Undiscovered Q&A E-Zine Capsule Review by Frank Sronce on 09/06/02
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
the new E-Zine for Undiscovered

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Product: Undiscovered Q&A E-Zine
Author: Various
Category: Magazine
Company/Publisher: Eilfin Publishing
Line: Undiscovered
Cost: $5
Page count: 93
Year published: 2002
ISBN:
SKU:
Comp copy?: yes
Capsule Review by Frank Sronce on 09/06/02
Genre tags: Fantasy

Undiscovered Q&A

Issue #1

All right. The folks over at Eilfin Publishing (www.eilfin.com) are now putting out an E-Zine for their swords & sorcery game Undiscovered: The Quest for Adventure. Since I've already posted a review of Undiscovered on RPG.net, they asked me to review their E-Zine, too.

I'm told that it's going to be published quarterly (roughly) and will cost $5 to download the PDF file. So, is it worth your five bucks?

I couldn't open my original review copy with Acrobat Reader 4.0, but after I upgraded to 5.0.5 it opened fine. I've heard of lots of people running into hidden incompatibilities with various PDF files and 4.0, so just be aware of that.

The E-Zine itself opens and closes with a piece of art from Calvin Camp, followed by an introduction that explains their submission process and explains that part of the material in their E-Zine was originally posted on their website. It's all pretty straightforward.

The table of contents lists all of the articles (there are 19 actual articles, as such) and takes full advantage of the fact that it's a PDF by letting you jump to any article just by clicking on its entry in the table. The articles are a wide assortment (pretty much what you'd expect in a paper gaming magazine). There are two actual adventures (one complete and the other the first part of 3 installments), stats for a new monster, optional rules, some artwork, several columns, a couple of fiction pieces, and more. About the only thing it's missing is a comics section. It's 91 pages long, plus some additional submissions info in the back.

Let's start at the beginning. The Star of Eilfin is a nice, introductory adventure for 4-6 starting characters. It involves the party being sent on a quest to poke around some old ruins and look for an ancient artifact of historical significance but no magical power. It's quite well written, and has a number of little touches that I like. The cross-country trek actually makes use of several non-combat skills, particularly Mountain climbing, and parties that lack that may find themselves repeatedly delayed but never stopped outright. The ruins manage to limit the PCs' options without being overtly linear. None of the encounters have stereotypical "attack mindlessly and fight until killed" opponents; they're after you for a reason, and they'll run if they're losing. And not every encounter should be solved by fighting, either, another thing I like to see in my adventures.

The adventure has some decent maps, and full stats for the monsters. In fact, the stats for the Skriks (giant insects) actually correct a minor flaw in the rulebook by telling you the duration of their poison bite. It was missing from the actual rulebook, so it's good that they included it here. Only one encounter is left incomplete, and that's mostly because it's expected that you'll only talk to the NPC in question, rather than attack him. We get stats for him, but not for his family. Probably not a big deal, but the encounter could turn violent, and then the GM will have to wing the rest of it. Still, it's a minor ommision.

All in all, a good introductory adventure, with a lot more to it than just "enter dungeon; kill stuff; leave".

"Slather's Secrets" is a little short story peripherally involving Slather, god of the unknown. It's decently well written, but seems more like part one of an ongoing series than a stand-alone tale. The table of contents refers to it as a column written by Slather, so I expect that future episodes will explain more of what's going on.

"The Showcase" is a little section where they print art submissions from fans. It's got three pencil pics by Sara Brodin, whose art is actually quite good. I expect the quality of this section will vary immensely in future issues, depending on what sort of submissions they get, but it's an interesting addition to the E-Zine.

Next they offer a new player character race: the half-alfar, who had one human parent and one elven parent. Their abilities depend heavily on what breed of elf they are descended from, and where they were raised. The treatment is fairly thorough, and pretty much duplicates the typical character race write-ups from the main book. Interestingly, only about half of the children of mixed parentage are going to be noticably half-alfar; the others are treated as one parent's race or the other. Fortunately or unfortunately, they don't really discuss how half-alfar fit into the game's standard setting. Are they scorned as half-breeds? Are they generally accepted? Do ice elves scorn their half-human kin, or perhaps use them as spies because they can pass for human more easily? They may just expect each GM to decide for themselves how half-alfar fit into the setting, but it would have been nice to see some suggestions.

The next article offers some optional rules for knocking opponents out in battle. Basically, you take a -25 to your attack roll (or a -40 if trying to do it barehanded) and if you hit you'll have a percentage chance to knock the target out, based on how high your appropriate weapon skill is. The rules kind of imply (but never outright state) that you also suffer a -40 penalty when trying to knock someone out with a weapon that isn't designed for it (like hitting them with the flat of a blade).

After that, there's a similar optional rule for the "Fatal Blow", where you take a hefty attack penalty (-50) but but if you hit you'll either inflict quadruple damage or kill the target outright (actually it maxes out at 500 points of damage, but very few opponents can take that much damage). Again, the chance of this special attack working depends on your combat skill. Basically the chance of success with both maneuvers ranges from 1% up to 25%, max, so they'll never be really reliable. I could definitely see either maneuver being very useful in a surprise attack against an unsuspecting foe, though.

Both of these seem very straightforward and are basically just there to give fighter types a few more options. Their effects can be very powerful (temporary unconsciousness or outright death) but the hefty accuracy penalty should keep them from being unbalancing. I will say this, though; any GM who uses these optional rules has no right to growse when some PC manages to defeat his favorite villain with a single lucky shot. Think carefully before using them in your campaign.

Then they offer some optional rules for mounted combat, basically making the Riding skill much more important. For example, there's a chart showing how likely you are to be knocked off of your steed if you take a solid blow. If you don't have the Riding skill, it's automatic. Even an expert rider has only a 70% chance of staying in their seat, so the rules are pretty harsh. I might increase the chance of remaining mounted by 25% or so, myself. The rules also cover things like flying mounts falling to the ground, and the effects of being pinned beneath your mount.

The next bit has optional rules for changing the way armor works. In the normal game, armor is abstracted into a generic defense bonus, effectively making you harder to hit (D&D does it this way, too). If you would prefer armor to reduce the damage done by each hit, rather than negating some hits completely and having no effect on the rest, these rules tell you how to convert the armor ratings into absorbtion ratings. With these rules, characters will be hit more easily, but they'll subtract their armor absorbtion rating from the damage done each time. I couldn't tell you if these numbers are balanced or not without some playtesting. It would also add a little more book-keeping; when you suffer a critical hit, your armor will be damaged by a few points. If it takes enough damage, its absorbtion rating will be reduced, so armor will slowly degrade in combat. I like the fact that it's only reduced by critical hits; that minimizes the book-keeping. I've played games where the armor was damaged by every hit, and it was a pain to keep track of.

Next are some optional rules for more detailed critical hits. It's got a table to roll on to see where you hit your opponent. Cross-referencing that with your type of weapon (slashing, piercing or bludgeoning) you'll see what the effects are. For example, a critical hit with a blunt weapon to your opponent's head has a 15% chance to kill outright, and otherwise does quadruple damage. Now the original rules for crits just said that you did double damage. These crits always do at least double damage, and often do quite a bit more, so if you use these rules your games will get a lot bloodier. They also suggest changing the effects of rolling a critical failure (originally you just dropped your weapon) to include a possibility of breaking your weapon instead. This seems a bit extreme... on a roll of 99-100, your weapon breaks. If it's enchanted or particularly high quality... it only breaks on a roll of 00. I don't know; even a 1% chance of breaking an enchanted weapon with every attack seems too high to me. I probably wouldn't use this rule.

After that, we have optional rules for expanding the effects of the Luck stat to include boosting (or penalizing) all of your percentile based skills. That's a hefty increase in how important Luck is in your game, so I'd probably want to playtest it first. But if your players all consider Luck to be the least important of their stats, you might try this to beef it up.

Ah, now we have an interesting optional rule called "Diffusing Disrupted Spells". One of the bits I found a little too random for my taste in Undiscovered was the big table of random effects caused whenever a mage's spell got disrupted by him taking damage while casting it. This rule lets a mage who gets injured decide whether to roll on the big chart of random events or try to diffuse the spell... dissipating the energies harmlessly instead. The chance of successfully diffusing the botched spell depends entirely on your Spirit stat, but since the average mage will probably start with a 70% chance of success, this makes botched spells much less dangerous. Since there were a few desirable results in the disrupted spell effects chart, you can choose to just let the botch happen and hope you get a good result. All in all, I like this rule, and would definitely use it, since it directly addresses one of my concerns with Undiscovered's magic system.

After that, we're done with the Optional Rules. Next it offers stats for two very powerful and important NPCs... these are Lolandrean (the current High Priest of Kala, goddess of Life) and Vlarnae (the Deathmistress of Zale, god of Death). Each entry has a color picture of the NPC in question, a map of the world with the location where they live marked, full character writeups, and a description of their background. The map, unfortunately, isn't that useful, because it shows the entire world, and they both live in the same little peninsula. A closeup that showed what that area actually looks like would be far better; if these two actually live in the same town, it better be a darned big town.

The writers of Undiscovered appear to like really high level NPCs. I was surprised to see a level 38 NPC in "The Star of Eilfin." These two make her look like a pathetic novice. They're both above level 90. That's a lot of levels. Admittedly, they're the highest representative of their religion on the planet, personally groomed for power by their own deity. And I may just be too used to D&D's level scale, where 20th level is really powerful. Suffice it to say, PCs should not mess with these two.

Anyway, Lolandrean is the better developed of the two. His history explains his upbringing and how he was chosen by the goddess, and it does it as an entertaining story that gives you some insight into his character. Vlarnae's background is shorter, and less interesting, but it does tell you a few things about her personality. The picture also tells you that ice elves apparently don't mind cold breezes in sensitive spots, because that outfit she's wearing is really impractical otherwise.

After that, there's a cute section called "What's Happening in the World Today". This consists of 9 little adventure snippets. These are rumors that PCs in your game might hear, and any one of them could be used as the basis of a full-blown adventure. If nothing else, they provide some nice background color for your game. There's a large variety, too, ranging from a kidnapping in Gallut (probably suitable for low level PCs) to a town besieged by trolls (mid level, I'd guess) up to a full-fledged war between two of the Empire's neighbors. It only takes up a page, but I think this feature is a really good idea. I hope they repeat it in the future.

There's some more fiction, then a detailed description of the town of Nyalan, where the next adventure takes place. "Trading Company Troubles" is the first of three installments, but they're each supposed to be playable on their own, too. That's good, because it'll probably be months before the next installment is available. The writeup of Nyalan is quite well done, and is one of the most detailed town writeups I've seen. This is very well done, and has a lot of potential adventure hooks, even if you don't run the attached adventure.

The adventure is pretty cool, with both combat and investigation necessary to figure out what's going on. There's one section that has some unreasonably aggressive animals (why would some giant rats busy gnawing on a corpse suddenly turn and attack the PCs as soon as they arrive?), but otherwise it's quite well written. A little combat heavy, but it looks like it would work well as either a standalone adventure or as part of their trilogy.

Finally, we have some more fiction and a writeup of the kingdom of Trenord, which is dominated by ice elves and would be a good source of villains for your campaign. Ah, here they actually have some discussion of the place of half-alfar in ice elf society, so that's useful to have.

So, is it worth your $5? Yeah, I'd say so. Both adventures are high quality and the town writeups are very nice. The optional rules are such a mix that there will probably be at least one that your GM wants to use. The E-Zine is well illustrated, with most of the art being high quality color illustrations.

If you're not interested in running a game of Undiscovered, then the E-Zine would be of limited use. You could use convert the adventures to another system pretty easily (I may steal the plot of "Trading Company Troubles" for my Ironclaw game) with minimal changes. The town writeups are well done, and again, you could steal them for another game without much trouble. The rest of it, though, would be of limited use. After all, you probably won't be interested in the optional rules or the stats for their NPCs.

Basically, if you're interested in Undiscovered, I'd recommend the E-Zine. If you aren't, you might consider it anyway (especially if you're looking for cheap generic adventure ideas), but it won't be nearly as useful.

I give it a 4 for substance and a 4 for style.