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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crothian" data-source="post: 2125215" data-attributes="member: 232">Murchads LegacySettings are always a tough review.  There is more information and more thought put into settings then other books.  The information all has to work together unlike the toolkit books where one is expecting to pick and choose items to use.  The details matter a lot in the settings and many times the details are left out.  It seems that many settings are how to run adventures in this world and not play in this world, not live in this world.  Lots of times these are the details that I want, the little things that can be used to make the setting come alive to players.  Without them, the settings start to blur together and it no longer matters really which setting the game is being played in.      Murchade’s Legacy is a new setting by Parent’s Basement Games.  It is also the first book Parent’s Basement Games has done.  Starting with a two hundred and fifty six page setting is a brave endeavor in the current market.  The PDF while nicely written is a bare to look out.  It is very plain with no borders and very few pictures.  Most of the pages are two columns of texts and a few headers.  One a book on tenth this size that would be okay, but reading a couple hundred pages like that just wears one down as most books this size would have much more art and borders and other items to distract the eyes from the solid text.  This is my single greatest complaint in the book.  The little art that is there is really good and seeing more of it would have been a great thing and it would have greatly helped out the lay out and the white space.  The book is well book marked making it very easy to find things in it.      In addition to the PDF of the book there are other files in the zip that this book comes in.  There are eight files that are each a picture of a flag of one of the countries featured in the world.  There is also a pair of maps.  One is a nice black and white covering the area and the other is the same map but just better.  It is in color, has a lot of detail of cities and topography on it and it is really big.  It is the kind of a map that I would love to get a poster of to use.  The map is very impressive and very well done.  It is one of the best maps I have seen for a role playing game.  The only bad thing that I can say is it really deserves to be in print and not just as a computer file.      The setting is well put together.  There are some nice changes to some of the basic things that I like.  For instance they have removed the common language replacing it with just languages of the countries.  The races are pretty much standard with two additional ones.  First they have Dark Elves, but this is one of the better reasons I have read for Dark Elves to be in existence.  They were basically mutated by the Negative Energy Plane.  The Orc is also an option to play and fitting since I never understood why half orcs were available but full orcs were not.  Both the Dark Elf and the Orc have are considered evil in the setting and both have an ecl of +1 making them a little stronger as a base race.      As I continually mention it is the little details I like.  Each of the core races and core classes are given a small paragraph to just explain how they fit into this setting.  It is a simple yet highly effective way to bring players to understand their characters a little better.  The setting does have psionic characters but they are extremely rare and it is discussed a bit in the back of the book.  There is a race for psionics though other races can have them.  It is nice though to see them feel like they are part of the setting even if such a small and rare piece.  So many times psionics feel like add-ons.  It is done in such a way that if someone is opposed to psionics in their game they can be removed with ease.  The nations are greatly detailed later in the book but in this front section it gives some good summaries of them and also of some of the churches and spiritual beliefs.      The setting does have gunpowder though it is interesting to see that firearms are inferior to longbows and there is not much of a desire to improve upon them.  It seems almost as if firearms were invented but then seen as inferior and so given up on by most of the countries.  That is a very cool and interesting take on firearms.      There are quite a few new feats but unlike most books of feats these serve a purpose.  Many of them are culture or background feats that serve to help define the character as well as give that cool mechanical benefit.  There are many interesting feats that can only be taken at first level so it might be a hard chose for character to decide on one.      Prestige classes take an interesting turn.  In fact the same can be said in the list of new spells.  Sometimes the normal progressions are changed.  For instance the base attack of some classes is different then the ones listed in the core books.  This was done on purpose and makes for an interesting change of pace.  The spells sometimes have different ranges and durations as well.  The ones listed are just fine, but different.      The calendar is a great thing they have used here.  There are many holidays that are described and holy days for the different religions.  And the religions are also nicely described with plenty of options and interesting groups.  The setting has always and punishments for different places and makes use of writs to grant permission to travel, wear weapons, trade, and other activities in the different countries.  These are areas that are sometimes neglected in setting and they make for great details that make this place a bit more memorable.    There is a lot of information about this setting in here.  But it is more about that it is a feel the book gives for playing in this campaign.  One of the designers has written: “Murchad's Legacy is basically a campaign designed around "Real Men" but with enough setting description so that a "Real Roleplayer" could join in the fun as well.”This was a success in writing the setting.  The book does have some of the usual mistakes like the layout that first time books have but the writing and ideas here are solid.  This is a setting that should be fun and enjoyable to play in.</blockquote>

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