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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2009627" data-attributes="member: 1129">NyambeAfrican AdventuresWritten by Chris DoluntPublished by Atlas256 pages$37.95So what do you get when you buy Nyambe?  You get almost everything you need to start a campaign in the Land of the Overpower.  The book starts off with a 16 page full color section that provides a quick overview of the land and its peoples ending with a full color map of Nyambe-tanda.  It’s an excellent primer and gives you a good idea of what adventuring in this land involves.The rest of the book is broken up into chapters that make finding information easy.  Want to know about the classes for this setting?  Go to chapter four, Core Classes.  Want to know about the Magic Items?  Go to chapter eleven.  The tight focus in each chapter allows the GM to just look for crunchy stuff or look for the ‘fluff’.  For example, Chapter Two is History and Chapter Ten, Lands, Nations, and Societies.  So what is Nyambe anyway?  It’s a setting loosely based on African mythos and history.  It’s broken down into broad areas and is surprisingly open to a number of crossover potentials.  For example, in times past, the Water People had land here and their ruins are still standing.  For those not in the know, the Water People are any Egyptian like people.  By avoiding specifics, Nyambe makes it extremely easy to merge or add different settings to this one.  Imagine a Necropolis Nyambe crossover.  Yeah, pretty cool eh?  Another interesting thing is that the history ends in the now phase where a lot of things are all happening at once.  Take north orc invaders.  If you have Races of Evermore or Sovereign Stone, both have orks that love the water.  Heck, Freeport orks might be the ones behind the recent attack.  Another good crossover point is the Far Eastern traders and merchants who set up here to take advantage of trade.  Rogukan anyone?The new races and cultures showcases how the races, most of ‘em the standard ones, are different in Nyambe.  Each race has name, personality, physical description, relations, alignment, lands, authority, religion, rituals, arts, food, language, names (male and female), adventurers, appropriate classes, and feats.  Now that’s a lot of information to take in at one setting, especially when you consider that the racial traits are blocked off in addition to this information.  The good news is that it’s easy ready and the races are illustrated so you can quickly read through and pick and chose what you want to add.  One of the interesting things is that like several other recent settings, Nyambe breaks humanity up into different cultures.  No changes to the stats mind you, but the fact that you don’t have to play a ‘human’ is nice and it’s cool to get separate names for each grouping.  Of the races that don’t match the standards in the PHB, we’ve got the Unthlatu Dragons, a race with a touch of dragon and reptilian blood coursing through their veins.For those wondering what I was talking about earlier with different core classes, yes, it’s true, much like any other specific setting, there are new core classes here, as well as notes of how to incorporate all the standard PHB classes.  One of the nice things about having individuals from the Far East is that these traders and merchants are the originating point for classes like Monks and Psions, which are mentioned by name.  Unfortunately, since Oriental Adventurers itself hasn’t hit the gentlemen’s stage yet, all of the OA classes are left mysteriously unmentioned.The new core classes in Nyambe almost all take into account the heat factor that makes wearing armor difficult in this setting by giving them the Sanguar Feat, a greater dodge feat that augments the armor class of the individuals.  It doesn’t’ go quite as far as some of the Swashbuckler handbook feats did in terms of granting an armor class bonus, but it should help characters survive a bit.  The classes include the Gamba, almost a hybrid between the barbarian (higher hit dice, faster movement) with the fighter (bonus feats and weapon specialization.).  The Mchawi, the wizards of the setting who are often evil and looked upon with distrust.  The Nanala, the rogues of the setting, who gain numerous bonus feats and sneak attack abilities.  The N’angas, the clerics of the setting who deal with the orisha or spirits of the setting. The listing provides a quick name, alignment, domains and typical followers so that players and GMs can quickly determine what they’d want out of the setting.  The Sei is the alternative versions of the Sorcerer, and is also distrusted by many in this setting.For Prestige Classes, I’m impressed that Atlas actually covers the core PrCs from the DMG by providing some incorporation notes making the GMs job just a little easier.  The new PrCs include the Dembe, a monster hunter that seems to be a ranger variant.  More exotic are the Leopard Cultists who have to be lycanthropes.  The Magic Eaters are warriors who hunt down spellcasters.  The Mask Makers are specialized spellcasters who focus on the crafting of unique masks.  The Mganga are ‘witchdoctors’, divine spellcasters who use spells from the wizard/sorcerer list.  The Ngoma’s are drummers who are social spellusers, filling the same role that bards often do.  There are more PrCs that players can strive for like the Nibomay Amazon and enough goods that most players and GMs should enjoy the feel that these PrCs give the setting.  The PrCs seem balanced with the core classes and since the core classes all get the specialized dodge feat, these classes too will benefit from it.  If you’re looking for new skills, feats and combat rules, then Chapter Six has you covered and provides a lot of goodies for feats.  Some new skills help flesh out the setting like Natural Medicine and Scry, but I know players, they’ll be flipping through the Feats section before the skills section.  There are several feats that could see use in almost any campaign.  Rogues will all want to take Crippling Strike, a bonus to your sneak attack that drains your target of 1 point of temporary Strength.  The feats provide a nice mix of combat related and skill related augmentation and players should be able to customize their characters enough so that no two need be alike.  GMs of course should carefully read the new combat rules.  The information on brush fires, ritual warfare, castle raids, nuba matches and engolo duels will come in handy and the rules for brush fires can be used in any ampaign.Nyamban Equipment includes a lot of new standard equipment but players and GMs will both want to flip immediately to the weapons and armors section.  We’ve got bolas, blowguns, battleaxes, leaf spears, dagger swords, and two-bladed swords.  Most of the weapons are illustrated with clean illustrations and it’s possible to see why the Elephant Axe is probably one of the most used weapons of the setting.  New armors included beaded, iron chain shirts, woven cord, hide, iron mantle and wooden plates.  A wide array of shields rounds out the armor section.Of course somewhere out there some role player is disgusted with my attention to the new weapons and armor as he’s busily flipping through the gear.  You’ve got game boards, backpacks, papyrus, egg bottles, head rest, stools, and of course, natural medicine kits.  Why there’s even a section on Nyamban clothing and mounts.  The Engargiya is one of the strangest mounts I’ve seen but we all know that players are going to be looking for that mighty Elephant.Those wanting more information on the Orisha’s than provided by the cleric class will read over Chapter Eight, the Spirits of Nyambe.  I’m not a super knowledgeable about African myths but was disappointed that Shango wasn’t listed but then again, I’ve seen Shango as the god of thunder and as a powerful mortal so I can see where the author didn’t want to cause confusion.  The information here is similar to the player’s handbook in that it provides a symbol, deity stat block information and some background to incorporate the material quickly.Nyamban Magic introduces some quick new rules for the setting.  Resurrection is a little different here, and armor spells need a component of 25 gp per level of the spell.  It’s a way to try to capture that authentic feel but seems a little forced.  New Nyamban Domains should be able to go into almost any game: Birds, Confusion, Dance, Darkness, Exile, Fertility, Fish, Flesh, Greed, Hunting, Iron, Lightning, Love, Plague, Serpents, and Wisdom.The spells start off in alphabetical order.  I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get a master spell listing broken down by class, level and then alphabetized with brief details ala the Player’s Handbook.  It would’ve made searching for spells a little easier then going through the list one at a time.  Still, you’ll find a wide variety of magics, both offensive and miscellaneous that can add color and background to the setting.  Bit of the Plague Rat anyone?Chapter Ten provides the reader with information on the setting, ranging from the terran in general terms and the typical encounters there, to the specific nations of Nyambe.  Each nation has it’s own stat block, history, conflicts and intrigues, and special notes so that GMs can start using the material right away.  About the only thing I’m disappointed in is that the book didn’t focus on a specific area that could be friendly to players of almost all classes and races so that the campaign can at least start with a bit of focus.  It suffers a little because this isn’t the same old same old setting where you might expect to start in a bar, but rather like Rogukan where things aren’t quite the same.One of the things that surprises me about Chapter Eleven, Adventures in Nyambe, is that there aren’t any brief little adventures but rather, rules for disease, secrets of the setting, treasures like gems, beads, and mundane items.Those GMs looking for more information on rewards will enjoy Chapter Twelve, Magic Items.  There are several new properties for different items as well as several new specific ones.  For example, the Spear of Heart-Piercing strikes a foe in the heart on a critical.  Minor and major artifacts are included so that GMs can provide tales of these items of power to their characters long before those players ever see a Blade of Scarring or a Greater Nail Figure.The chapters close out with a meaty monster section that provides GMs with a lot of opposition to throw at the players.  Thankfully, we’ve got a breakdown of creatures by category and by challenge rating so you can pit low-level characters against the boman, small blood sucking bats, and higher level characters against the Lau, a huge snake with grasping tentacles.The book closes out with an appendix for just about everything.  I was a little surprised that while all of the Dragon issues with the various African themes got covered that good old Role Aids with it’s Myth and Legends II wasn’t mentioned.  The index is a massive three-page beast that should help you master the book quickly.Art is good in many cases with a few great illustrations, especially in the full color section.  The layout is generally the standard two-column beast that we’re all used to in our RPGs.  Text to page ratio is fairly good and use of white space is good.  Editing is pretty strong and the only thing that caught my eye was one of the chapter headings being wrong as I used it for reference.Overall I’m quite impressed with the ‘whole’ factor of the book.  If there had been a few more tweaks and some home based setting, the book would rate a solid 5.  Some GMs though, just aren’t going to know what to do with the setting.  I’d suggest the ‘foreigner’ campaign just to keep it familiar until the players are settled in and then have them switch to standard characters.  On the other hand, GMs and players can both take classes, magic items, and spells from this setting and play ‘foreigners’ in the standard setting for a change of pace.If you’re looking for something a bit more exotic than another European dark ages setting, then Nyambe brings a lot to the table.</blockquote>

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