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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010829" data-attributes="member: 172">World of Whitethorn: The Hamlet of ThumbleHamlet of Thumble is an adventure and sourcebook written by Ed Cha (under the Open World Press banner) and published by Mystic Eye Games. The adventure is designed for 1st and 2nd level characters, and is also designed to accommodate either a good or evil party. The book claims to be updated for the revised rules.A First LookFormat: 72 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $14.99.Art comments: Cover art by Storn Cook is well done, depicting a halfling out at night with a lanern in front of a home in the village. Interior art is black and white and features artists Lee Smith and Diego Paredes. The interior art is mostly basic line art. I liked many of Smith's peices, but some of the drawing seemed simplistic.Cartography: Cartography is by Clayton runce. The maps appear hand drawn, but clear and readable. They don't appear as slick or polished as some of the newer computer generated maps, but they are stylish, and remind me a bit of the sorts of maps you find in the front of some fantasy paperbacks.Layout: Small body text font; single spaced lines and paragraphs; overall good use of space. Some editorial and layout errors, such as labeling two different chapters as "chapter X", and some less than intuitive placement of tables (such as waiting until after one paragraph of the next section to place a table that refers to the previous section.)Style: The writing style is overall easy to read, but there were some places that lacked clarity and in which other sections were alluded to without being explicitly referenced. For example, the section of using dreams invoke DCs without naming the modifiers. You eventually figure out that this refers to a new dream skill embedded at the corner of a page in an earlier chapter. It would have been most appropriate if either the dream rules explicitly referenced the skill or if the rules were included in the skill.A Deeper LookThe adventure is intended for either good or evil characters. You can play the typical party of good troubleshooters, or you can play kobolds or mercenaries out to plunder the halfling hamlet. If you choose a typical good party, the hamlet serves as a detailed home base for the PCs, while the PCs are out to deal with the kobold nuisance in the nearby burrow. If you play the evil characters, the situation is reversed. The kobold burrow become your "local village setting" and the halfling hamlet becomes your "dungeon".And that's just about it. You add in the plot hooks and a few special encounters on the route in-between (one of which involves an ogre mage which is way too powerful for the proscribed levels, and one of which is a cameo appearance by a witch), and a little less than one half of the book is actually dedicated to the adventure.The remainder of the book is something of a sourcebook with new game material. I am used to a little game material such as the occasional new spell, monster, magic item, or prestige class, but this book includes three new core classes (with new spells), new magic items (that seem to be there more to support the classes than to provide anything you will find in the adventure), GM advice, supplementary rules, and pre-generated PCs.The new classes are the cavalier, shaman, and witch.The thought of a cavalier core class made me wince at first; I remember the cavalier class from first edition and the kit from second, and I recall them being quite abusive. Well, this cavalier is a bit more reasonable, being a basically balanced image of a "knight" type class. That said, I am generally satisfied with the fighter filling this role and don't feel such a class is justified.Then there are two spellcasting classes: the shaman and the witch. These are concepts that have seen treatment under d20 rules in several books already; how do these classes compare?Much like the existing shaman classes (by WotC, Green Ronin, and Mongoose), the shaman here has totem spirits, though this one is more strictly limited animal spirits. Unlike the other shamans, the animal spirits aren't represented by whole domains, but simple abilities, in the form of spell-like abilities or ability enhancements. Oddly, thought the book claims to be updated to the revised rules, the animal spirit ability enhancements follow the convention of the pre-revised buff spells.With respect to spellcasting, the shaman is very much like a cleric or the Oriental Adventures shaman in that it can prepare and cast any spell on its list.The witch has also seen several implementations, more than the Shaman. In fact, one such witch appears in the Hunt: Rise Of Evil world book, also published by Mystic Eye Games; this is notable NOT the same witch. The witch here has an emphasis on nature magic and enchantments and has some shapeshifing abilities, somewhat similar to the Green Ronin witch. It has some of the emphasis on potions and healing that the ROE world book witch does, but not quite as strongly.The supplemental rules include rules for mundane weapons, which sort of amused me and seemed appropriate to the adventure. I could just picture villagers defending themselves against unruly kobolds with frying pans.Other supplementary rules include some simple moral rules, dream encounters, reputation points, and special abilities for PCs.The dream rules are not of the sort you see in various "dream magic" rules sets (like in Atlas' Occult Lore or Second World Simulation's Second World Sourcebook.) Rather, it discusses running encounters in dreams, using them as foreshadowing or other means of prophecy or veiled commentary. The mechanics are limited to dream skill checks to determine recalling, interpreting, or taking control of the dream.The reputations point system involves accumulating reputation points for specific actions. You can also accumulate negative points for infamous actions. Accumulating a large number of points can provide bonuses to some charisma based skills or your charisma itself. The latter seemed like a bad idea, as it could easily be parleyed into mechanical bonuses for classes like sorcerers. Other than that problem, the biggest problem would seem to be the sort of accounting required for this type of system.The special abilities are very much like feats. The author claims that they are not feats, but I am not seeing the justification for that distinction, other than the stated purpose of helping PCs survive 1st level. They are basically high powered feats, and quite frankly, I would never allow them. If you want characters to survive first level, it seems to me easy enough to achieve by adjusting the opposition, providing additional support, or simply starting characters above first level. I find the reluctance that some GMs have starting above first level despite the oft-time benefits of not doing so astounding.ConclusionAs a quick page count should reveal, this book was more sourcebook than adventure. The adventure itself is fairly basic and allows a lot of GM latitude. The setting material is thorough and well written, but seems like a lot of work for only a little adventure potential.As stated above, the classes seem to be well enough put together, but I am not sure if they were justified. If you look at this book as an adventure, it did not seem that any figures in the adventure were important enough to justify the inclusion of a new class (contrast this with the central role of the witch in MEG's Witch of Loc Durnan.) If you view this as a sort of hybrid sourcebook, then the classes and other supporting material seem sketchy compared to dedicated sourcebooks.Overall Grade: C+ -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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