Time Of Tumult, An Adventure Sourcebook for Exalted by White Wolf Game Studios.
Since this is the first review that I have posted on rpg.net I thought I should say a few words about myself and my background. I am a college educated professional in my mid-thirties. I have been role-playing for about 24 years. I have a general anti-White Wolf bias; I think they tend to go for quantity instead of quality. So, why did I start running Exalted? One word: Cheese. I am a long time Torg GM, and wanted something just a little different. My player group likes other White Wolf products, so I thought I would give Exalted a shot. The fact that it is not set in the World of Darkness was a definite plus for me. All of that aside, this is not an essay on White Wolf in general or Exalted in specific, so on with the show.
Note: You must choose between "capsule review" and "playtest review" when you submit a review. I have run my players through half of the adventures in Time of Tumult, so this review is really only of the first half of the book. Also, I will be mentioning things that would spoil a few surprises for potential players. Read on at your own risk. Finally, since this is a review of an adventure supplement I have written it with the assumption that the reader will know about the game of Exalted already.
Time of Tumult really contains something that any prospective GM of Exalted should find useful and entertaining for their players. It is a 176-page book, with two columns of text per page. The White Wolf propensity for quantity is certainly apparent here. However, this is not a bad thing. This book is expensive; when was the last time you shelled out $21.95 for a book of adventure ideas? The art in the book ranges from excellent to awful. This seems typical of Exalted products so far. Whoever chose the cover art should be ashamed. In contrast to the cover each chapter begins with a full page of very nicely drawn art. I would normally think that was a waste of space, but there is enough text in this book that you won't begrudge them the loss of a few pages.
The book is divided into five chapters, including the introduction. Chapters 2 and 3 are really one massive adventure. Chapter 4 is an adventure not even loosely associated with the previous chapters. Chapter 5 is not truly an adventure, but rather a monster plot hook. I'll only be reviewing chapters 1, 2, and 3 in this essay.
Chapter 1 contains a "How to use this book" section with a synopsis of each of the other chapters. It's a good enough preview, but there actually is very little information on how to use the book other than to say that the stories are not interrelated. This chapter is a massive 2 pages, so the lack of solid content isn't that big a deal.
Chapter 2 is the first part of the "Invisible Fortress". The invisible fortress is a powerful Manse in the far northern reaches of the threshold. For any group of Exalted the prospect of obtaining a Manse from the First Age should be a powerful incentive to participate in an adventure. If you don't want to give your players that much information on their goal, the beginning of the chapter includes several hooks that you might use to get them interested.
Chapter 2 is titled "Expedition to the Invisible Fortress." The assumption of this chapter is that your characters will need to travel to the Manse from wherever they are. Sounds simple, doesn't it? The book goes into little detail on potential travel methods and side adventures during the first part of the trip. The initial journey takes only 3 ½ of the chapter's 44 pages. The authors write that they don't think the journey should be a main focus of the adventure. I disagree, my player group spent 2 nights on this section alone, dodging the Dragon Blooded and trying to root out servants of the Abyss.
Once the players arrive in the comically named town of Wangler's Knob the real fun begins. The town is occupied by Dragon Born, and has made an unholy pact with a powerful local spirit. Frankly, I thought that there was enough material just set in Wangler's Knob to make a great adventure by itself. The book includes a rather rudimentary map of the town and detailed write-ups of the major characters. The NPCs include two powerful Dragon Blooded, and several mortals. There is no description of the Wendigo spirit with whom the town made their pact. The adventure assumes that the Dragon Blooded will kill the spirit without the players ever encountering it. The lack of statistics for the Wendigo was a mistake in my opinion. Again, my players spent much more time here than I think the authors intended. If you have a group that prefers interaction to action then I believe that you will experience the same thing.
Once the players move on from the Knob we head into my least favorite part of the entire book. The authors spend 11 pages describing the dangers of travelling in the frosty wilderness. They intended for this part of the journey to be a very important part of the overall story. Personally, I couldn't care less. In play I skipped right over this entire section and simply narrated some highlights to the group. That having been said, if "man against nature" adventures are your cup of tea then this one seems pretty well done.
When the players finish rolling to see if they get frostbite during the long hike they find themselves in a land inundated with demons. The book includes statistics for several demons, and guidelines for creating a great variety of them. The demons were originally summoned to build the Manse, and now they either want revenge on the Exalted who summoned them, or else to be sent back to Hell. Again, while this is a brief part of the adventure, there is enough material here for several sessions. This is the end of chapter 2.
Chapter 3 is titled "Guardians of the Invisible Fortress". In this chapter our intrepid heroes finally arrive at the Manse itself. This chapter is 50 pages long, and just crammed full of information. It includes a detailed layout of the Manse and the contents of the various rooms. It also has statistics for the various automatons and the Guardian Spirit. It has a couple of new charms, and a couple of new artifacts. The ultimate reward of the adventure is to possess the Manse itself. Acquiring that reward is no easy task.
Exalted is primarily a game of over the top anime-style combat and high adventure. Guardians of the Invisible Fortress diverges from these genres, and goes for straight horror. There is a note in the adventure saying something to the effect of "Don't fudge any rolls to save your players, kill them off if the dice says that they die." Honestly, I don't know why they include such tripe. I have a rule at this point in my game mastering; I don't kill players. I mess with them unmercifully, but I don't kill them. If you are the kind of GM that does kill your players, I do not see any legitimate way for a player group to finish this adventure without loosing several party members.
The Invisible Fortress is totally occupied by a Guardian Spirit that has turned into a psychotic Essence vampire. It is given the ability to mold the physical substance of the mansion and to send hallucinations into the minds of the characters. There are precious few clues given in the adventure as to what is actually happening. It could take a group several deaths to figure it out.
To add to the danger level the Mane is filled with death traps. I mean filled to bursting. It reaches the point of the ridiculous after a while. It's like reading an old Tunnels and Trolls adventure. Anyone remember those? The authors try to justify the traps by saying that the Exalted that used to live in the Manse became paranoid through their long period of self imposed exile. There is no level of paranoia that would justify this module. That doesn't mean that it's not entertaining, it's just ridiculous. If you have a player group too young to remember "Tomb of Horrors" then your players might find the experience a novel one.
To cap it all off, the dungeon crawl ends with a journey through "The Final Retreat". The final retreat consists of 24 rooms of death traps. Again, I do not see any legitimate way that a player group could make through this section without dying. Also, maybe I just missed it, but looking at the maps of the Fortress I don't see the entrance to the final retreat. I ended up just making something up. If I just overlooked it, I would appreciate someone pointing it out to me.
The reward for making it through their encounters with the Guardian Spirit and 24 rooms of trap hell are several powerful artifacts and the hearth stone for the Manse. I was rather disappointed in the power that was given to the hearthstone. Any Night Caste Solar Exalted will definitely feel cheated when a player of another Caste suddenly gains his unique anima ability.
This chapter wraps up with some suggestions on what it would be like for the player characters to own the Manse. It does not make a great base of operations, unless you are running a campaign set in the far north. Remember that they were supposed to have gone through several weeks of frostbitten terror to reach it in the first place. Then there are the barbarian tribes, the Fair Folk, the Dragon Blooded, and those pesky demons living in the area just outside the door. Just wrapping up loose ends and achieving some semblance of security could be most of a campaign.
If you combine the two chapters into one big adventure as the authors intend then I think you get a pretty good product. You have intrigue and adventure on the trail, lots of character interaction in Wangler's Knob, and then a good old fashioned dungeon crawl with a murder mystery thrown in. Maybe even some survival in the wilderness stuff if you like that sort of thing. Everyone should have a good time as long as you remember that you either need to plan on giving your characters a break, or else have a player group that doesn't mind having characters killed off right and left. Maybe an experienced Call of Cthulhu group or something like that. To anyone who reads the section on the final retreat and says, "My players could survive this," I defy you. Not a chance. No way. Just the earth elemental trap in room 14 will kill off almost any player group.
I have read through chapters 4 and 5, but not played through them. I generally found the material to be quite good, and well worth reading. However, this review is getting really long. I will post a complete capsule review of the last two chapters another day.
To sum up: Time of Tumult is a very expensive adventure book with some very good ideas in it. If you are looking for some ideas of things to do with your Exalted group, this book offers a lot of good material. It would be worth owning just for the Invisible Fortress adventure (although at a much reduced cost). I'm giving it a 3 for style (which is good but really nothing special) and a 4 for substance. I would give it a five if it weren't for the ridiculous traps.
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