The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The price you see above is correct. A usable, useful game supplement for under $7. When I first saw an advertisement that included the price, I thought it must have been a glaring typo. It's not, and you get a lot of information packed into 32 pages.

There's a single-page introduction, a page at the end detailing a few Hawkwood holdings outside of the four Hawkwood worlds, and the rest is detail on the world of Delphi, Ravenna, Gwynneth (which, yes, has a continent named Paltrow), and Leminkainen. There are 4 half-page maps of the planets and four half-page pieces of artwork, leaving a little over 6 pages to cover each world.

It's how the worlds are covered that makes Hawkwood Fiefs a great deal. The book is written as a traveller's guide commissioned by Emperor Alexius and written by one of his Questin Knights, Baron Geoffrey Hawkwood. This isn't an objective book. Baron Hawkwood gives the history of each planet, a very brief overview of each planet's star system, and then gets into the meat of the continents, a quick look at major cities, the planetary powers that be, and curiosities like Deepcore Cities on Ravenna or Delphi's Frisian Ice-Wyrms. Baron Hawkwood's summaries are tainted by his prejudices against other noble houses, the Vuldrok, and pagans. The summaries are also full of enough adventure ideas to make me want to pull out all my Fading Suns books and start running again (if I hadn't already promised my group I'd run something else this summer).

The only real flaw in the book is some editing slips. The word "minors" gets used instead of "miners". "Reign" is used when "rein" is meant (hint to editiors: to reign is to rule, to rein is to control; you reign over a fiefdom and rein in the excesses of your subordinates. Also, one of the planets in Leminkainen's system is a "windy world rife with dust storms", but has no atmosphere. I'm no expert on planetary physics or anything (I'm willing to accept that another airless world has a fierce solar wind, and that another planet is molten on one side but frozen on the other), but come on, guys.

Still, minor quibbles with a quality book. Unlike other books in the line, this one isn't required reading for every GM, but it's very useful and I recommend it highly.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Imperial Survey I: Hawkwood Fiefs
Author: Christopher Howard Category: game Company/Publisher: Holistic Design, Inc. Line: Fading Suns Cost: $6.95 US Page count: 32 ISBN: 1-888906-15-4 Capsule Review by Kevin Mowery on 06/08/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Far_Future Space Post-apocalypse Gothic	The price you see above is correct. A usable, useful game supplement for under $7. When I first saw an advertisement that included the price, I thought it must have been a glaring typo. It's not, and you get a lot of information packed into 32 pages. There's a single-page introduction, a page at the end detailing a few Hawkwood holdings outside of the four Hawkwood worlds, and the rest is detail on the world of Delphi, Ravenna, Gwynneth (which, yes, has a continent named Paltrow), and Leminkainen. There are 4 half-page maps of the planets and four half-page pieces of artwork, leaving a little over 6 pages to cover each world. It's how the worlds are covered that makes Hawkwood Fiefs a great deal. The book is written as a traveller's guide commissioned by Emperor Alexius and written by one of his Questin Knights, Baron Geoffrey Hawkwood. This isn't an objective book. Baron Hawkwood gives the history of each planet, a very brief overview of each planet's star system, and then gets into the meat of the continents, a quick look at major cities, the planetary powers that be, and curiosities like Deepcore Cities on Ravenna or Delphi's Frisian Ice-Wyrms. Baron Hawkwood's summaries are tainted by his prejudices against other noble houses, the Vuldrok, and pagans. The summaries are also full of enough adventure ideas to make me want to pull out all my Fading Suns books and start running again (if I hadn't already promised my group I'd run something else this summer). The only real flaw in the book is some editing slips. The word "minors" gets used instead of "miners". "Reign" is used when "rein" is meant (hint to editiors: to reign is to rule, to rein is to control; you reign over a fiefdom and rein in the excesses of your subordinates. Also, one of the planets in Leminkainen's system is a "windy world rife with dust storms", but has no atmosphere. I'm no expert on planetary physics or anything (I'm willing to accept that another airless world has a fierce solar wind, and that another planet is molten on one side but frozen on the other), but come on, guys. Still, minor quibbles with a quality book. Unlike other books in the line, this one isn't required reading for every GM, but it's very useful and I recommend it highly. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Imperial Survey I: Hawkwood Fiefs