Die Kreuzritter
You know, when I asked for this book, I thought "wow, how great that someone is giving a sourcebook for such a great snack food". I always felt that they were a somewhat ignored edible, with all the glory going to those Keebler Elf bastards.
Then someone pointed out to me that it was the Kreuzritter sourcebook, not the Ritz Cracker sourcebook.
Man, imagine my disappointment.
Anyway, by that point Sandy had already splurged on the shipping, and I'm not gonna say no to a review copy.
Die Kreuzritter is NOT the tale of a madman plotting the messy demise of the organization. Die is actually German for "The" (and no one who speaks German could... Ah, never mind).
(Being someone who has not stayed up to date with the 7th Sea storyline, I cannot say how deeply any of the following reveals secrets that "GAMERS WERE NOT MEANT TO KNOW", but consider this a half hearted attempt at a spoiler warning).
They're a combination of the Knights Templar and Ninja Gaiden. The templar aspect comes from the fact the pope ordered them killed. The Ninja Gaiden is from the fact they use Shadow Magic (tm). It doesn’t make them as cool as a combination Templar/Ninja (which I believe I saw a demo-team leader using in a game once), but that’s pretty much impossible.
They also know a Great Secret; that there's a shadow barrier being slowly eroded by the use of magic, which may allow Evil Forces entry to Theah. That is, of course, a bad thing, so they work to prevent the falling of the barrier and to keep the Evil Hordes at bay (since they can occasionally enter the Prime Theanical Plane). Apparently the Syrenth Ruins that dot Theah are part of the legacy of the Evil Hordes.
I'm not going to discuss whether it's bad to put this quantity of information about a group in a sourcebook; The Shadow Magic and Shadow Swordsmen School belong in this book. But The True History of Theah (which is Syrenth for Not Earth) shouldn’t be dribbled out, darnit! Some of that info should have been made available from the get go.
Another thing that irked me about the book was it seemed to have one or two too many references to other books; I just hate being told "details of NPC X's life can be found in the Die PeanutButteren sourcebook". Especially when it seems that the NPC in question may have some very interesting background information that it would be useful to know.
The initial sections, for players who’ll be taking the roles of members of the society, do a good job of making them playable. And it does succeed in the primary goal of the Splatbook, which is “now that I’ve read it, do I want to play this Splat more than anything else in the next game of 7th Sea I play?” The only problem with that goal is that I’m very fickle, and easily swayed. Ask me about how I ended up playing a one handed dwarf in a game of Vampire after reading through Clanbook: One Handed Dwarfs sometime. It wasn’t pretty, but I DID get some extra freebie points.
It comes out as a good book, however. The activities of Die Kreuzritter are interesting. My only worry is that most groups will have a panoply of Secret Societies represented, and which would likely lead to a dilution of the interestingness of each of them, or lead to a situation not unlike Paranoia, except without the clones and not as funny.
Thankfully, Die Kreuzritter doesn’t suck. It looks like it might be a cool Swashbuckling MiB type campaign; although I can’t really say I’m too thrown when a book mentions that it is giving us a chance to play characters with ethical dilemmas. I was unaware we had slipped back to 1978.
I do eagerly look forward to the sequel, Die Kreuzritter Die.
The Pirate level of Die Kreuzritter is, regrettably, low. But there are LOTS of guys with swords. Some of them are shadow swords.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)