Introduction
It seems like once the open system gimmick for d20 was
hatched that every game developer and his brother decided that was the way to
go. Some of the offerings have been
quite good. Many have been equally
forgettable. Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration
Fantasy, lands somewhere in the middle.
There are quite a few good ideas and useful concepts wrapped in this
very thick book. There are also a
number of parts that are far too derivative, nonsensical or simply odd.
Races, Classes, Skills and Feats
The world of Ptalmanar has most of the races found in the D&D
Third Edition Player’s Handbook rules and adds a few more on top of
that. Mostly the additional races do
not work very well, for example halflings were taken away and khesta were
added. Not much of a difference between
the two. The other races seem just a
slight notch too powerful. Though some
of the new races play a part in the
cosmological part of the game (re made by the gods) that doesn’t imply they
added anything to the world or plausible (even given the above premise).
A very good part of the races is the differentiation amongst
the elves. While one branch of elves
are the typical elves found in virtually every setting (re peacable, live in
woods, etc.) there are also the elves in the colonies. These are a militaristic bunch who don’t
care much for humans. They would be
analogous to Native Americans, save they are otherwise very militant magic using
elves. Note my tongue in cheek.
The races section is a mixed bag that probably could have
been made much simpler and taken absolutely nothing away from the setting.
The basic third edition classes are represented and
clarified in regards to the world of Ptalmanar. Nothing terribly special, but a quick explanation to set the tone
is appreciated. The new classes are for
the most part acceptable. One of the
very interesting concepts is the use of ritualistic magic, which as you might
guess requires greater skill to cast.
Hence two prestige classes are offered to explore this option, though
regular classes can cast rituals too, just not with as much skill (thanks to
feats and requirements for the prestige classes).
The skills section does not expand the third edition skills,
but does offer expansion to sailing oriented skills and ritualistic magic. In other words it does a fair job of
plugging in skills to the new bells and whistles offered in magic and setting.
The feats section is very hefty. There are far too many feats to believe, but from a player
perspective the choices are fairly limited.
Sounds like a dichotomy, but it isn’t.
The feats are, for the most part, doled out based on religion. More on religion later, but the feats do a
good job representing feats that any given type of god might offer and are
organized accordingly. So a worshipper
of the deity Bellinger would have a different selection than Jaad or The Wylds.
Religion and Magic
This section is one of the best in the book and could easily
be applied to any campaign or setting.
It puts some benefit and perspective into religion from a game mechanic
perspective. Basically to receive bonus
feats, one has to be a true believer in a religion. The more a character moves through the religious ranks the
greater the benefits from their deity.
Of course acting against the religion could mean loss of those god given
abilities.
Deities in Ptalmanar are nothing special and often seem to
run at odds with the high seas image Twin Crowns portrays itself as. It really feels like it was written outside
of the context of world building.
Basically imagine a circle with “The Maker” and “The Unmaker” at the top
and bottom, as you go from one axis to another the alignments shift
accordingly. There are a few really
good gods and a few very bad gods and the rest are somewhere in the
middle. The only deity that was fairly
interesting was Mirenae, who underwent radical changes when the original deity
was killed and an avatar of ascended to her position.
An interesting mechanic introduced in regards to religion is
that everyone has a limited number of times that they can be resurrected. The gift of life only gives so much. This puts a greater value on living and
makes death a very real alternative.
The number presented in the game is five, which seems a bit much. One interesting addendum to this concept is
that a character who is dead can be revived or have their soul anchored to the
body thus not costing them a life.
Ultimately though I think Twin Crowns makes it too easy given the
number of deaths, cheating death and the fact that souls b-line it to a
friendly temple upon death.
The mechanics of Twin Crown’s religions are fabulous
and intriguing, but the actual practice of putting religions into Ptalmanar is
muddled at best.
The World
Until this point Twin Crowns basically did a good job
of putting it’s rules tweaks on the wall and letting the DM see what will
stick. After this point Twin Crowns
becomes very muddled and ultimately detracts from what worked very well earlier
on.
Imagine if you will a large quasi-European continent that
basically is composed of two encompassing empires. Basically think one sort of like a Germanic state and the other a
French one, but that would be oversimplifying.
Basically both are detailed out with a good amount of verbosity. In fact too much, rather than ane age of
exploration as the book’s moniker suggests, really almost all of the page count
is dedicated to the old world rather than the new.
From a plotting perspective about a high seas RPG about new
world the Old World can be abstracted and fall out of focus. Twin Crowns is not about that and is
mired in the old world and the New World.
So little is dedicated to the New World you would wonder why anyone
might go there, much less if it was really something the development team
really cared about. The why is
speculation, but the effect is measurable.
Each portion of the Old World is described in painstaking
detail considering the above critique.
But from a verbosity perspective there is quite a bit of information to
be had, the problem is none of it is very good. Many of the locals are bad carbon copies of European states. Many are confusing, like for example the
highlanders are/were the guardians and religious zealots of a deep crevasse
that evil comes out of. While they do
fight for the side of good (i.e. keeping anything from going to or coming out
of the crevasse), they are a prime example of the lack of any originality the
writers could have applied to a quasi-European continent.
But it gets worse; there are poorly realized analogs of the
Chinese, Japanese and others. The
kitchen sink principle to a poorly thought out and oft-unoriginal world
design.
The New World is very sketchy in detail. While it seems likely it will be covered in
future books from Living Imagination, this first offering from them lacks
much. Of course assuming that the
campaign takes place in the old world, this is not a big deal. But there will be little cause for any sea
going either. In the New World are the
cleverly conceived High Elves and Orcs.
The High Elses have been pushed back from the original borders by the
colonies and while they despised all other races, their losses galvanize this
philosophy. Not a bad concept. The orcs are cookie cutter barbarian types
whose land is brutal and for some reason they are not nearly as aggressive to
the colonies…
This section lacks much of anything regarding value. As well one thing that would have helped
this section be a slightly more congealed would be the presence of the world map
in this section of the book and additionally portions of the world map for each
part of the world that was detailed.
Layout, Art
Like many small presses it seems like the layout and design
of the book lean towards the amateurish.
Other than minor issues like white space and annoying fonts there is
nothing there that would be considered horrible. It is a decent enough product from a production point of
view. Twin Crowns weighs in at
304 pages, it is one of the bigger d20 books to come out. At 24.95 it is only slightly more expensive
than the thin classbooks offered by Wizards of the Coast. In otherwords Living Imagination is packing
a lot of information for a fair price.
The art in Twin Crowns is mostly bad and amateurish. Luckily the book is very modest in the
amount of art that is presented. There
a few nice pieces in the book and though the various artists are not very good
they do portray the setting in a reasonable manner. The one glaring and annoying error in the art department was the
picture for the deity Bellinger is a female….when the gods is cleatrly
described in masculine terms.
Summary
Twin Crowns has many neat mechanical gimmicks that
could enhance virtually any game. Its
feats and religion rules are the most notable and really offer a chance to make
any character who is not a cleric think about religion in terms outside of its
followers being convenient medics.
The game setting is muddled at best and very derivative of a
world you could understand from any underclass level history text. It had much promise in delivering a high
seas, swashbuckling piracy and exploration RPG. But Living Imagination delivered an RPG that is mired in an Old
World setting that lacks any significant reason to campaign in. This part fo the book can serve as what not “to
do” with an age of exploration fantasy game.
Any negatives put aside, Living Imagination did put forth a
sizable product whose application could be used in virtually any campaign. Their scope was impressive, even if the
application in the setting was off the mark.
Ultimately Twin Crowns is worth the twenty five bucks
and that is good praise in the d20 flood of products.
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