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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jannica Thales" data-source="post: 2456635" data-attributes="member: 33331">The ENnie nominated Murchad’s Legacy (ML) is a d20 fantasy campaign setting that takes a lot of the standard fantasy tropes and gives them a bit of a twist.  This is hardly unusual in and of itself, but when you take into consideration that one of those little twists is that this is a setting you can actually “win” at, you realize that you’re in for a treat.  The basic premise is that there is a human-orc war brewing only the humans aren’t remotely organized and there are no heroes stepping up to save everyone.  The PCs are the heroes (as they are in every game) but in ML there’s a definite timeline based on in-game calendar and the PCs level progression.  If the PCs spend too much time digging about in dungeons or making magic items, the orcs are going to win this war.  There’s a definite sense of urgency in ML that is not present in other game settings.  It’s an urgency that makes you want to roll up a character before the hordes march through human lands.  So, let’s get to it! The book begins with a prologue that has some story text.  Many of the chapters start this way.  This particular story clearly defines the differences between two kingdoms we haven’t met yet, Launhym and Calisia.  It isn’t that long, but already from the start a cultural rift has been defined between the rustic Launhymians and the elite Calisians. Chapter One outlines the races.  Nothing terribly outlandish here.  Gnomes are excluded, but we get the option for two evil races, Orcs and Dark Elves.  Orcs are pretty much Orcs.  Dark Elves are basically drow only slightly less powerful and slightly more evil, as in “not Drizzit”.  They’ve been tainted by the Negative Energy Plane and apparently that makes them a little grumpy.  We also see a rundown of how the classes are viewed in this world.   Cultural background and to a lesser extent religion are more important in ML than in some game worlds.  The character’s nation of origin is going to be a lot more defining than class or race.  We’ll see more of this when we get to the feats. There are no new skills (sort of), but there are uses for old ones.  Alchemy can be used to make gunpowder, but as we’ll discover only fools use gunpowder in ML.  The forgery skill is much more important in this setting and PCs can use it to fake the various documents they might need.  There is no “common” language and the languages that do exist are far more integrated than I’ve seen in other D&D worlds.  Essentially, nations that have a common linguistic root can puzzle out what the other person is trying to say.  This is a welcome change and it’s this kind of cultural integration that is present throughout the entire book.   Spellcraft is listed as being able to be used defensively against Scry as long as the proper ritual is followed.  A fantastic addition for anyone who has played a higher level game. The feats are very well done.  They’re all a notch overpowered, but they can only be taken at first level.  There are background feats (e.g. Military, Pious) and cultural feats (one for each nation).  The cultural feats shine.  There are plenty of social penalties against arguing nations, so if you take the Launhym feat, you’re going to have a harder time dealing with Calisians.  My favorite is the Remarian feat, a bonus to Intimidate, Will Saves, and the probability of not being able to learn other languages at 1st level drive home the arrogance and pride of this culture. There is some new equipment, gunpowder will catch everyone’s eye, but there’s some fine print: it tends to explode.  Simply displaying a gun is enough to rack up social skill penalties as people back away from the crazy person with the guns. Chapter Two is all about prestige classes.  There is one for each nation.  The Imperial Legionnaire and the Knight of Pure Heart stood out while I was reading them.  Both give bonuses due to their relationships with other PCs or NPCs.  This isn’t like some of the dynamic duos in the WotC books.  If the Legionnaire is grouped with other Legionnaires they get some nice bonuses.  And I certainly wouldn’t object if my SO played a Knight of Pure Heart and decided my character was his “passion”.  The other prestige classes carry the feel of their nations, the Steadfast Knight is a sort of ranger-fighter who makes oaths that carry power.  The Homefront Guardian is an assassin-type.  And the Shadowtamer has a rather nasty pet and every level you advance threatens to damn your soul. Chapter three features spells.  There are no special rules for spellcasting in this setting.  There are new domains for the Church of Light, Restoration and Light.  We also are treated to some new spells.  In keeping with the setting most of these spells are marked with what culture can cast them.  My favorites from this list are Senses of the Hunter and Senses of the Prey for druids and rangers, they are basically self-buff spells but they also have slight penalties associated with them.  There are several Wizard spells for making gunpowder blow up by itself, yet another reason why guns exist in Murchad’s Legacy but nobody uses them.  The book also revisits Harm and Teleport.  Both of these are essentially nerfed a bit.  The change to Harm I didn’t really see the point of, but I liked the change to teleport.  Basically, if you teleport, you don’t arrive at your destination until midnight.  So the trick of teleporting in, zapping bad guys, and teleporting out doesn’t work in this setting. Nice. Chapter Four is a general world chapter and it is a very dense 30 pages.  Timeline, Holidays, moons, nobility, laws, technology, arcane magic, divine magic, the art of war, geography and weather patterns are packed in here.  Murchad’s Legacy is light on art and it is chapters like this where it really shows.  None of the above topics are skimmed over.  They were all covered in sufficient detail for me.  The geography and weather topics, I admit I skimmed over, but they were incredibly dense.  This is very much a living world and it is clear a lot of thought went into it.  My favorite part was the holidays.  The setting takes place in its’ year of 994 and all of the holidays for every culture relevant to the campaign are given, with any game effects that they may have.  This includes the  various jousting tourneys, making this the first book I’ve come across where a DM could base a campaign around a themed set of sidequests. Chapters five through thirteen run down the cultures that you encounter in the book.  I’m not going to go into each chapter in detail. Each country chapter begins with a black and white map of the area, a one or two page story, gives the history of the country, flag, government, society, notable people, national statistics, city populations, and a rundown of the cities and towns. Launhym and Remaria are the longest, Desolati is the shortest.  These chapters span from page 89 to 196. None of these nations exist alone. They all have an impact on each other and this is what I like about the setting.  I have read many setting books where you could cut out one country entirely and judging from the rest of the book there would be no effect on the rest of the world.  This is simply not the case with Murchad’s Legacy, with the possible exception of Desolati and even that comes up in the Calisia and Remaria chapters. So.  Let’s give a rundown. Aeylamdyar – the good guy elves, kinda sorta.  They are in a self imposed period of penance for the sins they committed a thousand years prior to the start of the game.  This period is drawing to an end. Calisia – wealthy elitists who love to joust.  They also effectively own about half of Launhym and these two countries are at constant loggerheads. Desolati – spiked chain using nomads, kinda similar to the Aiel from Robert Jordan’s books, only the Desolati have more common sense and less melodrama. Gadohig – the orcs and other humanoids.  I loved that their capitol city was captured from the Aeylamdyar. Galkarnan – dwarves who are a bit upset that their venture into technology was a complete bust. Home – great chapter here.  These are the Halflings.  They are a conquered race.  Some of them have given up and serve the Remarian empire and some of them fight back.  Best halfings ever. More about these guys in a bit. Launhym – the hapless protagonists who are about to get conquered by the orcs unless the PCs do something.  They are supposed to be a very rustic people, but their conflict with the Calisians can make this a very, very political chapter with lots of intrigue. Remaria – a big empire to the south of everything else.  I didn’t think they were terribly remarkable until I got to the gamemaster’s chapter. Shintai – drow, but drow who make sense.  They don’t do the whole “I am betraying my friends because my alignment says I am evil”.  They are however, very xenophobic and they have a long grudge against the Aeylamdyar.  They don’t use the drow rules and are technically “dark elves”. +1 ECL elves with no spell resistance and a better cantrip selection. Phew. OK, still with me?  Good, because we’re going into the gamemaster’s chapter and this is where it all gets brought together. Chapter 14 is for the GMs, but there’ a couple of neat tricks used so that there’s nothing wrong with the player’s reading it.  We are given two motivations for three major NPCs, both are consistent with how the NPCs are presented in the rest of the book and both are mutually exclusive.  So if the players do read this chapter, they still won’t know who the good guys and the bad guys are.  The alignment system takes a bit of a turn here, it’s a little complicated but it amounts to beings like demons and clerics having a definitive alignment that can be detected with appropriate magic, but a fighter or rogue wouldn’t get picked up at all.  It’s a small passage but adds credence and ambiguity. There’s a couple of other tidbits, like the metagaming reasons behind each of the nations (they’re themed to different playstyles), and a few slightly-overpowered feats that the characters have to commit in-game actions to qualify for, the one I liked is “Peacemaker” which allows for a reward if the PCs embark on a “Gahndi” solution to ML’s problem.s The Campaign Tracker is also in this chapter and I have to say I fell in love with it. There is a range on the tracker from 10 to -20.  The lower down the tracker you slip, the more the orcs have taken over.  These have very real consequences, such as loss of a barony or lowered saves through demoralization.  Moving up the tracker can be done a variety of ways.  Just killing orcs will hold it steady.  The players choose which of the different options they want to follow to move the tracker up to 10.  For example, they can build a castle near orc territory or they can recover one of a few select magic items from the orcs.  It puts the PCs in charge of the direction of the game in a way that is unlike other settings.  I applaud this and I want to see more of this kind of thing. Chapter 15 is where the adventures are, we are treated to three plus an alternate campaign.  The first two are pretty much straight up “find the bad guys and kill them” adventures.  The third takes place at a tourney and is exceptionally role-play heavy, you could probably run it without any combat at all.  The alternate campaign is about what happens if the players just decide to become merchants and wander about the various nations.  The adventures all look like they could be played over the course of one game session and seem solid enough. Chapter 16 is the monster of Murchad’s Legacy and this chapter was a bit lacking.  Showing how all the monster types in the D&D Monster Manual could be used was interesting but two of the three new monsters seemed tacked on and the third, a unique vampirc dragon, seemed to exist for the sole purpose of being the biggest and the baddest thing out there. Chapter 17 is magic items and here we’re back on firmer ground.  All of the magic items are tied in to the world very strongly and have solid histories behind them.  My favorite from this section was the Hide of the White Stag, which lends itself very nicely to being a mini-adventure as the players try to find the Stag in order to either gain it’s blessing to deal with any fey or kill it and use it’s skin for armor which will last one year and then the stag will appear again. And we’re done!  Oh, wait, no we’re not.  There’s an appendix for psionics.  I don’t use psi in my games so I can’t vouch if this is a good addition or not.  The A’Zat seem like a nicely fleshed out evil psionic race and the pisonic inquisitors that the Remarian Academy employs might lend itself to a fantasy “Men in Black” organization. The book concludes with a full index and tables in the back.  There is – and this is a nice touch – a CD that has all the maps and flags as well as a PDF of the book you just bought.  Very, very nice.  I would have preferred an actual paper map, but then I wouldn’t have gotten the rest of the goodies. Conclusion: This is a very big and dense book.  There are fewer cultures presented in Murchad’s Legacy than there in the Forgotten Realms or Eberron, but unlike those settings ML delves into them fully.  I have no questions about how someone from Launhym would feel about the various issues of what is going on in the world.  However, the writers also knew when to stop and they seem to have a very real and practical view of how a gaming group is made up.  There are a lot of settings where you can have a group of 100% powergamers or 100% roleplayers, but Murchad’s Legacy allows for a combination.  Actually, the book assumes that you’re going to have a powergamer min/maxer who isn’t the slightest bit interested in the setting and it provides an entire country to shove all of those players in (Desolati).  That allows the rest of the group to interact with the powergamer in character, it’s a clever solution to a metagame problem. I’m a little hesitant to bring this up, but I think it needs to be said.  One of the co-writers was female (or at least has a female name) and it shows.  The artwork has plenty of women who do not meet the stereotypical ideal, although the fantasy babes make an appearance as well.  Also, there are clear opportunities for romantic subplots with the NPCs.  Not “Book of Erotic Fantasy” romance, but real romance.  As someone who enjoys reading some women’s fiction now and then, I found it to be a welcome addition.  Murchad’s Legacy isn’t a 256-page bodice ripper or anything, most of it is about orcs and the slaying thereof, but there is a very human side to the writing. The Campaign Tracker I found to be brilliant.  Most campaign settings are meant to be very open and vague.  ML isn’t anything like that at all.  The PCs will have to weigh the consequences of their actions from the very start.  Things like creating magic items or going somewhere to sell off loot aren’t no-brainer decisions with this setting.  And the fact that the characters are in complete control of how they want to deal with the orcs is very cool.  Honestly, this is the only setting I’ve read since Birthright where I can honestly say that there is a point to a character building a castle for strict mechanical reasons. Tragically, this is Parent’s Basement Games’ first product and it shows.  It really was unwise to begin with a 256 page book until they had figured out how they wanted to handle things like layout.  But that leaves the question, do I want a book like this or a very pretty book like d20 Future that is visually appealing but has less to offer?  I wouldn’t even say there’s a middle ground.  If PBG had handled layout and art better this book would be more than a minor entry in the ENnie awards, it would be a bigger deal.  That being said the book is only $29.  Would I have really wanted to pay an extra $10?  I honestly don’t know. Murchad’s Legacy is a fine addition to anyone with a penchant for campaign settings.  The production values merit a 3/5, the remainder of the book is a solid 5/5.</blockquote>

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