Secret Societies

[Crothian]

Every campaign setting has its cults, conspiracies, and secret societies. Find out what´s worked for them in the real world and what´s brought them down. Titans of conspiracy theory like the Freemasons, Knights Templar, and the Assassins rub shoulders with game-perfect organizations like Mossad, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Thule Society. Each of them is fully detailed, ready to serve as a source of inspiration or drop straight into your weekly game.

There´s also advice on getting the most impact and realism out of your secret societies, examples of societies in different genres of d20 play, plot hooks to bring your PCs into the action, prestige classes, and details on other societies from our world for whenever you need something a little extra for tonight´s game.

Why let your next secret society fall lifeless when the real world has already done the work for you?

Secret Societies features:

* Information on how to use secret societies in your game
* 6 popular real world secret societies detailed in depth and each examined from a fantasy, modern and futuristic perspective
* d20 stats and rules to introduce those 6 societies into your games
* 6 prestige classes
* A broad examination of secret societies at large by looking briefly at over 25 such societies
* A complete breakdown of creating your own secret societies in your game

 

[Crothian]

Secret Societies are a well established tools in a lot of genres. They are prevalent in conspiracy theories and useful as an ally and antagonist. However they are under used in many role playing games. There are many ways to use then and they can look different depending on what the genre and feel of the game is.

Secret Societies is a PDF by Silven Publishing. The book is written by Landon J Winkler. The book has over a hundred pages and the lay out and art are nice though larger print and bold letters would really help set apart different sections. Sometimes it was hard to visually see the section titles as they are well camouflaged in with the body of information.. There are two version of the book one for on screen viewing and the other to print out. The on screen version has good color art and layout. The book is well book marked.

The book starts with discussion on secret societies and how they can fit into different genres. One of the on going failures of the book though is there is a lot of things for the modern society but very little good info on the fantasy and sci fi sides. The book has some good ideas on the varying levels of control a secret society can have as well the role they can play in one’s campaign. It does cover them as an antagonist or ally, and even if the players control a secret society.

The bilk of the book is spent on describing real secret societies in nice detail. This is very useful for the modern game and will really allow one to bring these to life. They cover six secret societies in depth: Assassins, Aum Shinrikyo, Freemasons, Knights Templar, Mossad, and the Thule Society. Each has plenty of ways to use them, and does a nice job of presenting so they can be on the players side or not. Each on has a prestige class associated with it and I think they made a mistake with doing that here. The book is aimed at fantasy, modern, and sci fi games. The rules for these games in d20 vary slightly and one class for a society does not fit all three genres. They do have notes for altering them but I am not sure that is enough to really represent the differences a secret society will have in the different genres.

The next chapter does a great job of presenting more secret societies but in less detail. Each is given a short write up with enough info for a DM to use them and expand upon the idea of them. There are almost three dozen secret societies presented this way. All of them seem to be from the real world and that can make it a bit hard to incorporate then in a fantasy realm that is very different then the Earth that gave birth to them.

Secret Societies turned out to be a bit to ambitious in my eyes. They presented a lot of good info and if it were just for the modern game I would give this book higher marks. But I think they stretched themselves thin by trying to shoehorn modern secret societies into Fantasy that they just do not fit well into.