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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2035058" data-attributes="member: 1129">Slavelords of Cydonia is a huge adventure-sourcebook for the Grim Tales game engine by Bad Axe Games. Written by Matthew Beall and Eric Tam, Slavelords weighs in at 238 black and white pages and runs for $34.95. Slavelords is designed to take characters from 1st to 20th level.SoC is broken up into five different books. Each book covers a main theme or section. Each book comes with an introduction to break down the text, ideas on running that section as it’s own unit, numerous scenarios, and further adventurers. Let’s get some of the bad things out of the way. Like about 98% of RPG material I read, there are the typical errors here. Editing could’ve used another round for clarity and in some cases, game mechanics. The worst offenders to me though, aren’t the little typos or the little ones or twos off in game stats. It’s stuff like see table X where table X doesn’t exist but is supposed to be table Y. It’s see character on page 28 when it’s on page 29. In one section, there’s not even a level range, but based on previous chapters and future chapters, I’d put chapter three at about 9th-12th level.Something some GM’s may find an issue, is that this is for experienced GMs who don’t mind shouldering a lot of work. While this is a huge adventure, it’s not packed with maps or fully fleshed out NPCs. Instead, you’re given a skeleton to work on. A very detailed skeleton that’s complete in and of itself, but one that will require a lot of work. Some little things could’ve made this easier. For example, some flow-charts of possible scenarios that the players followed.The book isn’t organized to my taste either. In the weeks I’ve been running it, there are characters that move from book to book. Unfortunately, each character is written out when he first appears so instead of having those characters put into an appendix with clear and neat descriptions and a written text that covers the characters descriptions, we get each character as they appear in the book with all future references to that character referring you to that chapter.Some of the XP seems off too. I’m in the middle of book two, which is recommended for 5th level character. The players in my game were third level, and that was with a lot of story awards that I didn’t divide up. Maybe I’m not running enough random encounters but I don’t see characters gaining all the necessary levels just by the adventures alone here.Lastly, the book isn’t going to appeal to all players. Now the back of the book notes ‘experienced’ players but I disagree. It’s more about ‘trusting’ players. If your players don’t trust you to mess with them, this adventure will not work at written and will require extensive rework. I say that because well, for the most part, the players are going to be slaves. Now they may be important slaves for many parts and may win their freedom at the end of things, but most players don’t play d20 games so that they can take up the reigns of slavery and fight for another master.Now that those thoughts are out of the way, what do I like about it? Well, since it’s using the Grim Tales engine, it’s pretty easy to use with any standard d20 game system as long as you’re familiar with Grim Tales and the engine you’re converting it to. For example, I’ve been running it with the players using Black Company rules. Four weeks down so far and no big issues. I’ve had to take a few notes on armor class, as Grim Tales characters have an armor class bonus, and some notes on what the talents here do in regular d20 games.In that aspect though, the book is pretty helpful. The introduction covers what the feats and talents do in abbreviated form giving you a quick heads up on what the effects of various game mechanics are. Some of them my players are even interested in. For example, one player is a Sword Master from the Black Company whose thinking of taking Agile Riposte, which grants you an attack of opportunity if an opponent misses you with a melee attack. Ironically enough, despite the fact that it uses generic currency, I’ve basically cut all the currency by a factor of ten as it’s still too high for a Black Company game.In terms of use, the book starts with the players hired to investigate some ruins. As they do so, they encounter another group already there and the GM has some opportunities to throw different adventure seeds at the characters until the main ruin opens up to Cydonia and the invaders from that world come and take the players back, as slaves, to their world.At that point, the characters are now involved on Cydonia and don’t have a good chance of seeing their home world again until the book’s end. That puts a little strain on the GM as if any of the players die, it becomes a little harder to rationalize why another character is just ready to go. For me, I had the players be part of a larger exploration group that was captured so that if any of them die, it’s not a problem to switch out a new character that’s an earth native as opposed to coming from Cydonia, which would remove most of the flavor of the game.Once on Cydonia, the players are thrust into the politics and dealings of the Sli’ess empire. The good news is that it gives the GM the chance to test some interesting combinations of race and class against the players in an arena. The bad news is, well, at least not apparent to the players at first, is that something else came through the gate and has infested the decadent empire of the Sli’ess.The party spends a lot of time after that building up contacts, resources, and information in their fight against the Lethid, one of the main foes from the Grim Tales core book. During the adventure, the characters have the chance to rediscover ancient technology, learn hidden truths about Cydonia, lead slave rebellions and fight at the head of great armies. All the good stuff from all the old John Carter of Mars books.The strengths of the adventure lie in its modularity. Because nothing is forced into the plot, the GM can use different adventure seeds and ideas for different groups. This requires the GM to know the material fairly well or when the players do something off beat, there may be some page flipping as the GM tries to figure out what path to put the players on next.For those not interested in running an adventure, the book offers a few other tasty morsels. For example, we get details on Cydonia and it’s masters, the Sli’ess. These beings aren’t you’re typical overlords but remind me of the Yuan-Ti in that they’re reptilians with various caste. Each caste has it’s own place in their society and they rule over their planet with an iron hand. Party members will clash against the social graces of the ra, match wits with the lor and test their strength against the crocodile headed bru while fighting back the savagery of the abominable gots.Part of the details of Cydonia, include the various weapons and armor that the Sli’ess empire uses. As wood is rare, they tend to use a lot of metal and crystal in their goods. The ruling empire has some high-tech goods and use cells to power their weapons with different effects. One of the most interesting aspects though are the primitive weapons as one of the lower slave races, the rat like Skreet, cobble together various metal implements of death to fight off their masters who tend to eat them.For some of the weapons, the crystals have different effects. The powerful bru for example, love to use the adamas crystal as it improves the critical threat range of a weapon while jade inflicts extra sonic damage. Good stuff but not overpowered even when compared to the lower powered Black Company setting as it relies on the crystal to power the extra abilities.Another interesting aspect is the Lethid. Take one part Possessors from Ronin Arts, add in some Aboleths and something possibly inspired by the Shoggoths of Call of Cthulhu and mix ancient dark history with more variants, and you’ve got the Lethid. Seems that they clashed with the Sli’ess many moons ago and now want some payback. It’s a bit of a weak plot as they should really be focused on taking over the earth. I mean, if someone managed to avoid my supreme power a long time ago and I still hadn’t taken over the world I’d been stranded on, I’d probably just blow up the transporter between worlds until I took over the world and then move onto that other world. Still, by playing up the ancient enmity between the races, the GM can smooth over that premise pretty easily.I haven’t delved deeply into the Mass Combat section. All those big fights with the PCs at the heads of their armies come at the end of the book. It looks pretty simple and easy to use however. You create the army, figure out where the battle is taking place. Have each leader pick their goal and make a Command check to see who has the advantage. Then each unit dices for imitative and the battle starts. Units pick different battle action.Combat can end in a few ways. One side can be eliminated, each side can hold their ground for a draw or one side can retreat. The system uses a battle rating, which is equal to the EL of the group. Now that EL is determined per Grim Tales rules. One nice thing is that the authors give you a look behind the numbers to see what they’re thinking, a nice touch that could be done more often.The book includes other little things here and there. For example, there are numerous creatures with the Lethid modifiers taken into place. There are numerous NPC stats written out. There is a massive index to make navigating the book a breeze. Most of the maps are clearly drawn and easy to use.My group is enjoying the adventure thus far, but are leery of the whole slave thing. I keep reminding them to ‘be cool’ and enjoy the adventure, that I’m not out to deliberately screw with them and that there’s a plot and purpose and that while I’m not going to railroad them into following the game’s main plot, that it’ll be easier for everyone if they do. So far, so good.Slavelords of Cydonia can sever several purposes. It can act as an example of an alien culture and setting that can be imported into any game with a remote location where an invasion slowly takes place. It can be used as a sourcebook on alien technology and cultures. Of course, as I’m doing, it can be run as it, a skeleton structure that the GM has to take and weave maps and detailed descriptions around even as allowing the players the freedom to move around the grand tapestry that is… Slavelords of Cydonia.If anyone has any specific questions on what I'm doing with Slavelords or how it's going, just drop a line and I'll respond.</blockquote>

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