This is part 5 of my review of Heroes of Adventure, a work of biography as much as a review of the system. I’ve chronicled one nameless man’s polished heartbreaker product, going through his style, his mathematics, his hero design, and finally his passion for procedural generation. Now to cap it off, I’m going to look through his Monsters Compendium, the requisite bestiary for this thing, before finishing with my conclusions. I’m certainly not going to trawl through every single monster, if you enjoy that content that’s a different podcast. First, I’ll make a note again about AI art. I’m sympathetic to the view of “death to all AI art products”, both in terms of paying artists, and in terms of having coherent illustrations with soul. What AI does excel at, though, is making horrible-looking nasty monsters. Zero artist budget that this book has, still every single monster has art, weird-handed and spiky. It adds definite color to what would otherwise be a rather dry monster manual. Since I know the author loves his modularity I was interested in seeing how he builds his monsters, and needless to say there are tables available. Monster subtypes (roll), descriptors (roll), five sizes (roll), threat levels (roll), and abilities (roll our first d100, neat), all good. The ability tags are detailed in a huge table and all make sense (poison, web, slow, lucky, regenerate, etc), the old d20 monster feats basically. Which is interesting, because what is completely ditched from the process is the highly regimented hit dice building for monsters…we have a little table that gives a default set of size/hp/AC/skill die (to-hit bonus)/damage for monsters level 1-7, but there’s no formula for how these are derived. Which makes me worry that it’s gut-based at a point, that’s tough for the home hacker. It’s a wonderful set of specialized tools you have here but you left out the general ones, like a screwdriver. An organizational note; humanoid NPCs creation was actually handled back in the Referee’s Guide including stats for leveled-up NPCs. Then we’re off to the monster listings. Format is tight, packing 164 monsters in this relatively slim 64-page booklet; most pages have four monsters per page, with each entry having its compact statblock, a short flavor blurb describing it, an AI-generated little illustration, and a 1d6 “Hooks” table that basically describes how a party is likely to come upon the critter(s). This format is good, the content is…a little uneven. Sometimes the hooks look useful, but at other times it is six different variations of “you bumble into this monster”. I do like that the statblocks include “HARVEST”, which are the monster bits that can be harvested for potions and spells, that’s grisly but cool. As usual, I first flip to the humble ogre (actually, I click the link…the PDFs all have linked tables of content, good show). It’s…a lot tougher than I’m used to, but still gives us a look at a bruiser-type enemy. Level six, with a towering damage resistance 3 (that’s going to more than double its HP), a nasty d12 attack bonus, and power attack, which gives it advantage on its damage rolls. The only thing it has got going against it is the “Slow” trait, which gives it disadvantage on initiative checks. Big tough fighter, that’ll be a hard fight until your heroes are near its level, but as ever it is charmable or able to be ensorcelled, just hope your first level mage’s d20+d4 beats the defensive d20+d12. Going through the lists, you have all the usuals…elementals, giants, dragons, ogres, goblins, gnomes, hags, kobolds, harpies, ghosts, ghouls, lizardmen, golems, animals, dire critters (giant animals), demon types, manticores, zombies, etc. Biggest notable omission is orc but beastmen are present and can fill the niche (art is basically Warcraft Orc). I am disappointed by only three dinosaurs available. There are a few cryptids in the mix too, no big surprise. There is an entry for bear and an entry for “mutant bear”, which is…weird. There are eight human types (Adventurer, Bandit, Commoner, etc) but given they’re just differentiated by the worn gear I’m not sure if the value there. Final note, there are some entries for structures, which is interesting. There aren’t a large number of “new” or nonstandard monsters, but looking at what is different:
Conclusion So with all these books wrapped up, what do I think about Heroes of Adventure? Well, first of all, I’m impressed with the thing as an individual accomplishment. The Nameless Designer put in a vast amount of effort in making some extremely professional-looking books for a notably complete TTRPG game system, all with full-color art, good layout, and a good grasp of the fundamentals of what is needed to use these 192 pages to run years-long campaigns. All of this is done using his own computer and some Midjourney cycles, which is darned impressive. Moreover, he’s not trying to grab a cash from all this, given this system and all the adventures he wrote for it too are completely free on itch.io, with Creative Commons licenses. It’s a singular creator’s gift to the world, offered just in the hope that it’ll be appreciated and shared, and I think that is extremely laudable. But besides all that Mrs. Lincoln, how about the play? I think, ultimately, the Heroes of Adventure Fantasy Adventure Game is…fine. Can I imagine playing it and having fun? Of course. Could I imagine running it for a year of progress over a 1-10 campaign, discovering a compelling emergent story with my friends? Yes, if I could find four others interested in the indie system. But unfortunately, a dark secret that all reviewers of TTRPG products must admit is that these games are one of the most inherently fun and enjoyable activities known to mankind. It's actually quite difficult to not have fun with a good group of friends, eating pretzels, drinking beer, and throwing dice. Heroes of Adventure is a perfectly cromulent game engine to use for this. Unfortunately, the question any new TTRPG system released in the year 2023 must answer is “why?” There are approximately infinity game systems available now, for every conceivable level of complexity, difficulty, or depth. There are all manner of action resolution systems, dice schemes, and running procedures. Every conceivable subsystem, hack, and minigame has been released, with prices varying from “here’s my Google drive link” to “Kickstarted for $2,000,000”. It’s a glutted market, even on the relatively small platforms like itch. Even the free aspect isn’t something to really tout anymore, in this day and age paying money for a TTRPG product means that the consumer either wants a physical product, or else is making the conscious choice to donate money to creators in the hobby. For goodness’ sake the internet bullied Hasbro Inc. into releasing D&D Creative Commons. There are a few innovations here, but I’m not fundamentally seeing any game experiences that can take place in Heroes of Adventure uniquely. I think anyone wanting to pick this up a run it will have a good time, but I wouldn’t say that it’s worth the effort of a 192-page dive, plus the immense inertial resistance that is overcoming “but why not 5E?” As an aside, the funny little term “semi-compatible with OSR” needs a moment of thought. Heroes of Adventure seems to tip more to “tradgames” (think D&D 3, Pathfinder, and other d20 derivatives) to me. Characters, while admirably fragile and not the optimization-pits that 3.P can be, are generally more mechanically distinctive than those in your favorite B/X clone. Even more than that, XP being designed to reward completing quests and adventures first of all is very different than “gold=XP” as the primary leveling and advancement mechanism. The focus on hexcrawling is great, but to be honest that’s more “imagining things while looking at Outdoor Survival” than actual old school play focus. Could you play Keep on the Borderland with this system pretty easily? Probably. But it’s not really what I’d call OSR. All that being said, maybe it is worth checking this out. I’d say it’s to support independent creators, but this guy doesn’t even allow donations, it’s not pay what you want. There are a couple subsystems that I really enjoyed here, most notably alchemy and religion ones…so there are some bits of value. Worth paying $49.99? No. But it’s free, and I admire the gumption here. Certainly, Heroes of Adventure should be held up to shame cash grabs like Shadowdark or glory hounds like Cairn where someone takes their rules hack and markets it to the high heavens, the professionalism and love that went into this is just embarrassing for those products. I do hope some groups out there are enjoying this well-crafted heartbreaker…I just hope for their sakes they won’t run into an ogre early on.
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AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
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