Lands of Conflict

[JoeGKushner]

Lands of Conflict is the latest entry in the d20 Warcraft game. Set on the plains of Lordaeron, the factions of the eastern lands struggle for survival against the Undead and against each other. Coming in at 200 black and white pages for $29.99, Lands of Conflict is written by Rob Baxter, Tim Campbell, Bob Fitch, Luke Johnson, Seth Johnson, Mur Laffertyand Andrew Scott.

Art is up to the high Warcraft standards, starting with the gorgeous two page full color internal art composite honoring the memory of Michael Martin Koiter and moving onto the black and white art handled by Rene & Michael Koiter, James Stowe, and UDON. The UDON mark itself is becoming a bit of a thumbs up as the artists who handle their work are often top notch.

In terms of layout, the book uses the standard two-column format with heavy wooden style borders surrounding each page. Game notes are pulled off to the side in gray boxes. Page utility is a little underwhelming at some points. One black page, one title page reproducing the cover in black and white, a credits page, a three page spread for table of contents, two pages of fiction between each chapter with a partial illustration taking up a full page surrounded by black with some of the prestige classes ending with roughly half a page of white space. It’s a complaint common to the series though so we’ll move on.

Lands of Conflict is broken into five chapters with two appendixes. These chapters provide a lot of large blocks that the reader can use to assemble his own campaign. Not everything is spelled out and the reader will have to make some decisions in terms of campaign style and campaign model, but the book offers enough options that most GMs worth their salt should find something to glean from the pages.

Take Chapter One, History and Culture. For fans of the Warcraft setting, they’ll enjoy the detaled timeline and the various epochs covered. The sidebars with campaign suggestions provide the GM with options that make using the book something different as she can put the campaign in a previous time zone and due to the wide patches between entries, pretty much write the history of that timeline of Warcraft.

My favorite campaign model for this is the section, Lands of Darkness, Lands of Demons, where the Order of Tirisfal quietly hunt down demons using their own members and money hungry mercenaries. In many ways, it’s a perfect campaign model providing the characters with patrons and enemies that are eternal.

A few overall notes are included in this first chapter. Part of it involves trade and languages as the land is shattered and money isn’t what it used to be. See, gold coins aren’t quite as useful as they could be when no one will take them as they have no use for them, brining back the old barter system, unless of course you’re going to a goblin shop at which point if they don’t have what you want, they can probably get it.

The next few chapters map and breakdown the lands; Azeroth, Khaz Modan, and Lordaeron. Each one includes locals and people. For example, if you read about Khaz Modan, you’ll find the Badlands, Dun Morogh, Grim Batol, Ironforge, Loch Modan, the Searing Gorge and the Wetlands. Each section has a full page black and white map so details while visible, are lacking. The cartography won’t win any awards but is fully serviceable.

Each section includes a quick rundown on the land proper, and then each subsection includes population, major settlements, languages, faiths, resources, affiliation, specific background details, people and culture break out, geography details, sites and settlements details, more history, and adventure seeds. Often we get a specific NPC of the region and strangely enough, unit information for mass combat using the Cry Havoc engine that was adapted for Warcraft in a previous book. That’s a nice touch despite taking up some space because to be honest, the thing that prevents me from using Cry Havoc more is the labor of writing up the units. In addition to these details, we sometimes get large up close looks at specific areas like Ironforge city, which has it’s own map and several details about the locations within its halls.

Now having information on the setting, the book goes one step further and provides three quick adventures. It starts off with Arena Games, an adventure that starts in the worst way possible with the characters being captured and stripped of their items and is meant for 2nd to 4th level characters. It then moves into Dark Iron Chains where the party is hired by a dwarf warrior seeking his father but everything is not as it seems, designed for 6th level characters, and wraps up with Dead Men’s Tales, a romp against several factions for 11th level characters.

Each adventure includes game mechanics for important characters in addition to maps for vital areas making them more complete than merely cast off adventure seeds. Each includes a few notes on how players might get to the adventure as well as ideas on how to continue using some of the elements introduced by the adventure.

For those GMs who prefer to craft their own adventures, they’ll want to fip to the first Appendix, Organizations. Each organization is broken down by name, membership, alignment, affiliation, regions of influence, activities, organization, location, members, and leaders. These leaders have abbreviated details, name, sex, type, and class. For example, Kel’Thuzad is a male lich Wiz 25, who runs the Cult of the Damned.

Organizations included are the Caretakers, Cult of the Damned, Defias Brotherhood, Explorer’s Guild, Royal Apothecary Society, Scarlet Crusade, Stormwind Assassins, and Syndicate. This allows the GM patrons aplenty for his group as well as organizations to act against the players. Despite the power of the Scourge on this land, people stiff fight and struggle against one another trying to use this horrible time as opportunist of the worst sort even as others just follow their base nature.

The book doesn’t forget players though. While the focus on Crunch isn’t heavy, we do have new feats, prestige classes and other goods. Appendix two includes new feats like Spell Crusher, a feat with many prerequisites but allowing the user to use greater dispel magic as a sorcerer of his level once per day, as well as new magic items like Trol’Kalar, a bastard sword that’s keen and a giant bane weapon that prevents a troll’s fast healing from working on wounds inflicted by it.

For PrCs, we have the Dark Apothecary, spell users who gain caster levels every other level, but in exchange gain abilities that come into play quickly. Their first ability, Improved Brew, allows them to create potions in one hour and at no experience point cost. As they gain in levels, they learn how to throw potions, and empower them, in addition to becoming masters of poison.

The Defias Renegade on the other hand, attempts to master machinery, giving themselves a Cog tattoo and learning how to work with machines and increasing their abilities to detect mechanical traps and how to destroy those devices. A great PrC if you’re using some of the material from the Magic and Mayhem sourcebook.

The Dwarven Prospector is an odd class in that it’s not one about heroism but one of exploration. While the prospecting bit gives it a focus, they’re masters of terrain with abilities that range from direction sense and mineral sense, to ‘prodigious memories for the places they visit.”

For those wanting to play a character on the edge, the Scarlet Crusader is a PrC focused on destroying the u7ndead with abilities to track their prey and gaining the Favored Enemy ability against them.

The GM gets a few new toys in this chapter too. These include new monsters like the Crocolisk and Dark Iron Dwarves, to the planar invaders known as the Worgen.

While the black and white maps work against the overall details and the lack of a giant map of the whole land makes it a page flipper to see how things link together, the book does a good job of providing something to everyone. By including a wealth of details ranging from locations to organizations, the book provides the GM with all the building blocks he needs. By including adventures, the book lets a GM get started right away. The game mechanics at the back of the book showcase that the setting is just as important as the mechanics behind it and provide the players with tools that can make them a solid part of any Lands of Conflict game even as it provides the GM with a few more monsters to use against them.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Explore the World of Warcraft

Visit the ghost-haunted remnants of the human nation of Lordaeron; journey to the Ironforge dwarves’ thriving homeland of Khaz Modan; explore the kingdoms of the continent of Azeroth. A world of adventure awaits!

Hope You Survive the Trek

This campaign setting sourcebook covers the regions of Lordaeron, Khaz Modan, and the continent of Azeroth, from inhabitants to geography to key individuals. You’ll also find an up-to-date history of events from the world’s birth to its current tumultuous state. Hardcover.

 

[Psion]

Lands of Conflict is a setting book describing the Warcraft campaign world, most specifically the Eastern continent Azeroth (the Western continent Kalindor is covered in some depth in the Warcraft RPG main book.) The book is published under White Wolf’s Sword & Sorcery logo. The book is developed by Mike Johnstone and features authorial contributions by Rob Baxter, Tim Campbell, Luke Johnson, Seth Johnson, Mar Lafferty, and Andrew J. Scott, with rules advice and material by Chris Metzen and Bob Fitch.

Note that the term Azeroth is used to refer both to the setting as a whole and the south of the Eastern continent. Hereafter, I will sidestep this confusing convention by restricting my use of the term to refer to the region of the Eastern continent.

A First Look

Lands of Conflict is a 200-page hardcover book priced at $29.99.

The cover of the book has a full cover painting, which is a collage of figures from the setting, including a human and an orc, as well as some fearsome creatures. The cover art is by Samwise Didier.

The interior artwork is black and white (other than the lavishly illustrated end leaves). Interior artists include the late Michel Koiter (to whom the book is dedicated), Rene Koiter, James Stowe, and the boys from UDON, Chris Stevens, Eric Kim, Greg Boychuk, Greg Brown, Jim Zubkavich, and Ray Dela Cruz. The art is well detailed and shaded, though the book is somewhat more sparsely illustrated than you might expect for a list of authors of this size.

The cartography is somewhat primitive, something that has sort of become an annoying trend among White Wolf books. The overland maps mostly appear like grayscale copies of the setting map.

A Deeper Look

Lands of Conflict contains chapters regarding history & culture, three major regions of the Eastern continent (Azeroth, Khaz Modan, and Lordaeron), and adventures, and two appendices detailing organizations and rules material, respectively.

Each chapter has a short fiction section. The body text is written from the perspective of a traveler in the world, and a number of shaded sidebars throughout the book provides game related materials including NPCs, creature and unit statistics, and variant campaign ideas referring to on inspired by nearby text sections. Some of these are pertinent to a standard Warcraft campaign, but some provide ideas for games in the past of the world, though such games would obviously have much less support in terms of game material than contemporary Warcraft RPG games.

The first chapter pertains to the Warcraft world as a whole, and provides more in depth history and cultural notes than the Warcraft D&D core book. In addition to a timeline and an overview of each of the ages of the world of Warcraft’s past, the chapter provides brief detail on travel, languages, and culture, though this section is inexplicably sandwiched between the history and timeline subsections.

The region chapters describe a number of states and regions, each using a similar format which resembles that used in the Scarred Lands setting books. Each region/nation has a overview (with line items for population, government, rulers, major settlements, languages, faiths, resources, and affiliation, and a few paragraphs of overview), geography, sites and settlements, history, and adventure ideas. Each area receives about two pages of text, which strikes a compromise between brevity and detail, though one perhaps a little on the short side compared to other setting books.

The book’s name is a reflection of the nature of the lands of Azeroth, Khaz Modan, and Lordaeron. The lands have been overrun by forces hostile to the alliance such as the burning legion, scourge (undead), and syndicate (bandits). This creates a wild and desperate feel to the setting somewhat like that of the Scarred Lands, if perhaps a bit less fantastic and a bit more grim, something a bit more like Warhammer.

The adventure chapter features three adventures, covering a level ranges of 2-4, 6, and 11th level. The last two adventures are perhaps more typical of D&D adventures, being a dungeon raid and a keep assault, respectively. The first adventure seems to me the freshest of the three, putting up the characters as gladiatorial slaves in an arena run by the jungle trolls. All three adventures are competantly written, with straightforward synopses and usable plot hooks, a simple test that many d20 adventures fail.

One tidbit I found interesting in this chapter was a sidebar in the Arena adventure, discussing how being a gladiator does not mean one is a member of the Gladiator prestige class. This observation stands in stark contrast to a discussion in the Kalamar Plaeyer’ Guide years back that dismissed the existence of a gladiator prestige class and justified their gladiator core class by positing that many characters who would find themselves in an arena would not qualify for the prestige class. This shows to me that the authors of Lands of Conflict “get” the d20 system whereas the authors of the Kalamar Player’s Guide did not.

The first appendix introduces a variety of organizations existing in the eastern continents. The organizations run the gamut from those that can serve as allies or patrons to good players, such as the Explorer’s Guild and the Caretakers, decidedly more villainous groups like the Cult of the Damned and the skilled bandits of the Defias Brotherhood, as well as some organizations with a decidedly more complicated relationship such as the zealous Scarlet Crusade and the Dark Apothecary Society, a group of undead creatures that seek to purge the land of the Scourge.

Each of the organizations receives two or three pages of details, which is a lot of depth compared to the scant two pages or less devoted to each nation or region. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however. As a GM, I find organizations with their own goals and resources convenient building blocks for campaign, and these fill the bill nicely.

The second appendix provides a smattering of feats, equipment, and magic items, and a fair few prestige classes and monsters. Many of the feats refer to or require feats from the Alliance and Horde compendium, which normally would not be a great issue with me. However, that book seems to have been under-published and is not even available on the White Wolf website. That being the case, I find references to this book rather vexing.

The prestige classes are primarily associated with organizations in the prior appendix. This follows the pleasant pattern of providing more thorough backgrounds for prestige classes in various official and third party d20 books. Classes include the Dark Apothecary, Defias Renegede, Dwarven Prospector, and Scarlet Crusader. These are generally competantly assembled, though one makes the classic flub of listing iterative attacks in the classes base attack bonus.

Monsters include dangers such as the stranglethorn (a dangerous living tree), worgen (wolf like nocturnal humanoid), and dark iron dwarves (evil kin of the ironforge dwarves.)

Conclusions
(Note: I am trying a format change of a sort. Some commentators in the past have been approached me as if I am performing a hatchet job on their book because I point out weaknesses, and ignore that I point out strengths as well. As all books have strengths and weaknesses, I think that perhaps it may pay to make that point more obvious.)

Weak points: All things considered, the setting material is not very deep, nor is it too ground breaking. Indeed, it seems very typical for d20 fantasy settings. As stated, I also consider some reliance of some rules on the hard-to-find Alliance & Horde Compendium a problem.

Strong points: In contrast to the above, the adventures are nicely assembled and easy to use, and the organizations and situations will make creation of adventures in the eastern continent fairly convenient if you like working with such elements. Further, the rules material displays mastery of d20 rules.

This book should appeal to you if: You would like an organization driven campaign in the Warcraft setting.

Overall Grade: B

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I agree with you about the maps -- they're simply the basic outlines of areas from World of Warcraft, and even then, not all the details are right. The village of Anvilmar is in the absolutely wrong place in Khaz Modan, for instance.

I do think this is a highly playable setting, although I would have liked to have seen WWGS go beyond the basic details playing WoW could teach you and get into deep background. There's a little of that stuff, but not nearly enough. For a book that has a third of its setting info covering a dwarven kingdom, we know relatively little about how the dwarves live or their culture, for instance.