Next Age Heroes

[Messageboard Golem]

This is your time, your age; a time sages will one day proclaim the beginning of a new era. The next age of civilization.

The good races have climbed their way out of chaos and darkness. They have made civilizations that are strong and thriving. But they are small.

Now is the time to break through the barriers that have always hemmed in humanity. To leave the safety of the civilized world and face the threats that surround it. To discover what lies beyond the forests, hills, and rivers that have forever been the borders of the map. Now is the time for heroes to take those first steps to lead humanity onto a wider world.

Next Age Heroes is a campaign setting about exploration and discovery, and the greatness that comes from braving the unknown. When they begin adventuring beyond the known world, the player characters embark on a road that will lead them to become some of the most powerful and influential individuals of all humanity. The player characters are among the very few, perhaps even the only ones in their entire homeland, with the time, freedom, and ability to see what else the world has to offer, "beyond the map." Their discoveries will pave the way for humanity to grow and expand into its next age.

They are truly the ones destined to become the heroes of legend in ages to come - or die trying.

As such heroes, the options for the player characters are wide open. Will they found their own cities and kingdoms, trade with whatever natives they might find - or conquer them? Perhaps they will ally with others, or take the treasures they find and use them to conquer their own homelands! Will there even be others out beyond the wild? Could it be that the characters' homelands are the only place where there is any civilization? Or might they be a primitive backwater of a sophisticated world that has forgotten all about them?
There's only one way for them to find out.

Next Age Heroes is an archive of three pdf files with almost 270 pages of information.
Contained within are:

The general information of the characters’ home region.
Unique perspective write-ups for each race, including each of the various barbarian societies, detailing their histories, societies, politics, religions, and geographic knowledge.
Overviews of 61 human noble houses, including thumbnail sketches of over 120 nobles.
40 fully stated n.p.c.s, friends, neutrals, and foes - several at multiple levels.
Detailed information on the 20 areas that surround the characters’ home region, and adventure seeds for each.
6 different ideas for getting a party of disparate types together and going.
Flexibility. There are plenty of ways to tailor the setting as you wish. Advice on adding, removing, and changing what you like is included.

Additional information on Next Age Heroes, including virtually everything included in the Players Introduction file, can be found at http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-blackdrinkcreations

 

[Crothian]

Leaving the comforts of the home to find out what lies over the next hill is simple and yet complicated task. Exploration into the unknown and journeying off the known map is an endeavor few people will ever do. Next Age Heroes is a pdf world set around this very idea. It allows for the exploration of the unknown and lets the players seek adventures in places filled with rumors and legends.

Next Age Heroes is a fantasy setting designed for low level characters. It uses all the basic races and classes from the Players Handbook and just gives them each enough background to fit into this setting without actually changing any of the rules mechanics. The background information for the players is easy to follow and simple to use. This setting would be a great way to introduce people new to role playing. There is no over flow of options and everything fits nicely with the Players Handbook. There are very few powerful NPCs to overshadow the players. In fact the highest level NPCs are about 7th level and they are starting to get on in the years.

The product consists of three separate PDFs. The first is about a dozen poages in length and it covers the player’s introduction to the setting. In it the players will read a brief explanation on the races and the classes as well as a few well placed hints on what can be expected in the adventures in this setting. It is a fast read and should start the player’s creative juices flowing. The second pdf is larger and covers a more in depth look into the races of the world. It is a little under sixty pages, but still the reading is fast and easy. In it the players and the Dungeon Master will learn about the relationships between the races and as well as learn a lot about their customs and practices. The part is filled with details and good ideas. The third PDF is the largest having over 200 pages of Game Master information. It is in here the DM will get a thousand of ideas for running adventures and campaigns of exploration in this world.

There is a lot of information packed in this PDF. It is its own world and allows the players to become heroes through exploration. The three files are relatively small, the largest being a little under three megs and the other two being less then a half a meg each. The PDFs are simple in appearance. There is very little art in them and no borders. It does allow for easy printing though. The maps are functional and easy to read. The layout is basic and in two column format. It was easy to read through it all on the computer screen. Overall, it’s a good setting. I think it has a lot to offer and should make a great setting for people new to role playing. Experienced role players should fine the setting a pleasant change to the complicated and deeply plot driven settings.

 

[Beale Knight]

First off I want to say thanks to Crothian for writing the reivew - especially since he seems to have liked it.

I only wish to elaborate on one feature he brought up. The second pdf file, the racial perspective, is intended to be read entirely only by the DM. The file is divided into seperate sections for each race (and the five barbarian clans), the idea being that each player only recieves the section that covers his/her race's perspective. Thus dwarf characters won't know the geography of the elf's forest or the leaders of the human kingdom, but they will know facts about the deep underground that elves and humans won't.

Characters are free to share whatever information they wish of course, once they get together. But they can likewise keep whatever racial-specific knowledge they wish to themselves.

I could go on and on and on, so I'll quit here before I get on too much of a roll. Thanks again Crothian.

Wes Yahola
Sole Proprietor of Black Drink Creations

 

[GameWyrd]

Next Age Heroes is a PDF campaign setting for 3.5 d20 from Black Drink Creations. It's a big project for a small company.

Next Age Heroes comes in three pieces. There's one PDF to let your players read safely. There's another PDF for the players that offers up the in-game worldview of different races. The worldview is important in Next Age Heroes. The PCs are different, are the Next Age Heroes, because they've travelled further than a few days ride and are interested in what lies beyond. The third document, some 217 pages, is for the GM and it tells the reader what is really going on in the world beyond the starting region.

Yeah. There's a lot of reading - but there's a lot of skimming too. Much of Next Age Heroes is taken up with character sheets for NPCs. These are not full page, space consuming character sheets, they're terse but presentable character records. There is just lots of them. I'm not normally a fan of NPC stats in campaign worlds. The 3rd edition Ravenloft was rocking my world until they started tossing in stats for the atmosphere. It's still fun to quote Elminster Dance skill of 6. Ooh; 6 ranks of Dance! My gaming experience has been enhanced! I'm not quite so sardonic about NPCs in Next Age Heroes though. Why? I've decided that Next Age Heroes isn't a campaign setting at all.

Next Age Heroes is, in my opinion, more of a campaign than a campaign setting. It's a framework for adventure. I'll explain later and warn first. Since Next Age Heroes could be seen as an adventure and certainly since the theme of Next Age Heroes is about discovering things it is possible to spoil the setting by knowing too much. From this point on this review contains spoilers.

The theme in Next Age Heroes is very much about exploration. Characters come from the most "civilised" region and will spend the game exploring outside it. What's there? The "what" is the question that'll probably grab the PCs attention to begin with. Next Age Heroes tells you explicitly what's out there. We have all these stats for NPCs after all. We're told, for example, how many hydra are in which swamp. We're told how many heads each hydra has and which more intelligent creature is using them to defend the swamp. It's not the sort of level of detail I expect from a campaign setting. It's more detailed than that. It's more like the sort of information I'd expect to have as an introduction to a swamp encounter - but only the introduction. The GM still needs to lay a plot through the swamp. The same sort of attention to detail is applied throughout the entire PDF. The players get to find out what's out in the wilds. The GM gets to read about it.

Really, though, the interesting question is "Why?" Why are these creatures out there? As the GM allows the players may (or may not) discover that their home region isn't quite the forerunner of civilisation and technology that they thought. No. It's not the case that they're an isolated backwater surrounded by power powers - but that's the obvious alternative twist to the Next Age Heroes tale. The truth is that this is mankind's second attempt to establish a foothold in the world.

In the "first age" mankind slowly developed technology and magic, they explored the world, the planes and they culled the green menace and supernatural horrors. Each advancement led to another and mankind's progression in power bloomed. In no time at all, as the Great Beings measure it, mankind had gone from insignificant to dangerous. Man could cast magic to reshape reality. Man could, would, and had killed Dragons, Greater Whales, Lammasu and Higher Giants. It's the Dragons, the psionic Greater Whales, the not-quite-Monster-Manual Lammasu and Higher Giants who were the first beings, the Great Beings, and it was these races who decided that something had to be done about mankind and the similar and allied races. They knocked mankind back to the Stone Age. Mankind was lucky. There was plenty of politics and bloody battles among the Great Beings to decide the fate of mankind; strip them of their greater magic items, eliminate them all or somewhere in between. It's just a side note in the book but I rather like the fact that the Sphinx, Treants and other "old races" weren't part of this onslaught and know the truth of what happened.

Okay. So it's not quite a "wow original" twist but it is still much better than too many default fantasy campaign settings. Next Age Heroes is better than most fantasy settings.

Next Age Heroes struggles against these other fantasy campaign settings. It would all too easy for Next Age Heroes to become one of them. We're advised not to allow weird and wonderful PC races - it would defeat the theme. Black Drink is right, it would defeat the theme, but did it need to be pointed out? I suppose there were two routes the game could have taken; the setting could have conjured up the theme with atmospheric text and left the reader to decide what sort of fantasy race was appropriate or Next Age Heroes could have taken the more direct route of simply pointing out what was appropriate. Next Age Heroes goes for the latter. We're told what the best approach is. It's not annoyingly blunt and we're encouraged to go with what makes sense for us - but generally basic advice is explicit rather than implicit. It comes down to personal taste here. I think many gamers want advice in black and white - that, after all, is why they'll buy supplements - but I'd rather have the atmosphere and be left to deduce best practise from that.

There's more than geography and a twisted history in Next Age Heroes. Your usual campaign setting perks here are. We've monsters. We've prestige classes. We've new items. They all fit the setting nicely. I'm more impressed by the astrological symbols though - I just love that sort of quirky detail. I like the maps too; even though they're extremely simple.

It's not the history in Next Age Heroes that compels me to give the setting a go. It's the politics. I do like a bit/a lot of politics in my game and Next Age Heroes is pre-loaded with complex noble houses and relationships. Then, of course, we've the politics of the Great Beings. Oh, don't make the mistake of thinking that they're used as some Deux Ex Machina and then ignored. They're still around. There's a Greater Being, a Patrician, in charge of each realm in the land. In fact, that's why there are realms; they mark the boundaries of the Greater Being's influence.

My default reaction to another fantasy campaign setting appearing as a PDF would be to fall asleep at the keyboard. Next Age Heroes is better than that. There's enough sparkle in Next Age Heroes to make it worthwhile, it finds that incredibly hard to find middle ground between typical D&D and -something-thing-. It's not quite a grade A product though. I think Next Age Heroes is best suited to new-ish players rather than the more veteran gamer from the PDF market place. It's a personal taste issue but I'd rather have had more atmosphere and less black and white suggestions and less pre-placed NPCs. I do think Next Age Heroes is an amazing achievement for Black Drink Creations and it might be one of those super-rare times where the line between homebrew and professional really is blurred. Next Age Heroes does well to earn a B grade and I look forward to seeing what support for the setting, if any, the tiny company produces.

* This Next Age Heroes review was first published at GameWyrd.