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Sundered Reaches
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<blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2011047" data-attributes="member: 924"><p><strong>Sundered Reaches</strong></p><p></p><p><em>"'The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one' he said. But still they come!"</em></p><p></p><p>In this case, something goes to Mars. The d20 system. While it's not the Mars of H.G. Wells' Martians, it is a Mars somewhat inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) Mars, aka Barsoom. (They really could have come up with a better name than "Sundered Reaches", which is generic enough to apply to just about anything).</p><p></p><p>One of my earliest memories as a gamer was reading an article by Jim Ward in Dragon magazine about random treasure and buildings in Barsoom. That really captured my childhood imagination, though I was never a huge fan of the Barsoom books. But anyway, when I heard about this, I was intrigued. Though I never heard much, this flew under the radar, somewhat.</p><p></p><p>It's a weird product. It's d20, but it's not Dungeons and Dragons, 3rd edition (or 3.5). It's closer to the old sort of basic dungeon & dragons, in that each "race" is also a "class". But just like that product, most of the racial classes are like existing classes. Much like the "Dwarf" was simply a fighter or the Elf a "Fighter/Wizard", each Martian race is basically an existing class. There is some variation from the class they are patterned after, but not much.</p><p></p><p>Most of the variation comes from things that probably shouldn't have been changed. Like Hit Dice. Instead of the usual one dice rolled, a d6, a d4, a d12, etc, it's not uncommon to see 2d6, 3d4, 1d4+2, etc. Weird. And generally pointless. </p><p></p><p>Also weird is that all characters start at at least 4th level. All the charts for the race/classes start at 4th level, so even if you wanted to start at first, or use them in another d20 game, you really couldn't (you could reverse engineer the save and attack progressions, but you'd be out the special abilities).</p><p></p><p>It gets a bit weirder. While aliens don't have a class per se, they can somehow multiclass, like in regular d20, or at least the book says they can. Unfortunately, because all the race/class charts start at 4th level, not 1st, you cannot actually do this in practice. </p><p></p><p>Like a lot of Fast Forward products, I have to wonder, did anyone actually sit down and play this? Did anyone even sit down and read it? So while the rules aren't unplayable, they're pretty bad.</p><p></p><p>So, what about the setting aspect to it? Well, it's not much better, though this is probably more subjective.</p><p></p><p>The Martian races are all extremely alien, except for one, the "Slave" race, which is first described as being like Cro-Magnon man (which is basically, well, us), then as Neanderthal man. Though the pictures look like neither.</p><p></p><p>Besides them, there are the Asperi, the City Builders. They look like the stereotypical "Grey" alien, only they're blue, have fins on their head, and have 2 tentacles or feelers where a human male would have a mustache.</p><p></p><p>There's the Basintro, which sort of look like Yul Brynner if he were a mummy. The Falor, which also sort of look like Greys except they are short and furry and are actually plants (kind of like the Baldwins). The Lastuki, which look like one of the Gorillas from Planet of the Apes. Then there is the Nekarr, which look like really tall human mummies, sort of shriveled up a bit. </p><p></p><p>The Orid Nar kinda look like the Martians from the 1953 War of the Worlds. Triped, 3 eyes, but sort of lizard-like. There's the Parehla, a 10 legged, 3 armed, 10 foot tall race. While ideally suited to play basketball, they are in fact farmers. The Rahind are a fairly human looking race, except they are covered in feathers. (They're also hippies)</p><p></p><p>I didn't find any of the races particularly interesting, and in fact, many of them are repellent.</p><p></p><p>The setting of Mars only gets about 10 or so pages of description, a very general overview. There are about 10 new creatures, all of which seem to be some variation on a worm or arachnid. There is a section on Martian dragons, but of the many mentioned, only 2 are statted (1 of which is actually the "Arachnid Dragon" the other basically being a giant frog).</p><p></p><p>There are also some "Adventure Seeds" at the end of the book, but they are very bare bones and somewhat oddly written. So much so that I wonder if they were simply notes on what should go there, or a placeholder accidentally included in the final copy, somewhat like what happened with the old D6 rulebook.</p><p></p><p>Probably the most interesting part of the book are the artifacts of the "Star People", who are the ones who originally built up Martian civilization. There's a Gamma World-ish sort of chart on how to figure out how to use them. Except, the chart is something of a puzzle. At I failed on my roll to figure it out. </p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, while it gives an example of how it's used, the example is for the simplest possible artifact (which only uses the first row of the chart). It then says that the rest of the chart works like the first part, but it clearly doesn't.</p><p></p><p>Basically, it's 3 columns for the first row, each with a range (0-4, 7-20, 5-6) , and you roll a d20, then add the characters Int bonus. There's a good result, and two other results. After the first row, it's basically 5 columns, with lines going every where. It's impossible to tell which ranges are for what, which direction the flow chart goes (not all of the lines have arrows), and all the boxes seem to end up going to result "F", which is something bad, or "1" which is apparently the top of the chart. The directions on how to use the chart refers to "Ovals", but the chart has no ovals, only rectangles. </p><p></p><p>So, I really couldn't figure it out. The actual devices themselves are fairly interesting (my favorite is the dimensional doorknob, which is hard to explain), and could possibly be used in any setting, but there are only 8 of them.</p><p></p><p></p><p>All in all, this is a very disappointing product, being quite awful. While not the worst d20 product ever made, it's the worst product I've seen this year (2003). F</p><p></p><p>The main trouble is (besides the odd implementation of the d20 rules), other than descriptions of the races, there is very little detail about Mars itself. A planetary map of the place that is hard to read because it's blurry, and about 15 pages of description. So the GM will have to start almost completely from scratch. </p><p></p><p>Furthermore, the races themselves are not terribly appealing. Part of the appeal of going to Mars, at least in the ERB stories, was that despite the fact that they were egg bearing, some of the aliens were fairly human looking. Would John Carter have found Mars to be appealing without Dejah Thoris? Probably not. I suppose he could have found a cute Neanderthal lady if he went to this Mars, but I dunno.</p><p></p><p>Lastly, there is the price. It's a 128 page book, priced at $24.99, kind of expensive. But unlike some companies that have expensive books, the physical quality is fairly poor, and the font size is quite large. They take 3 pages to include the OGL (and bizarrely, they include the d20 STL itself, which was required in the very early versions of the d20 STL, before it was available to the public, but was changed to not needing it just after public release, something like 3 years ago), plus another 3 pages for ads, plus some more pages on a "preface" which basically tells you the life story of the guy who came up with the idea, like anyone really cares. So you don't get much value for your money. I paid $6, total ($2 + $4 S&H on ebay), so I don't feel ripped off, but I would be downright stomping mad if I paid full price.</p><p></p><p>The single best thing in the book is an illustration by Jim Holloway (of early TSR and 1st edition Paranoia fame) depicting a WW2 G.I. lighting his cigarette off of what looks like a Jedi's lightsaber. Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing in the book.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="trancejeremy, post: 2011047, member: 924"] [b]Sundered Reaches[/b] [i]"'The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one' he said. But still they come!"[/i] In this case, something goes to Mars. The d20 system. While it's not the Mars of H.G. Wells' Martians, it is a Mars somewhat inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) Mars, aka Barsoom. (They really could have come up with a better name than "Sundered Reaches", which is generic enough to apply to just about anything). One of my earliest memories as a gamer was reading an article by Jim Ward in Dragon magazine about random treasure and buildings in Barsoom. That really captured my childhood imagination, though I was never a huge fan of the Barsoom books. But anyway, when I heard about this, I was intrigued. Though I never heard much, this flew under the radar, somewhat. It's a weird product. It's d20, but it's not Dungeons and Dragons, 3rd edition (or 3.5). It's closer to the old sort of basic dungeon & dragons, in that each "race" is also a "class". But just like that product, most of the racial classes are like existing classes. Much like the "Dwarf" was simply a fighter or the Elf a "Fighter/Wizard", each Martian race is basically an existing class. There is some variation from the class they are patterned after, but not much. Most of the variation comes from things that probably shouldn't have been changed. Like Hit Dice. Instead of the usual one dice rolled, a d6, a d4, a d12, etc, it's not uncommon to see 2d6, 3d4, 1d4+2, etc. Weird. And generally pointless. Also weird is that all characters start at at least 4th level. All the charts for the race/classes start at 4th level, so even if you wanted to start at first, or use them in another d20 game, you really couldn't (you could reverse engineer the save and attack progressions, but you'd be out the special abilities). It gets a bit weirder. While aliens don't have a class per se, they can somehow multiclass, like in regular d20, or at least the book says they can. Unfortunately, because all the race/class charts start at 4th level, not 1st, you cannot actually do this in practice. Like a lot of Fast Forward products, I have to wonder, did anyone actually sit down and play this? Did anyone even sit down and read it? So while the rules aren't unplayable, they're pretty bad. So, what about the setting aspect to it? Well, it's not much better, though this is probably more subjective. The Martian races are all extremely alien, except for one, the "Slave" race, which is first described as being like Cro-Magnon man (which is basically, well, us), then as Neanderthal man. Though the pictures look like neither. Besides them, there are the Asperi, the City Builders. They look like the stereotypical "Grey" alien, only they're blue, have fins on their head, and have 2 tentacles or feelers where a human male would have a mustache. There's the Basintro, which sort of look like Yul Brynner if he were a mummy. The Falor, which also sort of look like Greys except they are short and furry and are actually plants (kind of like the Baldwins). The Lastuki, which look like one of the Gorillas from Planet of the Apes. Then there is the Nekarr, which look like really tall human mummies, sort of shriveled up a bit. The Orid Nar kinda look like the Martians from the 1953 War of the Worlds. Triped, 3 eyes, but sort of lizard-like. There's the Parehla, a 10 legged, 3 armed, 10 foot tall race. While ideally suited to play basketball, they are in fact farmers. The Rahind are a fairly human looking race, except they are covered in feathers. (They're also hippies) I didn't find any of the races particularly interesting, and in fact, many of them are repellent. The setting of Mars only gets about 10 or so pages of description, a very general overview. There are about 10 new creatures, all of which seem to be some variation on a worm or arachnid. There is a section on Martian dragons, but of the many mentioned, only 2 are statted (1 of which is actually the "Arachnid Dragon" the other basically being a giant frog). There are also some "Adventure Seeds" at the end of the book, but they are very bare bones and somewhat oddly written. So much so that I wonder if they were simply notes on what should go there, or a placeholder accidentally included in the final copy, somewhat like what happened with the old D6 rulebook. Probably the most interesting part of the book are the artifacts of the "Star People", who are the ones who originally built up Martian civilization. There's a Gamma World-ish sort of chart on how to figure out how to use them. Except, the chart is something of a puzzle. At I failed on my roll to figure it out. Unfortunately, while it gives an example of how it's used, the example is for the simplest possible artifact (which only uses the first row of the chart). It then says that the rest of the chart works like the first part, but it clearly doesn't. Basically, it's 3 columns for the first row, each with a range (0-4, 7-20, 5-6) , and you roll a d20, then add the characters Int bonus. There's a good result, and two other results. After the first row, it's basically 5 columns, with lines going every where. It's impossible to tell which ranges are for what, which direction the flow chart goes (not all of the lines have arrows), and all the boxes seem to end up going to result "F", which is something bad, or "1" which is apparently the top of the chart. The directions on how to use the chart refers to "Ovals", but the chart has no ovals, only rectangles. So, I really couldn't figure it out. The actual devices themselves are fairly interesting (my favorite is the dimensional doorknob, which is hard to explain), and could possibly be used in any setting, but there are only 8 of them. All in all, this is a very disappointing product, being quite awful. While not the worst d20 product ever made, it's the worst product I've seen this year (2003). F The main trouble is (besides the odd implementation of the d20 rules), other than descriptions of the races, there is very little detail about Mars itself. A planetary map of the place that is hard to read because it's blurry, and about 15 pages of description. So the GM will have to start almost completely from scratch. Furthermore, the races themselves are not terribly appealing. Part of the appeal of going to Mars, at least in the ERB stories, was that despite the fact that they were egg bearing, some of the aliens were fairly human looking. Would John Carter have found Mars to be appealing without Dejah Thoris? Probably not. I suppose he could have found a cute Neanderthal lady if he went to this Mars, but I dunno. Lastly, there is the price. It's a 128 page book, priced at $24.99, kind of expensive. But unlike some companies that have expensive books, the physical quality is fairly poor, and the font size is quite large. They take 3 pages to include the OGL (and bizarrely, they include the d20 STL itself, which was required in the very early versions of the d20 STL, before it was available to the public, but was changed to not needing it just after public release, something like 3 years ago), plus another 3 pages for ads, plus some more pages on a "preface" which basically tells you the life story of the guy who came up with the idea, like anyone really cares. So you don't get much value for your money. I paid $6, total ($2 + $4 S&H on ebay), so I don't feel ripped off, but I would be downright stomping mad if I paid full price. The single best thing in the book is an illustration by Jim Holloway (of early TSR and 1st edition Paranoia fame) depicting a WW2 G.I. lighting his cigarette off of what looks like a Jedi's lightsaber. Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing in the book. [/QUOTE]
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