Heh, I only just now realized that it was the print version that was on sale at the Green Ronin site.
Sorry about that. I will be purchasing the PDF from RPGNow, and will likely order a second print copy when the new price pops up. (Don't I feel silly now?
) This actually means that the Medieval Player's Manual is now cheaper in print than as a PDF - the PDF is $11 from RPGNow. So I am putting off hitting the send button until the new price for S&B pops up, since I will want to get both on the same shipment.
And as a result I am downloading the S&B and MPM PDFs right now.
Treebore said:
Sell me on medievel, Grump. Not a review, just tell me what makes it worth getting. I like the blurbs, the concept sounds great, so tell me why it is good/worth getting.
Essentially I intend to use it at some (as yet unspecified) future date along with Medieval Magical Society: Western Europe to run a lower powered medieval game based (loosely) on The Cantebury Tales. (Or more properly, what happens after they exchange their stories and travel one as one...) My normal campaign worlds tend to be post-Rennaisance (more accurately Reformation/Counter Reformation), so having something to give me a feel for the period is a good thing.
For this campaign I may even have the characters be characters in a story that they are weaving rather than being their actaul adventures. (In other words the adventures are the lies that the PCs are telling in their travels. If it sounds like a cheap attempt to get someone else to run the occassional game so that I can play once in a while then you are hearing correctly.)
The Medieval Player's Manual also shares a developer with one of my all time favorite RPGs - Ars Magica's David Chart, so I was familiar with the amount of research was likely to go into the product. While I could use the Ars supplements myself (I do own most of 'em) having it laid out for D20 means not needing to introduce a new system to my players, and not needing to convert it myself.
There are some interesting details in the book that can help flesh out the setting a good deal. I do not have my print copy to hand, but I remember the section on medieval libraries to be particularly, ummm, interesting if not useful - a gervaise was a locked cabinet that the books were stored in, they were rare and valuable. Actually having absorbed the contents of some of the books are handled with feats - while an interesting idea I found this to be the most cumbersome area of the rules. Way too many feats for way too little gain.
With some modification (just to the flavor material and to the chapters on Eorope and those on religion) this book would also work quite well for running a game set in Harn - possibly the most believable medieval fantasy setting I have encountered. This was actually the first thing that I considered, but then I decided that it had been a while since I had run a game in Medieval Europe. (And that was Call of Cthulhu.)
MPM does not really attempt to make the standard D&D magic using classes fit into a medieval world, but instead you get such things as Cunning Folk, who work minor magics and create charms, not too far in concept from its Ars Magica rendition. Clerics are also handled differently (not all of them are spell users), and in fact all the characters can have access to some miracles through Charisms. In some ways magic is actually
more common than in standard D&D, just not nearly as powerful. Certainly magic is something that everyone has some contact with, whether real or imagined. It feels like the 4th edition Ars Magica supplement Hedge Wizards was a primary source for this book.
*Stalling while the PDF downloads... Hummm de dummm....*
There we go, I wanted to review the magic chapters. Most magic is much less flashy than in D&D, and even the flashy ones such as Alchemy are not the stuff of combat or a way to riches. (Converting lead into gold for example costs 2 gp for every gp produced... done by an alchemist more to show that he
can do it than for any other purpose.) The closest to the standard D&D trope of magic using wizard is the Theurge, who works through spirits. Often they are the bad guys - some dealing with the spirits below, some willing to sacrifice the lives of others, and others seeking authority over God himself.
Clerics are mostly handled with the Priest class - the class beseeches God to grant the spells, they do not automatically function. Spells are pretty close to those of the cleric, excepting those dealing with other planes. If you really want a spellcaster in the group this is the most feasible possibilty.
All in all I suspect that the rules will result in a slower paced game than typical D&D, good for liesurely travelling from Kent to Paris, with the travels being the main point of the journey.
Hmmm, one odd thing that I had forgotten - it cuts off before Richard takes the throne of England, so folks wanting to do a Robin Hood style game will need to do a lot of their own work, while folks who want to do the Cantebury Tales will be well suited.
The Auld Grump
