Rogue Games Tabbloid -- December 8, 2009 Edition

8 December 2009

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

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no significant typos and editorial issues. Artwork is sparse, consisting of a couple of pieces of black and white line art and two maps, one of which is of the Canterbury Isles themselves (seen on the cover image) and another of the City of Bondaea. Both maps are certainly usable as rough guidelines in play but lack a scale, a problem carried over from the original release.

On Being a Laggard DEC 07, 2009 11:46A.M. Once again, I’ve allowed my correspondence to fall behind. In my defense, things have been — and continue to be — busy for me, but I still ought to do a better job of answering email and responding to comments here. Unfortunately, today’s going to be another busy day for me, so I probably won’t get round to most of that till this evening at the earliest. So, if you’ve sent me something in the last week and I haven’t responded to it, please accept my apologies for not having done so. I’m (probably) not ignoring you; I’m just a bit overwhelmed at the moment, owing to having so many irons in the fire at one time.

The Canterbury Isles are located in a frontier area to the northwest of the main continent. While this removes them somewhat from the conflicts on the mainland, that doesn’t mean they’re idyllic. Originally the home of elves and dwarves, the coming of humans has changed the complexion of the land. Once, there was an accord between all the races, but, two centuries later, it has all but evaporated and humans and elves look set to war upon one another, with the dwarves retreating into the earth to avoid being embroiled in such madness. Though perhaps a little clichéd, the political situation in the Canterbury Isles is nevertheless one ripe with adventuring possibilities, at least if one’s tastes tend toward political and/or military adventures. Those looking for more “traditional” adventuring possibilities can certainly find them, of course, but the focus of the product is unambiguously on the tensions between elves and humans.

Thanks.

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REVIEW: Gazetteer of the Canterbury Isles

The gazetteer itself briefly details a few areas on the islands, generally giving each two or three paragraphs of information to each, with a couple receiving lengthier treatments. This is, I think, a good level of detail, especially considering the smaller focus of this product compared to its predecessor. Much more detail is lavished on the city of Bondaea, the largest human settlement. Sixty-one locations are at least named within the city and most of them receive at least a short description, although, again, some receive much more (and others much less). The map does number several buildings without keying them so as to allow referees to add their own sites within the city. I think this is an excellent idea, although many of these undetailed buildings are clustered together rather than evenly spread out the city.

DEC 07, 2009 09:28A.M.

The product provides four pages of NPC descriptions, some of them very lengthy, along game stats for the characters in question. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, good NPCs are worth a great deal to a referee when designing and running adventures and many of the NPCs here are quite well done, intelligently portrayed and suggestive of how they could be used in a game. On the other hand, many of the NPCs are quite important movers and shakers of the Canterbury Isles. That’s to be expected, given the emphasis placed on political machinations in this region of the world of Arkara, but I do think the product would have been better served if at least some of its detailed NPCs had been lower level, serving as examples of how to use the political situation “on the ground” to spark interesting adventures. As it stands, the Canterbury Isles strike me as a place where characters might

The Gazetteer of the Canterbury Isles is the first expansion of the World of Arkara setting, which I reviewed last month. Like its predecessor, it is written by Charles Rice for OSRIC, but is readily convertible to any old school fantasy RPG. The Gazetteer is a 16-page PDF, which sells for the eminently reasonable price of $2. The product uses a simple, twocolumn layout with a high text density. I found it easy to read and noted

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

8 December 2009

go after they’ve already been adventuring a while and are looking for a place to establish their strongholds and begin playing politics — not a bad thing by any means but one that will hold appeal for every referee.

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Pulp Fantasy Library: The Coming Race

The product concludes with two new character classes, both of which seem to be NPC-oriented. The first is the guardsman, a fighter variant with the chance to see through illusions, detect poisons and traps, and hear noise. He can also become immune to backstab and interpose himself between an opponent and another character, taking the damage on himself. It’s an interesting idea for a class, although I’m not certain it’ll hold much appeal for player characters. There’s also a cloistered cleric class, which is a more scholarly, less martial version of the cleric. I’ve always been fond of the idea of such a class, ever since I read Len Lakofka’s version in Dragon many moons ago. Ironically, despite its medieval inspiration, I think the variant would probably be of interest to referees to make clerics more like swords-and-sorcery-style priests than the “fighter with magic” approach of D&D.

DEC 07, 2009 12:01A.M.

All in all, I’d say that the Gazetteer of the Canterbury Isles is marked improvement over the original World of Arkara in terms of its focus and presentation. It may be a little too focused for some referees, but that’s not necessarily a flaw in the product itself. I continue to hope for better maps in future products, ones with scales if nothing else. And while I don’t mind new game mechanics where appropriate, I still can’t shake the feeling that new game rules are de rigeur in World of Arkara products, even when there’s no compelling reason for them. I’ll say again that I think there’s a lot of potential in Arkara and I hope Rice continues to produce additional expansions for the setting. I fear that the piecemeal way it’s being released doesn’t play to its strengths, namely its bare bones approach, but that may change as additional regions receive their own gazetteers and we can better see how they fit together into a greater whole.

These days Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton is best known for the opening lines of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, than for his later novel, published in 1871. Entitled The Coming Race, this novel tells the story of a wealthy traveler who, in the course of his journeys, finds himself in a vast subterranean realm ruled by a race of angelic humanoid beings who call themselves the Vril-ya. The last survivors of an even more ancient civilization, the Vril-ya derive their name from Vril, a strange substance that can take many forms and is imbued with remarkable energy. In the hands of the Vril-ya, Vril can be used either to create or to destroy and many objects are crafted from Vril, thereby imbuing them with great powers of lesser types of matter, whether animate or inanimate. In short, Vril is a master substance and the key to the Vril-ya’s remarkable underground utopia.

Presentation: 6 out of 10 Creativity: 7 out of 10 Utility: 6 out of 10 Buy This If: You’re keen on political and military style adventures and campaigns. Don’t Buy This If: You’re looking for something a place to set a low-

As described in the book, the Vril-ya are, in every way, superior to human beings. Through their mastery of Vril, they can achieve feats that others might consider magic: flight, telepathy, and healing, as well as the ability to destroy entire cities with a minimum of effort. The Vril-ya are a matriarchy, for among them the female is the dominant sex. Under the guidance of its women, the race is slowly expanding and conquering the world beneath the surface of the Earth. For the moment, mankind need not worry about them, but, in time, the narrator surmises, the Vril-ya will turn their attentions elsewhere and the even the mightiest of Man’s empires will prove unable to withstand their assault.

level campaign.

Like a lot of 19th century novels, The Coming Race is difficult to read, as its style is somewhat ponderous and its digressions into various obscure topics render it hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, it’s an important work in the “lost world” genre, one that proved quite popular in its day and influenced many later authors. So popular did it become that some 19th century occultists adopted many of its ideas, either unaware or

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

8 December 2009

unconcerned that it was a fiction. The term “Vril” is now firmly entrenched in the vocabulary of occultism and some even claim — without much evidence — the existence of a secret “Vril Society” that was involved in the rise of Nazism in Germany. Interestingly, “Vril” was also used in the late 1800s to describe a variety of medicinal “tonics,” “elixirs,” and even foods, all based on the use of the term in The Coming Race. One of these survives to this day, Bovril, which is still produced to this day in the United Kingdom. The Coming Race is in the public domain, so it should be easy to find a copy of it online. I don’t necessarily recommend it for its literary value, although it is an interesting read, but for its importance in establishing many of the convention of lost world/hollow world fiction and for its impact on pseudo-science and occultism, both of which have, in turn, affected the development of pulp fantasy, particularly in its formative years during the 1920s and 1930s.

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