The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Warning. Get ready – because this review is long. Remember to go before we start.

Liberation is the final part of the second Tribe 8 metaplot story-arc, Conquest. To recap the story: the Fallen have finally united into a single social group, the Eighth Tribe, they save a repentant Joan from evil Z’Bri, they join Joan and Agnes on a series of crusades, they save what remains of the Nation after the Z’Bri (angered by the attacks) wipes Vimary off the map, and then they attack, lay siege and eventually destroy H’l Kar, the Z’Bri stronghold. The final scene of Revanche had Joan looking north worriedly as the survivors of that final battle slowly made their way back to the ruins of Vimary to weather out a harsh, early, winter.

Liberation begins in the following spring and covers the whole year. The Tribals (including the Fallen) now face the real challenge – Capal, the City of Hate. Not some bunch of orgiastic slackers like the H’l Kar, Capal is controlled by the Koleris – brutal, tough, bloodthirsty, and organized. Capal was never weakened by the birth of the Fatimas, the end of the Camps. Capal is still living in the era of the Camps. Capal knows of the threat the Nation poses, and it has more than enough power to deal with them – hundreds of Z’Bri, many thousands of Gekroh and Serfs, siege engines, and a nearly impregnable fortress to work from. Standing, geographically speaking, between Vimary and Capal are the Borehead squats - “barbarians” only in the strictest sense of the word (ie. “not us”, where ‘us’ is defined as Fatima-worshipping submissive former torture camp slaves). With a title like Liberation and these sorts of odds you’d be expecting a grand and epic campaign. If Revanche was about the horrors and pitfalls of war fought with good intentions only, Liberation would be about doing war ‘right’ (alliances, tactics, and heroics)…. What you get is a nice first draft that barely holds together by itself and even for a long-running campaign will need some serious work in places.

Many people have already commented that Liberation is the “Never Say Never Again” of the Tribe 8 line – that is to say a cheap carbon-copy of the excellent Revanche storybook. The similarities (Tribal-Fallen tensions, attacking a great Z’Bri base, big rituals, sabotage, people dying, “war poisons the soul” philosophy, and NPCs doing incredibly stupid things) are striking but there is enough of a scope that it is significantly different – but not always for the better (the H’l Kar Z’Bri, despite being a bunch of lazy, overconfident lackwits proved to be much more competent than the supposed “dark empire” of Capal).

Prelude to War

This is the intro section with the now familiar introduction, brief plot layout and recap of the entire Tribe 8 metaplot. The recap tells us that this is what all the trials and tribulations of the Fallen – the slurs, the manipulations, the two sieges and the inquisition – have led up to, one last campaign to liberate the North (Quebec, Northern and Eastern Ontario, New England and the Atlantic Provinces) of all organized Z’Bri presence. A worthy goal indeed.

Like Revanche there is some time taken to explain that this will be a PC-death story. One can hardly go up against Capal and not see one or more PCs die in the game. Whether they are new PCs (likely to be foot soliders) or veterans from the first T8 story (Enemy of My Enemy, and thus major heroes/legends of the Tribe 8 universe) – people are going to die, and not always doing big, heroic things. The advice they give is sound – even a death that seems minor and petty can be the “last straw” that propels the living PCs to greater acts of heroism – facing down the Capal Prince with a sneer and saying “this is for Marie you flesh-hating bastard!” Also expect that any NPCs you had laying around not-dead from Revanche will be crossing the Fold pretty fast in this one. There is plenty of “free space” and Weavers are encouraged to splice in their favourite subplots, end any plot threads, and to resolve any outstanding issues, in these lulls. If you do this, the campaign works much better since it gives the PCs an idea that this is it – this is the end of something big, and it adds to the drama that is hardwired into the final chapters.

Quest One: Sins of the Mothers

The first part of Liberation is a Cold-War style “blowback” involving Capal tricking some insane Keepers into wiping out Vimary with a pre-Z’Bri bioagent. The whole idea here is the revelation that the Fatimas were responsible for the Rust Plague that is slowly killing the Vimary Keepers and destroying the technological ruins of Olympus. There are problems, bad ones, throughout this chapter. The first being the basic set up – the “as you walk out of the bar a friend dies in your arms, a mysterious warning on her lips, and arrows fired from shadows in her back”. Yeah, and the old man has a map to a lost treasure but he needs a few “healthy adventurers” to go get it for him too. Actually the ”old man” and the “friend” are two children you just got introduced to five minutes ago but the contrived nature of the plot is still there.

The next problem comes from the choice of villains – the Machine Monks – those wacky, weird science Borg wannabes who replaced their legs with all-terrain wheels. The problem is they should be simply too twisted and too evil to care about the Rust Plague or the other Keepers (who, the author forgot, kill the Monks on sight and exiled them from Olympus for their beliefs).

A third problem comes from how the Z’Bri even know about the plague – actually a whole bio-warfare supply bunker. It’s isolated, it’s hidden (underground) and all the squats who lived around the area die periodically from the tainted environment.

The final problem is the climax of the adventure – odds are the bio-agent will be thrown into the river just upriver from Vimary, releasing hemorrhagic fever on the whole island. This has all sorts of serious campaign problems. Even if you stop them from dumping the agent odds are the container will break during the fight and congratulations! Your PCs now have 24 hours to live, have fun!

The best solution here is to place switch-a-roo with the various NPCs: replace the kids with long-term NPCs (so the PCs actually have a reason to traipse all over the island looking for the murderers, and replace the Monks with someone who actually gives a damn about the Rust Plague, like normal Keepers). There is also a problem in making the leap of logic that Capal (and not the Keepers themselves or a cell of H’l Kar Z’Bri survivors or Joh’an) is involved. Then there is the issue of the ‘secret’ sin of the Mothers – NPCs encourage the PCs to hide the truth, that it would sour Fallen-Tribal-Keeper relations, but there is never any fallout from the secret coming out. You have joined Cancer Man (a la the X-Files), welcome to the art of lying and keeping secrets. Strange given that all the prior stories encouraged revealing secrets. Salvageable, but still not as painful as the next story…

The Black Boar

Between Vimary and Capal lies the second most dangerous foe of the Nation – Luther Boarhead. One part viking, one part King Arthur, one part Alexander the Great this huge bear of a man and wolverine of a warrior single handedly conquered and has held (against all Z’Bri counter attacks) by sword or diplomacy (and without big metal gods or strange dream magics to help him) a stretch of territory larger than the H’l Kar, Vimary and Capal combined. He doesn’t have warriors – he has soldiers, a whole economy, access to advanced technology (and gunpowder), and a system of governance that encourages individual squat tribes and keepers into a functioning alliance. Your job, whether you accept it or not, is to escort the whiny princess (er, ‘diplomat’) to negotiate free passage so that Vimary can march all its troops to attack Capal while leaving what’s left of Vimary relatively undefended. Wasn’t this a X-series module for D&D?

Actually the Boarhead Confederacy has some really interesting features (most of which aren’t dealt with here, it’s all in the Weaver’s Resources section and only mentioned in passing here), including the origins of Luther Boarhead as a Koleris-worshipping barbarian (who, very-Nietzche-like, decided to kill his gods and take their power for himself). Unfortunately this chapter is burdened by two very big and very bad things: the diplomats from Vimary and the reaction of Luther Boarhead and his squats.

The diplomats are about the worst (as in badly thought out) villains you could imagine – they hate squats, they hate Fallen, they hate Z’Bri, they whine, they insult, they cajole, and despite being told you can’t kill them, there is no consequence if they don’t show up to meet Boarhead or return to Vimary (since some of the Dahlian caravan teamsters speak enough pidgin Squat to effectively act as translators). To think they were accepted as the representatives of the War Council of Vimary (and Hom), that Magdalen let them go not only as is, but also allowed them to take some Bloodied Rose assassins (!) on the mission (in case the Fallen get uppity)….

Did the author even read the first story of Revanche – you know, where the Fallen save Magdalen’s life from an assassination plot? Does the Lover even realize sending assassins to kill on a delicate mission of diplomacy is usually a bad thing? And why is the diplomat allowed to live as soon as she is out of sight of the Fatimas? My solution is again a switch – replace the diplomat with someone who either hates the Fallen OR hates the Squats, not both. Better yet, replace her with a long-term nemesis of the PCs (like Aucausin from Bitter Harvest) someone who is smart enough, competent enough and powerful enough to be someone the PCs can’t kill out of hand and who actually is suited to the task. A side issue is how the council decided that only Tribal (not Fallen) diplomats would be sent (and who would be representing only the interests of the Nation, not the Fallen) – this is the same bunch who just had three Fatimas saved by the Fallen, who had their civilization saved by the Fallen (twice by this point, if you ran the first quest), who owe the Fallen for the final defeat of the Baron and the Z’Bri. Suddenly they are back to their old, poke-you-in-the-eye Nation-as-bigots routine. Gee, and I thought Star Trek: Voyager had bad character continuity. Mek and Hal Ninva – the Fallen reps who sit on the Council, must have been playing “pull my finger” while the vote was being taken.

The first contact with the confederation comes when the diplomat “mistakes” smoke on the horizon (in a forest) for a campfire and then dares the Fallen to go save the squats from a Z’Bri war party. The leader is thankful but seems to be a little too “golly gee, magic-users!” for my liking – he’s a veteran of two of Boarhead’s wars and village defender who has held the Z’Bri at bay for years. The timely arrival of a couple of Tribal warriors wouldn’t, in my mind, convert him to the cause instantly. After all, he has a unit of musketmen and a palisade – two things Vimary never seriously thought of. Oh well, he offers (after the diplomats yet again insult and humiliate the Fallen) to take them to Boarhead’s wintering camp. When we get there we meet the Boarhead himself… and discover that he is a cuckolded, hen-picked, husband. His council is well written – each having a variety of temporal and spiritual motivations for either helping or hindering the trash-worshipping ‘barbarians’ of Vimary on their suicidal quest to attack Capal, the most dangerous and strongest Z’Bri stronghold ever seen. The final decision though is done in tried and true Dungeons & Dragons form – by testing the PCs (who are not supposed to be the diplomats remember). The quests are well done but the set up is just so badly executed that it seems – it doesn’t matter what the PCs do or say, the totem spirits pass them (while the Magdalite diplomats fail every time, despite being graceful, talented, etc). It ends with possibly the most stupid scene (the old ‘kill the PCs while on a boar hunt so as to dodge blame’, except someone forgot to tell the trained assassins that boars do not typically use poisoned blowgun darts fired from the trees). Oh well, it seems they (the Magdalites) aren’t great warriors, or even all that smart either, since they get killed by King Boar (thus removing the nuisance and absolving the PCs of any blame) – how ironic…

Meanwhile, back at the camp Boarhead’s wife (who is also the shaman of the nasty spider-worshipping squats) is taking a spiritual phone call (in the form of a debauched lesbian orgy – which would have been at least acceptable if not for the cuckolded Boarhead sitting outside the thumping-and-moaning long house – a scene I could just see veteran artist Jim Holloway (the humour artist who did most of the classic Paranoia and D&D illustrations) would have drawn). I felt myself remembering last week’s review of the Elminster novel where The Simbul of Algarond runs around Hell naked just for the sake of fan service. With the okay from his wife – er, the ‘spirits’, and not even wondering what happened to the REAL diplomats, he okays free passage and even some limited military assistance! Awfully nice considering not 48 hours ago he almost got the council to vote on conquering Vimary and putting his newfound allies to the sword and torch.

My solution to the whole Boarhead thing – watch some movies, read some books on Mohawk and Iroquois rituals (tests of honesty, trials of pain, etc), the take that, throw in how to do animal spirits right (my vote is Princess Mononoke, there’s King Boar right there!) and make the PCs earn that alliance with Boarhead. Make them terrified of him (he is, after all, the single most scary mortal they will ever meet, smart like Batman, strong like Superman, violent like Wolverine), make the rituals of the Maalin (the witch-women) into something more spiritual/sexual/bloody than the last sequel of ‘Chained Heat’. The Boarhead Confederation should put a lie to all the pre-conceived notions the PCs have of squats. These are organized, individuals who are equals, or even superior to, the Nation. If it wasn’t for Capal and the synthesis magics of the sisterhoods, Tribe 8 would be the story of the 8th tribe of the Boarhead Confederacy. Nice first draft, bad final product.

The Mistresses

Chapters 3 to 5 are where things really pick up and most of the extreme silliness falls away. The “some military support” of the squats is almost triple the size of the Nation’s armies. We get some surprises – the Fallen warrior Mek is made overall commander of the army, Joan takes up the role of simple immortal and nigh-invincible soldier, a squat is made one of the upper commanders and almost everyone (PC) gets an officer rank (wow, General Calrissian!). Due to the nature of the army it has a few problems – it seems there are raiders attacking the southernmost parts of the supply lines, and there are visions of a ‘black ship’ slowly making its way to Capal, bearing weapons and reinforcements. It seems Capal and the mysterious Oneida of Hattan have some sort of alliance, and that alliance has to be broken in such a way that Hattan doesn’t get involved in the war (thus opening up a second front in the very vulnerable rear flank of the army). PCs are shipped off to San Jon (the most advanced and most stable of Keeper enclaves so far introduced) to engage in some piracy and brigandeering. The Hattan Oneida continue to be well developed as the evil, and somehow ‘wrong’, but still quite human. The atmosphere around them is really well done. Scuttling the ship and dealing with a couple of Oneida scouts is easy. Formally breaking the alliance is left up to the players to devise, but an easy ‘out’ is given in the form of a bitter, ambitious Oneida governor. And the army decides to take a page from Boarhead’s playbook and construct waypoint forts in the newly conquered territory.

The only problems with this chapter lie in the “introduce new metaplot NPC” syndrome – something that the other subsequent chapters also suffer from. One Oneida slave we are introduced to simply vanishes (Bradley Robins told the Tribe 8 mailing list that he plays a part in later products). Another minor problem is the “here’s powerful magic items that are for NPC use only” – Z’Bri weapons constructed with heartstones made in Hattan and which the PCs are supposed to give the governor in exchange for his stopping all further shipments. The rules do not explain why the PCs cannot try and use the weapons – the corruption of using the enemy’s weapons against them and all that, it just flat out says “the PCs cannot wield these weapons they are too alien”, but they can carry them without any problems, despite being made with, and I say it again, Z’Bri soul-carrying heartstones (the things that only the Guides can use, and even they can go insane doing so, and whose very presence was the crux point of stories in the T8 Companion and Bitter Harvest). It’s called ‘setting continuity’, and it’s sorely lacking on this issue.

Legacies

Here the war proper starts. Remember how I keep reminding you of how dangerous the Z’Bri are, who well-trained and organized Capal is, how well-manned their armies are, swollen with the Koleris who abandoned H’l Kar (middle quest of Revanche)? Well, forget it, somehow, when no one was looking, someone hid or burned all the copies of Horrors of the Z’Bri and Word from the North and single-handedly replaced the brains of all the Z’Bri with those of gibberlings from AD&D – you know the gibberlings, those 1HD beings that are even dumber than orcs and goblins? The ones whose idea of tactics is the mob formation? Whose only great advantage is the fact that the average encounter with them numbers about 100:1 in their favour – and they still lose? Yep, those things. We also see a return to the Revanche theme that war with Z’Bri makes humans act like Z’Bri (makes sense, you are fighting soul-destroying spirits whose very presence corrupts the mind), but this time we are saved from another plague of zombies by the reintroduction of the long lost tribe of Mary the Forgiver (whose whole role in the original Camp liberation was to spiritually heal the warriors, to clean them of the sins of war and Z’Bri taint).

The chapter takes place in San Foy (that’s Saint-Foy, the rich anglophone outskirts of Quebec City, where my grandparents lived and where my mother and her sisters grew up), where the PCs are ordered to garrison in an abandoned and slowly disintegrating tower (formerly a Z’Bri keep). The chapter describes some excellent and horrifying effects of the slow tainting of the soldiers there – from the flashes of shared perception to the Koleris-like fetishization with bloody duels of honor. When reinforcements come along the PCs should be quite tainted. I love when authors actually use the taint to the fullest in this way – players shouldn’t catch on that they have become tainted, everything should just feel natural, almost a positive side effect. People should want to be tainted… until you tell them that the taint is the reason for all this goodness. Anyways, one of the reinforcements is a Black Marian hiding amongst the Joanites, who recognizes the taint and tries to purify the PCs in a big synthesis ritual. Marians, for those who don’t own the Tribe 8 Companion, are the heretical followers of the ‘dead’ Fatima, Mary the Forgiver. Mary “died” and Agnes was “born”, but the Marians (those that did not switch to worshipping Agnes or commit ritual suicide with their Fatima) hid themselves in other tribes, teaching their children and worshipping in secret. In Vimary they are sort of a conspiracy group like the Knights Templar or the Illuminati, biding their time and keeping hidden until the “time is right”. Well, the ritual works, sort of (we get the lame “have to fight your shadows” scene in the River of Dream), but it reveals the Marian’s true allegiance. Realizing that the Marians would be incredibly helpful, the PCs must try and contact their leadership (a brilliant exercise in conspiracy investigation and cellular organization – each Marian only really knows their teacher and 1-2 others). The chapter ends with the PCs revealing the secret of the Marians, defending them in front of the Council, and performing a ritual that mass-purifies the armies.

Despite being a well-written military/religious conspiracy quest, the chapter isn’t without its problems, but mostly in the beginning and the end – centering on the relationship between the Marians and Agnes the Child (or Pre-Teen). Most notably is the curious omission of the ‘First Children’ subplot element from Word of the Dancers – the first children were the child Marians who attended Agnes the first moments after her birth – they are immortal children, adults locked in the bodies of kids, and powerful dreamers. There is no mention of them in this chapter and I felt that they should have been there – if only as a reminder in the Weaver’s notes and a possible story hook.

The other major problem is how the Z’Bri assault is handled in the beginning of the chapter. Remember my gibberling comment? I wasn’t joking. This, simply, should never have been written as is. Not even the near-Chained Koleris of H’L Kar are this stupid. Not to mention that the Army’s tactics seems to have forgotten how the Nation actually fights: where are the Sirens to lure the Z’Bri out? Where are the Dahlian flankers? Where are the Fallen Sheban executioners and the snipers (using Truth for that ‘perfect shot’)? There is also no comment made about how the Squats fight – it seems they go along with whatever tactics the Tribals (their inferiors remember) suggest. One final problem lies in dealing with how the squats fare in pitched combat with Z’Bri. In Revanche you had dreamer versus spirit-demon, but Squats are particularly vulnerable to Z’Bri atmosphere, sundering and taint. The only win by using guile, long range sniping and hit and run raids – a pitched battle should be something brand new to most of them (they are soldiers, but guerilla soldiers, not WW1/WW2 infantry).

Forlorn Hope

See the NPC. See NPC die. Die, NPC, die. See the PC? See the PC die. Die, PC, die. This is the final act of the campaign – taking place on the edge of winter. Concerned about trying to fight so far from their supplies, in contested territory, Mek takes a gamble and orders a snap attack on the Fortress, the outer castle of Capal and whose wall encircles the city. The chapter ends in a climatic suicide charge to breach the Ch’taux and crush the Z’Bri once and for all – a charge led by humanity, a battle fought not with magic but sheer human will, and a battle “that will become a legend for centuries to come.” And, unlike many hyped battles in games, this one actually looks like it will pull it off – if Weavers do a bit of creative editing and add their personal NPCs/subplots to the mix.

It begins with a spy coming over the wall – Isa the Dreamer (a serf who, like the forbearers of the Nation, was gifted by the Goddess with the ability to dream). She’s been funneling messages to the Tribals (presumably through her dreams). The funny part here is we get to see Isa, but not Chantalle or any of the other Tribals or Fallen from Word of the North. She’s been talking to Kyrt the Free (something that Weavers should probably change to one of the WotN NPCs) and says that the Lords are convening a council in the Ch’Taux, meaning the Fortress is guarded only by Iv’Chet, gekroh and serfs - still about 200-300 soldiers, but not impossible. Mek chooses to mount a double attack – one on the ground aided by Keeper artillery and sappers, and one by boat, climbing the cliffs. The battle is something of a nod to actual history – recreating, in essence, the Battle of the Plaines d’Abraham (where British General Wolfe conquered Quebec/New France back during the early colonial period in North America). Subplots abound here and mostly do a much better job of grasping the sheer magnitude of this war than Revanche did. The only real writing problem here (beyond the usage of Isa) is the killing of Capal’s Prince off camera by the four Fatimas (Joan, Magdalen, Agnes and Dahlia). Author Bradley Robins (again on the T8ML) explains that this was done because “the PC’s can’t be everywhere important”), and I can agree with this opinion (having just recently railed about how NPCs like Elminster seem to be Mr. Forest Gump when it comes to pivotal events in history, always inserting themselves just to say they were there), the execution (oh, he’s dead, we’re all okay, here’s his heartstone) is really poorly, almost insultingly, executed. I say this drawing a direct comparison to the death of The Baron in Vimary Burns (where no PC was present but still the battle was suitably dramatic) – one was evocative and provided depth, this was just a stupid fait accompli – worse given how Prince Thak’ikch’at has been made into a monster much more powerful and dangerous than the Baron. It deserved a better death.

After the Fortress is taken (and PCs let Magdalen, the Fatima who sent them off with Natacha Badenoff and her crew of anti-Fallen bumblers, walk away with about 20 heartstones from the Prince’s trophy room – which was in the Fortress instead of the more reasonable Ch’Taux)., the Z’Bri pull another Darwin Award move and release… the Mayor of Sunnydale, oh, I mean the Midgaard Serpent, er, Sandworm of Arrakis? Basically a big snake/worm thing that does more damage to Capal and the Fatima Joan than to the army since the army would normally be smart enough to run away from such a huge thing. This is one of those “cannot be killed by PCs” type creatures – its stats would give the battlefleet of Gamma Division (from Jovian Chronicles) with their spinal-mounted lasers and particle beams a hard time. Should the army be used to attack this thing (sort of like sending Sadukar to shoot at Arrakis Sandworms) the Weavers are encouraged to use the ‘swarm’ rules and treat the army as a swarm of insects (and about as (in)effective).

Joan is crippled, the Army splintered, the Z’Bri are holed up in the Ch’Taux (instead of using the huge caverns under the city seen in Word of the North) and Mek is desperate for one final, decisive, win. He asks for volunteers to join a suicide rush on the Ch’Taux. He asks for 500, he gets at least twice that much. Volunteers are asked to say their goodbyes to any and all loved ones (the hook for this is an excellent attempt at redeeming Troy Fenys – the perennially cardboard-cutout Herite leader, this is simply great), resolve their plot lines, declare their love for one another, make up with enemies, and wait to die. I won’t go into too much detail about the battle but it is one of the best fight scenarios I’ve read – despite the brain-dead tactics of the Z’Bri, the use of Z’Bri Lords as cannon fodder). The ultimate moment, when Mek’s Bane makes his appearance (and, in the same paragraph, Troy seems to disappear in that missing-a-few-sentences-here sort of way), the PCs are placed in one of those “Oscar Award clip” moments – rushing, sacrificing, to restore the morale of the Forlorn Hope (the name of the suicide forces).

My only suggestion in this chapter is to really work some of the battles, put everything you have into that final battle – even if the PCs aren’t in Forlorn Hope they can still have their “slow motion drama” scenes, their anime-esque dying soliloquy, their adrenaline-driven vanquishing of evil. Rework the battle between the Fatimas and the Prince (even allow them to participate in some way), give them an idea of just how dangerous this Z’Bri is. One suggestion is to even have him play the role of Mek’s Bane, making that scene even more charged – not only are you fighting in this final battle, but you, the PC, exiled, hated, loved and heroic, face down the demon possibly more deadly than even Tibor the Beast himself, no Fatima, no magic, no saving grace just the sheer will of humanity to live without fear, without domination by the Fatimas, to live and die finally and truly free. Choose some really, really good music for this one (Braveheart, Duel of the Fates, Karl Orff and even Gladiator spring immediately to mind). Let the dice fall by the wayside, run this one to the hilt.

Aftermath

“The battle’s done and we kind of won, so let us give our victory cheer! Tell me, where do we go from here?”
– Giles and Scoobies, Where Do We Go From Here

H’L Kar has been destroyed, Capal conquered, the Eighth Tribe not only victorious but also sitting in the odd position of being the winner, but at a horrible cost and with even more weighty consequences. Many of the squats decide to stay with the Fallen in Capal, which almost without negotiation, is the new homeland for the Children of Prophecy. There are tends of thousands of serfs, no master to serve, no conception of freedom, still to deal with. Luther Boarhead has the regrettable position of having cut off the head of one rival only to have helped place a greater threat (in his mind) in its place.

The chapter deals with the fallout of the Conquest story arc detailing the reactions of each tribe and outlook (well, not all and not entirely completely either) as well as the Keepers, Serfs and Squats. Since the Time Before, humanity walks free of the Z’Bri, if only in one corner of the world. The Z’Bri who survive are still lurking in the shadows but they are little more than individual monsters not the collective, species-wide nightmare that destroyed our world and almost drove humanity to extinction.

The Children of Prophecy have matured and grown, the Conquest is behind them, this is no longer the story of the exiles or the 8th tribe, this is the story of humanity. Fin.

Final Thoughts

Liberation is as much about ending the Conquest arc and the Vimary campaign subplots as it is about laying the groundwork for the Capal campaign and the next two plot arcs (the next is entitled ‘Legacies’) which sees the timeline advanced by 5 years. But it takes too much away from the story at hand and it never really satisfactorily deals with others. The virtual omission of the New Bloods (the young generation of Fallen and Tribals, and those children born within the 8th Tribe, never having been exiled themselves) is perhaps the one thing that bothers me – especially since it was hinted that rules for playing them would be in the book (as replacements for PCs who died in Revanche) but also because things like The Black Boar would simply not have happened if they were around. Another group that is entirely ignored (for the second book in a row) are the Guides, who play NO role in the most important moment in the Fallen’s destiny. At the very end they simply move from Hom to Capal and set up shop without comment. So much for the mysterious parental figures of the Fallen, the spiritual powerhouses that could have helped out, or at least help protect the squats (what’s the matter Halos, you loved a squat, you lived with them, but somehow actually helping them fight something they are totally defenseless against is somehow not your problem)? Where are the Hunters – you know, the Z’Bri killing Z’Bri? One makes a cameo, only to say he * might * make an appearance later on (which the author then forgets about completely). This would normally show a lack of knowledge of the Tribe 8 setting, except that the author is a veteran Tribe 8 author, who helped shape many of these NPCs.

I’d like to make some comparisons to other “endgame” type scenarios – notably Wraith the Oblivion’s End of Empires which uses all the plot seeds in one grand culmination. Compared to Liberation, EoE is a much better product. Compared to the original WFRP Empire in Chaos it does much better. Compared to Star Trek Voyager’s finale it’s a lot better (despite having equally inconsistent characterization).

If you are intending on playing Liberation by itself or as the beginning of your campaign I strongly, strongly suggest you don’t – instead, play at least the entire Conquest arc first, if not start from the beginning. Otherwise you simply won’t care about the important deaths, won’t know why things like the Rust Plague are important, and will have an extremely warped perspective on how dangerous the Z’Bri are.

If you are already playing Tribe 8 (or intend on following my advice) then use Liberation as a template, change the NPCs using long-term ones, take note of subplots from other books, use previously developed plot threads. If you do this, then the minor modifications (the Z’Bri counterattacks) are the only you have to do, and you will have a great time.

I’m giving Liberation a 4 for substance because what’s in here is very good (if badly implemented), but only a 1 for style (since, as I said, the implementation quite frankly makes me nostalgic for the generic D&D modules of old and ‘1’ is as low as I can go). My comments, hopefully, will not be seen as “it isn’t what I would have done” fanboy ranting but illustrates some serious flaws in the structure of the plot, the antagonists and the characters as well as unexplained deviations from establish setting elements (like the heartstone thing). I did hear that certain parts of the book had to be re-written due to concerns about Sept 11th (I’m assuming that it was the first quest of the book), but still there is no excuse for turning the Z’Bri, inexplicably, into morons who couldn’t think their way through an open doorway, or for deflating threats like the Boarhead Confederacy or the serfs of Capal. Given that the San Jon Keepers (depth of society) and the Oneida (creepy) are done so well (even beyond the average Tribe 8 book) shows that it isn’t a matter of taste, but simply sloppy writing and uneven development.

One can hope the next plot arc and future releases keep to the old high quality of work and that Liberation isn’t the first sign of a depressing downturn in Dream Pod 9’s normally excellent quality.