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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6239920" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 352: February 2007part 3/6Runagate rampant: We start off the themed section with a fairly short interview of China. Like George R. R. Martin, it turns out D&D was not his favourite RPG. However, while Martin's poison of choice was GURPS, Mieville's is BRP, with Call of Cthulhu as a favourite. And good god does it show in his creature design, which is one of the most interesting parts of his worldbuilding. Working biology up, and then thinking about how various intelligent creatures would fit into a mixed species society with their differing biological needs and drives produces fascinating results. It's certainly a step away from humans with pointy ears, and all the better for it. So this article gives me a pretty good idea of his writing priorities, and I only wish it was longer, as he has plenty of interesting thoughts on how to reflect society in his books. Oh well, onto the game material. Bas-lag Gazetteer: As that's what the books focus on, they decide to give us lots of information on New Crobuzon, while leaving the world surrounding it fairly sketchy. Like Eberron, while it may have been a medieval fantasy world at some point, people have not stayed still, and both technology and magic have developed substantially over the years. With a full 18 pages, they can go into a fair amount of detail on both geography and history, with a map, coverage of individual neighbourhoods, (Perdito Street Station is right at the centre, unsurprisingly. ) and lots of named NPC's. It's a grimy place, full of pollution, organised crime, and neighbourhoods of various nonhuman races. It doesn't seem like a very pleasant place to live, but it is an excellent place for adventures, with tons of obvious external problems and social issues for a would-be hero to tackle. Even without reading the books, this gives me more than enough info to get started, just like the overview of the Known World in the front of the isle of dread. So it seems they've chosen well, covering a world which isn't like any of the existing D&D worlds, but has enough similarities to be smoothly converted ruleswise, and isn't so small as to only support a single story. And since he's pretty popular right now, it shouldn't be too hard to find people who want to play here. People of Bas-lag: We've already found out a fair bit about the nonhuman races of Bas-lag, and how they fit into the setting. Now let's see what they look like mechanically. With one +0, two +1 and one +2 LA, they're fairly suitable for PC's, but haven't been nerfed to make them more D&D-friendly. That seems promising. Cactacae are cactus-people, unsurprisingly. They're big, solid, sleep standing up, have the usual plant type immunities and can tolerate extremes of heat and dryness. They lack fine manual dexterity though, which gives them good reason to trade with the softer fleshies. One would make an excellent tank for your party as long as you aren't being pressed up against them in confined spaces. Khepri are highly gender dimorphous cockroach people with sentient human-sized females and little mindless males. They live in hives, and are obviously completely matriarchal with the males treated as being good for one thing only. Gee, that's an obvious bit of social commentary. Still, darkvision and resistance to gaze and mind-affecting attacks seem handy enough. Remade are people turned into half-machines, usually as punishment for some kind of crime. Even if they manage to win their freedom, they can face a lifetime of prejudice and struggling to get a proper job. Like Warforged, their precise capabilities are incredibly flexible, but they have some pretty substantial problems along with their benefits. Well, when you're treated as a literal machine, they only care about you doing the job. And if you break, oh well. There's always more troublemakers, even if you have to pass new laws to make the innocent guilty. Vodyanoi are squat frog-people who can comfortably live in or out of water. With the ability to jump superhumanly and speak to aquatic creatures, they make perfect sailors and dockworkers, but are also pretty damn good spellcasters when they put their minds to it. So each of these has more than enough distinct flavor to keep them from being a one-note species where everyone feels the same. Any of them could replace D&D's regular elves or hobbits quite nicely.</blockquote>

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