I love Pulp. The action, the edge-of-your-seat cliffhangers, the nasty villians, the stylish heroes, the exotic locales, all of it. When I first heard about this game, and downloaded the short preview, I was very excited! The art was great, the characters seemed interesting, and it promised to bring the excitement of Pulp to d20. (I don't buy Dragon, so I don't count the pulp mini-game that was in there).
The day the book hit the shelves, I bought it. I was a bit surprised that it was smaller-sized than most d20 books... It is the same dimensions as AFMBE and Witchcraft from Eden Studios. However, it is 300 pages long, hardbound, and has very thin margins on the sides as well as an average to small font. In all, it is probably about average in terms of price for content.
The next surprise was that Forbidden Kingdoms covers not 1 but 3 eras: The Steampulp era (Victorian), Tesla Time (early 1900s), and Nazi Thugs (strange name for an era, but it is the 1930s). The gaps between these eras are not really discussed much, meaning WW1 is barely mentioned. Still, the variety gives more options about where and when you can set your adventures, and I have always felt that the high Victorian era (ala Castle Falkenstein) was related to pulp.
The first 82 pages describing these eras and the people, places, and adventure possibilities in each one are the best part of the book, in my opinion. Every page is loaded with adventure ideas and plot hooks. Some of the ideas are recycled from previous pulp games, such as Prof Moriarty's World Crime League or the German's unveiling of a Superman at the Olympics, but this book expands upon the ideas and leaving gems like these out of a pulp game would have been a crime itself, so this is forgivable. Other story ideas are more unique, such as Nikola Tesla building a futuristic city on the edge of the Niagra Falls, powered by hydroelectricity. He also has gathered together a team of adventurers called The Extraordinary Delphians to help protect it as well as investigate unnatural phenomena around the world. From monster sightings to a vanishing deep-sea explorer, secret societies to ghost-hunters, these first 82 pages are simply a smashing-good read... it is a shame that the rest of the book went downhill from there...
The first sign of amatuerish editting/design appeared on page 83... it is completely blank. The chapter ended halfway down pg 82, but instead of filling the next page and a half with art, a short story, more adventure ideas, etc, they left them blank. (They wanted to begin every chapter with a facing art piece) Now, once is bad enough, but the same thing happens again on pgs 141 and 185! It looks very unprofessional to leave utterly blank pages in the middle of a book, and these should have been filled with something.
The second strange layout feature was the use of numerous pictures cut in half. Rather than have a full page picture, they cut the picture in two, putting half on 1 page and half on the other. This would not look too bad if both halves met at the binding, but instead, the pictures are put at the far edges of the page! That means there are 2 columns of text between the front and back half of a submarine, or a man and his arm, or a woman and her leg. It looks very weird and was simply a poor choice of layout.
Speaking of art, most of it was of average to good quality. The chapter headers by LUK ACS are especially nice. However, remember those great character designs I mentioned in preview? (I believe they were by Kieran Yanner). They are nowhere in the book! Instead, the character portraits are by another artist, and while they are not bad, they don't seem to be historically accurate. The Clergyman has a soul patch, for goodness sake! The mystic looks like a hippy flowerchild from the 60's, and the Soldier of Fortune looks like Rambo! (By the way, anyone know when dogtags were first used in the military? For some reason, it doesn't seem pulpish to me.) To be fair, many of the portraits did look historically correct, such as the Idle Rich, Crimefighter, and Diplomat.
Speaking of character classes, we come to one of my biggest complaints about FK: The Classes have extremely sparse descriptions! All of the classes are lacking rules and descriptions of their special abilities. This is doubly strange because the Prestige Classes do include (very short) ability descriptions! Furthermore, some of them have questionable mechanics. The Academic, for instance, has an ability called Information Font. It is pretty much identical to a Bard's Legend Lore. But instead of adding his level to his roll, as a Bard does, every 5 levels the Academic gets a special ability called Ignotus Agnitio which reduces the DC for Info checks by 5. Why was this done? Another example: The Idle Rich get an ability called Filthy Rich at 1st, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th level. At first level, it gives them 10x the starting cash of other characters, but no other mention is made about it in the character class chapter. Under Feats, we find that if taken after starting level, it doubles your money. Is the character supposed to total up all of his possessions, houses, cars, etc and instantly double it for no reason other than he hit 7th level?? That is just silly! And some classes have abilities with no definition at all, such as the Explorer ability Trustworthy (which does not even seem to fit him, but that's beside the point). It is not a new Feat in the book, and it is not from the PHB. There is no description of how it works anywhere.
The worst case by far, though, is the Expert class. It starts simply enough... at 1st level he picks any 5 skills and gets 3 in each of them (rather powerful at 1st level... lotta multiclassers will want this!) But then at 3rd level and every 2 levels after that, he gets, quote " 1 to all Expertise skills, (pick 1 grouping of expertise skills)" The "pick 1 grouping" part seems to refer to the ability at 6th, 12th, and 18th level to pick 5 more skills to become expert in. At 5th level, he gets 2, 7th is 3, etc upto 9 at 19th level. Are these cumulative or not? If not, and he chooses to add them to a group of skills with only the base 3 bonus, do they suddenly jump up to the current bonus? The rules are nonexistant on this, as each character class has a bit of intro fiction and a single chart instead of full character rules! Looking at other classes as a model is no help. The Explorer lists both cumulative (I assume) and non-cumulative bonuses on the same chart! (ie: Alertness 2, 3, 4 alongside multiple listings at 9th, 12th, 15th, etc for a 2 in Gather information, Spot, and Search.)
Ok, let's move on to the chapter called New Rules, Skills, and Feats. FK uses the Vitality/ Wounds version of the d20 rules, though here vitality is renamed Stamina. Armor reduces damage done, but unlike SW revised, it reduces the damage of all hits, not just Wounds. How much does it reduce it? I have no idea, really, because there is no armor chart in the book!!! The example on pg 114 says a Flak jacket provides 4 points of protection (did they have those in the pulp era?), but there are no other examples or listings of armor values. Considering over 3 pages are spent talking about the armor rules, the penalties for wearing armor, whar armor stacks with what bonus, etc, this is a MAJOR oversight.
Skills... breaking the tradition of trying to broaden the base d20 skills instead of create new ones, FK goes wild and adds 28 new skills! Many of them seem repitious to me, though. Insurgency is used for sneaking into secured areas... why not use Sneak? Bribery, Charm, Conversation, Leadership, Savior Faire, Seduction, and Streetwise are added to the existing Bluff, Diplomacy, and Gather Information. Do you know when to use each one? Players already spend few points on these abilities, and splitting them up further reduces the usefulness of all of them. There are also Melee, Pistol, Rifle, etc skills seperate from the Feets required for proficiency. Every 5 levels in the skill adds 1 to your attack rolls.
The most important (and powerful) new skill is called Technique. It covers training in the Martial Arts, and every level you take in this skill gives you a mini bonus Feat called a Manuever. This is not a bad idea, and can provide for martial artists with very different abilities. Some of these mini-Feats are not so mini, though! Improved Iterative Attacks increases the rate of extra attacks from the usual every 5 to 3. So a character that normally has 2 attacks at 10/ 5 would get 4 attacks at 10/ 7/ 4/ 1! Nerve Strikes enable to to do everything from Cause Blindness to Cause Paralysis. These maneuvers only work with weapons that are part of your martial style, but you can declare anything from a sword to a elephant gun to be your martial arts weapon! Adding more weapons is easy, and costs 1 maneuver.) In many cases, these mini-Feats, 1 free with every skill level, are far more powerful than full Feats!
Speaking of which, FK adds 54 new feats, but they are split between normal and martial, and the descriptions of the martial feats are 100 pages further into the book! (Another layout blunder, IMO) While the Martial Feats are very powerful, the normal feats tend to be very weak. The Lethal Anatomy (Martial) Feat which gives 1 on attacks and 2 on damage with all Martial Arts weapons! Compare this with Weapon Focus which gives only a 1 on attacks with a single weapon! The new Arcane Resistance (non-martial) feat, on the other hand, gives a 2 on Will saves, but only against Arcane magic. By comparison, Iron Will from the PHB gives a 2 on all Will saves, no matter what the source. These illustrate the disturbing lack of game balance seen throughout the skills and feats in FK, always favoring fighting types by a huge margin.
FK tends to skimp on some important areas, like class descriptions, but then go overboard on detail in other areas. The price list for cars gives a breakdown of cost year by year! (Though several of the cars are listed as NEVER being available for sale in any year!) There are also chase rules in FK, but unlike Spycraft, they take into account modifiers for road conditions, turn radius, incline or decline of the road, everything! There are charts to convert MPH into feet/sec, feet/rnd, and feet/min. There is a chart of reaction times, in both feet and seconds, to show how long/far it would take a car to stop from a fixed speed! Don't they know that in pulp, the car ALWAYS goes over the cliff??? :)
There are also complex rules for building your own guns, because the book only provides a 1/2 page chart of examples. While that is a nice idea, you'd have to be a gun-nut to be accurate in your constructions! You have to choose a propellant size, bullet caliber, barrel length, receiver, feed, and then add any special abilities it needs! How many people can do all of that for a long list of guns?
Next, there are sections on Weird Science, Magic and Psionics. Weird Science is glossed over VERY quickly, receiving only 3 pages!! Magic is given a somewhat sparse treatment (16 pgs), but there are rules for rituals and a few new spells. Psionics are given quite a nice section, though, and the system seems like a sound one. (It is based on Skills and Feats). There are a broad range of abilities, from Telepathy to Electrokinesis. I'm a bit unclear on why some of the powers are Feats and some are skills, but it looks like an interesting system for modern psionics (as opposed to the more Sorcery-oriented psionics in the Psionics Handbook).
The book ends with a few character write-ups (though strangely none for the fiction piece characters) and a few creature templates (vampire, ghost, etc) The character sheet at the back is terribly amatuerish and unattractive.
I know I sounded fairly harsh and negative throughout this review. I think that is partly because I had such high hopes for this game. On the bright side, it looks as if the line will continue, as a Gamemaster's Codex is advertised in the back, and 3 city books... Paris, Manchester, and Berlin. If some of the vague points are cleared up in the Gamemaster's Codex, the game might still be salvagable, but as it is, it would require MAJOR rules interpretation and balancing to be usable. Still, it can provide a lot of good ideas for other Pulp games.
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