Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration Fantasy
Twin Crowns, subtitled Age of Exploration Fantasy, is the inaugural offering in the d20 arena by Living Imagination, Inc. Twin Crowns is a campaign setting book for the d20 system, detailing the world that the authors name Ptalmanar.
Note that this book is rather large - indeed, the largest d20 System book I have reviewed to date. That being the case, this is likely to be more cursory than most of my reviews, as I do not have the time or patience to go into overly exhaustive detail on so much material.
Note: The version of the book I reviewed is not the same version that appeared at GenCon; from my understanding, much of the book has been revised.
A First Look
Twin Crowns is a huge (304 pages) perfect-bound softcover book. It is priced at $24.95 US, which is rather cheap for a book of this size. At 8 cents a page, it is the cheapest item on a price-per-page basis that I have seen.
The text density seems to hold up as well. The typeface is dense (similar to WotC classbooks), with small leader spaces. The formatting is a little unpleasant in places. The first "book" is fairly clean, but for some reason the second "book" uses an excessive paragraph indent that looks jarring after having read the first book. In addition, there are tabs with the chapter name and title at the edge of each page. Toward the end of the book, many of these are mislabeled.
The cover is a basic blue, with the "metal-bound tome" look common to d20 System products, in imitation of the D&D 3e core books. The front cover has a design with a somewhat nautical motif, featuring an anchor-like design, a ship's helm wheel, and a design with compass directions.
The interior art is rather lackluster. Though none of the pictures look quite so amateur as those in the Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils or Nightmares and Dreams, they are still pretty uninspiring. Even the better images are somewhat marred by a pixilated look, as if they are poor scans.
Overall, the price per page and text density give the book an exceptional value based on quantity of content alone.
A Deeper Look
After an introductory chapter, Twin Crowns is organized into three "books," each book being subsequently sorted into chapters. The three "books" are the Player's Section, the World, and the GM's Section.
Book 1: Player's Section
The second through tenth chapter comprise the Player's Section and focus on rules changes and additions required to play the game in Ptalmanar. The second chapter discusses races in the campaign world. Ptalmanar uses all of the standard PHB races except for gnomes and halflings. The standard PHB elves are called "wood elves" here - which may be confusing, since there are wood elves in the d20 SRD / MM too. Ptalmanar's high elves and wild elves also share names with standard elven subraces, but have abilities defined here.
There are three new races presented in Twin Crowns. Khesta are pretty much surrogate halfling/hobbit types; they are short, rotund, and jovial. Kithraas are an amphibious race that can live on land or water. Shallorians are a catlike race. Overall, the races seem rather well balanced.
The third chapter covers classes and describes how they fit into Ptalmanar. The most major rules changes come with clerics, who automatically hold the status of being initiated to a deity, which conveys quite a bit of power to the class. If you had difficulties with the power of clerics before, this may be the straw that breaks the camel's back - but we will get to religion and initiation in a second.
There are five prestige classes presented in the class chapter. The arcane ritualist and the divine ritualist are specialty spellcasters who are expert at using the ritual system described later. The bounty hunter in Twin Crowns is an expert at retrieving people and objects. The diplomat is a class specialized in negotiation, including the ability to cast spells that aid in diplomatic pursuits. Finally, the privateer is a sea captain with a willingness to act on behalf of his country and with abilities that integrate with the naval adventuring rules described later.
Chapter Four introduces new skills. There are four new Profession skills that are part of the naval adventuring rules: artillerist, navigation, pilot, and sailor. There are two new skills that are part of the new ritual rules, Arcane Ritual and Divine Ritual. Finally, a new skill, Sea Legs, is introduced that allows one to maintain balance on the deck of a ship. This last one I thought was redundant since there is already a Balance skill in the d20 System rules that is too close to the concept to allow for another similar skill, given how general skills are in the d20 System.
Chapter Five covers feats. A vast majority of the feats are divine feats. To receive a divine feat, the character must be initiated to one of the twelve deities of the setting. Some of the divine feats are extremely powerful, perhaps too much so. For example, there are many feats that raise ability scores. The Weapon Master feat gives the character proficiency in all weapons and Weapon Focus in all simple and martial weapons. Dance Macabre automatically reanimates the character as a type of undead when he is slain.
Chapter Six covers equipment. The section is brief and covers firearms and nautical equipment.
The seventh chapter covers naval adventuring. The rules are a simplified version of Living Imagination's upcoming Broadsides book on naval adventures. The rules outline the various tasks that are involved in nautical travel and simple methods of how to handle them. Statistics are defined for a variety of ships and rules are provided to handle combat between them. As you might suspect, the treatment is less thorough than the various books dedicated to the topic of seafaring adventure, but the rules are sufficient for general purposes and I saw no obvious flaws.
Chapter Eight covers religion and magic in Ptalmanar. This chapter is where the real differences between Ptalmanar and the typical D&D setting begin to show.
In the setting, there are 12 deities. The central deities are the maker and the unmaker, the most powerful good and evil deities respectively. Between these two deities, there are 10 other deities that take up various other roles, though the good ones are generally grouped with the maker and the evil ones are generally grouped with the unmaker. The deities are conceptually arranged into the great wheel.
Some deities have multiple aspects of paths that have different alignments and that allow access to different divine feats. For example, the god of war is Bellinger. Bellinger has two paths, the path of the tactician (which is lawful) and the path of the warrior (which is chaotic).
Each deity has an array of domains selected from the standard d20 System domains. Each deity also has a new domain named for the deity. For example, Argon (a deity of civilization and invention) allows access to the knowledge and protection domaims, as well as the Argon domain. Clerics in Ptalmanar must select their deity's named domain and one other domain from those granted by the deity.
Those loyal to deities in Ptalmanar are divided into various ranks, starting at worshipper. Those devoted to a given deity may become initiated to that deity, a process that requires an expensive ritual. Those that are initiated to a deity gain a divine feat for free and can pick subsequent feats from the divine feats for that deity. Given the power of some of these feats, that is no mean benefit.
The topic of death is handled totally differently in Ptalmanar than any other campaign setting of which I know. When a sentient being dies, her body fades - that's right, flat out disappears - after 3 minutes, and the spirt is cast adrift. The spirit seeks out consecrated ground. Any initiated character may perform the Ceremony of Life. This ceremony creates new bodies for all spirits at that site, and brings them back to life. As with normal raise dead rules, the character loses a level upon returning to life.
If a character can cast a spirit tether spell on a deceased body before it disappears, the deceased character can be brought back without losing a level if the body is present at a Ceremony of Life.
There are a few catches, however. First, all sentient creatures are considered to have five gifts. Each time the character dies, they lose a gift. Once all gifts are depleted, the character can never again be brought back from death. Further, if you perform a Ceremony of Life, all spirits at that site are brought back. Spirits wander to sanctified sites, but they can get lost or go to a different site than you might expect (though there are some new spells to address this).
Spellcasters in Ptalmanar are dependant upon shrines (for divine spellcasters) and nexuses (for arcane spellcasters). These sites are where magical energy flows into the world. Spellcasters must periodically recharge at these sites. Spellcasters can only go for one day per level before they have to return to a site or recharge, or they cannot use their spellcasting abilities.
The last part of the magic and religion chapter describes a number of religious sects and orders. Since there is no rules material there, it seems like this should have been in the world book.
The ninth chapter covers new spells introduced for Ptalmanar and how to change existing spells to fit the assumptions of the setting. Some new spells are straightforward extensions of the existing spell repertoire. For example, just as Tome and Blood and Relics and Rituals did, Twin Crowns introduces some ability score enhancers. Others are created to fit the setting assumptions or nautical rules. For example, there are a variety of spells useful in sea combat such as founder ship (creates a wave to knock a ship over), and spells dealing with spirits such as locate spirits (lets you find the spirit of a deceased companion so you can perform Ceremony of Life on it).
For the most part, I thought the spells were pretty balanced. There where minor quibbles, such as spells that give the character a dodge bonus (which is not supposed to happen per the d20 System rules, since all dodge effects stack). Break limb introduces a mechanic for broken bones that seems to work fine in and of itself, but seems a little odd in that the existing combat system, where such things would logically occur, has no rules for broken bones.
The last chapter of the Player's Section covers rituals. Rituals are much like spells in their effects, but are cast by a totally different method. Rituals are not limited by spell slots, but they are limited by time, risk of catastrophic failure, and korba. Korba is a silvery powder that contains a measure of magical power used to provide the energy for rituals.
Each ritual has a difficulty associated with it, requiring an Arcane or Divine Ritual skill check. Much like combat rolls, critical successes and failures are possible with rituals. Also, if the character just barely succeeds at the ritual, a flaw in the ritual may cause some undesirable effects.
Rituals can do some impressive things, such as raise fortresses, though that is a rather powerful example. Many divine rituals are unique to certain deities and paths. Since rituals are dependant upon the ritual skills, which in turn depend on level and have a costly component, rituals seem fairly balanced, albeit that you have to stomach a little risk that the ritual will not work.
Book 2: The World
The second section details the history of the world of Ptalmanar and the current state of the world.
The eleventh chapter is the history of the world of Ptalmanar. In a nutshell, there were many primordial wars including a struggle against the unmaker called the Demon Wars. After that time, some primitive tribes under the direction of a powerful leader started a campaign of expansion. This eventually lead to an empire that covered most of the continent. A rebellion centered on the claim of a forgotten heir led to an eventual schism that fragmented the empire. A northern and southern empire formed, and many former provinces spun off the empires after the rebellion.
The next three chapters describe the nations of the nothern empire, the southern empire, and those that belong to neither. Each nation is an overt derivative of real world nations. It is easy to find parallels to ancient Russia, China, America, Japan, Scotland, Scandinavia, France, and Spain. Each nation write-up has details on the geography, history, government, politics, and society of the nation. My only complaint about the organization is that, while it provides a sufficient overview of each nation, it provides little in the way of idea seeds or personalities that you would find in other d20 System settings such as Forgotten Realms, Rokugan, and Kingdoms of Kalamar.
Book 3: GM's Section
The final section of the book is the GM's Section, providing advice for running a game in Ptalmanar.
Chapter Fifteen discusses adventuring in the setting. It mentions the three main sources of conflict; establishing these is a good thing, I think, and central to a successful campaign setting. In the case of Ptalmanar, these three elements are religion, exploration, and korba, the component essential to rituals. Of these, I consider religion the most well grounded. The influence of religion is clear, as is the array of deities and religious forces. Further, effects such as the gifts make the influence of religions obvious in the campaign.
I consider korba the weakest of these sources of conflict, however. While I agree that korba appears to be a valuable resource, it does not seem to be essential to the running of the empire. Rituals, while useful, are not needed to keep life rolling along. Further, there needs to be more back story behind what it is to make it compelling. As it stands, it is left too vague. Think of the spice in dune: if korba had a similar back story that wove it through the setting, then I would be more liable to agree that it is a useful source of conflict.
In addition to the basic sources of conflict, the chapter also discusses how unique aspects of the setting - such as the five gifts, recharging spells, and rituals - affect the campaign and offers advice for handling these elements.
Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen introduce a number of original items and monsters for the game. Many of these arise out of elements of the setting, such as rituals. The only major gaffe I saw is the undead servitor. The creature comes in several sizes and has statistics for each size. Yet there is no description or combat section to tell me what this creature is all about.
Appendix
The appendix section contains a number of convenient items, including a map of the empires and the new world, a calendar, coats of arms, a glossary, an imperial timeline, and compiled tables from the book.
A final note is the index. Though it does contain a number of terms, while reading through the book, I was unable to find a number of important concepts in the setting referred to in the index, such as spell recharge and the ceremony of life.
Conclusion
This book has a lot of value based on its sheer size alone. Even if you do not intend to use the setting, if any of the concepts appeal to you, it comes at a low enough asking price that cherry picking some of the better concepts like the rituals and seafaring rules should not be that expensive of a proposition.
In the vein of rules, I have few complaints. My primary concern is the divine feats and initiation. It seems like it would lend a lot of power to religious characters, so it will tend to cause players to gravitate away for less pious character types. The ritual and nautical rules seem balanced and usable.
I have to be honest when I say that while I thought the "touches" to the setting such as rituals, the gifts, and initiation interesting, I personally did not find the setting itself all that exciting. Perhaps it is just the fact that I never liked settings with clear historical derivatives to the tune of Warhammer FRP and 7th Sea. Further, I did not see as many ideas in the setting material that would be convenient to borrow as I did with the Forgotten Realms and Kalamar settings.
Perhaps if you would like to run such a setting in the d20 system, however, this setting may work well for you. It certainly is detailed and has a lot of fresh touches.
-Alan D. Kohler
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)