Guildcraft
- Thread starter Ghostwind
- Start date
GameWyrd
Explorer
Guilds. Those fantasy stalwarts. Stalwart and yet usually so annoying that they’re not worth the bother. In my experience Guilds have been deployed as a poor way to keep in check character’s level advancements, as impromptu and unrelated plot twists, as half hearted references to what the author thought should be there. I mean, if you’re heroes engage on an epic adventure which lasts seventeen years and has them cross the great sulphur flats of the Deadlands, scale the spine of the world and travel beyond the edge… then who cares that they’re a rank two novice in the wizard’s guild back in their home town?
Guildcraft is Bastion Press’s attempt to convince me that Guilds are worthwhile – or, at least, if I want to use guilds how to get the most out of them. The book has mixed success.
There’s a quick note about "world neutral" right at the start and that makes for a good beginning. Guildcraft is written so that it can be used in any fantasy world or as many different fantasy worlds as normal. This rounds off the bell a little, drawing everything closer to the average but does mean that you’re likely to be able to fit at least one of the guilds in the book into your campaign if you wanted to.
Just a few pages in and Guildcraft totally wrong foots me. What’s your idea of a typical Guild? The over-present Thieves Guild (and are thieves across the D&D universe the most organised people ever?) or perhaps a Mages Guild? Does your list of organised professionals working together for a better tomorrow include barbarian hordes? No? Me neither. Yet, barbarian horde is the first example guild in Guildcraft. Putting the boot into your expectation that guilds are inherently civilised and an urban phenomena is the Druid’s Cabal. Thankfully, after those two the guilds come more recognisable as such and continue the character class correlation. Golden Blades is the name of the fighter guild, One Reed for the monks, Paladin Orders for the Bards – oh, okay – it’s for the Paladins, Rogue’s Gallery and Sacred Light for the goodie-goodie clerics. Seekers reserves as sort of catch all for wizards, bards but it seems best suited for sorcerers and is placed in line for such as we run through the class to guild list, the Wizard’s Academies come next and Ye Fools is the guild suggest to organise Bards.
There’s more than just names to these guilds though. In fact, there are some decent game mechanic suggestions in Guildcraft that make the book worthwhile. The book’s most concerned with running through these suggested guilds though, that’s where most of the pages go. After taking the obvious but probably helpful character class approach to building guilds the book picks on some suitable or interesting skills and weaves guilds from them.
Neric’s Avengers are a bunch of organised vigilantes and so they’re probably a suitable guild for many d20 heroes out there. Despite Neric and company being the lead entry into the skill-based guild chapter there isn’t actually a skill requirement to join, you just need to be second level. There’s a nice use of a traders’ guild in the Roshanta Trading Guild that seems to be the slightly less than perfect evolution of an elder and less successful merchants’ association. The Shondak are the name given to the guild of weaponsmiths and historically such a profession makes for an ideal choice of guild.
Chapter three is home to the collection of guilds with least description for each. The theme here that links the guilds together is that above any other reason they’re just groups of people with a common cause who have gotten together. Chapter four, on the other hand, has only a single guild in it but it’s the one with largest number of pages spent on it. The Collective is the adventurer’s guild. It’s there to deal with those annoyingly mundane things like accommodation and food but also looks to employ adventurers and even help out from time to time.
Really. There’s nothing very special in the example guilds in terms of fresh ideas, detailed history or cunning ambitions. Many of the guilds are detailed through several pages though and that’s probably good enough for plug-and-play in most campaigns. There are plot hooks as well as NPC stats, suggested variations and notes on the size and scope of the guild.
The success in Guildcraft comes from the game mechanics on progression within the guilds. Membership as feat like prerequisites and then on in each different rank in some guilds also have prerequisites and all new ranks have an XP cost. It’s not a huge XP cost but you’ll certainly notice spending them. The cost is balanced by tangible game mechanic benefits. If you’re a barbarian of the barbarian horde and you’re out on, er, barbarian horde business and everyone round about you is caught up in the rage of battle then even if you might otherwise be all raged-out you might find another dose of furry inside you. If you have a mage’s guild supporting your studies then scrolls and supplies will be cheaper. In short; there are real costs that your players will feel and there are real benefits that your players will feel as well. I think this makes the guilds in Guildcraft rather more real than the might otherwise have been and this is a good thing.
The book ends with a small but sufficient chapter on how to design and build your own guild so that they fit into the outline used by Guildcraft. This is another of the book’s successes and for me it’s what makes the purchase worthwhile. Technically the book ends with some prestige classes and feats but I suspect most people who’ve had Guildcraft for a while will pick it up, flip to the back and use it for the creating your own guilds.
I don’t think Guildcraft has managed to persuade me that anything other than nation wide guilds are worthwhile. Guildcraft certainly has persuaded me that if I am using guilds that I’ll want to do them in the Guildcraft way.
* This GameWyrd review was first published here.
Guildcraft is Bastion Press’s attempt to convince me that Guilds are worthwhile – or, at least, if I want to use guilds how to get the most out of them. The book has mixed success.
There’s a quick note about "world neutral" right at the start and that makes for a good beginning. Guildcraft is written so that it can be used in any fantasy world or as many different fantasy worlds as normal. This rounds off the bell a little, drawing everything closer to the average but does mean that you’re likely to be able to fit at least one of the guilds in the book into your campaign if you wanted to.
Just a few pages in and Guildcraft totally wrong foots me. What’s your idea of a typical Guild? The over-present Thieves Guild (and are thieves across the D&D universe the most organised people ever?) or perhaps a Mages Guild? Does your list of organised professionals working together for a better tomorrow include barbarian hordes? No? Me neither. Yet, barbarian horde is the first example guild in Guildcraft. Putting the boot into your expectation that guilds are inherently civilised and an urban phenomena is the Druid’s Cabal. Thankfully, after those two the guilds come more recognisable as such and continue the character class correlation. Golden Blades is the name of the fighter guild, One Reed for the monks, Paladin Orders for the Bards – oh, okay – it’s for the Paladins, Rogue’s Gallery and Sacred Light for the goodie-goodie clerics. Seekers reserves as sort of catch all for wizards, bards but it seems best suited for sorcerers and is placed in line for such as we run through the class to guild list, the Wizard’s Academies come next and Ye Fools is the guild suggest to organise Bards.
There’s more than just names to these guilds though. In fact, there are some decent game mechanic suggestions in Guildcraft that make the book worthwhile. The book’s most concerned with running through these suggested guilds though, that’s where most of the pages go. After taking the obvious but probably helpful character class approach to building guilds the book picks on some suitable or interesting skills and weaves guilds from them.
Neric’s Avengers are a bunch of organised vigilantes and so they’re probably a suitable guild for many d20 heroes out there. Despite Neric and company being the lead entry into the skill-based guild chapter there isn’t actually a skill requirement to join, you just need to be second level. There’s a nice use of a traders’ guild in the Roshanta Trading Guild that seems to be the slightly less than perfect evolution of an elder and less successful merchants’ association. The Shondak are the name given to the guild of weaponsmiths and historically such a profession makes for an ideal choice of guild.
Chapter three is home to the collection of guilds with least description for each. The theme here that links the guilds together is that above any other reason they’re just groups of people with a common cause who have gotten together. Chapter four, on the other hand, has only a single guild in it but it’s the one with largest number of pages spent on it. The Collective is the adventurer’s guild. It’s there to deal with those annoyingly mundane things like accommodation and food but also looks to employ adventurers and even help out from time to time.
Really. There’s nothing very special in the example guilds in terms of fresh ideas, detailed history or cunning ambitions. Many of the guilds are detailed through several pages though and that’s probably good enough for plug-and-play in most campaigns. There are plot hooks as well as NPC stats, suggested variations and notes on the size and scope of the guild.
The success in Guildcraft comes from the game mechanics on progression within the guilds. Membership as feat like prerequisites and then on in each different rank in some guilds also have prerequisites and all new ranks have an XP cost. It’s not a huge XP cost but you’ll certainly notice spending them. The cost is balanced by tangible game mechanic benefits. If you’re a barbarian of the barbarian horde and you’re out on, er, barbarian horde business and everyone round about you is caught up in the rage of battle then even if you might otherwise be all raged-out you might find another dose of furry inside you. If you have a mage’s guild supporting your studies then scrolls and supplies will be cheaper. In short; there are real costs that your players will feel and there are real benefits that your players will feel as well. I think this makes the guilds in Guildcraft rather more real than the might otherwise have been and this is a good thing.
The book ends with a small but sufficient chapter on how to design and build your own guild so that they fit into the outline used by Guildcraft. This is another of the book’s successes and for me it’s what makes the purchase worthwhile. Technically the book ends with some prestige classes and feats but I suspect most people who’ve had Guildcraft for a while will pick it up, flip to the back and use it for the creating your own guilds.
I don’t think Guildcraft has managed to persuade me that anything other than nation wide guilds are worthwhile. Guildcraft certainly has persuaded me that if I am using guilds that I’ll want to do them in the Guildcraft way.
* This GameWyrd review was first published here.
Psion
Adventurer
Guildcraft
Guildcraft is a softcover supplement by Bastion Press, publisher of such books as Minions: Fearsome Foes and the Oathbound campaign setting. Guildcraft provides new rules, ideas, and details for guilds and similar organizations in a campaign.
Guildcraft is by Peter Leitch, Chris Maxfield, Mark Somers, and Wes Nicholson.
A First Look
Guildcraft is a 96 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $24.95. This is the same format as Bastions previous softcover books; in general the format is a little pricey.
The cover of Guildcraft has a uniform gold-tone look, with a front cover image depicting some armored figures fighting in a pillared hall.
The interior is full color, featuring art by Andrew Baker, Andy Brase, Ginger Kubic, Mark Jones, and Michael Orwick. The interior art is fair to good, and most of the art is comic-book style. The art is lightly distributed through the book.
The interior text is fairly dense, with conservative body and header fonts and no gratuitous paragraph or column spacing.
A Deeper Look
Guildcraft is divided into 5 chapters plus two appendices.
The first four chapters address different types of guilds and similar organizations. Each organization includes details on membership, structure, advancement, benefits and disadvantages, affiliations, details on how one can leave the organization, a sample character in the leadership of the group, notes for use of the guild in a campaign, and adventure hooks to use the guild in the campaign.
The ranks and benefits are conveyed spending xp in a cost scheme, and the benefits are very class-like in nature. As many of the guilds are class oriented, many of these abilities exist to enhance existing class abilities. I have never been fond of the approach of circumventing the class/level/feat mechanic to grant PCs skills, and unlike the prestige races in Bastion's Oathbound, the abilities discussed here seem like they should be class abilities and thus seem very unjustified and tacked on.
The first chapter discusses class guilds associated with the various core classes - of course, they aren't all guilds per se. The barbarians have a horde, the druid have a cabal, paladins have an order, and so on.
The second chapter covers organizations dedicated to certain professions or skills, a bit more like historical guilds. The chapter includes a mercenary band, a merchant guild, and a weaponsmith guild.
The third chapter is about relational guilds, guilds that exist primarily as social organizations. The Clover Union is an alliance of families. The Feasters are a social club that indulge in exotic foods. The Lochrinn Town Guild are citizens of a town that organize for its defense.
The fourth chapter is all about the Collective, a large adventurer's guild. As the whole chapter is devoted to the collective, it covers quite a bit of detail. The collective has many services available to members, such as access to adventuring gear at a discount, banking, access to appropriate experts, and the option to pay money to have your party rescued if you flub up an expedition.
The fifth chapter breaks down the guild format used in other chapter and discusses how to design an organization using this format, including options for several details and a random table for designing details of a guild.
The first appendix is only half column, and is a quick listing of possible NPC names.
The second appendix describes two new prestige classes, a new feat (feint), and a new use for the diplomacy skill. The prestige classes are the avenger (a warrior type driven to avenge wrongs) and the Seeker (a scout in the service of the Lochrinn Town Guild). The prestige classes seem reasonable in power and concept.
Conclusion
There is some worthwhile material in here, particularly in the collective chapter; players may find some of the organizational concepts useful. The outline used by the book seems to handle many of the salient point you would be concerned about with a guild.
However, there were many guilds I did not find to be compelling or surprising additions to the game; much of what is there is exactly what most DMs and players would figure it would be. Further, as stated, I did not think the tacked on special abilities associated with some guilds were really appropriate. These types of abilities are exactly the sort of thing that prestige classes were designed to do and did not see a compelling reason not to go that route.
-Alan D. Kohler
Guildcraft is a softcover supplement by Bastion Press, publisher of such books as Minions: Fearsome Foes and the Oathbound campaign setting. Guildcraft provides new rules, ideas, and details for guilds and similar organizations in a campaign.
Guildcraft is by Peter Leitch, Chris Maxfield, Mark Somers, and Wes Nicholson.
A First Look
Guildcraft is a 96 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $24.95. This is the same format as Bastions previous softcover books; in general the format is a little pricey.
The cover of Guildcraft has a uniform gold-tone look, with a front cover image depicting some armored figures fighting in a pillared hall.
The interior is full color, featuring art by Andrew Baker, Andy Brase, Ginger Kubic, Mark Jones, and Michael Orwick. The interior art is fair to good, and most of the art is comic-book style. The art is lightly distributed through the book.
The interior text is fairly dense, with conservative body and header fonts and no gratuitous paragraph or column spacing.
A Deeper Look
Guildcraft is divided into 5 chapters plus two appendices.
The first four chapters address different types of guilds and similar organizations. Each organization includes details on membership, structure, advancement, benefits and disadvantages, affiliations, details on how one can leave the organization, a sample character in the leadership of the group, notes for use of the guild in a campaign, and adventure hooks to use the guild in the campaign.
The ranks and benefits are conveyed spending xp in a cost scheme, and the benefits are very class-like in nature. As many of the guilds are class oriented, many of these abilities exist to enhance existing class abilities. I have never been fond of the approach of circumventing the class/level/feat mechanic to grant PCs skills, and unlike the prestige races in Bastion's Oathbound, the abilities discussed here seem like they should be class abilities and thus seem very unjustified and tacked on.
The first chapter discusses class guilds associated with the various core classes - of course, they aren't all guilds per se. The barbarians have a horde, the druid have a cabal, paladins have an order, and so on.
The second chapter covers organizations dedicated to certain professions or skills, a bit more like historical guilds. The chapter includes a mercenary band, a merchant guild, and a weaponsmith guild.
The third chapter is about relational guilds, guilds that exist primarily as social organizations. The Clover Union is an alliance of families. The Feasters are a social club that indulge in exotic foods. The Lochrinn Town Guild are citizens of a town that organize for its defense.
The fourth chapter is all about the Collective, a large adventurer's guild. As the whole chapter is devoted to the collective, it covers quite a bit of detail. The collective has many services available to members, such as access to adventuring gear at a discount, banking, access to appropriate experts, and the option to pay money to have your party rescued if you flub up an expedition.
The fifth chapter breaks down the guild format used in other chapter and discusses how to design an organization using this format, including options for several details and a random table for designing details of a guild.
The first appendix is only half column, and is a quick listing of possible NPC names.
The second appendix describes two new prestige classes, a new feat (feint), and a new use for the diplomacy skill. The prestige classes are the avenger (a warrior type driven to avenge wrongs) and the Seeker (a scout in the service of the Lochrinn Town Guild). The prestige classes seem reasonable in power and concept.
Conclusion
There is some worthwhile material in here, particularly in the collective chapter; players may find some of the organizational concepts useful. The outline used by the book seems to handle many of the salient point you would be concerned about with a guild.
However, there were many guilds I did not find to be compelling or surprising additions to the game; much of what is there is exactly what most DMs and players would figure it would be. Further, as stated, I did not think the tacked on special abilities associated with some guilds were really appropriate. These types of abilities are exactly the sort of thing that prestige classes were designed to do and did not see a compelling reason not to go that route.
-Alan D. Kohler
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Guildcraft
Written by Peter Leitch, Chris Maxfield, Mark Somers and Wes Nicholson
Published by Bastion Press
96 full color pages
$24.95
So you’re looking for a little extra spice for your character? As a GM, do you wonder what role and functions the various guilds in your setting serve? In either case, Guildcraft has some goods to offer you.
The first chapter breaks down guilds into core class associations. You get barbarian hordes, swordsmen schools, mages guilds and other goodies. Each one with different ranks and requirements and rules for advancement. Some of the better parts of this section include the abilities you can gain. Said abilities belong to different levels within the guild and have an experience point cost. Yes, that’s right, it’s not enough merely to spend the experience, you have to have the rank to do so.
In some cases, these bonuses are simple role playing opportunities and bonuses, finding shelter from fellow guild members or having pull in certain circles. In others though, the game balance, the dreaded game balance monster, may have to be called into play. For example, the fighter’s guild, the Golden Blades, has five ranks. At the fourth rank, you’ll be eligible for you’re 3rd ‘combat bonus’, a +1 bonus that must be selected from attack bonus or armor class bonus. This of course stacks with other goods like weapon focus, dodge, etc… so with up to a +3 bonus, people with Power Attack and other feats to take advantage of damage are really going to ham it up, perhaps becoming untouchable if they have the feat Expertise. The One Reed monk school provides stat bonuses and has a lot more grades so there are more bonuses to be had. It gets to the point where you’d have to wonder why you’re character wasn’t in a guild!
Now not all guilds are based around classes. The second chapter details guilds dedicated to professions, almost modeled like historical guilds. The chapter includes a mercenary band, a merchant guild, and a weaponsmith guild. Now here, the mercenary band takes center stage for me. There are many organizations in the Scarred Lands campaigns and I’ve never been able to figure out what to do with them or what benefits to grant certain schools. There are several military academies very famous but would they grant powers? Using this band, Neric’s Avengers, I have a good idea on what structure an army has (something the AEG book War completely missed), as well as what benefits that the military ranks may carry with them.
The third chapter covers social guilds. The strangest one here has to be the Feasters. These boys get together and eat various exotic monsters and foods so I can see where the GM can easily use something like this to have the party go hunt for specialized foods for them to test. The Lochrinn Town Guild consists of citizens of a town organized for its defense. I found this another useful tool as there are so many friggin small frontier towns that are always about to get destroyed by some horde or another of screaming humanoids that it provides a good solid base to add to those towns.
The fourth chapter is all about the Collective, a large adventurer's guild. This is a little different than Neric’s Avengers as it provides a lot more detail to the guild. There are numerous services this guild provides. Part of these goods include Waystations and I can’t help but think of Mercedes Lackey’s series with her Herald-Mages and their various way stations in the country. Lots of NPCs help round out this section and provide the GM some tools to use in fleshing out the campaign further but some of those names have to go like Bob the cleric/fighter. Bob?
Chapter five helps GMs design their own guilds. What’s the purpose? Who are the members? Why should people join? What’s the criteria? How big is it? It seeks up a question and answer bit but falls a little short in providing stark details like how much does the guild costs to run per month, reputation modifiers, etc.. In some ways, I still look at Rifts Mercenaries for some ideas on handling the creation of organizations as it has a lot of tables and ideas to help you.
The appendices include A, a fast name choicer. B has a new feat, and a new use for diplomacy. In addition, it includes the Avenger and Seeker PrCs, each one a full 10 level class. The Avenger is, yes, a being who hunts down those who’ve done him wrong while the seeker is an advanced scout.
The book has the standard two-column layout with color interiors. I was pleased to note that there are several different artists in the book so Bastion is listening in terms of the art department. You’ll notice that the cover is different too and provides more proof that Bastion isn’t all about doing the same thing over and over again. Editing is fairly good and no errors jumped up at me. Text to white space ratio is solid. The book is a little lite on maps though as I would’ve loved to have seen maps for everything in the book!
I guess in the end, part of the problem is that the ideas and concepts here aren’t quite as useful out as they originally were. Take the Path of books from Fantasy Flight Games. Each one has organizations and maneuvers you can learn at an experience cost. Very similar to the ideas here. How about the core idea of prestige classes themselves? Aren’t PrCs designed to give you special abilities for being part of an organization?
The other part of the problem is that it’s not specific enough. For example, it doesn’t hesitate to give you a gold piece number when pointing out costs of joining the wizards’ guild, but when it states you can make money, it leaves the figure alone and nebulous. Rising in ranks is sometimes a little unclear to. “Go meditate and we will let you know how you did.” Okay, but is that a concentration check with difficulties to take into account the weather and other factors or just a complete role-playing element?
Guildcraft is a good book and provides numerous examples of special abilities that might be gained by interested parties but its definitely not for everyone.
Written by Peter Leitch, Chris Maxfield, Mark Somers and Wes Nicholson
Published by Bastion Press
96 full color pages
$24.95
So you’re looking for a little extra spice for your character? As a GM, do you wonder what role and functions the various guilds in your setting serve? In either case, Guildcraft has some goods to offer you.
The first chapter breaks down guilds into core class associations. You get barbarian hordes, swordsmen schools, mages guilds and other goodies. Each one with different ranks and requirements and rules for advancement. Some of the better parts of this section include the abilities you can gain. Said abilities belong to different levels within the guild and have an experience point cost. Yes, that’s right, it’s not enough merely to spend the experience, you have to have the rank to do so.
In some cases, these bonuses are simple role playing opportunities and bonuses, finding shelter from fellow guild members or having pull in certain circles. In others though, the game balance, the dreaded game balance monster, may have to be called into play. For example, the fighter’s guild, the Golden Blades, has five ranks. At the fourth rank, you’ll be eligible for you’re 3rd ‘combat bonus’, a +1 bonus that must be selected from attack bonus or armor class bonus. This of course stacks with other goods like weapon focus, dodge, etc… so with up to a +3 bonus, people with Power Attack and other feats to take advantage of damage are really going to ham it up, perhaps becoming untouchable if they have the feat Expertise. The One Reed monk school provides stat bonuses and has a lot more grades so there are more bonuses to be had. It gets to the point where you’d have to wonder why you’re character wasn’t in a guild!
Now not all guilds are based around classes. The second chapter details guilds dedicated to professions, almost modeled like historical guilds. The chapter includes a mercenary band, a merchant guild, and a weaponsmith guild. Now here, the mercenary band takes center stage for me. There are many organizations in the Scarred Lands campaigns and I’ve never been able to figure out what to do with them or what benefits to grant certain schools. There are several military academies very famous but would they grant powers? Using this band, Neric’s Avengers, I have a good idea on what structure an army has (something the AEG book War completely missed), as well as what benefits that the military ranks may carry with them.
The third chapter covers social guilds. The strangest one here has to be the Feasters. These boys get together and eat various exotic monsters and foods so I can see where the GM can easily use something like this to have the party go hunt for specialized foods for them to test. The Lochrinn Town Guild consists of citizens of a town organized for its defense. I found this another useful tool as there are so many friggin small frontier towns that are always about to get destroyed by some horde or another of screaming humanoids that it provides a good solid base to add to those towns.
The fourth chapter is all about the Collective, a large adventurer's guild. This is a little different than Neric’s Avengers as it provides a lot more detail to the guild. There are numerous services this guild provides. Part of these goods include Waystations and I can’t help but think of Mercedes Lackey’s series with her Herald-Mages and their various way stations in the country. Lots of NPCs help round out this section and provide the GM some tools to use in fleshing out the campaign further but some of those names have to go like Bob the cleric/fighter. Bob?
Chapter five helps GMs design their own guilds. What’s the purpose? Who are the members? Why should people join? What’s the criteria? How big is it? It seeks up a question and answer bit but falls a little short in providing stark details like how much does the guild costs to run per month, reputation modifiers, etc.. In some ways, I still look at Rifts Mercenaries for some ideas on handling the creation of organizations as it has a lot of tables and ideas to help you.
The appendices include A, a fast name choicer. B has a new feat, and a new use for diplomacy. In addition, it includes the Avenger and Seeker PrCs, each one a full 10 level class. The Avenger is, yes, a being who hunts down those who’ve done him wrong while the seeker is an advanced scout.
The book has the standard two-column layout with color interiors. I was pleased to note that there are several different artists in the book so Bastion is listening in terms of the art department. You’ll notice that the cover is different too and provides more proof that Bastion isn’t all about doing the same thing over and over again. Editing is fairly good and no errors jumped up at me. Text to white space ratio is solid. The book is a little lite on maps though as I would’ve loved to have seen maps for everything in the book!
I guess in the end, part of the problem is that the ideas and concepts here aren’t quite as useful out as they originally were. Take the Path of books from Fantasy Flight Games. Each one has organizations and maneuvers you can learn at an experience cost. Very similar to the ideas here. How about the core idea of prestige classes themselves? Aren’t PrCs designed to give you special abilities for being part of an organization?
The other part of the problem is that it’s not specific enough. For example, it doesn’t hesitate to give you a gold piece number when pointing out costs of joining the wizards’ guild, but when it states you can make money, it leaves the figure alone and nebulous. Rising in ranks is sometimes a little unclear to. “Go meditate and we will let you know how you did.” Okay, but is that a concentration check with difficulties to take into account the weather and other factors or just a complete role-playing element?
Guildcraft is a good book and provides numerous examples of special abilities that might be gained by interested parties but its definitely not for everyone.
Simon Collins
Explorer
This is not a playtest review.
Guildcraft is a sourcebook on guilds from Bastion Press.
Guildcraft costs $24.95 for 96 pages. Its softcover and in colour. There are areas of white space in the book, font is good, and margins are fairly average. I found the artwork to be mostly average, with a couple of better pieces here and there. The banale brown front cover did not improve things. The couple of maps are basic, with no scale shown. Writing style is fairly good, and editing also seems good (though there is a significant margin title error in Chapter 2).
My first impression of Guildcraft is that the order of chapters was an odd choice. The book begins with guilds based on PC classes, moves on to skill-based guilds, social guilds, an adventurers guild, and finally a template for guild design. I would have liked to have seen the guild design template first, as this would have given me a better understanding of the guild examples presented. The unusual concept of PC class-based guilds would have been better suited after the more traditional guilds had been covered. So my review is going to be backwards...
Chapter Five: Designing Guilds
The Guild design template gives guidelines on creating your own guild. There is a discussion on the purpose of the guild, types of members & membership requirements, the joining process, its size and scope, the structure of the guild and advancement within the structure (levels of authority in a guild are termed 'grades' to avoid confusion), benefits and disadvantages of guild membership, affiliations with other organisations, and any difficulties associated with leaving the guild. This structure is used in presenting the guilds throughout the rest of the book, though in addition guild entries also contain sections on advice for amending the guild to suit your campaign, adventure hooks, ideas for other similar guilds, and an NPC or NPCs. Each guild also has a table showing the requirements, benefits, and costs of advancing in guild grades - these work a little similarly to prestige classes in many cases, with an XP cost in return for such advantages as skill bonuses, feats, and other benefits.
Chapter Four: The Collective
Actually the Adventurer's Guild, and includes a number of statted-up example adventurers-for-hire, information on the banking service provided to members, search and rescue expeditions for failed adventurers, local experts (for hire at reduced prices to members), and trading posts, as well as a typical guildhall. There is also discussion on the commercial, informational, and professional activities carried out by the guild. This chapter certainly provides a sound organisational basis on which to bring the PCs together in the first place, to replace party members, or add to the party (new players).
Chapter Three: Relational Guilds
This chapter offers three guilds designed to enhance group relationships:
* The Clover Union is a guild accepting members from only certain families. The guild is designed to increase the economic position of these families and afford protection where required.
* The Feasters is a social guild whose purpose is to try new, exotic or unusual foods, requiring _someone_ to seek out or hunt down these delicacies to bring them to the table.
* Lochrinn Town Guild is based on protection of a town bordering on a wilderness area and includes all town inhabitants in a militia-based organisation.
Chapter Two: Skill-based Guilds
Three more traditional historical guilds:
* Neric's Avengers is a lawful-aligned mercenary organisation
* Roshanta Trading Guild is a widespread, wealthy and influential mercantile guild
* Shondak Weaponsmiths Guild is based in a single city and grading is based on skill alone
Chapter One: Class Guilds
These 'guilds' are based on PC classes:
* Barbarian Horde
* Druid's Cabal
* Golden Blades - a fighting academy which allows fighters, rangers and paladins membership
* One Reed School - monastic martial arts
* Paladin Orders
* Rogues Gallery
* Sacred Light Council - good-aligned clerical organisation against tyranny and slavery
* Seekers - group focused on helping those with latent arcane powers bring them into being
* Wizards' Academies
* Ye Fools - secret Jester-orientated bardic society focused on material power
To double back to the very end of the book, Appendix A lists some names that can be used for on-the-fly guild members. Appendix B gives a new feat (Feint, similar to the use of the Bluff skill in combat), the use of the Diplomacy skill in motivating troops, and two prestige classes - the aptly-named Avenger, and the Seeker, a PrC focused on scouting skills.
Conclusion:
In the dictionary, there are two definitions of the word 'guild'. The first is "a mediaeval association of craftsmen or merchants"; the second is "an association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of a common goal". Bastion have definitely taken this second definition as the framework for Guildcraft. This makes its utility greater than if it had focused on the first definition, since it provides several organisations that can give direct benefits to PCs in-game. The problem is that many of the 'guilds' seem just like ordinary organisations in their flavour, with prestige-class-like benefits tagged on to them. Since one of the main reasons for the existence of prestige classes was to reflect unique organisations in a campaign setting, why didn't Bastion just use the prestige class framework?
I found the Adventurers Guild to be a viable and useful addition to the d20 treasure-trove of rules and concepts. The guild design template was also useful for sparking ideas and focusing the mind when creating your own guilds. I found most of the other guilds presented fairly average, being less imaginative than the organisations presented in FFG's 'Paths' series for example, and not relying on the strengths of the Prestige Class concept as the 'Paths' organisations have done.
Guildcraft is a sourcebook on guilds from Bastion Press.
Guildcraft costs $24.95 for 96 pages. Its softcover and in colour. There are areas of white space in the book, font is good, and margins are fairly average. I found the artwork to be mostly average, with a couple of better pieces here and there. The banale brown front cover did not improve things. The couple of maps are basic, with no scale shown. Writing style is fairly good, and editing also seems good (though there is a significant margin title error in Chapter 2).
My first impression of Guildcraft is that the order of chapters was an odd choice. The book begins with guilds based on PC classes, moves on to skill-based guilds, social guilds, an adventurers guild, and finally a template for guild design. I would have liked to have seen the guild design template first, as this would have given me a better understanding of the guild examples presented. The unusual concept of PC class-based guilds would have been better suited after the more traditional guilds had been covered. So my review is going to be backwards...
Chapter Five: Designing Guilds
The Guild design template gives guidelines on creating your own guild. There is a discussion on the purpose of the guild, types of members & membership requirements, the joining process, its size and scope, the structure of the guild and advancement within the structure (levels of authority in a guild are termed 'grades' to avoid confusion), benefits and disadvantages of guild membership, affiliations with other organisations, and any difficulties associated with leaving the guild. This structure is used in presenting the guilds throughout the rest of the book, though in addition guild entries also contain sections on advice for amending the guild to suit your campaign, adventure hooks, ideas for other similar guilds, and an NPC or NPCs. Each guild also has a table showing the requirements, benefits, and costs of advancing in guild grades - these work a little similarly to prestige classes in many cases, with an XP cost in return for such advantages as skill bonuses, feats, and other benefits.
Chapter Four: The Collective
Actually the Adventurer's Guild, and includes a number of statted-up example adventurers-for-hire, information on the banking service provided to members, search and rescue expeditions for failed adventurers, local experts (for hire at reduced prices to members), and trading posts, as well as a typical guildhall. There is also discussion on the commercial, informational, and professional activities carried out by the guild. This chapter certainly provides a sound organisational basis on which to bring the PCs together in the first place, to replace party members, or add to the party (new players).
Chapter Three: Relational Guilds
This chapter offers three guilds designed to enhance group relationships:
* The Clover Union is a guild accepting members from only certain families. The guild is designed to increase the economic position of these families and afford protection where required.
* The Feasters is a social guild whose purpose is to try new, exotic or unusual foods, requiring _someone_ to seek out or hunt down these delicacies to bring them to the table.
* Lochrinn Town Guild is based on protection of a town bordering on a wilderness area and includes all town inhabitants in a militia-based organisation.
Chapter Two: Skill-based Guilds
Three more traditional historical guilds:
* Neric's Avengers is a lawful-aligned mercenary organisation
* Roshanta Trading Guild is a widespread, wealthy and influential mercantile guild
* Shondak Weaponsmiths Guild is based in a single city and grading is based on skill alone
Chapter One: Class Guilds
These 'guilds' are based on PC classes:
* Barbarian Horde
* Druid's Cabal
* Golden Blades - a fighting academy which allows fighters, rangers and paladins membership
* One Reed School - monastic martial arts
* Paladin Orders
* Rogues Gallery
* Sacred Light Council - good-aligned clerical organisation against tyranny and slavery
* Seekers - group focused on helping those with latent arcane powers bring them into being
* Wizards' Academies
* Ye Fools - secret Jester-orientated bardic society focused on material power
To double back to the very end of the book, Appendix A lists some names that can be used for on-the-fly guild members. Appendix B gives a new feat (Feint, similar to the use of the Bluff skill in combat), the use of the Diplomacy skill in motivating troops, and two prestige classes - the aptly-named Avenger, and the Seeker, a PrC focused on scouting skills.
Conclusion:
In the dictionary, there are two definitions of the word 'guild'. The first is "a mediaeval association of craftsmen or merchants"; the second is "an association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of a common goal". Bastion have definitely taken this second definition as the framework for Guildcraft. This makes its utility greater than if it had focused on the first definition, since it provides several organisations that can give direct benefits to PCs in-game. The problem is that many of the 'guilds' seem just like ordinary organisations in their flavour, with prestige-class-like benefits tagged on to them. Since one of the main reasons for the existence of prestige classes was to reflect unique organisations in a campaign setting, why didn't Bastion just use the prestige class framework?
I found the Adventurers Guild to be a viable and useful addition to the d20 treasure-trove of rules and concepts. The guild design template was also useful for sparking ideas and focusing the mind when creating your own guilds. I found most of the other guilds presented fairly average, being less imaginative than the organisations presented in FFG's 'Paths' series for example, and not relying on the strengths of the Prestige Class concept as the 'Paths' organisations have done.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio
Sizing Up the Target
Guildcraft is a 95-page soft cover accessory published by Bastion Press. Peter Leitch, Chris Maxfield, Mark Somers and Wes Nicholson are co-authors of Guildcraft. The cover is by Michael Orwick and depicts a guildhall in faux-tome format, interior art is by a handful of artists and is very well done and fits the content of the pages they’re sported upon. Guildcraft retails for $24.95.
First Blood
You might think that a book on guilds could be dry and boring, but the guys at Bastion turned out a decent product, introducing support areas pretty much untouched by any edition of D&D. The authors take an interesting tact, splitting up guilds by design, i.e. skills, crafts, class, relational and collectives. A short history of guilds is given, running comparisons of the guilds as forerunners of the trade unions of today to civic groups such as ‘Adopt-A-Road’. They also announce that the book is world-neutral, any guild in the book can be dropped anywhere, from the Forge to Bluffside to Freeport.
Class Guilds are as expected, run down the traditional classes, barbarians are grouped into hordes, druids into cabals etc. Each guild comes with ways to insert them into you campaign, adventure hooks, advantages, disadvantages and more.
Rank benefits for the guilds are given, adding pluses to abilities, contacts, affiliations and the like. A typical Guild master is listed for each guild along with examples of similar guilds.
Skill based guilds are more like the trade unions. Fighting companies of mercenaries (these differ from class guilds as they are not limited to fighters, but anyone pursuing a mercenary life), trade federations, smith guilds and the like. These guilds are set up for commerce. While of more use to the DM for NPC’s and adventure hooks (potential employers or adversaries) these guilds supply infrastructure to the towns and cities of a world and should not be lightly dismissed, look at Green Ronin’s Freeport, it is based on a similar guild structure; a pirate federation gone legitimate.
Relational Guilds are those guilds set up to improve the humanoid condition, poor houses and soup kitchens, social guilds like those whose members have similar interests and hobbies such as the Feaster’s Guild supplied here. The town guild was a very interesting idea, a town where every member has a say in how the town is run, this harkens back to some of the town meetings of colonial days.
The Collective is a catchall kind of guild that encompasses parts and parcels of each of the other three types of guilds and melds it into one massive, well, collective. Gathering together, in this example, adventurers (class guilds), providing services such as banking (trade guilds) for individuals with similar interests (relational guilds). This guild would seem to be the final logical step before we get to industrial-era trade unions. Because of the scope of what the guild covers, a number of members are given as NPC’s.
Chapter 5 delves into how to create your own guilds more suited for your campaigns. Guidelines supplying purpose, membership requirements, how to join, membership make-up, size and scope, advancement, benefits, disadvantages and bonuses are all covered allowing a DM to craft a well-planned guild to best serve his needs.
The book closes with some appendixes, a short, fast name chooser, a couple of feats, feint and new uses for the diplomacy skill, and 2 new prestige classes. The Avenger, is a batman like character, i.e. one who is driven to bring justice to the world and avenge the wrongs done to those who can’t defend themselves. The Seeker is a ranger-like class of those who seek to defend a particular area. In this case the town guild that was delineated employs seekers to patrol it’s environs.
Critical Hits
As I said, this volume fills a need overlooked by previous editions, oh sure we’ve used guilds for a long time, but no one ever went into serious depth on it. This book does, it makes employing guilds easy and not such a chore to insert into a campaign. Also the art didn’t bog me down the way some of Bastion’s art does, it was fantasy but not too way out there.
Critical Misses
More depth, any book on guilds should have dipped into the whole master, journeyman, apprentice feudal system, adding even more color to how guild members can interact with players.
Coup de Grace
This is a good book, one that will probably get passed over again and again by those seeking books with more crunchy bits to it. This book is a resource meant for the serious ROLE-playing DM and can give such a DM a lot of useful material.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
Sizing Up the Target
Guildcraft is a 95-page soft cover accessory published by Bastion Press. Peter Leitch, Chris Maxfield, Mark Somers and Wes Nicholson are co-authors of Guildcraft. The cover is by Michael Orwick and depicts a guildhall in faux-tome format, interior art is by a handful of artists and is very well done and fits the content of the pages they’re sported upon. Guildcraft retails for $24.95.
First Blood
You might think that a book on guilds could be dry and boring, but the guys at Bastion turned out a decent product, introducing support areas pretty much untouched by any edition of D&D. The authors take an interesting tact, splitting up guilds by design, i.e. skills, crafts, class, relational and collectives. A short history of guilds is given, running comparisons of the guilds as forerunners of the trade unions of today to civic groups such as ‘Adopt-A-Road’. They also announce that the book is world-neutral, any guild in the book can be dropped anywhere, from the Forge to Bluffside to Freeport.
Class Guilds are as expected, run down the traditional classes, barbarians are grouped into hordes, druids into cabals etc. Each guild comes with ways to insert them into you campaign, adventure hooks, advantages, disadvantages and more.
Rank benefits for the guilds are given, adding pluses to abilities, contacts, affiliations and the like. A typical Guild master is listed for each guild along with examples of similar guilds.
Skill based guilds are more like the trade unions. Fighting companies of mercenaries (these differ from class guilds as they are not limited to fighters, but anyone pursuing a mercenary life), trade federations, smith guilds and the like. These guilds are set up for commerce. While of more use to the DM for NPC’s and adventure hooks (potential employers or adversaries) these guilds supply infrastructure to the towns and cities of a world and should not be lightly dismissed, look at Green Ronin’s Freeport, it is based on a similar guild structure; a pirate federation gone legitimate.
Relational Guilds are those guilds set up to improve the humanoid condition, poor houses and soup kitchens, social guilds like those whose members have similar interests and hobbies such as the Feaster’s Guild supplied here. The town guild was a very interesting idea, a town where every member has a say in how the town is run, this harkens back to some of the town meetings of colonial days.
The Collective is a catchall kind of guild that encompasses parts and parcels of each of the other three types of guilds and melds it into one massive, well, collective. Gathering together, in this example, adventurers (class guilds), providing services such as banking (trade guilds) for individuals with similar interests (relational guilds). This guild would seem to be the final logical step before we get to industrial-era trade unions. Because of the scope of what the guild covers, a number of members are given as NPC’s.
Chapter 5 delves into how to create your own guilds more suited for your campaigns. Guidelines supplying purpose, membership requirements, how to join, membership make-up, size and scope, advancement, benefits, disadvantages and bonuses are all covered allowing a DM to craft a well-planned guild to best serve his needs.
The book closes with some appendixes, a short, fast name chooser, a couple of feats, feint and new uses for the diplomacy skill, and 2 new prestige classes. The Avenger, is a batman like character, i.e. one who is driven to bring justice to the world and avenge the wrongs done to those who can’t defend themselves. The Seeker is a ranger-like class of those who seek to defend a particular area. In this case the town guild that was delineated employs seekers to patrol it’s environs.
Critical Hits
As I said, this volume fills a need overlooked by previous editions, oh sure we’ve used guilds for a long time, but no one ever went into serious depth on it. This book does, it makes employing guilds easy and not such a chore to insert into a campaign. Also the art didn’t bog me down the way some of Bastion’s art does, it was fantasy but not too way out there.
Critical Misses
More depth, any book on guilds should have dipped into the whole master, journeyman, apprentice feudal system, adding even more color to how guild members can interact with players.
Coup de Grace
This is a good book, one that will probably get passed over again and again by those seeking books with more crunchy bits to it. This book is a resource meant for the serious ROLE-playing DM and can give such a DM a lot of useful material.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
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