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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Samurai" data-source="post: 230229" data-attributes="member: 3850">My Review of Forbidden KingdomsBelow is the capsule review of Forbidden Kingdoms that I did for RPG.net.  Yes, it is fairly negative, but I think the points are valid.  This game could have been MUCH better than it ios with more editting and proofreading, as well as rules clarifications.  Now that I hear that entire sections were lifted from other books and .pdfs, it adds to my belief that FK was rushed to press to beat the other Pulp games coming soon... and it suffers for that rush...I love Pulp. The action, the edge-of-your-seat cliffhangers, the nastyvillians, the stylish heroes, the exotic locales, all of it.  When Ifirst heard about this game, and downloaded the short preview, I wasvery excited!  The art was great, the characters seemed interesting, andit promised to bring the excitement of Pulp to d20.  (I don't buyDragon, so I don't count the pulp mini-game that was in there).The day the book hit the shelves, I bought it.  I was a bit surprisedthat it was smaller-sized than most d20 books... It is the samedimensions as AFMBE and Witchcraft from Eden Studios.  However, it is300 pages long, hardbound, and has very thin margins on the sides aswell as an average to small font.  In all, it is probably about averagein terms of price for content.The next surprise was that Forbidden Kingdoms covers not 1 but 3 eras: The Steampulp era (Victorian), Tesla Time (early 1900s), and Nazi Thugs(strange name for an era, but it is the 1930s).  The gaps between theseeras are not really discussed much, meaning WW1 is barely mentioned. Still, the variety gives more options about where and when you can setyour adventures, and I have always felt that the high Victorian era (alaCastle Falkenstein) was related to pulp.The first 82 pages describing these eras and the people, places, andadventure possibilities in each one are the best part of the book, in myopinion.  Every page is loaded with adventure ideas and plot hooks. Some of the ideas are recycled from previous pulp games, such as ProfMoriarty's World Crime League or the German's unveiling of a Superman atthe Olympics, but this book expands upon the ideas and leaving gems likethese out of a pulp game would have been a crime itself, so this isforgivable.  Other story ideas are more unique, such as Nikola Teslabuilding a futuristic city on the edge of the Niagra Falls, powered byhydroelectricity.  He also has gathered together a team of adventurerscalled The Extraordinary Delphians to help protect it as well asinvestigate unnatural phenomena around the world.  From monstersightings to a vanishing deep-sea explorer, secret societies toghost-hunters, these first 82 pages are simply a smashing-good read...it is a shame that the rest of the book went downhill from there...The first sign of amatuerish editting/design appeared on page 83... itis completely blank.  The chapter ended halfway down pg 82, but insteadof filling the next page and a half with art, a short story, moreadventure ideas, etc, they left them blank.  (They wanted to begin everychapter with a facing art piece)  Now, once is bad enough, but the samething happens again on pgs 141 and 185!  It looks very unprofessional toleave utterly blank pages in the middle of a book, and these should havebeen filled with something.Another sign of a rush job is the fact that EVERY "see pg XX" reference in the book says XX instead of the page numbers.  I have not found a single instance yet that actually lists a page.The next strange layout feature was the use of numerous pictures cutin half.  Rather than have a full page picture, they cut the picture intwo, putting half on 1 page and half on the other.  This would not looktoo bad if both halves met at the binding, but instead, the pictures areput at the far edges of the page!  That means there are 2 columns oftext between the front and back half of a submarine, or a man and hisarm, or a woman and her leg.  It looks very weird and was simply a poorchoice of layout.Speaking of art, most of it was of average to good quality.  The chapterheaders by LUK ACS are especially nice.  However, remember those greatcharacter designs I mentioned in preview?  (I believe they were byKieran Yanner).  They are nowhere in the book!  Instead, the characterportraits are by another artist, and while they are not bad, they don'tseem to be historically accurate.  The Clergyman has a soul patch, forgoodness sake!  The mystic looks like a hippy flowerchild from the 60's,and the Soldier of Fortune looks like Rambo!  (By the way, anyone knowwhen dogtags were first used in the military?  For some reason, itdoesn't seem pulpish to me.)  To be fair, many of the portraits did lookhistorically correct, such as the Idle Rich, Crimefighter, and Diplomat.Speaking of character classes, we come to one of my biggest complaintsabout FK:  The Classes have extremely sparse descriptions!  All of theclasses are lacking rules and descriptions of their special abilities. This is doubly strange because the Prestige Classes do include (veryshort) ability descriptions!  Furthermore, some of them havequestionable mechanics.  The Academic, for instance, has an abilitycalled Information Font.  It is pretty much identical to a Bard's LegendLore.  But instead of adding his level to his roll, as a Bard does,every 5 levels the Academic gets a special ability called IgnotusAgnitio which reduces the DC for Info checks by 5.  Why was this done? Another example:  The Idle Rich get an ability called Filthy Rich at1st, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th level.  At first level, it gives them 10xthe starting cash of other characters, but no other mention is madeabout it in the character class chapter.  Under Feats, we find that iftaken after starting level, it doubles your money.  Is the charactersupposed to total up all of his possessions, houses, cars, etc andinstantly double it for no reason other than he hit 7th level??  That isjust silly!  And some classes have abilities with no definition at all,such as the Explorer ability Trustworthy (which does not even seem tofit him, but that's beside the point).  It is not a new Feat in thebook, and it is not from the PHB.  There is no description of how itworks anywhere.The worst case by far, though, is the Expert class.  It starts simplyenough... at 1st level he picks any 5 skills and gets  3 in each of them(rather powerful at 1st level... lotta multiclassers will want this!) But then at 3rd level and every 2 levels after that, he gets, quote " 1to all Expertise skills, (pick 1 grouping of expertise skills)"  The"pick 1 grouping" part seems to refer to the ability at 6th, 12th, and18th level to pick 5 more skills to become expert in.  At 5th level, hegets  2, 7th is  3, etc upto  9 at 19th level.  Are these cumulative ornot?  If not, and he chooses to add them to a group of skills with onlythe base  3 bonus, do they suddenly jump up to the current bonus?  Therules are nonexistant on this, as each character class has a bit ofintro fiction and a single chart instead of full character rules! Looking at other classes as a model is no help.  The Explorer lists bothcumulative (I assume) and non-cumulative bonuses on the same chart! (ie: Alertness  2,  3,  4 alongside multiple listings at 9th, 12th,15th, etc for a  2 in Gather information, Spot, and Search.)  Ok, let's move on to the chapter called New Rules, Skills, and Feats. FK uses the Vitality/ Wounds version of the d20 rules, though herevitality is renamed Stamina.  Armor reduces damage done, but unlike SWrevised, it reduces the damage of all hits, not just Wounds.  How muchdoes it reduce it?  I have no idea, really, because there is no armorchart in the book!!!  The example on pg 114 says a Flak jacket provides4 points of protection (did they have those in the pulp era?), but thereare no other examples or listings of armor values.  Considering over 3pages are spent talking about the armor rules, the penalties for wearingarmor, whar armor stacks with what bonus, etc, this is a MAJORoversight.Skills... breaking the tradition of trying to broaden the base d20skills instead of create new ones, FK goes wild and adds 28 new skills! Many of them seem repitious to me, though.  Insurgency is used forsneaking into secured areas... why not use Sneak?  Bribery, Charm,Conversation, Leadership, Savior Faire, Seduction, and Streetwise areadded to the existing Bluff, Diplomacy, and Gather Information.  Do youknow when to use each one?  Players already spend few points on theseabilities, and splitting them up further reduces the usefulness of allof them.  There are also Melee, Pistol, Rifle, etc skills seperate fromthe Feets required for proficiency.  Every 5 levels in the skill adds  1to your attack rolls.The most important (and powerful) new skill is called Technique.  Itcovers training in the Martial Arts, and every level you take in thisskill gives you a mini bonus Feat called a Manuever.  This is not a badidea, and can provide for martial artists with very different abilities. Some of these mini-Feats are not so mini, though!  Improved IterativeAttacks increases the rate of extra attacks from the usual every  5 to 3.  So a character that normally has 2 attacks at  10/  5 would get 4attacks at  10/  7/  4/  1!  Nerve Strikes enable to to do everythingfrom Cause Blindness to Cause Paralysis.  These maneuvers only work withweapons that are part of your martial style, but you can declareanything from a sword to a elephant gun to be your martial arts weapon! Adding more weapons is easy, and costs 1 maneuver.)  In many cases,these mini-Feats, 1 free with every skill level, are far more powerfulthan full Feats!Speaking of which, FK adds 54 new feats, but they are split betweennormal and martial, and the descriptions of the martial feats are 100pages further into the book!  (Another layout blunder, IMO)  While theMartial Feats are very powerful, the normal feats tend to be very weak. The Lethal Anatomy (Martial) Feat which gives  1 on attacks and  2 ondamage with all Martial Arts weapons!  Compare this with Weapon Focuswhich gives only a  1 on attacks with a single weapon!   The new ArcaneResistance (non-martial) feat, on the other hand, gives a  2 on Willsaves, but only against Arcane magic.  By comparison, Iron Will from thePHB gives a  2 on all Will saves, no matter what the source.  Theseillustrate the disturbing lack of game balance seen throughout theskills and feats in FK, always favoring fighting types by a huge margin.FK tends to skimp on some important areas, like class descriptions, butthen go overboard on detail in other areas.  The price list for carsgives a breakdown of cost year by year! (Though several of the cars arelisted as NEVER being available for sale in any year!) There are alsochase rules in FK, but unlike Spycraft, they take into account modifiersfor road conditions, turn radius, incline or decline of the road,everything!  There are charts to convert MPH into feet/sec, feet/rnd,and feet/min.  There is a chart of reaction times, in both feet andseconds, to show how long/far it would take a car to stop from a fixedspeed!  Don't they know that in pulp, the car ALWAYS goes over thecliff??? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />There are also complex rules for building your own guns, but thebook only provides a 1/2 page chart of examples.  While that is a niceidea, you'd have to be a gun-nut to be accurate in your constructions! You have to choose a propellant size, bullet caliber, barrel length,receiver, feed, and then add any special abilities it needs!  How manypeople can do all of that for a long list of guns?  Furthermore, some of the rules are strange... Shotguns allow a Reflex save for half damage?  Why?I would think the spread of the buckshot would make it harder to dodge than a single bullet, not easier.Next, there are sections on Weird Science, Magic and Psionics.  WeirdScience is glossed over VERY quickly, receiving only 3 pages!!  Magic isgiven a somewhat sparse treatment (16 pgs), but there are rules forrituals and a few new spells.  Psionics are given quite a nice section,though, and the system seems like a sound one.  (It is based on Skillsand Feats).  There are a broad range of abilities, from Telepathy toElectrokinesis.  I'm a bit unclear on why some of the powers are Featsand some are skills, but it looks like an interesting system for modernpsionics (as opposed to the more Sorcery-oriented psionics in thePsionics Handbook).The book ends with a few character write-ups (though strangely none forthe fiction piece characters) and a few creature templates (vampire,ghost, etc)  The character sheet at the back is terribly amatuerish andunattractive.I know I sounded fairly harsh and negative throughout this review.  Ithink that is partly because I had such high hopes for this game.  Onthe bright side, it looks as if the line will continue, as aGamemaster's Codex is advertised in the back, and 3 city books... Paris,Manchester, and Berlin.  If some of the vague points are cleared up inthe Gamemaster's Codex, the game might still be salvagable, but as itis, it would require MAJOR rules interpretation and balancing to beusable.  Still, it can provide a lot of good ideas for other Pulp games.</blockquote>

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