Kingdoms of Kalamar represents the first official 3E setting produced by a third-party company; in fact, it is the first authorized third-party setting produced for D&D (in any incarnation) for some time. In some sense, it is the first full 3rd Edition campaign - it's far more extensive than Greyhawk, and its release predated the Forgotten Realms. All in all, Kenzer & Company entered new territory in producing this book, and frankly, it shows.
Let me begin by saying that I loved this book; in many ways, it represents everything I think a campaign setting should be. Virtually all the information contained herein has more to do with roleplaying than "rollplaying". The chapter on "races" deals with human cultures - no stats involved, which frankly is how it should be.
Further, here you'll find page after page on nations, cities, courts - political intrigue and underworld manuvering. A great deal of thought has been given to how each city "feels," presumably in an effort to aid GMs in describing these settlements and fleshing them out where necessary.
An entire chapter is given over to organizations, ranging from socialists - the Blackfoot Society - to would-be global dictators - the Secret Network of the Blue Salamander - to a merchant's guild - the Golden alliance. And there are many more besides, all with interesting and unique elements that could inspire several different adventures. The next chapter discusses human and demihuman languages, including alphabets and common name elements.
And if that's not impressive enough, an entire appendix is devoted to the campaign world's constellations (and other celestial bodies), and the common calendar!
This is a remarkable book.
Unfortunately, it's a bit rules-light. There's a new magic item (actually, a variant on the old ring of invisibility), stats for various breeds of - get this - horses, and lists of the races, alignments, classes and levels of various famous NPCs. That's about it. Actually, I wouldn't mind that so much if it wasn't for the fact that even the domains of the various gods have been left out! (To be fair, these will reportedly be published in a future supplement, and KenzerCo has put them online, but for the purposes of this review I must focus on the core sourcebook alone.)
Speaking of the gods, none of them have the universal names found in so many other settings - something I find most refreshing. To be sure, it appears they are worshipped everywhere; but then again, many of Earth's faiths share similiar ideals and tenets here and there, so perhaps this is more realistic than one would think. At any rate, instead of a single name, each god has a descriptive title and a list of regional names. My gripe here is that many of the regional names don't feel right - they sound as though they were created by some random "fantasy name generator" program. Looking back, I see that this is in fact I problem that shows up again and again throughout the book. Some of the names do fit in, but many others do not. I find this most disturbing, especially given the care and attention given to so many other parts of the book.
As for the style - well, the interior art is quite impressive, and the layout is very nice. There is something a bit disconcerting about the book: some of the pages are in color; the rest are in black and white. That would ordinarily be fine, but the color difference extends to the borders as well. Sometimes they're brown and gold, sometimes they're grayscale. I realize it's probably best, economically, to print only parts of the book in color, but I wish they'd kept the greyscale borders throughout the book if they were going to do that.
As for the cover - it's quite obviously a drawing, but it's actually a very nice one. It reminds me of some of the better animated fantasy movies I've seen. I can actually see a cartoon wizard (albeit a reasonably "realistic" one) examining this tome by the light of a flickering candle. It's not as fancy as the covers of the core rulebooks, or the Forgotten Realms, or some of the other D&D sourcebooks published by WotC, but it has a charm and a grace all its own.
The book also comes with a gorgeous set of poster maps. These are very nice indeed: full color, quite large, very easy to read. They are glued to the pages, and said glue can be difficult to remove from the book after the maps have been taken out, but this is actually not a major problem. A clear plastic hex overlay is included as well, for measuring distances, and this is also very nice.
In the end, despite the detail, I did find Kalamar to be fairly generic in tone. There's not much that sets it apart from the stereotypical fantasy setting. That's not really a complaint. Too many D&D setting require GMs to make adjustments when importing or exporting various elements - and frankly, sometimes I buy settings and setting-specific sourcebooks just for the neat ideas contained therein. I don't always want to make adjustments. With Kalamar, you can take any or all of it and plop it somewhere else, or import any bits and pieces you want. It's a basic fantasy setting - and that's a strength, not a weakness, because that makes it a clean slate, a foundation on which virtually anything can be built. And the esoteric details found in the book are a pile of bricks with which one can build. I can see why a given GM would want to use elements of Kalamar in his own setting; and why he might want to take his group to the setting, adding his own elements there. It works well either way.
The $35 price tag might make some gamers balk, but in my opinion, Kalamar is well worth it, despite its flaws. It's less expensive than the Forgotten Realms, and in terms of quality it's about on par - it handles some things better, some things worse, and ultimately they cancel each other out.
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