Kingdoms of Kalamar is a new generic D&D setting from Kenzer and Company. It is an officially licensed D&D product, which means that Kenzer has a direct contract with Wizards of the Coast (it doesn't use the Open Gaming License) and gets to display the D&D logo.
I should emphasize the phrase generic D&D because that is what you are getting here. Kalamar uses all the standard conventions we know and love from the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and the supported game settings like The Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. For example, the groups of elves mentioned include high, gray, wood, wild and dark, kind of like the elf entry in the Monster Manual.
My impression is that Kalamar is emphasizing craftsmanship and detail over spunk and style. Nothing is at all shocking or unusual about the setting, but everything fits together really neatly. While Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms seem to be thrown together based upon the needs of the home campaigns of their respective authors, I never once criticized the believability or rationality of any of Kalamar's features.
Let me get one complaint out of the way first: Kalamar is extremely similar to Greyhawk in the big picture. Here I am referring to the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (LGG) version of Greyhawk. First and most noticeably, Greyhawk history is really the history of the migration patterns of six different human races, while the same is true in Kalamar, where there are also six different groups of humans and a nice map depicting their migrations. You can draw some connections between the six races in each setting if you want.
Next, Greyhawk political history is dominated by the Great Kingdom which conquered most of the continent. The Great Kingdom started in the west and conquered much of the central Flannaes. Later, the peripheral areas of the Kingdom declared independence and adopted traditional but silly names like the Duchy of Urnst. What do you know, the same thing happens in Kalamar. The Empire of Kalamar conquered most of the continent of Tellene (the main setting area) and then later further-away areas declared independence and adopted silly names like the Duchy of O’Par. One difference is that the period of decline has ended in Kalamar and an aggressive emperor is trying to reconquer the independent nations. These aren’t the only similarities between the two settings, but I think I'll lose readers of this review if I keep harping on it.
So what do you actually get when you buy the book? Well, it's a sturdy 272-page hardcover that comes with two fold out maps. I'll say more about the maps later. The book starts out with a short discussion of the six human races and then gives some really basic facts on human society and climate. The bulk of the book, 150 pages or so, is a gazetteer-like look at the various nations and cities of Tellene. While basic info is given on each country (including religion, politics, the military, population, etc.) the main focus in on individual cities. Each city entry both gives you a basic overview and also tries to include information that will be helpful for adventure ideas, such as notable sages, current goings on, temples, and so forth. I liked the details about which demihumans live in each city, which is better than the 78% human, 22% everyone else formula in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.
If you want another high-magic Forgotten Realms, this setting will not deliver. No characters are over 20th level and most are well under that. Most important city leaders are actually of the Aristocrat NPC class in the DMG, and it is nice to see some designers not making every character into a combat machine. There are not very many wizards and sorcerors hanging around on every street corner. One humorous city description says that there is a Wizards' Guild for the four local wizards, who meet every month for pastries. There are temples in almost all of the cities, but the clerics working there are not necessarily of super-high levels. In fact, the religion section makes a point of distinguishing between adventuring clerics who gain experience and thus class levels and temple clerics who have low class levels but high rank within the church.
The cultures and countries are pretty standard Greyhawk stuff, although again the good part is in the details about how everything fits together. The authors seem to have a good grasp of human nature and have many examples of corruption and inefficiency in local government. Unlike in the unrealistic Forgotten Realms, every nation is not one composed of traders who scheme to make money while readers wonder who grows the crops and does the laundry. But again, this particular book focuses on city life and is not like Harn, which emphasizes the realities of rural life. As is usual in game settings, some of the smaller countries are gimmicky, as in wacko religion here, women rule here, merchants rule here, and so on.
As usual in generic D&D settings, demihumans and humanoids (as someone else pointed out online, the book uses the 2nd edition terminology to differentiate between good and evil races) are pushed off to the side, with one exception. Elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings are all around although none of them have any large kingdoms anymore. Instead, elves have small cities at most "in that forest over there, way outside of town" and dwarves are "in those mountains over yonder." Since these races are straight from the Player’s Handbook, no real new detail is given to them. A couple of cities are described, though, and demihumans live in many human nations as well. One neat touch is that the Empire of Kalamar has conquered one dwarven city and is trying to fight a guerrilla war against other dwarves. However, the poster Kenzer distributed showing a battle in this dwarf-Kalamar struggle is highly misleading because the vast majority of the book focuses on humans and not other races. The giants in the poster are an extreme aberration and were killed after the battle. Still, many monsters from the Monster Manual get a mention once or twice in the book. This is like “Thri-Kreen live here, bullywugs over there” and little detail is given. Apparently the usual underground and underwater races are in existence, but again there is no information on this.
The one glaring exception to the usual D&D minimization of nonhumans is the focus given to hobgoblins. Hobgoblins, as an organized lawful evil race, are important in several areas of the book. Hobgoblins control two large kingdoms on the map (the only nonhuman race to do so) and seem to exist in other areas as well. They are still evil but are not rampaging idiots whose moronic schemes are easily defeated. In one of the few instances of game stats actually appearing, Kenzer makes up stats for half-hobgoblins, which are more appropriate than half-orcs for the setting.
The best part about the gazetteer chapters is the map. I would say the majority of the art budget was spent on the map, and I believe that was the best choice. The map is in very beautiful color that gives a good indication of terrain and city locations. The map is printed in several forms throughout the book. The most prominent is in two fold out maps, which are glued into the book. The glue is a little annoying to deal with, but my maps were easily removed with no tearing. Additionally, the majority of the map is printed in greyscale on the inside covers, and appropriate color sections of the map with highlighted political boundaries open up each of the gazetteer section's chapters. The color subsets of the map with boundaries really makes reading the geography chapters a lot easier. Instead of constantly fumbling with the fold out maps to find a region, you can just flip back a few pages and easily find the city or country being discussed. The interior color maps make the book really functional. I like the map.
After the gazetteer chapters, the last 100 pages contain info other than city descriptions. First up are some lame secret societies. There is no Zhentarim or Scarlet Brotherhood here yet to pique our interest. Next is a detailed look at major languages. Information on common names for characters from different cultures or the demihuman/hobgoblin races was nice, but they included some lame alphabets for the different languages. Memo to game designers: if you aren't Tekumel's Barker or Tolkien, don’t create your own alphabets. I simply refuse to believe that all alphabets in a fantasy game should be a similar 25-27 letters suitable to easy translation to the Roman alphabet.
The next chapter on gods is one of the strongest in the book. There are 40 something gods, all of which cut across racial and ethnic lines, which helps get across the point that these gods are really extraplanar entities, not outgrowths of society, as the racially based Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk gods seem to indicate sometimes. Instead of focusing on badly thought up names or ripping off historical Earth deities, these gods are given English names like "Knight of the Gods" and "The Overlord". Each god has several names or titles. Also, the clergy of each god and the church itself have their own titles. This is a little classier than the usual approach. For those who want it, the gods' names in each of the six human languages are also given. Basically I think these gods are much better than the usual D&D crop. One problem is that the authors' forgot about D&D mechanics and didn't include clerical domains. Someone quickly posted a list on Eric Noah's website, so this is not the end of the world.
The next chapter has some pictures and descriptions of various constellations, and, more helpfully, English translations of the months and days of the week. The next chapter gives a two-page chronology of recent history and descriptions of the various systems of numbering the years. This section is helpful because references to historical events in the main text rarely mention how long ago those events actually happened.
Further appendices discuss cities, typical codes of law, and the organization of the Kalamaran army. There are also helpful tables listing the strengths of each army in Tellene, basic facts about each country, and names and adjectives for people from various countries. These are the facts that other settings (aka the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk) rarely have the cohesion to set out in stone in the beginning and so various freelancers make up as they go along, freely contradicting other authors. Hopefully Kalamar will not turn into a setting where people argue about things like "Well, Book X says this and Book Z has this information that contradicts Book X and Ed Greenwood says something completely different" and so forth.
Another, multi-page table has basic class levels, alignment and racial information for a lot of NPC's mentioned in the main text. This list is not exhaustive, and it is unclear why some characters were included and others were not. As I mentioned before, one interesting point is that the average character level is not superstellar, and these characters are more likely to be the movers and shakers in the world.
Finally there is the most helpful index I have ever seen in a gaming product. It is not only an index, but also a glossary as each entry has a small description to jog your memory as to just who or what that name refers to. Good job Kenzer!
I mentioned the great maps above. Kenzer also has useful art that depicts the holy symbols' of the gods and also the constellations. There are also four or five full-page paintings (one of which is unfortunately in black and white) which you can see on Kenzer's website. However, only in one case is there text explaining what is going on in the painting, which is too bad. (There is text on the website, though). The rest of the art is generic black-and-white fantasy pictures or pictures of rural manor houses. These filler pictures don't seem to be customized for the region being discussed and are pretty forgettable.
If anyone is still reading this review, I'll say another thing that this book does not have: rules information. Unlike most D20 products such as the upcoming Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Kenzer does not add any new spells, skills, feats or prestige classes. I couldn’t care less about this stuff, because I feel overwhelmed with these items already. On the other hand, there are also not any preplanned adventuring sites. Right now there is not a counterpart to the Forgotten Realms's introductory town of Shadowdale.
How is the Kenzer product line going to advance in the future? I heard one company employee make the claim that they will release 10 supplements a year for Kalamar. That is a tall claim and seems to be many more than Wizards is planning for the Forgotten Realms. The next two products are both adventures, perhaps followed by an Ed Greenwood accessory on a small city of 8,500 people. I guess they are going for a Shadowdale-like introductory setting, because the city in question is pretty unimportant in the big scheme of things. A product for further down the road is a Player's Guide, which will have information on, you guessed it, prestige classes, feats and skills. This product seems to be at least 9 months away.
To conclude this long review, I want to reiterate my basic impression. Kingdoms of Kalamar is a totally generic D&D setting that wholeheartedly adopts all the cliches from the main rulebooks. However, the level of detail, the importance placed on realism and believability, and the goal of providing a lot of useful information to the DM make this perhaps a better setting than Greyhawk. As to a comparison with the Forgotten Realms, the two lines should appeal to different groups. Groups liking a more superpowered approach to their games should play in the Realms, while those wanting details that fit together and make more sense should play in Kalamar.
Hooray to Kenzer for putting a lot of effort into the details of a great setting. If they had added a little more flavor in terms of things like demihumans, magic and the like I would be a little happier, but they can't please everyone, I suppose.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)