An Elvish Endeavour

Long ago, at the beginning of the 13th Age, war raged between the Elves and the Dwarves. The Elf Queen commanded the magic of the wild and the fey capable of defeating her people’s enemy, but could not truly control it. Liris, a nature goddess, voluntarily underwent a ritual to contain this magic by binding her into a vault. The ritual was a success and it bound both the magic and the three elven districts—Greenwood, Darkwood, and Lightwood—to the Elf Queen’s own Thronewood. With the magic, the Elf Queen helped withstand the Dwarven assault and as time passed, the relationship between the Elves and the Dwarves eased and they became allies. Yet the power which Liris helped contain and control and so save the Elves corrupted her and drove her to attempt escape and wreak revenge upon those she blamed for her imprisonment—even though it had been voluntary upon her part. The Elf Queen and her greatest spellcasters from all three districts offered a Key up to perform a great ritual which would ensure that the vault imprisoning Liris would remain closed. Then the Keys were returned to their respective districts and placed in three mystical towers, hidden from those who did not know the means or routes to find them. More recently, the Elf Queen senses that the ritual keeping the vault containing Liris is weakening and needs to be performed again. For that, she needs the three Keys from each of the three districts, but relationships between the Elf Queen and the three districts were not they once were and many of those who readily knew the locations of the three towers have long since died. As the magical bindings on Liris’ vault weaken, her dark influence is being felt across the Thronewood and beyond as shadows and sorrow deepen. With her strength dedicated to withstanding Liris’ influence and preparing for the forthcoming ritual, the Elf Queen needs agents she can trust to find the three mystical towers, assail their heights (or depths), and return in time for her to perform the ritual which will save her kingdom.

This is the set-up for Elven Towers, an adventure for the Champion Tier for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. The adventure requires access to both 13 True Ways and the 13th Age Bestiary to play and mostly obviously, will hook in Player Characters with Icon relationships with the Elf Queen or her allies. Options though are suggested for involving Player Characters with other Icon relationships, even ones so adverse to the Elf Queen that they would be prepared to betray both her and the efforts of their fellow adventurers should the need arise! Several ways of handling the interaction of the Player Characters with Court of Stars are offered, each of varying complexity or detail. The simplest is to run it as a group test, but alternatively, the Player Characters can attend the court and get involved in its activities and events, fully interacting with the various courtiers and hangers-on. There are plenty of NPCs detailed here as well as some nice means of handling the effects of Liris’ growing influence and the Player Characters being unsuccessful in their interactions with the Court of Stars. This includes increasing the amount of time it takes to get information, temporary penalties to saving throws, and temporarily delaying the increase of the Escalation Die in combat.

Once the Player Characters have worked out where the three Keys are located, they can set out to each of the locations. Consisting of the Tower of Memory in Greenwood, the Tower of Dreams in the Darkwood, and the Tower of Fate in the Lightwood, they can be tackled in any order, but they all adhere to the same format—a montage travel scene followed by three or four encounters between the Court of Stars and each tower, and each tower consists of four encounters before a finale. The encounters, inside the tower or outside of the tower, are essentially big set pieces, each different, but themed along the lines of the region the Player Characters are travelling through and the tower they are trying to reach. The format provides room for the Game Master to insert encounters of her own, if thematically appropriate, but to fair, the given encounters will be challenge enough. The Tower of Memory and the Greenwood are home to the Wood Elves and are forest-themed with the Tower of Memory being a giant tree. The Tower of Dreams and the Darkwood are home to the Dark Elves—or Drow depending upon the Game Master’s campaign—and the Tower of Dreams may be entered via a tree, but is actually in a spire protruding down into the Underworld. Many of its encounters veer between dreams and nightmares. The Tower of Fate is in the Lightwood and is home to the High Elves, with the Tower of the fate ascending to the Overworld. Many of the encounters in the Lightwood and the Tower of Fate relate to oracles, fate, and destiny.

The design of the scenarios as a series of big set pieces, means that the author gets to be inventive. For example, in the Tower of Memory, the Player Characters have to race across a rope bridge high above the forest floor, the missing slats of the rope bridge hidden by illusion, harassed by a Pixie knight and a Drunken Sprite Swarm; on the way the Tower of Dreams in the Darkwood, an ambush involves a Player Character being dragging back and forth behind an enraged wild boar and then back again after confronting equally enraged Owlbears, the whole encounter threatening to collapse into chaos; and a surprisingly creepy encounter in the Tower of Fate in the Lightwood in a cave of birthing pools left over from the Elves’ first creation of the Orcs a very long time ago, that should really resonate with any Half-Orc Player Character or Player Character with Icon Relationships with the Orc. The final encounter atop each tower always includes facing agents of one or more of the other Icons and there are stats and suggestions on how to tailor the forces of each Icon to each encounter. This allows the wider involvement of the Player Characters’ Icon Relationships, including both those with Icons who oppose the Elf Queen and those who might have interest in limiting or disrupting her power and influence.

Not all of the encounters in Elven Towers involve combat, though most of them do or will result in combat. Answering riddles or sharing secrets are a common feature, and is making trades. The sharing of secrets involves a roleplaying upon the part of the players, whilst riddles some deductive reasoning, though rules are given for skill checks and rolling dice for those players adverse to riddles. Trades will often see the Player Characters give up minor magical items, Revives, even Icon Relationship rolls—temporally!—and more. All of the encounters include advice on staging them and if necessarily, scaling them up to make a tougher battle.

Finally, the Player Characters will return to the Court of Stars with the three Keys—or not. The Player Characters may not necessarily gain all three Keys to Liris’ vault and the fewer Keys they have, the more difficult and dangerous the ritual that Elf Queen has to perform, becomes. The Player Characters get invited to a big party before the ritual to celebrate their success in obtaining the Keys and an even bigger party if the ritual is a success. The Player Characters are, of course, invited—or is that expected?—to help defend the ritual, which leads to a big boss, end of adventure-level fight. There is scope here too, for the Player Characters to betray the Elf Queen, if that is what their Icon Relationships demand. How that plays out is down to the Game Master, but if the betrayal succeeds, or the ritual as a whole fails, there could actually be a change in one of the Icons! However, if the ritual succeeds, there are rewards aplenty, including powerful magical items, the Elf Queen’s favour—which mostly means she will use them as her agents again, no matter what their Icon Relationships are, and even gaining or improving an Icon Relationship with the Elf Queen.

Physically, Elven Towers is well presented. The artwork is excellent and individual encounters are all easy to use and reference. However, some of the maps are a little dark and murky; the text requires a slight edit in places (one monster inflicts over three hundred points of damage, when it should be just over thirty); and an index would have helped. There are lists with page numbers for all of the monsters.

Elven Towers is an adventure that the Game Master will want to run if she has an Elf amongst her Player Characters or a Player Character with a strong Icon Relationship with the Elf Queen. The adventure is harder to run without either of these, but once involved in the adventure, Elven Towers is an entertaining, often exciting affair, with plenty of opportunities for roleplaying alongside the big, sometimes bigger, fights. Elven Towersis a grand quest in traditional fantasy and fantasy roleplaying style, well designed and executed with plenty of variation that reveals some of the secrets and nature of the Elf Queen and her realm.

—oOo—

Pelgrane Press will be at UK Games Expo

from Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

Monster Metropolis

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters takes you right into the home of one member of the thirteen Icons of the Dragon Empire of the 13th Age—the Blue, a Blue Dragon also known as the Blue Sorceress. Once it was the city of Highrock, which protected the Midland Sea and the empire from invasion, but four centuries ago it was invaded and reduced to ruins. So, it remained until one hundred years ago, when the Blue Dragon took the city for herself and rebuilt half it, making it a haven within the empire for all of the monsters who would not normally be allowed to reside within other cities. Even as she allows the Goblin Market—famous for its deals, steals, and buyer’s remorse—to operate within the walls of Drakkenhall, an Ogre Mage to head her secret police, and numerous cults to practice their dark faiths in their profane temples—yet denying access to the city by any Orc, the Blue Sorceress serves as the Imperial Governor of Drakkenhall under geas from the Emperor and the Archmage. The question is, has the power of the Blue been constrained within the limits of Drakkenhall by making her part of the Dragon Empire’s hierarchy, or is this part of the Blue Dragon’s plan to subvert the empire from within? Ultimately, this is not question that the supplement will answer, but like other supplements in the line, it is one that is explored and multiple answers suggested.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is a supplement for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. Designed for adventurer and champion-tier campaigns, it explores the various different aspects of a city infested by monsters, run by monsters, and constraining monsters. It is both radically law-abiding and radically criminal, fastidiously good mannered and rudely brutal, a half city built on the shattered remains of an old city, the ruins hiding dungeons and secrets which stretch from the former city walls into the depths of the city harbour waters. Alongside this, ordinary folk of the Dragon Empire get by and know how live alongside the turbulent nature of the city’s other, often unpleasant or difficult inhabitants, and in between New Rat City which provides a safe, if expensive underground route into Drakkenhall, the docks of Saltside where the lowlifes encountered are likely to be tourists as much as other visitors, and the Goblin Market, where getting fleeced is just part of doing business, there are points of goodness and light. The most notable of which is Pleasantville, an old Highrock city block in the rubblehood run by the Halfling, Uncle Papa Brother Knuckles, which is clean and minty fresh, covered in flowers and vines, and even has a supply of good drinking water, as well as the Scales enclave, a place of business barely tolerated by the Blue despite its normality, but such places are far and few between, and very much at odds with the rest of the city.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is not a conventional city guide in that it does not explore the city as a whole. Rather, it focuses on particular aspects of the city, with each chapter written by a different author, but it begins with an overview of its power brokers and pawns. It starts by highlighting the huge divide between the manors and estates of the wealthy and the surrounding shantytown ruins, little details such as the city’s odd status and high criminality making food supply and trade highly irregular, that many inhabitants of the city have to swear an oath of fealty to the Blue Sorceress, and instead of having a rat problem, Drakkenhall has an ooze problem! It divides its manors and estates—its ‘Estates of Significance’—between ‘Estates of Decadence’ and ‘Blood Houses’, connecting them to cults, demonic salons of science and discovery, fashion trends, and best of all, a social season with Enchanted Dance Cards each of which tracks the holder’s points with each of the Three. Suggestions are included too for the other Icons, but primarily it is with the Black, Blue, and Red Dragons, and the bearer can possibly earn one-time relationships with each one of them. There are even Fashionista Oozes which accompany their owners to parties and often react badly to fashions and styles their owners hold in poor regard and mechanical barber-surgeons like the Cut Monkey and the Amputation Mechanoid, which partially fill the void left by the lack of ready healing in the city. There are rules too for prosthetic limbs, so if a Player Character needs healing, the party had best keep a healing spell or two in reserve lest one of the automatons comes cutting… Much like the rest of Drakkenhall: City of Monsters, this opening chapter explores various aspects of the city, but in places, such the ‘Estates of Significance’, it leaves the specifics up the Game Master, and so in comparison, there are elements of the chapter that are not as interesting as the rest of the supplement.

‘Welcome to the Rubblehood’ hits some of the highlights of Drakkenhall’s ruins, for example, Hobtown, the fortified compound where the Jagged Company, a Hobgoblin mercenary unit drills daily, or the Float Royale, a pirate haven which floats just offshore, where the best beverages in the city can be found and the worst magical items in the empire go to be lost, whilst the bay itself is protected by a sleepy Dragon Turtle, who just happens to have a tame Kaiju-Shark at its beck and call. Every entry, as with the rest of the book is accompanied by a numerous adventure hooks and links to the Icons. There are more of the latter here than in other chapters, there being thirteen per Icon. ‘The Docks of Drakkenhall’ begins where the previous chapter left off at the shore’s edge, Saltside, the docks that are very much everyone’s idea of what dockside dives should be. There are Drakkenhall touches though, like the Dybbuk Inns, where guests get drugged of a night, their bodies possessed and put to some nefarious task, only to wake up with a terrible headache, but none the wiser or the Drowned District, an underwater remanent of Highrock just off  the coast, where the ghosts of the district’s former inhabitants, known as Lamenters, silently wail on the seabed, when they are not marching on the shore, likely with the aid of the Liche King. Accompanying these are quick and dirty rules for sea travel in the Dragon Empire, essentially handling them as travel montages as per the 13th Age Game Master’s Screen & Resource, whilst the Isles of Doom in the Midland Sea, Omen, which constantly spawns living dungeons that attack ships, and Necropolis, home to a massive army raised by the Liche King to threaten local shipping, are worthy of chapters of their own.

‘The Goblin Market’ is the standout chapter in Drakkenhall: City of Monsters. It describes the structure of the market from its outer Stalls to the deepest sections of Rock Bottom via the Underways; its own argot, a Goblinoid gang cant; and scam after scam, starting with all trades having to be in the market’s Blue Imp coins rather than Imperial coins, meaning currencies have to be exchanged, and then planting items on customers and claiming them to be stolen, drugging unsuspecting tourists and not only relieving them of their valuables, but delivering them ready to fight in the Fighting Pits, escalating a spilled drink into a demand for satisfaction which can only be settled in the fighting pit, and even demanding visitor’s fingers—especially if they are an Elf (such sweet meat)—as compensation for intruding on gang territory. Parts of the Goblin Market shift, but mostly it remains in Rubble City, run by the feudal mafia-like Organisation of goblinoid gangs, the most notable of which are the Rippers who operate the Double Draught speakeasy. This complete with gambling pits, a stage where even the most famous of the Dragon Empire’s entertainers have performed, impromptu blood brawls are set up, and a Halfling chef—so the food is good. Located in the depths of Rock Bottom, the Double Draught is going to be somewhere that the Player Characters are going to have to work to get to and get into, but once there, there are plenty of adventure hooks and ongoing plots to keep them coming back.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters includes lots and lots of adventure hooks, but one thing it lacks until ‘Smash and Grab’ is a sense of an overarching plot that might keep the Player Characters in the city and crossing back and forth from one location to another. What ‘Smash and Grab’ suggests is a big scavenger hunt, leading to a treasure hunt. The ‘Society of Monster Archaeologists Searching for Hoards’—or ‘SMASH’—a secret society whose members possess a degree of immunity in a city of criminals. This is because members have a reputation for being tough, even mad, having delved into the deepest, darkest, most dangerous parts of Drakkenhall and the former Highrock in search of treasure and returned. Can the Player Characters join? Of course, they can! They just have to find the headquarters first, which is a hunt in itself, then when they have, they have to prove themselves worthy. This provides reasons for longer term play in Drakkenhall as well suggestions as to where to look for treasure worthy of SMASH. There are ideas too, for the Player Character who has SMASH as part of his Background during character creation.

Penultimately, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters presents some ideas as to why exactly, the Blue does not allow Orcs into the city. None of the four options are simple, but all four of them point to the deviousness of the Blue Sorceress. They are useful if the party includes an Orc Player Character. Lastly, there are stats for the Blue Dragon as the Blue Sorceress, though whether this is who she is, is open to conjecture…

Physically, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is well written. However, the map of the city is not particularly detailed, so not as useful as it could have been, and the artwork does vary in quality. 

As written, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters does not feel like a coherent book. There is no overview which might pull all of the book’s content and city description together and its treatment of the city is scattershot. That though is by design. Drakkenhall is far from a cohesive city, raucous and rowdy, lawless until someone steps out of line, order of a sought being maintained by fear, dread oaths of fealty, and the Blue Sorceress’ secret police and Kobold force of the Glinting Legionnaires. The result is that a Player Character is never going to quite get a true grasp of what the city is like and how it really works, and even if he did, there is no knowing quite what would be different if he left and came back. The Game Master is supported with plenty of new threats, a handful of new magical items, and too many adventure ideas and hooks and more to mention, so that each time a Player Character comes back there will be a new scam he has not run into, a new plot to get tied up in, and more. It also means that from one visit to the next, the Game Master never has to keep all of the city in mind, but can rather focus on particular locations and how the Icons might be involved. There are elements which Game Master will need to develop, but with half a city reduced to rubble, there are plenty of places to put them.

Ultimately, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is a criminally chaotic—to a point—and an evilly entertaining city to visit for a 13th Age campaign. Probably more than once. However, full of malevolent magics and would be marauding monsters, with a government lamentably legitimate, and almost everyone ready to swindle almost everyone else, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is probably not somewhere to stay for long.

Superbly Subterranean

Book of the Underworld is a sourcebook for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. It is a guide to the realms below the Dragon Empire. Not the dungeons, but further below, in the realms known as the Underworld, riddled with twisting tunnels and networks of caverns; home to lost seas, lost races, and lost gods; rife with dark secrets and darker kingdoms; and below that? Here can be found the Gnomish school of wizardry, the Arcane Academy in the Burrowdeep Warrens where the graduates swear to never reveal its location upon pain of a curse that changes from graduation year to graduation year and where all sorts of magic is studied away from the eye of the Archmage—even necromancy! Forge, the Dwarven City of Memorials to the lost ancient civilisation of Underhome which stretched across the Underworld and which the Dwarven King still claims as his—along with much of the Underworld. Drowfort, a magnificently dark fortress sphere suspended by webs amidst a circular cavern, where factions of the Drow dedicated to the Elf Queen, She Who Spins, and both without ever revealing their allegiances co-operate to impose martial law on the Underworld. The Caverns of Lost Time in the Hollow Realm where whole regions of both the Overworld of the Dragon Empire and the Underworld, as well those of previous and lost Ages have been swallowed and preserved. Below that, glimpses of Underkrakens might be caught, seas of chaos writhe and surge, gods repose in their great catacombs, and something stranger still might be found—possibly the great architect of the Living Dungeons which burrow up the Underworld to the Overworld… And he has a beard, wears glasses and Hawaiian shirts, and speaks with a Midwestern accent, that would not be the strangest thing in Book of the Underworld.

The Book of the Underworld is a slim volume of ideas, places, monsters, advice, lists of thirteen things, and more, all designed to take a Game Master’s campaign even deeper underground. It is by no means a definitive guide to the Underworld, but it contains more than enough content and ideas to fuel multiple campaigns. Some locations its fleshes out in detail, such as Forge, Dwarven City of Memorials with its multiple districts and NPCs, or Web City, the stalactite city home to two cults—the Cult of She Who Spins in Darkness and the Cult of He Who Weaves With Joy—and innumerable spiders and drow, a fantasy ’noir setting strung across the ceiling of a great cavern, whereas locations such as the Dark Temples where the darkest of gods hide from the light and the Salt Mines of the Manticore, a sprawling salt mine used in ages past as a prison with one entrance pit in manticores were free to feed on the salty inmates, get just a paragraph or two. Whilst the former are more ready to play and easier for the Game Master to bring to the table, the other locations are more ready for her input and development of her own ideas and content.

The Book of the Underworld does require access to a number of supplements for 13th Age. In addition to the core rulebook, the Game Master will need the 13th Age Bestiary, 13th Age Bestiary 2, and 13 True Ways, whilst 13th Age Glorantha, Book of Ages, Book of Demons, and others will all be useful. It divides the Underworld into three layers. These are in descending order of depth, the Underland, the Hollow Realm, and the Deeps, which correspond roughly to the three tiers of play in 13th Age—Adventurer, Champion, and Epic. As with other supplements for 13th Age, it ties in the thirteen Icons and their relationships with the Underworld, which of course can be used to spur the Player Characters into descending below either on their behalf or to stop their plans. It throws in too, several fallen, vanished, and refused Icons, such as the Explorer from the Book of Ages or the Gold King—a former Dwarf King turned undead from 13th Age Bestiary 2. It introduces the Calling, the alien desire which subverts an existing icon relationship and compels an adventurer to travel further into the Underworld…

The supplement also discusses the roles which the underworld can take in a campaign, from a source of evil or monsters to a realm which is either hidden, prosaic, or weird, if not a mixture of all three, as well as using as the setting for a quick delve or a longer sojourn across an entire tier of play. Rather than suggesting that the Game Master map out each and every tunnel or cavern, it gives guidelines on how to use travel montages and include the players’ input and descriptions to detail and enhance the various locations their characters come across to make it interesting and involving, but shies away from focusing upon the day-to-day tracking of resources such as food, water, and sources of light. It adds a few treasures, such as the Drow Poesy, made of flowers plucked from Hell and the Bezoar of the Caves, former magical items belonging to adventurers chewed up and spat out by carnivorous caves, as well as numerous new monsters, but the latter tend to be specific to their locations.

The two races to receive the most attention in Book of the Underworld are the Dwarves and the Drow. Both are well handled and nuanced, but the interpretations of the Drow are the more interesting, if only because they are not portrayed as the out and out villains they often are in other settings, but rather accorded multiple interpretations which the Game Master can pick and choose from. Also known as the Silver Folk, they are primarily divided between those loyal to the Elf Queen and those loyal to the Cult of She Who Spins in Darkness. The realm of the Silverfolk lies below and extends beyond the Queen’s Wood. Numerous options for obtaining access are given, such as via ancient fairy mounds or sigils spun by spiders, and the Silver Folk might be divided into family clans of extreme specialists, whether that is of duellists, torturers, mushroom farmers, spider herders, artists who paint living portraits, and more; operate as the Elf Queen’s secret police; be exiles from the Queen’s Wood above; or reside in cavern dens as drug-addled fiends and hedonists, or laboratories where alchemy is practised as an art. The other Drow locations detailed in the Book of the Underworld, Drowfort and Web City, are located below in the Hollow Realm and are likewise accorded options of their own from which the Game Master can choose—as with much of the supplement.

Elsewhere, the Book of the Underworld provides lists of ways to get into the Underworld—including via the Abyss for Player Characters who want to make their delvings all the more challenging and for the Game Master who wants to make use of the Book of Demons, an explanation of how druidic earthworks work—above and below ground, the Grand Dismal Swamp—complete with Troglodytes and Fungaloid monsters, and not one, but four kingdoms of the Mechanical Sun! There really is a lot for the Game Master to play with in the pages of the Book of the Underworld. Plus it need not be just for 13th Age. The ideas and settings in this supplement would work equally as well in a lot of other fantasy roleplaying games too.

Physically, the Book of the Underworld is well written, but not always well illustrated as the artwork varies widely. It presents a wealth of ideas and options as well as particular locations, some already developed, others awaiting development upon the part of the Game Master, that she can bring to her campaign. Or indeed, actually turn into a campaign! The Book of the Underworld literally adds depth to 13th Age and content that a Game Master can mine for scenario after scenario and campaign after campaign.

Abysmally Amazing

The Book of Demons brings an enemy that everyone hates to 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. The Abyssal enemies of the 13th Age crawl and skitter beneath the earth of the Dragon Empire, seeking to break onto the surface, where they can claw out hellholes where the weird rules of the Abyss below now apply, ready to fight everyone and destroy everything! Of the thirteen Icons, the Archmage wields his might magics to banish them from whence they came, the Crusader trusts only himself to take his righteous sword to slaughter every single one of the unholy creatures, the Great Gold Wyrm died to save us from destruction at their hands, and the Diabolist cavorts on the edge of the Abyss as she both steals their power and helps them up into the world. From between the Crusader, the Great Gold Wyrm, and the Diabolist steps a new agent—the Demonologist. Somehow the Demonologist is connected to all three though the Paths they are known to follow. To the Crusader via the Path of Slaughter. To the Great Gold Wyrm via the Path of Flame. To the Diabolist via the Path of Corruption.

The Book of Demons opens with a whole new Class for 13th Age, the Demonologist. This is a complex character Class much in the vein of the Druid Class. It is first and foremost a spellcaster, and it is mostly a summoner. Except when it is not, and that depends on the path selected by the player. Two of the paths, the Path of Corruption and the Path of Flame, definitely are, and their adherents will be summoning demons which they will send against their opponents, knowing that the summoned demons can stray from the Abyss only for so long. Unlike the Druid or the Necromancer, the Demonologist does not have to spend time controlling the summoned Demons. They will simply serve him once summoned. However, Demons have a half-life and lose Hit Points at the end of every round when they vanish. The Path of Slaughter is different. Its adherents are Demonic Warriors, leaping into melee where the followers of the other Paths do anything to avoid it. They wield heavier weapons and wear heavier armour than those of the Path of Corruption and the Path of Flame do.

In terms of spells, those of the Path of Corruption and the Path of Flame are highly thematic, as obviously are the demons they can summon. So those of the Path of Flame include Burners and Hellhounds, whilst those for the Path of Corruption include Demon Toads and Hopping Toads. Those of Path of Slaughter are all about frenzy, bloodlust, and the like. Many of the spells involve curses, and these and others are highly conditional. This adds to the complexity of roleplaying the Demonologist and is thus more demanding of the player. Of the three Paths, a Demonologist is free to choose from all three or specialise in one more than another, or completely specialise in one. The first two of these options enable a player to mix and match Talents and spells, and there is a guide for multi-classing the Demonologist as well. Of course, there are some notes on playing the Class in conjunction with the Tielfling Race, which of course, a natural fit.

The description of the Demonologist takes up roughly a third of The Book of Demons and is thus for the player to read. The rest is entirely for the Game Master’s eyes. This begins with discussing the nature and uses of the demon in play. Essentially, they are what the author describes as the ‘temp agency of evil’, as there is something pleasingly utilitarian about their use—they can turn up anywhere, serve anyone, and so on. They are not constricted by environment as a great number of other monsters are. There are suggestions as to giving them distinctive features and patterns of speech, but the best feature of this chapter is devoted to showcasing how demons are liars—and notoriously so. This is done in exactly the way it should be for 13th Age, Icon by Icon, and in each case, this is an interesting and different set of opinions upon the Icons, if not necessarily true.

The Book of Demons adds a way to change the ecology of the Dragon Empire with Hellholes. Created either through arcane means or ripped through the fabric of reality at its weakest, and although they come in many forms, they nearly all contain a gate to the hells or the Abyss, often hidden. A Hellhole is initially weak, and until it stabilises, this is the best time for someone—such as the Player Characters—to strike and close it. Once it stabilises and is fortified, a Hellhole can be ferociously difficult to close and destroy, and often the response to a stabilised Hellhole is to monitor and prevent any Abyssal forces raiding too far from it. Six example Hellholes are described in detail. These are scaled from First and Second Level all the way up to Eighth to Tenth Level, from Adventurer to Epic Tier. All include a description, hooks and perils to get the Player Characters involved, and a list of the demonic denizens particular to each Hellhole—and that is in addition to the generic Demons given earlier in the book.

The Hellholes begin with ‘The Ratwood’, sat over a tiny crack into the Abyss out of which the weakest of demons squeeze themselves and make bodies for themselves out of the local vermin. They just need a spellcaster to open it properly… Where ‘The Ratwood’ is a small encounter, the ‘High Heath of Unending Woe’ is much bigger and wider, a seemingly endless and timeless blight with fluctuating boundaries which is impossible to get out off, but can be crossed. Described as one big peril, it comes with a wide selection of random encounters , including flying sets of teeth, memories (?) of the Icons (to tie in with the Player Characters’ relationships), convulsions which warp the Hellhole, an avaricious demonically transformed slug who wants out, and more! Abandoned by higher demons and thus ruled by a surprisingly lowlier demon, ‘Claw Peak’ is a mountain on which there can be upslides and sidelides as well as landslides, whilst the ‘Floating Market’ is a Hellhole in the Eastern Marsh where mortals mix and trade with demons and the Diabolist keeps the peace through a system of randomly distributed tokens which indicate absolute innocence. Of course, the right tokens can be traded and stolen… Divided into various districts, the ‘Floating Market’ is constantly changing and the whole ‘city’ moves on an army of arms on its underside, and presents somewhere where the Player Characters will have to interact with demons rather than slaughter them and the Demonologist’s knowledge and reputation can really come into play.

Similarly, ‘Red Crag Castle’, once home to the Vocnort family which was said to enjoy questionable taste in both pleasures and alliances, is also faction riven. Four factions of demons—each very different in character and each with their own random demon abilities, now vie for control of this Abyssally-infested dungeon, whilst surviving members of the Vocnort family want the castle for reasons of their own. Plus there are Paladins who also want to storm the castle. Although not mapped, the castle’s locations are described in detail so that the Game Master can run them as is, or expand them with further locations or even map them out in true dungeon style. There is scope here for numerous missions into Red Crag Castle, to take advantage of rival factions, if not ultimately clear it out. Lastly, the Abyss explodes into the Overworld as a pillar of hellfire, ripping up chunks of the land around it and flinging them into the air to orbit around and even into the fire as Abyssal magic collides with Celestial magic. Beset by burning cloud castles, crazed Celestials, earthquakes, skyquakes, and spellquakes, and besieged by armies of the Crusader and a Host of the Overworld, this is the ‘Hellgout’, and populated with demons happy to co-operate given the array of enemies they have to taunt and fight. This is a big bold scenario which will see the Player Characters island-hopping further up and around the pillar of fire. Each of the individual islands is given enough detail for the Game Master to expand on, some requiring it more than others. Otherwise, ‘Hellgout’ has a fantastic sense of scale.

Two Icons make their homes in Hellholes and ‘Citadels of the Icons’ details both of them. These are First Triumph, home to the Crusader, a city-citadel under permanent martial law where demons bound by the deleterious effect of the Iron Spike do all of the drudge work and the Diabolist’s fortress in the Hell Marsh. Exactly what form her fortress takes is unknown, but everyone, including the other Icons and her cultists has an opinion, probably based on rumours or lies. Where the description of First Triumph is appropriately written in stone—since the Crusader is a lawful icon, that of the Diabolist’s fortress is given a range of options that the Game Master can choose from or adjust as is her wont. Of course, the Game Master is free to ignore or change the description of First Triumph as the text suggests, but the style and tone is entirely appropriate to both.

Physically, The Book of Demons is well written and decently illustrated, although the art styles vary widely. In terms of content, The Book of Demons brings all of the chaos of demons into play for 13th Age like never before, presenting them as both an enemy that everyone loves to hate (obviously) and an enemy which can be summoned and manipulated (if they are not manipulating you, that is). Its six Hellholes can be used together to build a campaign around demons or individually slipped into an existing campaign for a little or a lot of demonic danger. Plus, the Demonologist is a new Class for the player who likes a challenge in terms of both mechanics and roleplaying, the latter because no one trusts demons and certainly no trusts anyone who has dealings with them!

The Book of Demons is a damnably good source and scenario book for the 13th Age Game Master who wants to take her campaign to the edge of the Abyss—and back again!

An Onslaught of Options

One of the great features—amongst many—of 13th Age is how it handles characters, making each Player Character unique, emphasising narrative gameplay elements, and upping the action. Published by Pelgrane Press, a wide range of character Classes were presented in both 13th Age and 13 True Ways, but one of the aspects of 13th Age is that Player Characters can only advance to Tenth Level. What this means is that campaigns are relatively short and new campaigns can be begun relatively easily and relatively regularly, so having a wider range in terms of character choice is always useful. Now whilst presenting new Player Character Classes has not been the focus of titles from Pelgrane Press, it does mean that there is scope for other publishers to provide a Game Master and her players with such options. This is exactly what Kinoko Games has done with Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, which added the monstrous Abomination, the destiny-shaping Fateweaver, the mind-bending Psion, the berserking Savage, the dashing Swordmage and the dark-souled Warlock to 13th Age.

Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths, the second supplement from Kinoko Games also expands the number of options available in 13th Age. However, unlike Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, it does not add any new Classes. Instead, it goes back to the fifteen Classes presented in 13th Age and 13 True Ways—the Barbarian, Bard, Chaos Mage, Cleric, Commander, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Necromancer, Occultist, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard—and adds to them, sending each of the Classes in new directions. Essentially each comes with a host of new Talents and Class-specific features, but that is not all to be found in the pages of Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths. The supplement also includes new rules variants, new Races, and a whole new starting point for any 13th Age campaign, all of which will work with 13th Age, 13 True Ways, Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, and of course, Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths.

Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths starts with a host of new rules, clarifications, and variants. The new rules include Advantage and Disadvantage, exploding dice (rolling and adding again when the highest number on a die is rolled), and increasing or decreasing dice step-by-step, and to be honest, none of these rules are new if you are aware of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and the Old School Renaissance in general. However, they are new to 13th Age and the new Class options in Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths makes use of them. The variant rules provide an alternative means of players rolling the abilities for their characters, suggests granting a single ability increase at every Level rather increases to three every few Levels, using Icon relationships as a bonus in skill checks, and amusingly, ‘The Plushie Rule’, in which a player who brings a stuffed toy to the table to represent his character’s familiar, receives a bonus from the Class’ usual list. Lastly, ‘Taking Risks’ allows a player to double down after failing a roll. Instead of opting to accept the consequences of the failed roll, but still succeed and thus ‘Fail Forward’, a player can ‘Take a Risk’. If he succeeds, then there are no consequences, but if he fails the roll, the consequences are bad—bad! This might be Lasting Pain which causes disadvantage on all Saving Throws; a Hand Injury, which causes disadvantage on all Melee and Ranged attacks; and so on… For the most part, this means that ‘Taking a Risk’ is a more personal option for a player and his character and a player can avoid the party-affecting consequences of the usual Fail Forward option.

Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths provides thirteen new Races—Elemental Souls, Half-Ogres, Leomars, Nyama, Orcs, Pixies, Ratkin, Shadowborn, Star Children, and the Vorhai. Elemental Souls are the descendants of followers of the Four Elemental Lords who were defeated by chromatic dragons in a past Age and infused their remaining power into them so there are Elemental Souls of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Half-Ogres are simply Brutal and can attack at Disadvantage to inflict double damage; the feline and proud Leomar have a greater resistance to fear; Nyama are shapeshifters, able to change into wild animals; Orcs are full-blood Orcs, dangerous because they have a greater chance of inflicting a critical strike, at least initially in a battle; and Pixies can fly, their weapons do poison damage, and they can shrink any one normal-sized object down to Pixie-size. Ratkin are rodent-like humanoids, known for their love of family, and their Stench which is strong enough to daze anyone nearby; the Shadowborn are humanoids native to the Underworld, able to slip into the shadows to escape a fight; a Star Child has come down from the stars and is simply blessed, able to freely choose a single at-will spell to cast, typically once per day; and the Vorhai or Greyskin are a race of magically created warriors from a past Age, who possess a single Adventurer-Tier Talent from the Fighter Class. Not all of these new Races are going to interest a Game Master or her players, but they do lend themselves to some interesting possibilities. How about an all Orc, Half-Orc, and Half-Ogre campaign built around serving the Orc Lord? Or an Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, and Pixie focused campaign built around the Elf Queen or the High Druid? That said, simply throwing these thirteen into the mix with those from 13th Age and 13 True Ways is likely to dilute their abilities and those of the other Races. Perhaps it might be better to mix and match, build a campaign around them, and so on?

Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths also provides rules for mixed Race Player Characters and a selections of new Feats—both General and Racial. The former include ‘Bribery’, ‘Heirloom’, and ‘Icon Lore’, whilst the latter include ‘Ancient Grudges’ for the Dwarf, ‘Human Ingenuity’ for the Human, and ‘Pixie Dust’ for the Pixie. There are a lot of feats here and certainly the Racial feats could have been listed by Race rather than alphabetically, as they would have been easier to choose from. The bulk of Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths though, is devoted to the new Talents and features for the original fifteen Classes. Each one comes with some suggestions as to the play style that each new set of Class options offers. For example, ‘Bouncer’ provides a Barbarian brawler with a series of wrestling moves, Bulwark enables him to fight with a shield and sword like a Viking or Saxon warrior, ‘Giant Blood’ lets him be a classic two-handed sword wielding barbarian, whilst ‘Primal War Dance’ turns his battle rage into a defensive dance and ‘Raging Storm’ unleashes lightning damage upon an opponent with every melee attack! For the Cleric, there are over thirty new Domains, from ‘Air/Storm/Thunder’, ‘Animal/Beast’, and ‘Archery/Hunting’ to ‘War/Leadership’, ‘Water/Sea/River’, and ‘Winter/Ice’, each with accompanying Feats and spells, whilst the Druid undergoes a revision. It takes the six Druid Talents from 13 True Ways and replaces them with circles—Circles of Decay, the Fang, Feysong, the Land, Life, the Moon, and War—each of which has its own Talents, spells, powers, or flexible attacks. For example, the Blighted Stench Talent means that the Druid is followed everywhere by the smell of decay, and is granted a bonus Necromancer spell and the Blighted Stench spell, which inflicts poison damage on two nearby enemies. Combine this with other Talents like ‘Festering Maggot Aspect’ or ‘Life Leech’, and spells such as Summon Giant Bug or Creeping Thorn Ivy, and what you have is whole new way of playing the Druid Class, one that is just a little weird and definitely creepy, almost a Class unto itself—and that is just one of the six circles, each of which different in character and tone. This revision of the Druid is possibly one of the more complex options in Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths, but nevertheless, delightfully thematic.

The Fighter has always been a Class to make interesting, and whilst far from uninteresting in 13th Age, in Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths the Class has even more options to make it interesting and flavoursome. ‘Air of Authority’, for example, enables a Fighter to hush a room or a mob, ‘Lock & Load’ turns a Fighter into a fast shot with a crossbow, and ‘Ultimate Combat Reflexes’ enables a Fighter to act any time in a round! The Class is accompanied by a list of new Manoeuvres, like ‘Get a Read’ which grants the Fighter’s player a question about his opponent and ‘Staredown’ which sends the Fighter into the face-off with an opponent, which either can lose. Similarly, the Necromancer is given a host of Talents and spells, such as ‘Bloodseeker’ which turns the Necromancer’s origins into vampiric, and enables him to detect heartbeats of the living, heal by drinking a cup of blood, and empower his next spell with double damage, whilst his ‘Disgusting Display of Depravity’ Talent can strike fear into his opponents! Perhaps the most fun spell will be Zombombie, which summons a zombie which can detonate with a putrid explosion! Elsewhere the Chaos Mage gets entertainingly silly spells such as Frogsplosion, which creates two exploding frogs, and Princessification, which turns a target into an Elven princess, whilst the Wizard goes back to the classic version of the Class with its magic and its many, many spells being built around the eight schools of magic—Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation. However, there are only spells for seven of the schools, Necromancy being the province of the Lich King and a whole other Class. Every Class has options upon options, multiple ways to play them like this.

Penultimately, Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths presents the ‘Novice Tier’. This is a means of exploring the Player Characters’ adventures before their careers really begin, essentially taking them from Level Zero through the three mini-steps of the ‘Novice Tier’ up to First Level, and covering everything from Backgrounds and One Unique Thing to Levelling Up and Encounter Design for Novice Characters. The latter feels somewhat short, and it would be nice to see some adventures written for this mini-Level. Lastly, the new magical items consist of new musical instruments for the Bard, and does include some silly items like the Battle Didgeridoo and Lightning Kazoo.

Physically, Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths is tidily presented. The book is decently written, but the artwork does vary in quality. Much of the artwork is decent, but the black and white artwork is rarely as good. Some of the colour artwork does veer slightly towards the ‘Chainmail Bikini’ school of art, but only a few pieces.

13th Age is a roleplaying game with plenty of options in terms of character choices, and that only grows with the addition of 13 True Ways. Essentially, thirteen different Classes, each with direct ways to play them. Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, the previous supplement from Kinoko Games, only added to that with six new Classes. Which of course, is no bad thing, because having options—and having more options—is always good. Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths is a whole book of new options, one that returns back to the official character Classes. With just ten Levels of play in 13th Age, the choices in the core rules and 13 True Ways may not necessarily stand up to too much repeat play, but a supplement like Dark Alleys & Twisted Paths, incredibly rich in character options, provides the means to invigorate an existing campaign or build a new one.

Broken and Brilliant

Redfield Valley is so utterly bucolic and idyllic that there is almost no reason for anyone to go there. Unless of course, you grew up there or you have recently come into property there or you are returning the ashes of a friend to his home there or a fugitive you are hunting for is said to have taken refuge there or you are investigating rumours that the valley might actually be full of treasure or… Or whatever the reason, you and your fellow Player Characters are visiting Redfield Valley, best known for its rich, red soil, Vakefort—the dullest outpost in the Imperial Army, and that is it. Redfield Valley really is nothing to write home about. Oh perhaps after visiting the villages of Crownhill and Appleton, the inhabitants might come to you with some help dealing with some Goblins who have kidnapped several of the locals, but that is about as much excitement as you would expect to find in Redfield Valley…

And then KABOOM! And fazacck! And fire and really sharp, eye-stinging glitter (not kidding) and… the sky falls on Redfield Valley.

Now, the green, bucolic landscape of Redfield Valley has been turned into a blood red mud churned hellhole, littered with debris that crackles with strange energy from a city, whilst the Old Tusk promontory to the south is a steaming caldera, towers lie on their side, cracked and open, roads in the sky appear to climb to nowhere, and a dungeon appears to spiral into the sky. None of this was there before the fall… What has happened in Redfield Valley? Who unleashed the devastation and what secrets will it reveal?

This is the set-up for Shards of the Broken Sky, a campaign for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. Designed to take Player Characters from First Level to Seventh Level, it is a sandbox campaign set in 13th Age’s Dragon Empire. It supports different motivations and play styles, is designed to support Player Character relationships to the setting, and which really could be played more than once—though with different Player Characters—and each time their motivations would make the campaign very different in tone and flavour. It is also both brilliant and broken.

What is going on in Shards of the Broken Sky—and this explanation is clearer and more straightforward than any given in the book, and something that the authors should have led with, but failed to do so—is that Redfield Valley hides an incredible secret. It is actually the cover for an ancient prison and repository for all of the ancient secrets and dangers that Dragon Empire—and in particular the Emperor and the Archmage do not want anyone to know about or to get hold of. In Ages past, the Archmage hid these secrets behind wards which prevented access to them and built Vantage, a flying city-fortress-prison, to monitor, control, and protect the wards. Neither the wards, Vantage, or the roads that led up to it could be seen from the ground unless you had permission and knew the way. Now, something or someone has caused Vantage to come crashing down to earth, depositing an apocalypse upon Redfield Valley, causing death and devastation, weakening the wards it was built to maintain, and over the course of Shards of the Broken Sky, failing and so unleashing and revealing all of the secrets and threats Vantage was intended to hide.

Over the course of the campaign, the Player Characters will constantly find themselves delving into dungeons that are not dungeons and dungeons that are not dungeons which play with perspective and geometry and time. They are almost bookended by a pair of tombs, one full of traps inspired by Grimtooth’s Book of Traps, the other full of the deadliest of traps that the Old School Renaissance has to offer, and which would ordinarily never ever otherwise appear in an adventure for 13th Age, but also include an Area 51-like bunker which served as a repository of magic; the Shattered Spine, a wizard’s tower fallen and broken on its side; a valley of dinosaurs, all ready for the Orcs to raid and die in order to grab the gargantuan beasts as mounts; Magaheim, a golden city suspended over a volcano inhabited by demons and Dwarfs and their offspring, where the Game Master can play all of the noir storylines amongst its corruption and bureaucracy; the Winding Gyre, a floating maze which spirals into the sky and will see the Player Characters leaping up and down from one lump of rubble to ruin, again and again; and a living dungeon where the Oozes which may not be what they seem.

There are amongst them some incredibly inventive scenes. They include the Corpse of Kroon, dead and falling, but frozen in time, which the Player Characters can scale again and again in order to steal the magical items he implanted in his body; a wizard’s sanctum frozen at the moment of its destruction, its fixtures and features flung into the air around which the Player Characters must manoeuvre to fight; and a warded and party-frozen battlefield with the feel of the trenches of the Great War. All of this is fantastic and it is where Shards of the Broken Sky shines—and shines brilliantly. Not just because of these scenes and the inventiveness of these dungeons, but also because the campaign can be played in different ways. It is a mystery in which the Player Characters investigate dungeon after dungeon to determine who attacked Vantage and brought it down on Redfield Valley? Is it a heroic rescue mission in the Player Characters work to save the inhabitants of Redfield Valley and prevent the dangers warded by Vantage being unleashed upon the wider Dragon Empire? It is a campaign of survival horror, in which the Player Characters must survive and fight the dangers unleashed by the fall of Vantage? Is it a classic heist, in which the Player Characters raid the aftermath of the fall of Vantage for loot and glory? Is the new landscape of Redfield Valley simply somewhere to explore and delve into its newly revealed secrets? Shards of the Broken Sky can be played as any one of those or even combined.

However, to get to this brilliance, it takes a lot of effort upon the part of the Game Master—and that is where Shards of the Broken Sky is broken. And intentionally so. As a campaign, it is not just a sandbox, but a toolkit which the Game Master has to take the parts of and put together, taking dungeon after dungeon and encounter after encounter, and plugging them into the character Levels which the Player Characters are at. Shards of the Broken Sky provides numerous dungeons and encounters with which to do that. The Game Master also needs to work hard in order to bring Player Character motivations into play. This will primarily be done through their relationships with the thirteen Icons of the Dragon Empire—the Archmage, the Crusader, the Diabolist, the Dwarf King, the Elf Queen, the Emperor, the Great Gold Wyrm, the High Druid, the Lich King, the Orc Lord, the Priestess, the Prince of Shadows, and the ancient evil Dragons known as the Three—each of which has their own reasons for taking an interesting in Redfield Valley and the fall of Vantage. To support that, Shards of the Broken Sky provides adversary group after adversary group for the various factions and Icons with an interest in the remnants of Vantage, which the Game Master can plug into the campaign depending upon which the Icons the Player Characters have relationships with and which may or may not have been responsible for what has happened. Primarily these will appear as random encounters which the Game Master will work into the dungeons throughout the campaign, with the forces of the various Icons often appearing and working against the efforts of the Player Characters. These random encounters are in addition to the various monsters and encounters given for each location, as well as the Tension tables for each dungeon which ramp up the pressure on the Player Characters as they delve deeper—or even sometimes higher—into the dungeon.

As well as providing numerous adversary groups, Shards of the Broken Sky includes new monsters, new Icon-specific monster abilities to customise agents of the Prince of Shadows, new treasures, and new optional Player Character Races. The latter includes the Lava Dwarves, who can deliver a blistering heat at attack once per battle; Oozefolk, whose melee attacks do acidic damage when they are Staggered and whose touch might be acidic—an interesting defence if swallowed; and the Ophidians, legless, four-armed serpent folk with poison fangs. All make an appearance in the campaign as NPCs, and could then appear as replacement Player Characters or in the ongoing campaign once Shards of the Broken Sky has been completed. The new magical items include fading items whose power drain away from one scene to the next and various items derived from the crystals that were built into the walls of Vantage, whilst the monsters range from Pie Mimics and Kroon’s Foot Lice to Wicker Golems and Rainbow Puddings!

To fully run Shards of the Broken Sky, will need more than a few books. Not just the core 13th Age rules and 13 True Ways, but also the 13th Age Bestiary and 13th Age Bestiary 2 and the Book of Loot and Book of Loot 2. Other books, such as The Crown Commands, Fire and Faith, and High Magic & Low Cunning will be useful, but are likely optional. The excellent Book of Ages may be useful as a reference in certain dungeons of the campaign.

Physically, is in general well-presented. It needs an edit in places, and whilst relatively lightly illustrated, there is some great artwork throughout. However, of the maps that there are, many are too dark to read with ease, whilst others are comprised of icons that indicate the relationship and links between various locations. These are not often easy to read. Enjoyably throughout though are the authors’ advice and playtest feedback which provide a commentary throughout. That said, the authors could have been more upfront about the plot to the campaign and what is going on, rather than leaving it for the Game Master to discover as she reads through the book. Lastly, Shards of the Broken Sky is not actually an easy read, but that is due to it being written as a toolkit rather than as a linear dungeon which would be the case with almost any other mega-dungeon or campaign for the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice.

Anyone going into Shards of the Broken Sky expecting a more traditional, even linear campaign, even as a sandbox, is likely to be disappointed. It is simply not built that way, and in comparison to such a campaign, Shards of the Broken Sky is broken. However, Shards of the Broken Sky is designed in that way by intent because it is a toolkit, a book of parts—each of which could be extracted from the book and used on their own in a Game Master’s own campaign—that are designed to be used by the Game Master to build around her Player Characters and their Icon relationships to create her own version of the campaign. Which of course does more work upon the part of the Game Master, but if done right will make the campaign more personal to the Player Characters. Neither the Game Master nor her players are going to be able to put the Shards of the Broken Sky back together, but they are going to be able to take its brilliant brokenness and build a great campaign together.

Another Six Ways

One of the great features—amongst many—of 13th Age is how it handles characters, making each Player Character unique, emphasising narrative gameplay elements, and upping the action. Published by Pelgrane Press, a wide range of character Classes were presented in both 13th Age and 13 True Ways, but one of the aspects of 13th Age is that Player Characters can only advance to Tenth Level. What this means is that campaigns are relatively short and new campaigns can be begun relatively easily and relatively regularly, so having a wider range in terms of character choice is always useful. Now whilst presenting new Player Character Classes has not been the focus of titles from Pelgrane Press, it does mean that there is scope for other publishers to provide a Game Master and her players with such options. This is exactly what Kinoko Games has done with Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets.

Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets presents six new Classes—the monstrous Abomination, the destiny-shaping Fateweaver, the mind-bending Psion, the berserking Savage, the dashing Swordmage and the dark-souled Warlock. All come with the Class Features and Talents, plus features specific to the Class just as you would expect for a Class for 13th Age. In addition, each is accompanied with notes on the Play Style for the Class, ideas for Backgrounds, the Icons associated with the Class, which of the Dungeons & Dragons-style Races it works with, options for Multi-Class versions, and ‘Riffs and Variations’, essentially extra ideas on how each Class would play. This is not all though, for Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets also includes notes how some of the Classes from the 13th Age core book and 13 True Ways would work with the new half dozen it provides, as well as various new magic items. These are also designed to work with the six Classes in Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets.

The first new Class is the Abomination. This takes the transformed monster of Gothic fiction, horror films, superhero comics, and the like, and brings it into 13th Age as a combat monster! So that could be the Beast of Beauty and the Beast, the Wolf Man of The Wolf Man, and the Incredible Hulk of Marvel comics. Now by default, the Abomination cannot transform, although with the right Talent it is possible, but it could be a failed experiment, a thing which crept out of hell, and so on. It relies upon its natural weapons in combat, which it then augments with an element such as poison or fire which it can spit. As an intimidating, raging combat beast, it can be made dragon-, snake-, and troll-like amongst other flavours, make it harder, and so on, all depending upon the Talents chosen. The Abomination has Maneuvres like a Fighter which trigger on a flexible basis, so the player rolls to attack and then selects the Maneuvre which the roll has triggered rather than selecting the Maneuvre beforehand. The Abomination can be played as a raging, rampaging beast of a monster, but with the appropriate selection, the player gets to do that as well as roleplay out the tragedy of the Abomination’s existence.

In comparison to the Abomination, the Fateweaver is a step up or two in terms of complexity. Fundamentally, the Fateweaver breaks the Fourth Wall in order to manipulate the dice and the narrative. Naturally the Icons take an interest in the Fateweaver, perhaps a wandering fortuneteller or disgraced court jester, because of his ability to manipulate and shape destinies—which is their job after all! To model this, the Fateweaver receives Talents such as ‘Astrologer’, which enables the character to predict the future and if correct, regain a spell or recovery, or increase the Escalation by one; ‘Stage Performer’, which allows the Fateweaver to reroll an attack or action in a scene or battle as long as he has an audience; if the Fateweaver thinks life to be a joke, then ‘Harlequin’ lets him add an extra effect to a spell—as long as the other players (and not the other characters) think it is funny. A Fateweaver can also cast two types of spells, standard spells and Meditations. To use the Fateweaver meditates to enter a state known as Focus to connect to threads of reality, once he has Focus, a Fateweaver expends to both cast a spell and gain the spell’s Focus effect. For example, Reveal What Was Hidden shows the Fateweaver something on the battlefield or nearby that the rest of the party had not seen, or Mantra of Cleansing, which allows the Fateweaver to make a saving throw against an ongoing effect.

Potentially, the Fateweaver is a dynamic support character, but the intricacies of its design mean it is not easy to learn and harder to master. The disruptive nature of the style of play may also mean that the Class may not fit with every single campaign. That though, will come down to what sort of campaign the Game Master wants to run.

Then there is the Psion. Again, this is more complex, but where the Fateweaver feels all new, the Psion is familiar in what it does and how it works. Psions specialise in three of six disciplines—Blaster, Egotist (body alteration), Nomad (teleportation), Seer (clairsentience), Shaper (object creation, including arms, armour, and constructs), and Telepath (including mental control of others). These are fuelled by Psionic Power Points, which are recovered by resting. Every Psion has the base at-will minor powers for all six disciplines, but over time, can learn the greater powers of their selected disciplines. They can also offset the set cost of their powers by selecting certain Talents, but for the more potent powers a player will still need to husband his character’s Power Points throughout a scenario. Whether it is powers like ‘Withering Limbs’ or ‘Stretchable Forms’, there is the feel of superhero or Jedi powers to the Psion’s abilities. In other words, these powers are more obvious in what they are and how they work, but at the same there is a wider range of them, allowing a player to better tailor his character. Some extra notes suggest how the powers might be tied to other sources and mapping them onto the various schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons. For the setting of 13th Age, the Dragon Empire, there are some interesting suggestions as who or what might be a Psion’s patron, since psionics do not actually quite fit the setting.

The Savage though is a front rank combatant, able to use Frenzy dice to fuel their powers, heal themselves, or increase damage. These dice increase in size and number as the Savage gains Level. Gained through successful hits, they can be spent on Frenzy Powers. Some of these expend Frenzy dice in return for their effect, such as ‘Frenzied Leap’ which enables the Savage to leap across the battlefield, or ‘Iron Determination’ which grants a reroll on a failed save or death save. Others though, such as ‘Cry for Blood’, which inflicts damage on multiple nearby enemies, and since it is a melee attack, the Savage gains a Frenzy die. The Talents for the Savage add colour as much as a mechanical effect, so ‘Born to the Saddle’ makes the character a skilled rider, especially in combat, whilst ‘Full Metal Berserk’ allows him to wear heavy armour without penalty rather than the standard leather and hides. The background for the Savage in the Dragon Empire, the setting of the 13th Age is also interesting, placing it outside of the empire, their being from beyond civilised lands. The Savage Class is slightly problematic in that it is not dissimilar to the Barbarian Class. This is more thematic than mechanical though.

Where the Psion feels familiar to longtime players of Dungeons & Dragons-style games, the last two Classes will be familiar to more recent players. The first of these is the Swordmage, which as the title suggests combines swordplay and arcane magic. The Swordmage is primarily a defensive Class, placing Sigils on their opponents using the Mark with Sigil spell. What this does is force the enemy so marked to focus on the Swordmage and then punish them when they attack an ally. So a Sigil of Vengeance lets the Swordmage teleport immediately to the marked opponent and attack him if the opponent is attacking someone else. Other Sigils inflict damage or force rerolls on the opponent, and so on. A Swordmage starts off with one Sigil and gains more as he gains Levels. In addition, a Swordmage automatically has Mage Armour and can redirect it with his off hand to increase his Armour Class. Most Swordmage Talents alter how the Swordmage fights and casts spells and sigils, again adding flavour as much as mechanics. Thus ‘Skull Blade’ gives access to Necromancer spells and ‘Twin Blade Style’ grants the ability to fight with two weapons and apply its effects to all spells which deal weapon damage. Most Swordmage spells are colourful blade attacks which do arcane damage. For example, Keen Blade enables a Swordmage player to reroll dice on an attack and take the best, whilst Freezing Strike inflicts cold damage and immoblises the target! Overall, the Swordmage here has a Manga or Martial Arts feel to it.

The sixth and last Class is the Warlock. This will be familiar to various versions of Dungeons & Dragons, but here specialise in blasting spells which inflict damage, curses which have harmful effects, and hexes which have a range of  mostly protective effects. Thus Hungry Shadows blasts a target with negative energy—even more if the target is cursed, Burning Retribution both burns and curses the target, and Demon Tongue grants rerolls on Charisma-based rolls. As with versions elsewhere, the Warlock presented here has a Warlock Pact, but being for 13th Age, it is with an Icon rather than something nebulous. So a Divine Pact is with the Priestess, a Knightly Pact is with the Crusader, and so on. This grants the Warlock a minor effect, typically triggered by the Escalation Die, and then essentially provides the flavour for how the Warlock casts his magic.  All of the Warlock spells can be cast at-will, so they are not quite as powerful, but they are flashy and fun. Further, the Warlock can have any of the spells and adjust their flavour to his Pact.

Beyond the six Classes it details, Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets gives various Talents for the Classes from 13th Age core book and 13 True Ways. So ‘Lycanthrope’ for the Barbarian will transform the character into the Abomination when the Barbarian rages, and the Eldritch Knight can use the ‘Mark with Sigil’ feature of the Swordmage. Again, these flavour the various Classes slightly, but do not push a Class over into the other. Lastly, Magic Items adds items specific to the six Classes in Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, and more. Abominations can take severed body parts—poison glands, slappy tails, troll hearts, and more—and add them to his body as Grafts, whilst Crystals, such as Jewel of Storing or Reflecting Bead, are designed to work with the Psion Class. There are lots of magic items given here, all useful for adding a little more flavour and feel to playing 13th Age.

Physically, Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets is tidily presented. The book is decently written, whilst the artwork in the main consists of full colour pieces for each of the six Classes. If there is an issue with the art, it is perhaps that veers too far towards the ‘Chainmail Bikini’ school of art. The art overall, is done in a Manga style.

Fundamentally in coming to Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, both players and the Game Master has to ask themselves if they want or need extra character Classes for their campaign. None of the half dozen in the supplement are necessary to play 13th Age, but of course they expand the range of options available and in some ways what sort of stories can be told. Obviously the tragedy of the Abomination and the Warlock eventually having to come to terms with the Pact made to gain his powers. Some Classes may be too close to others to have them at the table together, for example the Savage and the Barbarian, so a gaming group may want to be careful in its choice of Classes available. Some of the Classes make you wonder whether the ‘Archmage Engine’ of 13th Age could be used for other genres. For example, take the Abomination Class and do a superhero character like Hulk, and whilst that might be the most obvious, there are Talents scattered throughout Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets which lend themselves to other superheroes or genres.

Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets is solid support for 13th Age. If as a 13th Age Game Master you want more Classes, the Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets provides a decent range of new Classes and more to bring into her campaign.

The King is Dead, Long Roleplay the King!

From Castles & Crusades, OSRIC, and Labyrinth Lord to Swords & Wizardry, Left Buried: Cryptdigger’s Guide to Survival, and Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style!, there is a retroclone to fit your desired style and tone of Old School fantasy roleplaying. So the question is, why bother with The King of Dungeons, a retroclone of a retrovlone? Published and written by Baz Stevens of Grand Scheme Publishing—co-host of the UK podcast, The Smart Party—following a successful Kickstarter campaign, The King of Dungeons uses the Archmage Engine, also used in 13th Age Glorantha, and first seen in Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age. Since 13th Age draws from both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition for its mechanics, thus making The King of Dungeons a retroclone of a retroclone. What The King of Dungeons uses though, is a streamlined version of the Archmage Engine, to essentially present the Basic Dungeons & Dragons equivalent of 13th Age—but that is not the selling point of The King of Dungeons. No, the selling point of The King of Dungeons is that it corporatises the dungeon bash.

Before that though, it turns dungeoneering and adventuring a la Dungeons & Dragons-style into a profession. Then it has those professions join a Guild (rather than be in a party), which sets up a Guild house, perhaps with staff or a library or an alchemist’s lab or… And Guilds are recognised entities which can lobby for Charters—or missions—which typically involve going down dungeons. This recognition is due to the political influence of The Adventuring Party, a group of adventurers who retired, went political cross-national and cross planar, helped unionise the Guilds and in return for granting each Guild a licence, had them sign up to the Adventurer’s Code. These bylaws govern Guild activity, such as ‘The Law of Unity’, which states that may never split the party, and ‘The Law of Vengeance’, which states that no member of the Adventuring Party—and all Guild members are also members of the Adventuring Party—can willingly or by omission cause the death of another member of the Adventuring. Which means that rival Guilds cannot fight each other, although they may feud or compete for Charters, though what happens down a dungeon... 

Within a Guild, adventurers do not Level up, so much as get promoted until such times as they are wealthy enough to take on other adventurers and train them up. Then perhaps, those newly recruited professionals can go off and undertake Charters assigned by one of the senior adventurers. In other words, once a player character has got to the point where he cannot adventure, his player can start refereeing Charters for the new junior adventurers, as can the other players with senior adventurers.

As written, this feels more like the set-up for an American television series about a law firm, with junior associates being given minor cases to litigate or take to court, their continued success leading to them getting promoted to senior associates and on track to become partners in the law firm. Of course, instead of taking on cases and fighting them out in court, in The King of Dungeons, the Guild is taking on Charters and fighting them out in dungeons, successful completion of Charters means that in due course the adventurers will be promoted, take on bigger Charters, start bringing in Charters to the Guild rather than clients coming to them, begin hiring junior adventurers who will be assigned Charters of their own, and so on.

If there is one American television series that The King of Dungeons felt like in reading this, it was The Good Wife. And low and behold, when turning to the section for the ‘King of Dungeons’—as the Game Master is known—it is the exact television series that the author has based the structure of the roleplaying game on. Yet, the author goes even further in applying that structure. Not just in the set-up of modelling a Guild upon a law firm, but also in the types of play and agendas. So where in a series like The Good Wife, there are scenes dedicated to court, to the case, and to the law firm, in The King of Dungeons, there scenes, or time, dedicated to combat, to the adventure, and to the Guild. Then in The Good Wife, there are plots dealing with the case, the cast, and the law firm, in The King of Dungeons, there are agendas, specifically, Charter agendas, adventurer agendas, and Guild agendas. A Charter agenda might last a session (episode) or two, an adventurer agenda several sessions (episodes), and a Guild agenda a whole campaign (season).

Guilds then are The King of Dungeon’s innovation. In play, a Guild is set up at the same time as adventurer creation. The players choose or roll for the type—military, thieves, dilettantes, preservers, missionaries, and band—and then concept, Guild house, and pub, the latter the drinking hole where the Guild meets up to unwind and hold a post mortem on its just finished Charter and conduct assessments and appraisals on it adventurers. They also roll or choose the Guild’s Speciality, but together decide on its Alignment.

Our sample Guild is Roister Doister Boys, made up of third or fourth offspring of local nobles who have turned to adventuring rather do whatever it is that their parents want them to do. Not get married, not take up a commission in the army, or join the church. They had tried blackmail and robbery and assassination, not all together, but individually, and unlike adventuring professionally, there is less of a chance of their being arrested and executed if they were instead a legally sanctioned Guild. Plus if they can make some money along the way, what better way to stick it to their parents (and pay for their drinks).

Roister Doister Boys 
Type: Band
Concept: Gang
Guild House: Back of a Pub
Pub: The Marquis Club
Speciality: Exploration
Alignment: Pater’s a duke, you know?

The Guild will also be given its own character sheet, complete with stats like an adventurer, which come into play when the adventurers want to act like a group rather than as individuals. Examples include chases, diplomacy, investigation, and so on. Lastly, a Guild should ideally have one of each of the six Classes in The King of Dungeons as an adventurer. If they lack any one of them, then all rolls made with the stat associated with the missing Class are made at a disadvantage. So for example, if a Guild lacked a Rogue, whose associated stat is Dexterity, then all Guild stealth checks or rolls to climb a tower would be at a disadvantage. 

An Adventurer in The King of Dungeons is defined by his Culture, Class, stats and their associated tell, alignment, expertise, and lifestyle. Culture is the equivalent of Race in other roleplaying games, the six given being Draconic, Dwarf, Elf, Goblin, Human, and Infernal. These can be the classic fantasy interpretations of such races, but a table is included which can provide a twist to each Culture should a player want to create a different interpretation. The six Classes in The King of Dungeons are Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Scholar, and Commander. The first four of these are the classic Classes of the Old School Renaissance, but the Scholar brings knowledge and insight to the completion of Charters, including both research in the library and the field, whilst the Commander brings leadership and management skills to both the completion of Charters and Guild operation. The King of Dungeons uses the classic six attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, instead of being on the three to eighteen scale, each is measured between zero and five, essentially the stats’ bonuses rather than the stat values themselves. The best two and the worst two stats have tells, phrases that make adventurers stand out from each other. Again, Alignments are not the classic Alignments of the Old School Renaissance, but beliefs in concepts like civilisation, magic, thievery, and so on, as well as the gods. There are also three dark paths in terms of Alignment—Diabolic, (un)Death, and Villainy. For NPCs only, of course (unless that is how your adventurer or Guild swings…). Lastly, every adventurer has expertise in five areas. Three of these are already decided in a player’s choice of Culture, Class, and Alignment, but the player is free to select the last two, ideally inspired by the adventurer’s backstory. Lastly, an adventurer’s wealth is reflected in his Coin, Kit, and Lifestyle. One of these the adventurer will have the advantage with, another the disadvantage with.

Creating an adventurer is a matter of choosing or rolling—if there is a table to roll on—all of these elements, and then selecting the various abilities from the chosen Class. So Warriors get Talents like Heavy Metal, which reduces damage taken by half once per combat, or Power Attack, adding extra damage to an attack once per combat. They also get Exploits, Like Brace For It, which when triggered by any missed attack, means that until a Warrior attacks again, any critical attack is taken as a normal attack instead, or Make ‘Em Flinch, which on any natural even miss, lets the Warrior inflict damage equal to his Charisma. Every Class has Talents of its own, Rogues get Schemes as well as greater weapon damage because they are trained killers; Priests make Prayers, either to Take Confession and cast on one recipient, or to Deliver a Sermon to affect more recipients, but to lesser effect; and Mages get minor spells or Tricks to cast as well as a full range of spells to choose from. Scholars have Theorems and Insights to give advice to and support their Guild, typically delivered in a rambling monologue. Many Theorems and Insights have ongoing effects which need to be maintained with a successful Save and an extra effect when brought to a finale or Exclamation. For example, the Theory of Skirmishing needs to be maintained with a Save, requires a Charisma-based attack to be successful against several targets, inflicts 5d6 plus Charisma damage, and as long as the Scholar continues making a successful attack from turn to turn, continues inflicting damage. If the Save is failed or the Scholar decides to end the Theorem, the attack is made one last time, but on a miss, it inflicts half damage. Lastly, Commanders have Commands which require Command Points, and Tactics which do not. So with the Command, Try Again, which costs two Command Points, an ally is given the advantage on an attack and if a twenty is rolled on the attack, the Commander gains a Command Point. Whereas, the Tactical Strike Tactic can be done at will, and grants an ally a free attack with the Commander’s Charisma as a damage bonus, but requires a Save to reuse.

Otinaar Dreched
Culture: Draconic (Hunted to the brink of extinction by Dwarves)
Alignment: Civilisation
Class: Scholar Level: One

Hit Points: 30
Recoveries: d8

Defences
Fortitude 14 Reflex 14 Will 14

Strength +0 (Emaciated with work and worry)
Dexterity +2
Constitution +5 (Wiry for his frame)
Intelligence +3
Wisdom +4 (Assured in his knowledge)
Charisma +1 (Scholarly shabbiness)

Expertise: Guerilla Fighter, Tomb Delver

Wealth
Coin, Kit (Advantage), Lifestyle (Disadvantage)

Equipment
Clippers, scale wax, mirror, map, heavy breathable clothing, laden with stuff, scroll tubes of notes and maps, astrolabe.

Like other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, The King of Dungeons is limited to just ten Levels. Once an adventurer has reached Tenth Level, he is eligible for retirement. And just like other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, the Levels in The King of Dungeons are broken int0 three tiers—Adventurer (First to Third Level), Conqueror (Fourth to Seventh Level), and King (Eighth to Tenth Level), each tier determining numerous factors throughout the game. So the effects of Class abilities, the value of adventurers’ Expertise dice, standard skill targets, how many dice rolled for damage, and so on. Unlike 13th Age and other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, The King of Dungeons does not use the ‘One Unique Thing’ which separates every player character from every other.

Mechanically though, the core of The King of Dungeons is still the d20 System. So rolls of one are fumbles and twenty are fumbles and situations where an adventurer has the advantage or disadvantage, two twenty-sided dice are rolled, the best result being kept when he has the advantage, the worst when he is at a disadvantage. After this, there are a lot of tweaks. So fumbles also earn the Guild Bonds, which can then be spent to gain Advantage in a roll and all Saves are rolled on an six-sided die—a standard Save being four or more, Easy two or more, and Hard just six. Instead of skills or Backgrounds as in 13th Age, an Adventurer has areas of Expertise, drawn from his Culture, Class, and Alignment as his two Expertise skills, represented by a die type rolled and added to any die roll. The die type rises from Tier to Tier, as do the standard Target Numbers—fifteen at Adventurer, twenty at Conqueror, and so on.

There are further tweaks to combat. Initiative rolls are made against an opponent’s Initiative rating. Fail and the opponent acts before the Adventurer, succeed and the Adventurer acts first. Initiative rolls are made each round, but in the first round, they are made using Wisdom, the second they are made using Dexterity, the third and subsequent rounds using Constitution. This is model the effects of fighting over several rounds as the combatants become increasingly tired by their efforts. Melee attack rolls are made against an opponent’s Fortitude, missile attacks against an opponent’s Reflex, and most spell attacks against an opponent’s Will. Damage is dealt out in six-sided dice—or eight-sided dice for Rogues because they are vicious killers—the number rolled increasing as an Adventurer is promoted. Of course, The King of Dungeons being an Archmage Engine roleplaying game means that it uses the Escalation die, the six-sided die which sits in front of the King of Dungeons and goes up by plus one each round after the second, the players adding it to their adventurers’ attack rolls as it rises. And as with other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, many of the various abilities of The King of Dungeons’ Classes are keyed to the state of the Escalation die.

For the King of Dungeons, the Dungeon Master, there is advice on running the game, setting up agendas and charters, creating monsters, and bringing both the authorities and rival Guilds. Overall, it is good advice, but the section on Charters feels undeveloped, almost as if the author is writing around the subject rather than about it. The concept is that the King of Dungeons can take any dungeon adventure and either use all of it or particular excerpts from it as a Charter, but the advice on how to do that could have been stronger and more helpful. Of course, the designer knows how to do this, but not every new King of Dungeons will be because a Charter is different. If there is anything missing from The King of Dungeons it is a sample Charter.

What is interesting about The King of Dungeons is that it is not about setting, but about structure. Indeed, there is no setting given, but together, adventurer Professionalism and Guilds provide both reason and framework. Reason to go down dungeons and undertake missions and for freelancers such as adventurers to exist and framework to explain adventurer promotion and to give something upon which to hang the larger story or campaign. Of course, it is a light framework, one that does not quite hold together when too closely looked at, but that does not prevent it from working.

Physically, The King of Dungeons is a decent book. It is illustrated with a range of character illustrations and maps which are not always as sharply presented as they could. The book does feel as it could have been better organised in places and sometimes as if the author is writing around the subject rather than about it. Another issue is that perhaps the core concepts could have been more strongly presented, especially about the corporatisation and the running of a campaign of The King of Dungeons as television series.

There is a pleasing simplicity to many of the changes made to the mechanics by The King of Dungeons. So the new Save mechanic, the variable Expertise rolls, the Initiative rules, and so on, are understandable, and even logical, changes. Changing to them is another matter since in many cases players are used to playing a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game in a certain way. This is not say that making the change is insurmountable—far from it—but it does require an adjustment. As does having different values to roll against when making an attack, but for all that, there is a complexity to The King of Dungeons, one that it cannot escape given its use of the Archemage Engine. This complexity lies in the different, often asymmetrical abilities for the six Classes in The King of Dungeons, and as much as they bring interesting tactical options to play, there is not a pick up and play quality to them. There is a learning curve here… Nevertheless, the designer should be praised for simplifying the mechanics around the abilities, if not the abilities themselves. 

The King of Dungeons is not amazing, but it is clever. Its set-up of the Guilds and the interactions around them are undeniably rife with story and roleplaying potential as much as the Charters—or dungeons—are rife with action potential. This is the selling point to The King of Dungeons and what sets it apart from other retroclones.