Twilight of Atlantis
Avalanche Press LTD is known primarily for their historical wargames. They hoped to leverage their historical emphasis by offering d20 products that were oriented around historical and mythological themes. Many gamers, however, have come to associate Avalanche with the covers that they have chosen to apply to most of their d20 books: most of their d20 product covers feature a scantily clad woman with details that are often entirely wrong for the setting treated by the book in question. This has earned Avalanche no small degree of criticism.
I must say, though, that at least one author in Avalanche has earned my respect. Despite being held back by a somewhat costly cover price, weak presentation, and gratuitously cheesecake cover, I found Jade & Steel (authored by Jim Lai) to have some very strong content. It had very good background material, good rules material, and one of the better event-driven adventures I have seen in a d20 product. I saw Jade & Steel as something of a diamond in the rough.
I was a fan of the old Bard Games Atlantis setting (written my Talislanta creator Stephan Michael Sechi) in my gaming youth, which was based largely around myths of Atlantis and similar myths of prehistoric civilization. So, when I got a chance to see another effort by an author who demonstrated some talent about a topic I found interesting, I jumped at the chance.
A First Look
Twilight of Atlantis is a 48-page, staple-bound softcover book priced at $12.95 US. This gives it a rather high cost per page, similar to other Avalanche d20 books.
The cover of Twilight of Atlantis, as with many of Avalanche's d20 books, is illustrated by Heavy Metal artist Lorenzo Sperlonga, a fact that Avalanche likes to point out often. And as with other such covers, it depicts a chesty woman in skimpy attire. In this case, the woman seems to be wearing a bronze chainmail bikini and matching bronze chainmail stockings. She is holding a trident and has some vegetation and an exotic looking structure in the backdrop.
The interior is black-and-white. The interior artwork is of mediocre quality, and a few snapshots of ancient artifacts are thrown in here and there. A two-page map of the Atlantean world is in the back, but it is rather abstract and unappealing. Overall, the interior looks rather bland.
The typeface used in the book is somewhat large, with the exception of the content of numerous sidebars, which seem to use a denser typeface. The book does use slender margins, which should deliver more content. Some column formatting problems appear in some of the sidebars, making some of the stat blocks difficult to read.
Like many other Avalanche Press d20 books, the sparse content for the price and weak presentation are detractions to the delivered value of the product.
A Deeper Look
Twilight of Atlantis is organized into three parts: Atlantis and the Ancient World, Characters and Equipment, and Atlantean Campaign.
Part I: Atlantis and the Ancient World describes the background, history, geography, and society of Atlantis and other European and African nations at the time of the purported existence of Atlantis. For the most part, the authors build off Plato's description of Atlantis and some suppositions others have made about his tale (e.g., it is assumed that Plato got the idea of Atlantis from Egyptian folklore, and many Egyptian references are in the book), but they extrapolate a bit to make it into a fantasy setting.
For those not familiar with the legend of Atlantis, the basic concept is this: the Greek god Poseiden raised a land from the depths of the ocean. He took a mortal wife, Cleito, and by her had 10 children, 5 sets of twins. His progeny multiplied and expanded to overtake the continent. They eventually forged a prosperous and powerful empire that extended into Europe and Africa. Yet the Athenians were eventually able to repel Atlantean invaders, and the Greek gods eventually grew jealous and/or worried about the Atlanteans and sank the continent.
As with Plato's version, Twilight of Atlantis pictures a landscape with ring-shaped canals. The end of Atlantis in this version, however, is not due to the Greek gods, but Poseiden himself. Amidst a war in which a number of nations under Atlantis' dominion rose up in rebellion, a quarrel arose between Poseiden's wife Cleito and Gaderius, one of his sons. Gaderius slew Cleito with Poseiden's trident, the very artifact that was responsible for keeping Atlantis above the waves. In his rage, Poseiden breaks the trident, dooming Atlantis.
This version of Atlantis - and the ancient world - is one befitting the sorts of ancient myths that were the source of inspiration for the fantasy genre. Accordingly, there are wizards of great power in the ancient world, and the Atlanteans are foremost among them. The first part describes the rise and fall of Atlantis as well as provides cultural details such as the Atlantean worldview on death, agriculture, art, magic, and so forth. Atlantis is depicted as an empire built on magic, a vision that is consistent with many visions that have grown up around Plato's image of Atlantis.
In addition to the main text, there are a number of other details about the ancient world surrounding Atlantis, given in sidebars. This includes a detailing of Egypt, as well as the Lemurians and Mue, dwellers in other fabled lands.
Part Two launches into the details you need to make player characters in the Twilight of Atlantis setting. Five races are available for PCs in the setting. Humans use the normal d20 System rules. The four remaining races are new: Atlanteans, Noble Atlanteans, Half-Atlanteans, and Bastai.
Common Atlanteans are pictured as intellectually powerful but physically frail. Spinning off the theme that the empire is built around magic, Atlanteans can detect magic and always treat Use Magic Device and Knowledge (arcana) as class skills.
Noble Atlanteans are closer to the true bloodline of Poseiden. They are tougher and more charismatic than common Atlanteans, and have bonuses to several skills and all saving throws, as well as acid, cold, and electricity resistance. The note on Atlanteans states that they add one to their class levels due to their racial benefits, which would be normal for a powerful race. It also states, though, that they get an additional hit die for this one level, which is not the way that races with level modifiers are normally handled. A final glitch is that (according to the author), the noble Atlantean description is supposed to be applied to the common Atlantean stats as a template, but this is not stated anywhere.
Half-Atlanteans are merely crossbreeds between humans and Atlanteans. This is handled in much the same way half-elves are handled in the d20 System rules. Half-Atlanteans have Atlantean racial traits at a reduced level, but have human flexibility with classes.
The Bastai are a race of evolved cats that the Atlanteans magically engineered for use against the Egyptians. Bastai are have penalties to Constitution and Intelligence, but bonuses to their Dexterity and Wisdom. Bastai have bonuses to a variety of motion-related skills. They are experts at unarmed combat, and thus have monk as a favored class.
Twilight of Atlantis presents four new prestige classes for Atlantean characters: Artificer, Orphean, Resonant, and Spellbane.
The Artificer is a spellcaster who specializes in the creation of magic items. They receive numerous bonus item creation feats, and some useful class abilities, such as the ability to use the recipient's XP toward item creation. The amount of item creation feats they get seems gross, but considering how specialized they are and the inherent limits on magic items, I do not think it would work out badly.
Orpheans are loosely based on the legend of Orpheus, who traveled to Hades to recover his beloved Euridice. Orpheans are magically sustained warriors who have returned from death. The magic that sustains them gives them great resilience, including natural armor bonuses and resistance to critical hits.
The Resonant appears to be an outgrowth of the idea of "magic as a science" that has been touched on in the authors' description of Atlantis. The resonant's key class ability is the ability to create prisms that let her use metamagic feats more effectively. While this is a novel idea, I am not so sure I like the execution. The metaprisms are created like a one-shot magic item with a spell level equal to the total adjustment of the metamagic feat to the level of the spell. This seriously underestimates the power of the prism; other items in WotC books suggest that the cost should be based on the total level of the spell after adjustment.
Spellbane is probably the shakiest concept of the lot. Spellbanes are basically warriors who have leared martial techniques that allow them to fight spellcasters, which sounds like a decent enough concept, and the class abilities also seem fairly well thought out. What struck me was the available races: Bastai and Half-Atlantean. I can get the Bastai part if they were specifically trained in overcoming Egyptian sorcerers, but I totally do not get why Half-Atlanteans would be included in the races for this class.
Twilight of Atlantis introduces one new skill and several new feats. The new skill is Charioteering. As should be apparent, this skill allows the character to maneuver chariots.
The new feats include a few combat oriented ones appropriate to the period, but most are targeted at achieving the "magic as a part of the culture" thing at which the authors are driving. Examples are Imbue Tattoos (which creates magic tattoos), Elemental Independence (a metamagic feat that lets the caster cast an attack spell as raw magical energy instead of as an elemental effect), and Resonant Spellcasting (once per day allows the caster to try to cast a spell without using a slot).
The equipment section provides rules for handling weapons and items in the classical era represented by the book. This includes statistics for the trident and establishes weapon equivalents for the falcata, kopesh, and pike. A short list is also provided detailing which items from the d20 System rules are not available in the era.
Rules are provided for bronze weapons and armor. The combat statistics of bronze items are not impugned as in many D&D/d20 books covering such items; however, the item's resilience to damage is reduced.
New items and spells are also introduced. In addition to cat's eye bracelets (which assist in unarmed combat) and the already mentioned metaprisms, the magic metal Orichalcum is introduced. For the purposes of item creation, Orichalcum is effectively a universal power component per the DMG.
The new spells are largely themed around the notion of Atlantis' civilized magic and other themes associated with the legends and purported period associated with Atlantis. Chariot of Poseiden creates a chariot that rises out of the waves. Curse of Helios amplifies light, causing a fireball like effect that can also blind targets - though considering the usefulness of blinding opponents, the spell's level (3rd) is probably too low.
The final section, Atlantean Campaigns, includes ideas and guidelines for running a game set in the Atlantean era. These ideas and guidelines include some notes on party make-up, types of adventures, and placing monsters according to their cultural origin. The chapter also includes three rather detailed and interesting adventure seeds - really, adventure outlines - for running a game in the Atlantean era.
Conclusion
As was the case with Jade & Steel, Twilight of Atlantis is an assembly of good ideas and material hampered by the price and presentation. I think that a game set in Atlantis could be a wonderful break from the normal fantasy game, yet it relies strongly enough on existing myths and legends that most players will not be baffled by the alienness of the world. Still, though I find the concepts interesting, I did not think this book was quite as mechanically sound as was Jade & Steel.
-Alan D. Kohler
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