I have a love/hate relationship with Avalanche Press. I love history and mythology (not exactly a rare thing among gamers), and so I love the idea of d20 historical and mythological sourcebooks. Unfortunately, I hate most of their products, or rather, hate the lost potential they have.
In most respects, "I, Mordred" is the typical Avalanche Product. Nice ideas, but the implementation is flawed.
As the name implies, it's an Arthurian sourcebook (as in King Arthur). But not content with the standard King Arthur, this has something of a twist. King Arthur is now a corupt, fat, bitter king, now turned to evil. (He was really really upset over his wife and Lancelot shacking up. Not that I blame him, but...)
The book starts with a very brief overview of the real King Arthur story. Very brief, and it's not 100% accurate. It says the Arthur story was first written down by Chretien de Troyes starting in AD 1170. Although he did write the first Grail story (though there might have been an earlier, oral source for the grail story, as a couple guys who wrote grail stories a little bit later than he did claimed), he didn't write the the Arthur stuff first.
As far as I know, Arthur first shows up in Nennius' History of the Britons, in AD 825 or so. And then about 100 years later, he and Mordred (maybe - "Medraut") were mentioned in the Cambrian Annals. The first basics of the story are written down in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, around AD 1136.
(
See - it's got a background on him, and gives a summary of his book).
This was then translated into French, which apparently was the kernal of the idea of Chretien de Troyes's poem (maybe). So, this product is simply flat out wrong on it's sources. Not a good thing in a historical sourcebook. (Especially since it makes no logical sense why a Frenchman would come up with the idea of King Arthur, hero of England. A non-Norman English hero?)
It flops around a bit more, mentioning only a few of the later King Arthur tales. It mentions the vulgate cycle and Morte d'Arthur, but misses Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Tristan by Gottfried von Strassberg (not to mention many many others). It also misses the excellent Faerie Queen (which came out about a 100 years after the Morte d'Arthur), which was a huge inspiration for D&D in the first place. ("Grey Elves" are straight out of there).
It goes on to mention modern takes on the tale, most notably the movie Excalibur, Monty Python's Holy Grail, as well as some fiction like Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon. Sadly, Martin Lawrence's Black Knight doesn't get a mention.
Like I said though, this is a really short chapter, so perhaps I shouldn't be too picky.
The second chapter details this products take on the Arthur story. It's basically like the original story, except when Arthur is cuckolded by Lancelot, he turns despondant and later evil. (This is helped by Morgan le Fey). So, Mordred, instead of being an usurper, wants to help the poor opressed people. Sort of a Robin Hood type.
Most of this Mordred's support are the Fey, which are on his side mostly because of his mother.
It's a bit more complicated, but not overly so. This chapters only about 6 or so pages.
The third chapter is on game rules (the whole thing is open content, too). Most interestingly for me, a new core class is introduced (I like core classes, okay?). The Noble Knight, which is a bit dorky sounding, but is essentially a Knight class. It's more or less a Fighter, only with some feats pre-selected (or special powers instead of feats), and with 4 skill points instead of 2. So it's perhaps a bit overpowered, as it's essentially better than the Fighter class.
(This violates the basic rule that a new core class should not be more powerful or better than other core classes, especially the Fighter. This is blatant since it essentially is the Fighter, with more skill points.)
A new race, the Fey is introduced. The basic race is okay, but in addition, each Fey belongs to a clan. The clan also has some modifiers and such. These violate the basic rule of having abilities modified by an even number. They're sort of like elves, but closer to the mythological ones (though not really. The real Fey are much more mysterious).
So, I was actually a bit disappointed with this. When designing classes and races, there are a couple simple rules to follow, and they were violated. The fact that they are broken isn't bad in of itself, but because there are good reasons for the rules (which are actually explained in the DMG).
There are some new monsters. The Green Knight, the Lady of the Lake (both are elementals in this), the "Power Wraith", (which Merlin is in this), and the Questing Beast.
This section is only about 10 pages.
The forth chapter is on the basics of the "I, Mordred" campaign. It's pretty big, around 25 pages. This consists of a detailed description of Camelot and Mordred's Camp in the forest. This would have been a lot more interesting if Camelot wasn't simply a crudely labeled Square, with many little squares in it (well, rectangles). Sheesh, that map must have taken all of 2 minutes to draw, if that. Mordred's camp is a little better, but the mapping is still pretty crude.
The fifth chapter is a short (8 page) mini-adventure. Quite honestly, it's awful. The PCs don't really do anything, they're simply ordered about by Mordred, then they are ordered about by the Lade of the Lake. Pretty lame.
The last part of the book is an appendix, with stats for several prominent people. Arthur, Merlin, Mordred, Morgan, Lancelot, Galahad, Parsifal, Tristam, Gawaine, and Gareth.
So anyway, this is another disappointing Avalanche Press product. Why? Well, for the usual reasons their products tend to be disappointing.
For one, they bungled the d20 rules a bit. While it's not unplayable, it's not very well done, either. They also keep the standard D&D magic rules, which I don't really think fit the setting. (Memo to Avalanche - nothing says you can't alter the magic system in d20 to something more suited to historical magic.)
For another, it's too sketchy. This is actually a bit better than most AP products, which are smaller (this is 64 pages), but there are only 2 places detailed in all of Arthur's realm. There's not even a map of his country.
The old board game "Knights of Camelot" did a better job of giving you info about Arthur's realm and playing in it. And that was a 32 page booklet! Compared to an actual Arthurian rpg, like say Pendragon, this is pretty incomplete.
D
(The cover isn't even that good. It's not by famed Heavy Metal artist Lorezeno Spurwhatever, but it's still sleazy. It's actually done by Terry Moore Strickland, who has done rather excellent back covers for most of their d20 products (usually what looks like oil paintings, really snazzy in the case of the Atlantis book). But apparently he's not great at doing the human form. The only thing worse than a cheesecake cover is a cheesecake cover done poorly, where the people look mishapen.)
(As a note to any publisher, print or PDF. A good d20 Arthurian sourcebook/setting is something I'd buy in a second...I'd actually love to see a d20 version of Pendragon, which won't happen, but would be cool.)
