A four-legged pigeon is the size of an apatosaurus, and in combat a display of feathers rises behind the creature’s head. (…) At will, the giant pigeon can shape-shift into a giant yellow spider.

If that sort of thing — along with 7′ tall parrots who are always on fire and 12′ long blue jays without legs — sounds interesting and useful to you, then you’re going to love Isle of the Unknown. If it doesn’t, however, then you’re probably going to be struggling to find much utility between its covers.

Isle of the Unknown presents an interesting contrast to Carcosa (Geoffrey McKinney’s other deluxe hexcrawl product from Lamentations of the Flame Princess). Unlike the bland and boring key entries for Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown — which describes an island roughly 150 miles wide — is generally specific, clever, and creative. Unfortunately, it presents a very different set of problems which, nevertheless, cripple the product for me.

First, there are the monsters. Although occasionally spiced with some interesting abilities, they really are giant pigeons all the way down: Pick a random animal. Make it bigger than normal. Randomly determine the number of limbs it possesses. Now, randomly combine it with another animal; light it on fire; have it ooze pus; or give it a random spell-like ability. Ta-Da! You’ve re-created the vast majority of the monsters in this book.

Second, although in a hex-to-hex comparison Isle of the Unknown is much improved compared to Carcosa, in totality it ends up being just as bland by over-saturating its themes.

Let me explain: I think themes are very important in creating interesting hexcrawl or dungeoncrawl keys. Themes give a location its identity and make it memorable. Without a proper theme, a ‘crawl turns into a random funhouse. But if a theme is too narrow and relied on too heavily, then it becomes repetitive. (For example, enchanted vales which remain perpetually in springtime regardless of the weather outside simply stop being magical when there are something like a dozen of them scattered around the island.)

In the case of Isle of the Unknown, McKinney describes the scope of his key like this:

To aid the Referee, only the weird, fantastical, and magical is described herein. The mundane is left to the discretion of the campaign Referee, to be supplied according to the characteristics of his own conceptions or campaign world. Detailed encounter tables (for example) of French knights, monks, pilgrims, etc. would be of scant use to a Referee whose campaign world is a fantasy version of pre-Colombian America. Similar considerations led to the exclusion of most proper names.

Couple important things to understand about this: First, it’s untrue. The key includes a lot of “mundane” detail (most notably all the major communities on the island). Second, it’s nonsense. You can’t say “if I don’t give this guy a proper name, then it’ll be easy to slot him in as a pre-Colombian American” and then describe him as “a robust and jovial man of middle years with blue eyes and curling reddish hair and beard (…) he loves nothing so much as the hunt, save perhaps his dozen Scottish Deerhounds”.

What McKinney really means is that 95% of his hex key is going to be broken down into three categories: Monsters, Magical Statues, and high-level Magic-Users/Clerics who all live by themselves as bucolic hermits.

And on an individual level, most of this content is at least interesting. But if you attempted to actually run a hexcrawl using this hex key, the result would be incredibly boring due to its repetition: “Magic statue, bucolic hermit, bucolic hermit, giant parrot, magic statue, humanoid bluejay, magic statue, magic statue…”

So, ultimately, I’m forced to conclude that the book is not very useful in its intended function as a hexcrawl. However, it may have some value as an inefficiently organized bestiary and the like… but only if you like giant, flaming parrots.

In closing, it must be noted that, once again, Lamentations of the Flame Princess have created a book which is both beautiful and useful. Although completely different in its aesthetic from Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown is nevertheless gorgeous: Excellent illustrations, rich lay-out, high-quality paper, durable binding. (My only caveat would be that the map of the island, while very pretty, does not clearly identify the terrain type in each hex. From a utility standpoint, that’s a fatal flaw in a hexcrawl product.)

Style: 5
Substance: 3

But having just finished the fifth book (Martyr) I’m afraid I’ve hit the straw that broke my back:

Robin Lefler’s mother was kidnapped by an alien race called the Momidiums? Her MOM was kidnapped by the MOM-idiums?

No. Sorry. After a book filled with clumsy puns, you have officially crossed the line from “eye-rolling” to “Cheap Xanth Knock-Off”. And I want no part of it.

Normally I’m fairly skeptical concerning computer roleplaying games. Of all the games I have ever played only the Ultima series of games ever really succeeded. It succeeded because Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series, designed a series of games which slowly became more and more adept at modeling the real world. Because people behaved the way real people do (with varying daily schedules, speech patterns, and personalities), because no problem possessed a single solution (with a set of rules behind world interactions, allowing you to blow a door up if you can’t find the key to it), because there was more than one course which could be followed (with a deep, intriguing plot with sundry subplots and side plots included), because you got to really care about your traveling companions. For all these reasons and more it is easy when playing the Ultima series of games to simply let yourself slip into the role of the Avatar. Does it allow the same breadth as face-to-face gaming? No. But it does allow roleplaying, and it does give you some things which face-to-face gaming cannot. The Ultima series acknowledges its weaknesses and exploits its strengths. It may not be better at what paper-and-pencil roleplaying can do, but it isn’t a paper-and-pencil roleplaying game so I respect these games for doing what they do – you can’t expect a computer game to do the same things a traditional RPG does; nor should you try.

Now, here comes the surprise. Final Fantasy VII is a highly successful game, despite the fact that it fails to do almost everything which the Ultima series does so well. The world of FF7 is contrived, the plot is almost completely linear, and multiple solutions do not exist in most cases. But FF7 does do one thing right: It presents characters who you can care about, characters with distinct (although sometimes cliched) personalities. As an almost direct result FF7 succeeds; and it helps that although the plot is linear, it is a very interesting and dynamic plot. You shouldn’t approach FF7 so much as a roleplaying game as a movie in which you have some partial control over the main character.

THE GOOD STUFF

I’ve already pointed out a couple of things. The main strengths of this game are, in my opinion, the plot and the characters – which are really intertwined with each other. There were points in this game where I felt genuine sadness and genuine joy as the plot and the characters developed. This, more than anything else, was what made the game very addictive to me.

Another major strength of the game lies in the graphic department. The visuals are highly anime-influenced, imaginative, and effective. Definitely a treat, especially the magic spells.

Finally, this game has a fantastic interface. It was originally designed for the Sony Playstation before being later translated onto the computer (which is where I played it). Everything is controlled through a series of intuitive menus which are accessed from the numeric keypad. A template to lay over the keypad comes with the game, but you won’t need it for long – the controls are easily learned and, once committed to memory, the entire system is easily memorized. Players will find the combat system, in particular, to be highly entertaining – it’s abstracted, but this allows for a great deal of strategic planning which I find difficult to obtain in other games where the chaos of the battlefield usually means I have no chance to control what my characters are doing.

This is a fairly powerful combination for a game to have: Intuitive, powerful gameplay; interesting characters; compelling plotline; and excellent graphics all in the same package? I should already have you sold. Why aren’t you out buying the game yet?

THE BAD STUFF

I’m a strong proponent of not judging a product on things which it is not attempting to do. Obviously you would never critique a hammer by saying “it’s not a screwdriver”, but in the area of creativity (such as novels, music, television, film, roleplaying games, or computer games) it is all too easy to slip into critiquing a product because it is not the type of product you happen to like. So, on that level, I don’t think FF7 has any serious weaknesses: It sets out to do exactly what it excels at accomplishing.

That being said, I should reiterate that this is not a “roleplaying game” in the sense that you are given a role which you are then allowed to control with broad parameters. In this game you are given a role, but the course along which you are allowed to guide that role is fairly proscribed when all is said and done. But saying “this game sucks because you aren’t allowed to control the characters” is similar to critiquing, say, Babylon 5 because you weren’t allowed to control the actions of Sheridan. FF7 resides somewhere between mediums (such as television or film) where you aren’t allowed any control over the characters and the mediums (such as roleplaying) where you are. Its important to judge the game on that ground, but I think it fair to warn off those who won’t find that type of entertainment, well, entertaining.

CONCLUSION

Buy this game. ‘Nuff said.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Company/Publisher: Squaresoft / EIDOS
Originally Posted: 1999/02/17

This review was first published thirteen years ago almost to the day. That’s really kind of weirding me out. Interesting how times turn, though: I’ve actually been replaying FF7 on my PS3 the past couple of weeks.

I know it’s cliche for people to say SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER was the first time they cried because of a video game. It wasn’t mine (Ultima VII: Serpent Isle beat it by half a decade), but it remains one of the most memorable moments in any fictional medium for me. There is a very fine art to putting me on rails in a video game and yet getting me to completely invest myself in the character: The experience is more akin to acting than to roleplaying, but when it succeeds it can be very, very powerful. And in FF7 it succeeded brilliantly.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Thirty years before the Rise of Camelot there was born to the Duke of Tintagel and his wife, Igrayneh, twin daughters. One was named Morgan and the other was named Megan, the youngest of four sisters. Seven years later the Duke would be killed in battle while his nemesis, Uther Pendragon, came to his wife’s bed – mystically enchanted by the magician Merlin so as to assume the appearance of the Duke and so beguile the devoted Ingrayneh. In triumph Uther married Igrayneh and from their ignoble union was born Arthur.

Arthur’s youth is well known, but the fate of his half sisters is less so. Following Uther’s rise to power they were sent away from their mother and into marriage. Morgan was married to a northern lord. Megan was sent across the sea. Both, as if bound by the ties of birth, studied magic, earning for themselves the title of “Le Fey”. But where Morgan studied the black arts, Megan studied the white.

They would not cross paths again for forty years. Arthur, in triumph, had built the mighty walls of Camelot. The bitter, warped mind of Morgan had returned to him and conceived by her own half-brother a child. The child, called Mordred, manipulated and aided by his mother, would, in turn, return to Camelot intent upon its destruction. They would have succeeded, destroying mankind’s last best hope of escape from a dark age, had Megan Le Fey not returned from beyond the sea and joined her might with that of her brother Arthur to destroy the forces arrayed against Camelot.

In the years which followed, Arthur would lead the reunited Knights of the Round Table across much of the Known World. The world of today is one in which learned men have recaptured the ancient glories and the mystic arts have revealed to the common man the deeper mysteries of the world. Fey and man alike exist in mutual acknowledgment and brave new frontiers lying beyond the Mountains of the East, the Ocean of the West, and the Desert of the South lie yet to be explored.

William Boulle first ran for national office in 1956 as Adlai Stevenson’s running mate. Although they were handily defeated by the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, Boulle distinguished himself as a strong campaigner – particularly in the early primary states. Boulle would run unsuccessfully in 1960 against John F. Kenendy and then retire from politics in 1964 when his senatorial term ran out. In 1968 Boulle emerged from retirement to once again attempt to capture the democratic nomination. His domestic and anti-war policies caught the imagination of the people and he proved immensely popular at the ballot box. Tragically, however, Boulle would be assassinated immediately after declaring victory in the California primary by Sirhan Sirhan. Bobby Kennedy would go on to win the nomination and, then, the general election against Richard Nixon.

Once in office Kennedy would bring the war in Vietnam to a quick, successful, diplomatic conclusion before the end of 1971. This course of action easily won him a second term of office in 1972. Historians agree, however, that Kennedy’s most important achievement was in embracing his brother’s vision and expanding the American space program. By 1976, when he had left office, man had stepped on Mars for the first time and the plans for orbital and lunar stations were well on their way to completion. Without his influence it is doubtful that mankind would have reached the stars as quickly as they did, or established the Outer Colonies by the end of the millennia.

Next: Megan Le Fey, Second Sister of King Arthur

By the time he was twenty-five Aurelieus had established himself as a philosophical genius, composing several important works which survive to the modern day. More importantly, however, was his ability as a military leader, because the year was 430 B.C. and the first skirmishes in the Peloponnesian War were just beginning. Under his adept leadership (using tactics which would later be immortalized in his Art of War) the Athenian forces quickly overwhelmed those of Sparta, cementing Athens preeminence in Greece for centuries to come.

Aurelieus died in 398 B.C., but he left behind him a unified Grecian state based around the power of Athenian rule. Within a hundred years Greece had come to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. In the third century, the Greek general Pyrrhus would invade the burgeoning Roman state. In reference to that campaign, the phrase “Pyrrhic Victory” has come to signify tremendous success, as Pyrrhus and his forces crushed any and all resistance. The only block to Athenian hegemony over the entirety of the known world was in the city-state of Carthage. Greece would eventually crush Carthagenian resistance during the Punic Wars, despite the tremendous success of Hannibal (who succeeded, through the use of his elephant-mounted troops, at coming to the very walls of Athens before being driven back).

Next: William Boulle, The Man Who Would Be President

My entries didn’t make the cut, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for ‘em. So I present them here for what passes as posterity…

The year is 1932. Germany’s government is being crippled by debts incurred from the Versailles Treaty. The people, starving and unable to find food, turn desperately to a populist leader who can give them someone, anyone to blame. In a startling uprising at the polls they elect this leader, and his party, in an unprecedented landslide. Within a few short weeks this charismatic, influential man has solidified his grip on the center of German political power. The world pauses and catches its breath, waiting to see what course of action this man will take. His name is… Hans Adolpho.

Adolpho was born in 1899. He fought in the Great War and was sickened by the violence and death he saw all around him. After the war he travelled to Austria and then Italy, returning to Germany in 1925. There he joined the Einheit Party (German for Unity) and quickly rose through the ranks. His political message was simple: The German people should look to themselves for where the blame lay in their plight. Only by coming together in unity could they hope to save themselves. In 1932 he was elected Chancellor.

In 1935 he peacefully reunited Germany and Austria, forming the United Austro-German States. Using threat tactics in the Rhineland he succeeded in breaking the debt burdens imposed by the Versailles Treaty, then withdrew the troops and busied himself with rebuilding Germany. By 1941, when the Japanese attacked America at Pearl Harbor, Germany was a booming industrial economy who willingly assisted America in defeating Japan by early 1943. Adolpho’s last action before leaving office in 1952 (he was re-elected to the national office half a dozen times) was to form the Allied Force of the Springtime Invasion of Stalinist Russia, wiping Communism off the map by the end of the year.

Next: Aurelius, Emperor of Athens

As those of you who have seen the Black Book Beta know, I’ve generally eliminated the rules for spell components: Distinguishing exactly which spells require verbal and/or somatic components is an almost perfect example of the kind of non-essential detail that Legends & Labyrinths is systematically eliminating in order to provide you with a simplified and streamlined engine for your imagination.

I made an exception, however, for material components: Spells like identify and raise dead are partially balanced by the expensive material components they require.

And then, since I’d been forced to include the rules for material components anyway, I thought I might as well go ahead and include all of the material components.

But as I revisit the Grimoire for its final editing, I’m beginning to suspect I may have made a mistake. So what do y’all think? Should I keep all of the material components for the sake of consistency? Only keep the ones with a significant monetary cost? Get rid of all of them? Bring back all the spell components? Invent a fourth category of spell component and just toss it in there for kicks?

(What would that fourth category of spell component be? Hmm…)

When the original, limited edition of Aeon (The Game Which Would Become Known as Trinity) came out I snatched up a copy – I loved that hard black plastic cover and the slick interior design at first glance; and I’d been hearing good things about it for months.

Perusing it I was definitely not disappointed (as anyone reading my review of the game elsewhere on RPGNet can attest). About the only serious problem I had with it was that, although it had a fascinating setting which was obviously going to develop in a fantastic manner, not enough information was given about certain elements of the game to make me feel comfortable about running it immediately.

One of the specific problem areas I sited were the “lost colonies”: Several years before the start of the game Earth had lost contact with five colonies located out in deep space, and we were informed that only “just now” was contact being re-established. The game was even hyped in some places as “taking back the stars”. The problem was that although we were told that contact was being renewed even as the game begun – and that a primary plot suggestion was for the PCs to go out to those planets – absolutely no useful information was given about what they were going to find there. Did the mining colony under attack by a hostile alien species get destroyed? How did the rebellion on another turn out?

After posting my review here at RPGNet I became vocal about this problem on the various Internet forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists. By various people I was told that I could “do whatever I wanted” since things hadn’t been defined. As I pointed out at the time, this missed the whole point. Obviously Andrew Bates, Trinity‘s designer, had a plan of how these events would unfold – and I wanted to be lead down that path and tie his meta-story into the specifics of my campaign. Unfortunately there was no way for me to proceed at the moment because if I – for example – sent the PCs to the mining colony and had them discover that it had been completely destroyed, only for it to turn out later that it had not been destroyed and would play a major role in the future development of the Trinity universe, I would be royally screwed and I, and my group, would be unfairly excluded from using the unfolding developments.

There is a narrow line between “not giving everything away” and “giving enough clues so that we don’t misstep” that the basic Trinity game had overstepped. All of that being said, Trinity Field Report: Extrasolar Colonies not only vindicates my conviction, but also solves most of my problems.

First, it vindicates me because these twenty-five pages are exactly what I thought was lacking in the main rulebook – and the quality of material found here is fantastic. Extrasolar Colonies takes the format of selections from the actual reports of the jumpships that traveled to the distant colony worlds, and it is used to drop hints and tantalize us very effectively. A direct measurement of how successful this product was lies in the fact that when I reached certain places where “data decay in transit” had caused the message to become unreadable I would occasionally yelp in frustration (so I’m a dork, but it’s an indication of the success of the product – that nobody will deny).

“Wait”, you might be saying, “if they’re still omitting data which is so important that you’re yelping because you don’t know it – isn’t that still a problem?” Not at all, because this time they only excluded information which will end up advancing the meta-story. However, they gave me enough of the broad, general details that I can still take my PCs out there and explore the colony worlds. The trick is to give me enough information so that I don’t end up stepping on the toes of future products, but not so much as to ruin the surprises. It’s a balance which the core rulebook failed to maintain at places, but which this product nails perfectly.

Second, it solves most of my problems because of the price of this product. At $4.95 for 25 glossy, full-color pages these Field Reports are excellent impulse buys and a great format. I can even hand this stuff directly to my players because it’s not only presented as in-world source material, but it’s source material which doesn’t reveal any “deep, dark secrets” (although it may hint at them). Any product which is cheap, has high production values, has great source material, and is useful for both the GM and the players gets automatic high ratings in my account of things for obvious reasons.

I do have a remaining problem: I’ve never liked the tendency of game lines to become “supplement oriented” – where the game, instead of focusing on one or two core products from which you can optionally branch off as you need, instead has no central core and, instead, expects you to pick up at least 95% of the supplements produced for the game. Although the Field Reports are cheap and seem to be targeting the specific areas I noted as lacking in the core sourcebook (besides the colonies I also mentioned aliens, which is the subject of the other Field Report released to date) I am not particularly happy that it was necessary for me to buy them in the first place (although I probably would have anyway).

However, that particular problem is with a minor concern I have regarding the game line as a whole – a concern which, so far, has been outweighed by the general high-level of quality material being released for it. This product, in itself, is excellent not only on the merits of its concept, but on the merits of its implementation. Hey, at $4.95 how can you go wrong?

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: John Snead
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-771-0
Originally Posted: 1999/01/24

These books really were the perfect impulse buy. Back in 1999, my go-to gaming shop was Phoenix Games on Lake Street in Minneapolis, MN. I remember the Field Reports fondly because at $4.95 a pop they were like full-color candy to an RPG addict like myself.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Forest Encounter – Alex Drummond

I like fantasy architecture. I stud my worlds with impossible structures weaved out of dream-stuff and fancy. And the cyclopean trees of elven forests are among my favorites. It would have been almost unthinkable for Legends & Labyrinths not to include an illustration like this… and, thankfully, Alex Drummond delivers something that is both fanciful and feyish; beautiful and mysterious.