This is part 3.1 of my review of the Heroes of Adventure free TTRPG system, this time I’m focusing on the Players’ Handbook. Parts 1 and 2 are found here and here. The Players’ Handbook is organized in the somewhat unusual sequence of Game Rules-> Setting/World Information-> Making a PC-> Equipment Lists-> Crafting/Alchemy-> Magic-> Setting Pantheon-> Example Characters/Sheets. Front-loading the rules makes sense in a player-facing document, as all DMs know that players have the attention spans of espresso-addicted hyperactive squirrels on a bender…they aren’t going to sit down and read a 64-page book in order. As a reviewer and a game-runner, though, I of course will be reading this thing one chapter at a time. Moving on then: Chapter One: Rules To begin, after several pages of colorful and somewhat wonky AI art in title pages, there’s a 1-page introduction that explains the basics of playing a TTRPG and sets the mood slightly. We get a few signals (“games of yesteryear” and “semi-compatible with OSR”) that the author knows his RPG history, and then we’re off to the rules. Significant variations from tradgames we note immediately are that distances are abstracted to “range bands” in terminology but that are still 30ft increments, that hitting zero HP is immediate death/rolling on a wounds table, and most significantly that XP is awarded primarily through completing quests. A little XP trickles in from overcoming monsters (not killing per se), exploring sites, and finding artefacts or treasures. This means that play will be structured along a mission format, wandering around into fresh zones looking for the yellow exclamation points…which will be somewhat at odds with the hexcrawl language up ahead. Most of the rules are pretty standard, though, as covered in part 1…again, this is a d20 system with checks against DCs as the primary mechanic. Attributes (Agility, Command, Fortitude, Senses, Strength, and Will) are far less impactful than in most systems but get used in standard ways, and there are a few things that OSR will definitely consider sins, like social interactions leaning on Command or Guile checks. Something I always check are the combat maneuvers/grapple rules…55 words here, very simple, undoubtedly insufficient for edge cases, but I’m not going to complain. It’s a perfectly functional system. The final bit of the chapter is an example of play that shows a scenario that’ll be unsurprising to anyone familiar with a d20 system. Chapter Two: Setting …and now for a sudden shift from crunch to fluff. This chapter concerns itself with the assumed setting of the Fallen Lands, a generic continent with a Standard Ancient Fallen Human Empire, the Dying Elf Race of the Woods (Wildfolk), the Stern Mountain Dwarves (Northmen), and a very normal set of factions (The Church, The Remnants, The Druids, etc). As generic as it all is at first, I do appreciate how blank the hexmap is…the game understands what’s special about a TTRPG campaign. It’s not about a weird or wild set of hooks, the stories that emerge are personal and special not because of the setting they’re in, but because it’s “us” who are in them. So generic, wish it sparked more creativity, but I don’t count that against it too much. Chapter Three: Heroes So at this point we’ve finally caught up to where the players flipped forward to about fifteen seconds after cracking the book, we’re now looking at races and classes to make the Player Characters. It’s not immediately intuitive in all ways but there are helpful examples of character creation sprinkled throughout the chapter. First, the prospective player picks a race (or rolls for it). Nonhumans have a limit to only 1 allowed per party...they’re generally much more powerful at the outset than humans, but take twice as much XP to level as humans. Options are:
This is a game built for the current year, so of course there are also rules for creating a character’s background, but more interestingly there’s also a fairly involved set of rolls in the backgrounds to have a history that gives benefits or detriments to the character at the outset, up to gaining a level or dying, in a nice nod to Traveler. Alright, let’s try this exercise and make ourselves a character, shall we?
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AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
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