Maidenheim vs. The Slayer’s Guide to Amazons: A Comparative Review
I wasn't able to submit a comparative review of these two products on the d20 Reviews board, so I'll put it here instead.
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Amazon characters have always been a staple of fantasy adventure and fiction, although there has never really been an entire supplement dedicated to these characters until now. In December of 2001 Mongoose Publishing released The Slayer's Guide to Amazons, while shortly thereafter Skald Books brought us Maidenheim: The Age of Scorn Amazon Campaign Setting in January of 2002. Both of these products use the rules of the d20 System, and are released under the terms and conditions of the d20 System License and the Open Gaming License. With two similar products from two different publishers dedicated to the same type of character being released back-to-back, it has become evident that there has been an unfulfilled longing for more detailed information concerning the Amazons beyond the imagery associated with our favorite Warrior Princess from television. Having purchased both products and reading them thoroughly, I intend to put forth a comparative review of them for those of us who have always been looking for role-playing material on the Amazons but could never find them.
Product Format and Availability
The Slayer’s Guide to Amazons (hereafter SGtA) is a 36-page softcover book, with a two-column format at a medium text density. There is some artwork inside of the book that does not interfere with the overall formatting. The product sells for $9.95, and you should be able to find it at your local hobby or bookstore. If not, you can order it online through Mongoose Publishing’s website.
Maidenheim is strictly in PDF format, and is only available for purchase at RPGNow.com. It totals at over 220-pages of material organized into three different books: Book 1: Amazon Adventures (65-pages), Book 2: The History of Scythae and The Fate of Man (22-pages), and Book 3: Nations and Empires (137-pages). These files are in ZIP format but they are still quite large, over 40Mb in size total. If you were to purchase Maidenheim online be prepared for a long download unless you have a fast Internet connection such as DSL or a cable modem. The layout of the PDF pages is also in a two-column format with a medium text density, using an attractive, almost archaic font throughout the majority of the product. The entire product sells for $10.00 in PDF format, although Book 1: Amazon Adventures is also sold separately for $5.00 should the entire product not be desired. RPGNow does offer to burn products onto a CD and ship them to you for an increased price, so you do have this option also if you would rather not store the files on your own hard drive or sit through a long download time.
Artwork
The SGtA does have a full-color cover depicting two Amazon women in the jungle, weapons drawn as they wade through water and surrounded by the speared heads of dead men. Both women are drawn with the lithe and supple bodies they are all presented as having within the product, including what appears to be some very large breast implants on them that are nearly bursting out of their clothing. The interior artwork varies in quality, and does include a centerfold of an Amazon ranger named Nympha. Although much of the interior artwork is well done, particularly the work by Chris Quillams, it is all of the pin-up and cheesecake variety.
Maidenheim does not contain any interior artwork beyond some chapter breaks in all of the books and map inserts found within Book 3: Nations and Empires. Each book, however, does contain a black and white cover image depicting a scene of the women portrayed within, the only glimpse we have so far of these Amazons. Those who are warriors are drawn as such, fully armored and clothed with barely any skin revealed. The cover of Book 3: Nations and Empires shows a scene of what appears to be noblewomen or diplomats of some kind. This work was done by Les Evans, and carries with it a darker, more grim and savage edge.
How The Amazons are Portrayed
The SGtA presents Amazons in a more traditional view. They live on the fringes of civilized society, deep within the hearts of remote jungle wildernesses or forests. Their particular culture is built upon three equal but distinct castes of Amazons: Maidens, Mothers, and Crones. At least once a year the Mothers experience an instinctive mating drive called the Growling that forces them to hunt down and kidnap any men who they can find for the express purpose of bearing children from them. After the mating is done, the men are disposed of rather brutally, sacrificed upon the altars of the Amazon moon goddess (left unnamed) and butchered, their remains scattered across the jungle floor. Nine months later the Amazons quickly slaughter their infant boys as well, leaving only the girls to be raised. Amazon villages tend to remain quite small, never more than 500 women and girls. They are superstitious of magic and sorcery, preferring instead to trust in the divine magic of their goddess. The SGtA also presents the Amazons as a human sub-race, complete with racial bonuses to certain skill rolls within the jungles. Their alignment is set as Neutral Evil due to their willingness to do what is necessary to preserve their way of life, justifying their rather cruel and lethal treatment of men. All of them possess lithe, supple bodies and stunningly attractive features to quote the product. In all, the SGtA presents the Amazons as gender-based separatists who prefer to live in isolation, where no man has any place within their communal society beyond his ability to provide these women with children before he is slaughtered.
Maidenheim presents the Amazons on a much broader scale. Rather than depicting the Amazons as a small sub-culture surrounded by a largely male-dominated or egalitarian world, Maidenheim turns these women into the mainstream culture within their world of Scythae. These Amazons have come to dominate and reverse the gender roles after decades of ancient wars lowered the numbers of men to disastrously low levels. These women are now the rulers, the warriors, the nobility, the merchants, the slavers, and even the pirates, brigands, mercenaries, adventurers, and slaves themselves. They control sixteen different nations and regions, the humans of which are based upon real-world cultures such as Greece and Rome, Egypt, Imperial China and the Huns, the Celts, Persia and India, and European Barbarians. Men are not slaughtered outright since there are so few of them compared to the numbers of women (measuring as little as 5-10% of the population in some countries), and they are still needed to provide the women with children. Rather than being killed, many if not most of them have been crippled in some way to prevent their greater strength from being used against the women, and their roles in society are defined under what is called the Reparations, a series of documents and agreements between the various Amazon nations that give each queen or local ruler the right to determine just what rights men will have within the confines of their borders. A rather detailed system of how men are handled under the Reparations is discussed in Book 2: The History of Scythae and The Fate of Man, and explains quite consistently how these large-scale matriarchal Amazons exert their influence on the world and keep things this way. In short, Maidenheim’s Amazons are empire builders, conquerors, and expansionists who have reached the limits of their Known World, and who have only recently become aware of the presence of other lands and nations ruled by men beyond the oceans.
Tips on Role-playing the Amazons
Both products give advice on how to role-play Amazons, although the SGtA only suggests how to portray those women described within its covers. They hate men with a passion that spares not even infant boys, all of whom are to be killed after they no longer serve their purpose. They even hate non-Amazonian women who have given into or accepted the rule of men over them. Maidenheim’s Book 1: Amazon Adventures contains 10 pages of information that offers suggestions on who the Amazons likely were in both myth and real history, the various relationships that they could have had with the world around them, including their relationships with men, as well as the differences between the Amazons and non-Amazonian women and the resulting distrust or contempt they could have toward the other all suggest a legitimate effort in making these women more realistic than cheesecake cut-outs. The SGtA presents one possibility of how Amazons can be role-played, while Maidenheim opens up many other doors that make them far more diverse as a people.
New Feats
The SGtA does not contain any new feats for Amazons, although Maidenheim does so under the pretense that they exist as a result due to the Amazon’s culture. Two of these feats in particular (Amazon Initiative and Amazon Strike) are d20 variants of the old AD&D Second Edition Amazon kit that gave the Amazons bonuses to hit and initiative when confronted by men who underestimated them. The other feats (Amazon Archery, Amazon Riding, and Amazon Fighting) seem to be based upon the techniques these women are said to have developed that made them legendary in their own time, granting them bonuses to hit or to related skill rolls.
New Prestige Classes
The SGtA presents one new Prestige Class, the Red Guard, an Amazon that has forsaken her ability to bear children in exchange for gaining some potent combat related abilities and the duty of protecting the pregnant Amazons and their children. Maidenheim also offers several new Prestige Classes, although they are not campaign-specific within the setting and can rather be used as more generic Amazons. The Amazon Defender is the guardian of the Amazon’s way of life, for good or evil; the Amazon Ambassador serves as a representative of her people to either other Amazon nations or even kingdoms ruled by men; the Amazon Archer fulfills a role that the legendary Amazons were known for; the Amazon Scout is skilled at patrolling the limits of Amazon territory and even spying on neighboring lands; and finally the Amazon Horse Whisperer, perhaps the most interesting Prestige Class Maidenheim offers us reveals a means by which the Amazons can be considered to be among the best horse warriors in any campaign setting.
New Deities
The SGtA does mention that the Amazons primarily worship a moon goddess, although the book does not state just what her name is (Artemis perhaps?). Maidenheim, presented as a campaign setting does provide us with a rather large pantheon of deities that the Amazons worship. The human goddesses come directly from real-world cultures, and you will find Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Loviatar, Isis, and other familiar names here. The demihuman deities are basically renamed and repackaged deities derived from the current demihuman pantheons we are familiar with; the Lady Lorellan is the chief goddess of the elves (rather than Corellon), Dain is the Forger of the dwarves (rather than Moradin), Dalla is praised by the halflings (rather than Yondalla). The similarities are noticeable if you look for them, and can likely be explained as the same deities manifesting in different forms on different worlds rather than actual copyright infringements.
New Spells
The SGtA offers a new cleric Domain (Sisterhood) as well as one new divine spell, Mother’s Milk. Maidenheim does not give us any new spell Domains, but there are several useful fertility spells such as Bless Womb, Conception, Detect Fertility/Virility, Ease Labor, and Miscarriage. For both products, I appreciated the fact that their perspective authors only introduced new spells that bore relevance within the context of the Amazon cultures they came from rather than putting forth an arsenal of combat related and destructive spells. The Amazons are already dangerous enough, so these spells reveal their more domestic and social concerns.
New Armor and Weapons
The SGtA does not contain any new weapons or armor types used by the Amazons, although it does state that most would use light armor to best receive the full benefits of the Ranger class that most of them would have. Maidenheim discusses the various types of weapons used by the Amazons within the campaign setting, and also has a table of armor types based upon piecemeal designs. The technology level of Maidenheim is a combination of Bronze Age, Classical Age, and the early Dark Ages, so there are none of the more Medieval or later weapons and armors to be found within the setting.
New Races
The SGtA, as stated above, presents the Amazons as a separate human sub-race. They receive bonuses to several skill rolls and benefits within the confines of their jungle homelands. Maidenheim does not present the Amazons as a separate race themselves, and the humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, and half-orcs are all considered equally to be Amazons. Maidenheim does offer us a new race, the half-gnome that has three distinct sub-races within it depending on what their exact parentage is.
Product Support
The SGtA, like the other books in the Slayer’s Guide series is a one-shot supplement, and appears unlikely to receive any future support from Mongoose Publishing. Maidenheim is both a campaign setting as well as a supplement, and from the looks of things on the Skald Books website it appears that we can expect to see more of these Amazons and the world presented in Maidenheim throughout the rest of the year.
Which One to Use?
The answer to this question largely depends upon what you are looking for should you choose to have Amazon cultures present in your campaign. The SGtA seems to present the Amazons more as monster encounters or non-player characters, while Maidenheim encourages the use of Amazons as player-characters as well. The SGtA can be inserted into any preexisting campaign with little to no effort, while Maidenheim can equally be used as an addition to another campaign or used entirely on its own for an all-Amazon styled series of adventures. If you prefer the Amazons to be presented as a minority sub-culture with control over a small geographic region, then the SGtA provides you with this option quite well. If you would like to present the Amazons as controlling entire nations, amassing armies to conquer their enemies, and becoming involved in political intrigues among themselves as well as their neighbors in other countries, then Maidenheim will allow you to achieve this.
Personally, I feel that these two products could easily be combined into one greater product. The Amazons found in the SGtA can be just as much at home within the jungles of Thentia or Ghandhara found in Maidenheim as they could on any other world, both products of which could then be conveniently placed within your own campaign.
Conclusion and Rating
I really liked both the SGtA and Maidenheim, and would recommend both to anyone interested in using Amazons in their campaigns as player or non-player characters. I give both the SGtA and Maidenheim ratings of 4 of 5 in Style, while for Substance I give the SGtA a 4 of 5 and Maidenheim the full 5 due to its greater possibilities and potential. Both products are well written, organized, and consistent within their context, and are great products to start with for any fantasy-based campaign that contains Amazons within them.
You can purchase The Slayer’s Guide to Amazons at your local hobby or bookstore for $9.95, or order it directly from Mongoose Publishing at http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/index.htm
You can purchase Maidenheim for $10.00 as a PDF download (or $16.95 as a CD) only at http://www.rpgnow.com. You can also visit the Skald Books website for more information at http://www.users.nac.net/corporal/skaldbooks/skaldbooks.htm
I wasn't able to submit a comparative review of these two products on the d20 Reviews board, so I'll put it here instead.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazon characters have always been a staple of fantasy adventure and fiction, although there has never really been an entire supplement dedicated to these characters until now. In December of 2001 Mongoose Publishing released The Slayer's Guide to Amazons, while shortly thereafter Skald Books brought us Maidenheim: The Age of Scorn Amazon Campaign Setting in January of 2002. Both of these products use the rules of the d20 System, and are released under the terms and conditions of the d20 System License and the Open Gaming License. With two similar products from two different publishers dedicated to the same type of character being released back-to-back, it has become evident that there has been an unfulfilled longing for more detailed information concerning the Amazons beyond the imagery associated with our favorite Warrior Princess from television. Having purchased both products and reading them thoroughly, I intend to put forth a comparative review of them for those of us who have always been looking for role-playing material on the Amazons but could never find them.
Product Format and Availability
The Slayer’s Guide to Amazons (hereafter SGtA) is a 36-page softcover book, with a two-column format at a medium text density. There is some artwork inside of the book that does not interfere with the overall formatting. The product sells for $9.95, and you should be able to find it at your local hobby or bookstore. If not, you can order it online through Mongoose Publishing’s website.
Maidenheim is strictly in PDF format, and is only available for purchase at RPGNow.com. It totals at over 220-pages of material organized into three different books: Book 1: Amazon Adventures (65-pages), Book 2: The History of Scythae and The Fate of Man (22-pages), and Book 3: Nations and Empires (137-pages). These files are in ZIP format but they are still quite large, over 40Mb in size total. If you were to purchase Maidenheim online be prepared for a long download unless you have a fast Internet connection such as DSL or a cable modem. The layout of the PDF pages is also in a two-column format with a medium text density, using an attractive, almost archaic font throughout the majority of the product. The entire product sells for $10.00 in PDF format, although Book 1: Amazon Adventures is also sold separately for $5.00 should the entire product not be desired. RPGNow does offer to burn products onto a CD and ship them to you for an increased price, so you do have this option also if you would rather not store the files on your own hard drive or sit through a long download time.
Artwork
The SGtA does have a full-color cover depicting two Amazon women in the jungle, weapons drawn as they wade through water and surrounded by the speared heads of dead men. Both women are drawn with the lithe and supple bodies they are all presented as having within the product, including what appears to be some very large breast implants on them that are nearly bursting out of their clothing. The interior artwork varies in quality, and does include a centerfold of an Amazon ranger named Nympha. Although much of the interior artwork is well done, particularly the work by Chris Quillams, it is all of the pin-up and cheesecake variety.
Maidenheim does not contain any interior artwork beyond some chapter breaks in all of the books and map inserts found within Book 3: Nations and Empires. Each book, however, does contain a black and white cover image depicting a scene of the women portrayed within, the only glimpse we have so far of these Amazons. Those who are warriors are drawn as such, fully armored and clothed with barely any skin revealed. The cover of Book 3: Nations and Empires shows a scene of what appears to be noblewomen or diplomats of some kind. This work was done by Les Evans, and carries with it a darker, more grim and savage edge.
How The Amazons are Portrayed
The SGtA presents Amazons in a more traditional view. They live on the fringes of civilized society, deep within the hearts of remote jungle wildernesses or forests. Their particular culture is built upon three equal but distinct castes of Amazons: Maidens, Mothers, and Crones. At least once a year the Mothers experience an instinctive mating drive called the Growling that forces them to hunt down and kidnap any men who they can find for the express purpose of bearing children from them. After the mating is done, the men are disposed of rather brutally, sacrificed upon the altars of the Amazon moon goddess (left unnamed) and butchered, their remains scattered across the jungle floor. Nine months later the Amazons quickly slaughter their infant boys as well, leaving only the girls to be raised. Amazon villages tend to remain quite small, never more than 500 women and girls. They are superstitious of magic and sorcery, preferring instead to trust in the divine magic of their goddess. The SGtA also presents the Amazons as a human sub-race, complete with racial bonuses to certain skill rolls within the jungles. Their alignment is set as Neutral Evil due to their willingness to do what is necessary to preserve their way of life, justifying their rather cruel and lethal treatment of men. All of them possess lithe, supple bodies and stunningly attractive features to quote the product. In all, the SGtA presents the Amazons as gender-based separatists who prefer to live in isolation, where no man has any place within their communal society beyond his ability to provide these women with children before he is slaughtered.
Maidenheim presents the Amazons on a much broader scale. Rather than depicting the Amazons as a small sub-culture surrounded by a largely male-dominated or egalitarian world, Maidenheim turns these women into the mainstream culture within their world of Scythae. These Amazons have come to dominate and reverse the gender roles after decades of ancient wars lowered the numbers of men to disastrously low levels. These women are now the rulers, the warriors, the nobility, the merchants, the slavers, and even the pirates, brigands, mercenaries, adventurers, and slaves themselves. They control sixteen different nations and regions, the humans of which are based upon real-world cultures such as Greece and Rome, Egypt, Imperial China and the Huns, the Celts, Persia and India, and European Barbarians. Men are not slaughtered outright since there are so few of them compared to the numbers of women (measuring as little as 5-10% of the population in some countries), and they are still needed to provide the women with children. Rather than being killed, many if not most of them have been crippled in some way to prevent their greater strength from being used against the women, and their roles in society are defined under what is called the Reparations, a series of documents and agreements between the various Amazon nations that give each queen or local ruler the right to determine just what rights men will have within the confines of their borders. A rather detailed system of how men are handled under the Reparations is discussed in Book 2: The History of Scythae and The Fate of Man, and explains quite consistently how these large-scale matriarchal Amazons exert their influence on the world and keep things this way. In short, Maidenheim’s Amazons are empire builders, conquerors, and expansionists who have reached the limits of their Known World, and who have only recently become aware of the presence of other lands and nations ruled by men beyond the oceans.
Tips on Role-playing the Amazons
Both products give advice on how to role-play Amazons, although the SGtA only suggests how to portray those women described within its covers. They hate men with a passion that spares not even infant boys, all of whom are to be killed after they no longer serve their purpose. They even hate non-Amazonian women who have given into or accepted the rule of men over them. Maidenheim’s Book 1: Amazon Adventures contains 10 pages of information that offers suggestions on who the Amazons likely were in both myth and real history, the various relationships that they could have had with the world around them, including their relationships with men, as well as the differences between the Amazons and non-Amazonian women and the resulting distrust or contempt they could have toward the other all suggest a legitimate effort in making these women more realistic than cheesecake cut-outs. The SGtA presents one possibility of how Amazons can be role-played, while Maidenheim opens up many other doors that make them far more diverse as a people.
New Feats
The SGtA does not contain any new feats for Amazons, although Maidenheim does so under the pretense that they exist as a result due to the Amazon’s culture. Two of these feats in particular (Amazon Initiative and Amazon Strike) are d20 variants of the old AD&D Second Edition Amazon kit that gave the Amazons bonuses to hit and initiative when confronted by men who underestimated them. The other feats (Amazon Archery, Amazon Riding, and Amazon Fighting) seem to be based upon the techniques these women are said to have developed that made them legendary in their own time, granting them bonuses to hit or to related skill rolls.
New Prestige Classes
The SGtA presents one new Prestige Class, the Red Guard, an Amazon that has forsaken her ability to bear children in exchange for gaining some potent combat related abilities and the duty of protecting the pregnant Amazons and their children. Maidenheim also offers several new Prestige Classes, although they are not campaign-specific within the setting and can rather be used as more generic Amazons. The Amazon Defender is the guardian of the Amazon’s way of life, for good or evil; the Amazon Ambassador serves as a representative of her people to either other Amazon nations or even kingdoms ruled by men; the Amazon Archer fulfills a role that the legendary Amazons were known for; the Amazon Scout is skilled at patrolling the limits of Amazon territory and even spying on neighboring lands; and finally the Amazon Horse Whisperer, perhaps the most interesting Prestige Class Maidenheim offers us reveals a means by which the Amazons can be considered to be among the best horse warriors in any campaign setting.
New Deities
The SGtA does mention that the Amazons primarily worship a moon goddess, although the book does not state just what her name is (Artemis perhaps?). Maidenheim, presented as a campaign setting does provide us with a rather large pantheon of deities that the Amazons worship. The human goddesses come directly from real-world cultures, and you will find Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Loviatar, Isis, and other familiar names here. The demihuman deities are basically renamed and repackaged deities derived from the current demihuman pantheons we are familiar with; the Lady Lorellan is the chief goddess of the elves (rather than Corellon), Dain is the Forger of the dwarves (rather than Moradin), Dalla is praised by the halflings (rather than Yondalla). The similarities are noticeable if you look for them, and can likely be explained as the same deities manifesting in different forms on different worlds rather than actual copyright infringements.
New Spells
The SGtA offers a new cleric Domain (Sisterhood) as well as one new divine spell, Mother’s Milk. Maidenheim does not give us any new spell Domains, but there are several useful fertility spells such as Bless Womb, Conception, Detect Fertility/Virility, Ease Labor, and Miscarriage. For both products, I appreciated the fact that their perspective authors only introduced new spells that bore relevance within the context of the Amazon cultures they came from rather than putting forth an arsenal of combat related and destructive spells. The Amazons are already dangerous enough, so these spells reveal their more domestic and social concerns.
New Armor and Weapons
The SGtA does not contain any new weapons or armor types used by the Amazons, although it does state that most would use light armor to best receive the full benefits of the Ranger class that most of them would have. Maidenheim discusses the various types of weapons used by the Amazons within the campaign setting, and also has a table of armor types based upon piecemeal designs. The technology level of Maidenheim is a combination of Bronze Age, Classical Age, and the early Dark Ages, so there are none of the more Medieval or later weapons and armors to be found within the setting.
New Races
The SGtA, as stated above, presents the Amazons as a separate human sub-race. They receive bonuses to several skill rolls and benefits within the confines of their jungle homelands. Maidenheim does not present the Amazons as a separate race themselves, and the humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, and half-orcs are all considered equally to be Amazons. Maidenheim does offer us a new race, the half-gnome that has three distinct sub-races within it depending on what their exact parentage is.
Product Support
The SGtA, like the other books in the Slayer’s Guide series is a one-shot supplement, and appears unlikely to receive any future support from Mongoose Publishing. Maidenheim is both a campaign setting as well as a supplement, and from the looks of things on the Skald Books website it appears that we can expect to see more of these Amazons and the world presented in Maidenheim throughout the rest of the year.
Which One to Use?
The answer to this question largely depends upon what you are looking for should you choose to have Amazon cultures present in your campaign. The SGtA seems to present the Amazons more as monster encounters or non-player characters, while Maidenheim encourages the use of Amazons as player-characters as well. The SGtA can be inserted into any preexisting campaign with little to no effort, while Maidenheim can equally be used as an addition to another campaign or used entirely on its own for an all-Amazon styled series of adventures. If you prefer the Amazons to be presented as a minority sub-culture with control over a small geographic region, then the SGtA provides you with this option quite well. If you would like to present the Amazons as controlling entire nations, amassing armies to conquer their enemies, and becoming involved in political intrigues among themselves as well as their neighbors in other countries, then Maidenheim will allow you to achieve this.
Personally, I feel that these two products could easily be combined into one greater product. The Amazons found in the SGtA can be just as much at home within the jungles of Thentia or Ghandhara found in Maidenheim as they could on any other world, both products of which could then be conveniently placed within your own campaign.
Conclusion and Rating
I really liked both the SGtA and Maidenheim, and would recommend both to anyone interested in using Amazons in their campaigns as player or non-player characters. I give both the SGtA and Maidenheim ratings of 4 of 5 in Style, while for Substance I give the SGtA a 4 of 5 and Maidenheim the full 5 due to its greater possibilities and potential. Both products are well written, organized, and consistent within their context, and are great products to start with for any fantasy-based campaign that contains Amazons within them.
You can purchase The Slayer’s Guide to Amazons at your local hobby or bookstore for $9.95, or order it directly from Mongoose Publishing at http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/index.htm
You can purchase Maidenheim for $10.00 as a PDF download (or $16.95 as a CD) only at http://www.rpgnow.com. You can also visit the Skald Books website for more information at http://www.users.nac.net/corporal/skaldbooks/skaldbooks.htm
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