates the possibility of a roleplaying backdrop if they discover the racist tendencies of the town leader Laender. However, if the GM wants to play up this backstory, it may take some special attention, as little is done in the books to depict the orcs as sympathetic at all, and it is sort of hard to see Degarn, who turned to a dark god of destruction, as an innocent.The first of the four booklets only contains a minor foray against an orcish outpost. The majority of the book is spent defining the region and its major NPCs. This will be of the most use to DMs who wish to use the region as a dynamic setting.The second booklet has the PCs investigating more of degarn's activities in the area, but the situation is not simple as it seems at first, as the orcish hall that Degarn and his henchmen are in is haunted, hotly contested by a cadre of undead lead by a ghost. The second adventure left me the most uncomfortable, as it seems to me that events in the hall would be rather random depending on player actions, yet the author attempts to script the outcome of the encounters to arrange Degarn's escape, which struck me as a little clumsy. If the actions that really happen somehow circumvent the script, the DM will be left with either railroading the outcome or with the PCs having captured the major villain two adventures early.The third adventure is more event based leading up to an investigation of the murder of Laender. With Degarn having learned the threat to his plans that is the PCs and the town leaders attempt to arrange an assassination of both Laender and the party. The booklet does a good job of identifying who does what during the days surrounding the assassination, but also assumes that the PCs will all agree to a job and be out of the area when it happens (which may not be an entirely safe assumption.) Again, it strikes me as a bit of scripting going on here that some players will not be comfortable with. The end part of the booklet has the players actually investigating the assassins Degarn sent, but up until that point there is little room for player choice.The fourth book returns to a more site-based adventure with a time element. Degarn has united two of the orc tribes with the promise to activate an artifact that will empower the orcs. The players must penetrate their base and attempt to stop Degarn once and for all.All four of the books are heavy on supporting information such as rumors, NPC knowledge, activities, and plot hooks to help get the players involved and help a harried GM. This is all very convenient, and would have been even more of a boon if the adventures were written in a more dynamic fashion.ConclusionRace for Retribution seems as if it has a hard time finding how it wants to be run. It has all the supporting trappings of potentially complex and dynamic set of adventures. However, the course of the adventures seems rather scripted given all of the tools that the GM is given.This might be a good adventure for beginning GMs (though some of the info seems like overkill for them) or for more experienced GMs willing to do a little extra work to stray off of the beaten path depicted in the advetures.Overall Grade: C+-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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