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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 2011652" data-attributes="member: 24255">Pantheonic Dreams - World of Canton Realm BookBy Jeremy Aldrich, Benjamin J. Eggers, Jason & Justin Vandenberg, and Jon MiseviczGeeks Cubed product number GEK0002286 pages, $32.00The World of Canton Main Realm Book is the first book in the "Pantheonic Dreams" line of RPG sourcebooks, detailing the campaign world of Canton.  It is filled with some interesting ideas, but suffers greatly in its presentation.The cover is by someone with the initials "JWK" - I can't be more specific, as there's nobody on the credits page with those initials - and depicts a hand-to-hand combat between a bearded humanoid figure and a winged demon.  Each has bands of different-colored energy leaking out of gaps in their skin; I imagine the humanoid figure is supposed to be the chief deity Alroul, who perished fighting the demonic general from the Hellpit rift.  There isn't much in the way of detail, and what little there is has been obscured by the graininess of the entire cover.  The "Pantheonic Dreams" logo at the top is rather nice, though, although the primitive blades that form the letters might easily misguide a reader into assuming that the world of Canton is chiefly a barbaric one.  Oddly enough, the back cover features four full-color monsters that each appear in the second book in the "Pantheonic Dreams" line, The Ecology of Canton Volume One.  This is particularly strange when you notice that the back cover of The Ecology of Canton Volume One, a Monster Manual-type book, features a drawing of the planet of Canton, which would make more sense on the back of the campaign setting book.  I wonder if the back cover images were mistakenly swapped, or if this was intentional?The interior artwork consists of 187 black-and-white illustrations by 8 different artists.  That sounds like a lot, even in a 286-page book, and it is, but many of these illustrations are either very small or merely pencil sketches that are too light to provide much detail.  There's also 57 black-and-white maps, all done by Clayton Bunce, but except for the 2-page map of Canton in the early part of the book, most of the rest are all blown-up sections from the larger world map.  Clayton did a great job on the 2-pager (and I've enjoyed his work in other books), but the map-section blow-ups aren't all that helpful, especially as some of them are little more than a star surrounded by forest (Danna, on page 256) or a star by some mountains (Laanathan, page 217).  Still, Clayton does a nice map/drawing of the city of Tir'Ceneral on page 141, and some of the artwork is pretty good, like the kobolds fighting the undead on page 243 (good use of shading and blending), the dwarves on pages 200-201 (great detail, good use of shading), and the female rogue/assassin on page 171 (nice fluid motion to the figure).  Taken as a whole, however, I think the artwork comes out to about average, with a large percentage of poorer-quality artwork dragging down the overall average.The World of Canton Main Realm Book is laid out as follows: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Introduction: A brief description of the book</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Main Map: Clayton's Bunce's two-page spread of the whole world of Canton</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Races: Information on Dwarves (with three subtypes: Morgou, Targou, and Shrakthraun), Drakin (draconic humanoids, with three subtypes: Common, Lesser, and Elevated), Elves, Felines (with three subtypes: the humanoid housecat Telgath, the humanoid tiger/panther/leopard Cym, and the humanoid lion Vranir), Gnomes, Halflings (with three subtypes: Hotbloods, Quickbreeds, and Widebottoms), Humans, Ja'kal (humanoid canines), Kalan (desert-adapted humans), Orcs (with three subtypes: Imasnorang, Barbaric, and Dissident), each including racial traits for PCs; plus some quick info on other intelligent races, including Charodan (nonviolent undead skeletons), Delvan (magic beings from other races), Ebon Sand Raiders (desert dwelling creatures evolved from demons), the Flayed (an evil elven offshoot), Kobolds, Minotaurs, and Ssnrav (humanoid serpents)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Prestige Classes: The Chronomancer, Detection Mage, Dorme (arcane spellcaster warriors), Duneblade (desert ranger with an interesting weapon), Elementalist, Illusionist, Lodai (katana masters), Merker (slayers of enemy spellcasters), Pint Bull (halfling warriors using oversized weapons), Se'Chan (brutal combatants), Seareth (elven snipers), Sporting Fighter (warrior who uses sports equipment as weapons), and Squad Leader</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Pantheon: 14 greater gods, 17 lesser gods, 7 new gods, 28 new clerical domains, and 12 new spells</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Thir'Galhorn: The government, magical organizations (orthas), history, and geography of the major kingdom of Canton</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Kalan Empire: An Asian-style culture of desert humanoids, with details on their government, major Houses, history, and important geographic locations</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Hellpit: Details on the culture, history, governments, and geographic points of interest of the Ebon Sand Raider, Flayed, Charod, and Morgou cultures</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Elven Nation: The lands and people of the elven nation of southwestern Canton</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Western Collective: The lands and people of the northwestern portion of Canton, including Gnomes, Targou, and a pirate nation</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Northern Isles: Lands of Kobolds, Charod, Changelings, Drakin, Shrakthraun, and numerous fey</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Northern Tip: Lands of Minotaurs, Halflings, and Dryads</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Southern Isles: Lands of Felines, Ja'kals, barbarians, Frost Giants, Drakin, Imasnorang Orcs, and Ssnrav</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Appendix A: a 4-page chart showing which orthas control access to which arcane spells</li> </ul>There is quite a lot that is disappointing in the World of Canton Main Realm Book.  I have complained in the past about companies who seem to rely exclusively on a spellchecker to do their proofreading for them; while I cannot say the same about Geeks Cubed, it's only because it's rather apparent that they didn't even bother to do that.  Spelling errors abound, as do missing words, extra words, messed-up punctuation, conflicting tenses, improper grammar - you name the error, and I'll bet there's an example of it in here.  (I even found a new type of mistake I've never seen anywhere else, the "double comma."  I've seen sentences end in two periods before - and I've seen plenty of them in this book as well - but the "double comma" was a new one for me.)  Put it this way: I'm picky enough about such things that when I read through a book, I'll jot down mistakes I see on a piece of legal paper; that way, at the end of the book, I can review the types and quantities of mistakes that were made throughout the work as a whole.  My previous record was two and a half sheets of legal paper (5 sides, counting each side separately).  Had I continued the trend with this book, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up on page 10; unfortunately, I'll never know, because I only got as far as page 19 of the book before I realized that I would be wasting too much time and energy trying to document every mistake, and just started writing blanket statements to myself about the types of errors noted.  While there's far, far too many to point out individually, I think it's only fair for me to quote a couple of sample passages from the book and let you see for yourself.  Here are a couple of choice ones: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p. 26:  "They instead get a brand of and eye some where on thier body."  3 errors in one sentence: "and" instead of "an," "somewhere" split into two words, and a misspelled "their."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p. 45:  "Gain the Mobility feat for free, as everyone is instinctively dodging out of the way of of the pint bulls wild brunning" - note the double "of," the lack of an apostrophe in "bulls," the "b" tacked onto the word "running," and the lack of a period at the end of a sentence - 4 errors in one sentence!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p. 181:  "The forest doesn't wastes nothing."  Gaah!  A double negative, and "wastes" instead of "waste" - only 5 words in the sentence, yet it has 2 different errors!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p. 272:  "The Overlords have the power of whatever they say is done."  Who wrote this, a 6-year-old?</li> </ul>These are the worst offenders (or actually, I should say these have the most compact number of multiple errors), but there are many, many more where they came from.  This book should have a statement on the front cover: "WARNING: May cause grammar teachers' and proofreaders' heads to explode."  To be fair, though, I should point out that the vast majority of the errors are herded toward the front of the book; starting with the Kalan Empire section, the error rate drops significantly, making me come to the conclusion that the various writers (5 are listed on the credits page) each probably wrote their own chunk of the book, and nobody went back and checked over each others' work (despite the fact that there are also 2 editors listed: Jeremy Aldrich and Joe Misevicz).  Whoever wrote the first 145 pages of the book ("The Kalan Empire" starts on page 146) really needs some help.Of course, that's not all that's wrong with this book.  The organization is really bad as well.  In fact, reading through the book, it seems as if it was written for the benefit of the authors themselves rather than for new readers, since nothing is organized in a coherent fashion.  You really almost need to already know about the contents of the book for it to make much sense during the first read through.  For instance, the authors use the term "orthas" over and over again, especially in the prestige class chapter, where many of the prestige classes are members of an ortha.  So what's an ortha, you ask?  That was my question too as I read through this.  I figured it was some sort of a scholarly club for wizards, but I was left guessing until page 91 - page 91! - when the term was finally explained.  On page 23 the authors make references to "the rift" and "the meteor."  What rift?  What meteor?  On page 24, the reader is forced to ask himself, "What's Thir'Galhorn?  What's the Genesis Council?  What's Tir'Cenneral?"  A few pages later, he's forced to wonder "Who or what is the Mistrath?  What's the Valraeme?  What do the words 'Valmar,' 'Kiorl,' and 'Mystreiort' mean?"  Eventually, he's liable to start asking himself "Why am I even bothering with this book?"  The fact that there is no glossary, nor is there an index, does nothing to help the confused reader; he must press on blindly and wait for the terms to be explained later at the authors' convenience.Not a whole lot of thought seems to have gone into much of the material in this book.  The deities in particular seem pretty bad.  I rather like the idea of a world where many of the deities have been destroyed (it helps set the campaign world apart from most of the others), but I have a really hard time even believing that many of these bozos were ever divine in the first place.  You know that meteor that was mentioned on page 23?  Well, it smashed into the planet of Canton and caused the Hellpit to form.  Oh, and incidentally, it managed to completely squish three major deities - Chlyndiss, goddess of forests, Ashami, god of magic, and Vendrich, the god of war - who were so powerful and godlike that they didn't even notice a frikkin' METEOR plunging onto their heads!  (Can I say "frikkin'," by the way?  I sure hope so.)  Now that's some divine awareness, huh?  Then there's Caslaven, goddess of oracles.  She doesn't strike me as a goddess so much as a spoiled brat of a teenager.  See, she really likes being the center of attention, so when she doesn't have a cool prophecy handy to tell the other gods, she...makes stuff up.  Yeah, she's really worthy of my worship, isn't she?  Then there's the ruler of the gods, the main deity taking the place of Zeus or Odin in this pantheon.  His name is Alroul.  You know how you pronounce the name "Alroul?"  "All-Rule."  It doesn't seem like a whole lot of effort was put into that name, does it?Of course, silly names don't stop with the gods.  The jackal-headed humanoid race is called the "Ja'kal."  There's a fort called "Forr'Bilter" which is pronounced "Four Built Her" - I wonder how many people it took to build that fort?  The Pharaoh of the lion-humanoid Vranir is named "Ank" (pronounced "Ankh," as in the Egyptian symbol for life - you know, the Egyptians, who in ancient times were ruled by Pharaohs).  And guess the name of one of the main rivers in the land of the cat-Egyptians?  Give up?  "The Nil."  Any similarity to "the Nile" is either a complete coincidence or - just perhaps - an indication that the authors didn't bother putting a whole lot of thought into the names in this book.One thing they did put a lot of into their names, though, is apostrophes.  There are so many of them that I almost wonder if they were getting paid by the apostrophe used (or, I don't know, maybe there was a sale on apostrophes or something).  Examples, you ask?  Sure:  Aki'Gomel, Ank'Talen, Cerri'Bolga, Cerri'Gomel, Cerri'Sacicco, Cerri'Saricco, Cerri'Teraccan, Den'Rey, Fir'Cerrnera, Fir'Collern, Fir'Conversan, Fir'Hurious, Fir'Lacrro, Fir'Naken, Fir'Natial, Forr'Bilter, Forr'Core, Grak'Ta, Hal'Germa, Jol'Goloridge, Jol'Kerrma, Jol'Laconia, Jol'Oilven, (or Jol'Olven, it's spelled each way once), Jol'Ralfhardo, Jol'Tathen, Jol'Visoxus, Jol'Vyre, Kiorl'Ceneon, Kiorl'Gorpane, Kiorl'Mialmor, L'yarit, Mar'Cideval, Mar'Karder, Mo'Kai's Pride, Mor'Krednath (or Mor'Crednath, take your pick - they're each used interchangeably), Mor'Grednath, Mor'Silvanas, Re'gin, Sar'Lithian, Se'Chan, Tel'Arthum, Tel'ja, Tel'Litium, Tel'Shadrar, Tel'Vranir, Ter'Crodinath, Ter'Mindea, Ter'Mindra, Ter'Sheltra, Thir'Galhorn, Velra'Dennon, Velra'Lengeral...is that enough to make my point?  The funny thing is, almost none of these names are elven characters/cities; you tend to expect elven words to be filled with apostrophes.  One thing you might notice about the above list of names: very few of them really need that apostrophe.  And then, on the other hand, you have a race of humanoid cobra-men called the "Ssnrav," a name just screaming for an apostrophe if I ever heard one.Okay, enough about picky stuff like proofreading and names.  How does the actual game material hold up?  There's some interesting ideas in here, but there's an awful lot of problematic stuff as well.  I like most of the new clerical domains, and was really impressed that they came up with a whopping 28 new ones!  Most of them seem fairly balanced, although some of the domain abilities are a bit on the weak side (clerics with access to the Harvest domain, for example, gain Profession (farmer), Cook, and Craft (cooking) as class skills - oh boy!).  Sadly, some of the spells were less well thought out.  For example: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Absolute Zero: If you have 100 hit points and are hit with this spell, you're dead (no saving throw).  If you have 101 hit points and are hit with this spell, you only take 5d6 points of damage.  The "Target or Area" entry in the spell listing reads "one living creature," yet the spell's description says it can affect a whole group.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bloat: It should say that a successful Fortitude save negates the spell.  Apparently, if you are of a higher level than the person casting this spell on you, you absolutely cannot be affected by it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Chill Shield: This spell should look familiar; almost word for word, it's the fire shield spell from the Player's Handbook!  ("Almost" word for word because they forgot to detail the effects of the "chill shield" version of the spell.)  Did they really think nobody would notice this?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Incinerate: Again, the spell stats say this spell affects "one living creature," but the spell description says it can affect a group.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Transmute Metal to Crystal: This spell is unique in that the name of the spell does not even appear at the top of the spell description!</li> </ul>Yeah, the spells are a bit messed up in here.  So is the spellcasting, at least for wizards in the primary kingdom of Thir'Galhorn - almost all arcane spells above 3rd level (and a few below that) are the exclusive province of wizards belonging to those "ortha" organizations I mentioned earlier.  That means that if you're a wizard, once you gain access to 4th-level spells you'd better start thinking long and hard about which school specialization you want to be shoehorned into (and which prestige class you might as well take).  Want to eventually be able to cast a wish spell?  Better sign up with the Ortha of History then, because only the members of the Ortha of History are allowed to cast that spell.  (You can try buying scrolls from members of the appropriate Ortha, but they're unlikely to sell them to non-members - except possibly at exorbitant prices - and being caught with an "unauthorized copy" can lead to the death penalty.)  So basically, for wizards, you get all of the hassles of school specialization with none of the advantages; a specialist wizard at least only has to avoid spells from one or two opposed schools of magic; ortha members are pretty much stuck with just the spells from the one school that their ortha specializes in, plus a handful of others (none of the good spells, though - they're all snatched up by the various orthas).  The end result?  In my opinion, if I wanted to play an arcane spellcaster in a Canton campaign, I'd chuck the whole wizard nonsense and just play a sorcerer.Some of the prestige classes are a bit messed up, too.  A Chronomancer has a class ability called "Time Attack," in which he forms a small ball of compressed time (draining one spell slot for each 1d6 of damage) that he can hurl at enemies.  However, there's no mechanics given for how to resolve this attack.  Is it a ranged attack?  Ranged touch?  Does it automatically hit, like a magic missile?  It doesn't say.  Detection Mages gain a "mage sight" that acts as a continual detect magic spell.  However, Detection Mages who have darkvision as a racial bonus lose that racial ability and gain low-light vision instead.  Why?  No reason is given.  It seems kind of unfair to punish some races (those with darkvision) and not others.  Also, while Detection Mages can feel magic if they pass within 5 feet of it (kind of like elves and secret doors), for some reason this doesn't work with potions, scrolls, bags of holding, and portable holes.  Why?  That doesn't make any sense.  I could see a Detection Mage being unable to sense the magical aura of an item stored inside a bag of holding, but I don't see why he wouldn't sense the bag of holding's magical aura itself.  Elementalists can gain access to a new feat, "Elemental Switch," which alters the type of elemental damage a spell causes.  Air spells, for example, now cause sonic damage.  Guess what kind of damage fire-based spells cause with this feat?  Who guessed "fire damage?"  I sure didn't!  So all of you fire elementalists out there in Canton can burn a feat to have absolutely no effect upon any of your fire-based spells.  What, no takers?  Finally, most of the Ortha-based prestige classes gain a magical tattoo on their bodies that gains more features as the character goes up in level.  At levels 1-3, the tattoo is a black silhouette.  At levels 4-6, it starts to fill in with color.  At levels 7-9, it gains color highlights and specific detail.  At level 10, it becomes a magical image and the character can move it about on his body at will.  My question: so what?  What the hell does anybody need with such a tattoo, and why was the "tattoo by prestige class levels" chart repeated in every single prestige class that gets such a tattoo?Fortunately, there is some cool material in this book as well.  (I'll bet you were wondering when I was going to get to the good stuff, weren't you?)  The Duneblade prestige class is really a cool concept, being based on a group of desert rangers whose powers stem from their specialized weapon, the "harmonic blade."  A harmonic blade is a sword with various holes in its blade, that can cause sonic effects when swung properly, and can be used to detect subtle vibrations in the earth when thrust into the ground.  Basically, duneblades become super-attuned to vibrations.  This is a very flavorful prestige class, and one unlike anything else I've seen before.  My hat is off to whichever of the "Geeks Cubed" came up with the concept.  I also liked the Flayed, a tribe of evil elves who are not drow!  These guys live for pain, both inflicting and receiving it, and their entire culture is based around pain.  The Flayed would make excellent evil opponents in any game world.  I also really like the Charod, intelligent, non-evil undead.  I just like the idea of skeletons walking around with the full knowledge of their previous lives, realizing that they're undead, but still carrying on with their "lives."  I like the Ssnrav, the cobra-men (although I hate their name!), especially since they could easily fill the yuan-ti niche left after their exclusion from the SRD.  I also like the fact that at least one of the Geeks is apparently a fan of the "Firefly" TV show (as am I, big time!), since he has a female gnome named "Serenity" as the mayor of a town not far from the "Firefly Fields."  Coincidence?  I think not!Sadly, however, Pantheonic Dreams - World of Canton Realm Book taken as a whole is not a very good RPG accessory, especially not for the $32.00 they're selling it for.  The whole thing reads not like a professional gaming product, but rather as a book that a bunch of gamers slapped together in their basement.  The fact that several of the last names on the credits page are the same (two Vandenbergs, two Miseviczes) gives the appearance that a couple of the main Three Geeks (whichever three they are; it's not evident from the credits page) got their brother or cousin or whoever to do some work on their book.  They would have done much better to get some professional assistance (they took a step in the right direction by getting Clayton Bunce to do their world map), or at least paid somebody to read through their manuscript with a red pen and mark up all of the mistakes.  (Or heck, couldn't they at least have run a blasted spellchecker?  That at least would have caught a bunch of the errors!)  While I have no doubt that the members of the Geeks Cubed company are psyched about their campaign world, they need to channel their energy into polishing their material.  They have some good ideas, just not enough - and too well hidden among the chaff - for me to give Pantheonic Dreams - World of Canton Realm Book more than a "2 (Poor)" rating.Next up for me to review is the second book in the "Pantheonic Dreams" line, this one a monster book sent to me at the same time as this book.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.</blockquote>

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