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The Book The Baalgor Wastelands for Palladium Fantasy RPG describes the part of Palladia known as Baalgor Wastelands. It is a softcover book with 216 pages, but only 209 of them contain game material (I counted). It was written by Bill Coffin.

Price I found this book on used books shelf. It cost me just $14 (Canadian dollars, I live in Canada). For this price I got excellent deal. At the back of the book the regular price is listed as $20.95 (U.S. this time). I think that this is still a good price for what you get in the book. And besides, nowadays d20 books sell for the same although they have one-fourth of the material this book has. One of the things I love Palladium for is that their books are reasonably priced.

Art The cover of the book is in color and shows a quorian (quorians are a race of humanoids living in the Baalgor wilderness) fighting some giant lizard. Overall it is not a bad illustration, although I find it somehow lacking in comparison to other Palladium books. In general, Palladium likes to put on their cover a lot of characters and plenty of detail. This one seems lacking of both. The Rest of the art is in white and black and ranges from very good to average.

Introduction The book starts with one-page introduction from the author. We have two texts here. One comes from Bill Coffin. He uses it to explain that Baalgor Wastelands is a harsh land and it is not for low-level adventurers. He is right. Most of NPCs given in the book are of high level (usually from eight to ten) and even their lowest henchmen range from level two to four. The monsters are also pretty tough and even the weather can be very deadly. This means that Baalgor Wastelands is only for experienced boys and girls. Beginners will die here pretty quickly.

The other text, slightly longer this time, is from Kevin Siembieda (another big name in Palladium) and talks about how great Bill Coffin is and how great future he will have in the company. At this point I must inform you that this book is from 1999. It was at that time that Bill Coffin came to work for Palladium. That?s why we get this whole ?Bill Coffin is so great and smart? text.

Personally, I think that this second text is a complete waste of space. I don?t give a rat?s ass about Bill Coffin and his future in Palladium. They should have scraped the whole thing and put some game material on it instead.

Part One The book is divided into four parts. Part one deals with the history of the land and its condition. But first there is some game fiction. It is written by some scholar who came to Baalgor to explore this land. I normally like fiction, but this one is not interesting at all. All the guy ever says is that the place has many mysteries and strange inhabitants. I could tolerate this fiction part if it was only at the beginning of the book, but it is at the beginning of every part. I?m not saying that it is horrible or something, but it does not say anything interesting at all.

After fiction we get the history of the land. It can be resumed like this. What is today Baalgor Wasteland was once the heart of the elven empire. At its center was the elven capital city of Baalgor and the rest of the region was covered with jungle. Then came the Elf-Dwarf War and after hundreds of years of struggle dwarves finally besieged the city of Baalgor. They were beaten back and in despair they used something called ?Elemental Circle of Absolute Power,? which was something like a magical nuke. This spell destroyed the entire landscape and turned once beautiful land into harsh desert. End of story.

After that we get rules on how to survive in the wilderness, how different ways of travel work and different weather occurrences. I must say that this part is interesting and full of detail. The rules are very helpful and seem ok, although they could have provided a table to sum up all they are saying.

Part Two This part is about denizens of the wastelands. Some of them are intelligent races suitable for playing as PCs, others are mindless monsters. This part seems good and I found no problems here.

Part Three Ah, Part Three. Part Three occupies the lion?s share of the book. It takes each region of the Baalgor Wasteland and describes it. Each section starts with an overview, continues with most important groups/settlements/NPCs and finishes with a table of encounters. I must say that I especially liked the encounters section. Encounters range from simple monster attacks to things than can easily turn into a long campaign. They also leave enough freedom for the GM to turn them into anything he wants, at least in most cases.

One major problem I noticed is that the author sometimes writes too much. For example, at one point he tells us that in such-and-such region there is such-and-such number of gromek (gromek are race of aggressive, giant, flying lizards) war camps and then describes each and every one. I think that he should leave some things without description so that the GM can have fun with them. Yes, I know that there is such a thing as the Golden Rule, but sometimes it just seems too much for me. There should be more space left for GM?s imagination. Of course, that?s my opinion. If you like your game books to be packed with plenty of info, then you will like this one.

So lets go over the regions one by one.

1. Rocky Coastline This is a very rocky part of Baalgor Wastelands that borders the Sea of Scarlet Waters. It is mainly inhabited by colonists from Western Empire and pirates. Some desert tribes come here to trade with colonists or to plunder them. So, encounters with natives from the deeper parts of the wastelands are common and can be friendly or unfriendly.

Here also lies the Free City of Troker ? the only large city in the entire region. Its king makes sure that it is a place of law and justice. Unfortunately, his idea of law and justice is to allow crime to flourish as long as criminals have some measure of control, leave certain people alone and pay part of their income to the king. This means that the city is the gathering point of all sorts of scum where trade in illegal goods and stolen goods is conducted openly and takes place on large scale.

The city is well described, there are some nice maps and we are given some prominent NPCs living there. One weak point I found are the undead. Let me explain. The city was once inhabited by elves who got all slaughtered during the Elf-Dwarf war. As a result many of them came back as undead. There are some 20.000 inhabitants in the city and 2000 undead. As you can see, it would be interesting to explore this issue a little bit more. After all, these undead must live next to the living inhabitants, but how these two groups interact with each other is never explained. Just few more paragraphs on this topic would satisfy me.

2. Stony Desert Stony Desert is stony and it occupies most of the region. We are told that it is inhabited by dragonmen (primitive humanoids) tribes, eandroth (a type of lizardmen) caravans, quorian wandercamps, bandits and gromek war camps. We get few examples of each.

3. Sandy Desert Sandy Desert is at the center of the Baalgor Wasteland. Contrary to Rocky Desert, this desert is full of sand. It was here that once stood the elven capital of Baalgor. And it was here that the Circle of Absolute Elemental Power was centered. The Circle completely atomized the city and despite constant rumors to the contrary, no part of it remains. However, the psychic energy of those who died there causes the ghost of the city to reappear once every hundred years. We are also told that there is an adventure about it in the last section of the book. The problem is that there is no such adventure. I once read on the Palladium forum that the adventure was scraped for some reason. Pity, because it seems interesting. I don?t understand why they decided to scrap one of the more interesting parts.

Anyway, the desert is inhabited by some gosai (another new race) tribes, some more eandroth caravans and minotaur tribes hiding underground.

4. Rocky Desert Rocky Desert is where the Elemental Circle of Absolute Power hit the Baalgor Mountains and shattered them. The whole area is covered with stones raging from small pebbles to mountain-sized rocks.

Here we find some more eandroth caravans, some giant strongholds, baalizad (they are an underground race) burrows, a couple of more underground minotaur tribes and quillbacks (a cute race of little humanoids).

5. Eastern Baalgor Mountains These mountains separate Baalgor Wastelands from the Yin-Sloth Jungles and the Old Kingdom.

Here live more underground minotaur tribes. (At this point you have probably noticed that Bill Coffin has a soft spot for minotaurs living underground.) Giants and gromek, who are fighting a vicious war with each other, occupy the rest of the mountains. We are provided with the description of their most important bases as well as maps of the two largest strongholds, each one can be considered a small city.

Part Four Here are a couple of adventures. They are all scarce in detail and they all need some work from the GM. I think that it is better to have few adventures lacking detail than one with plenty of it. When you have just one adventure, there is always the risk that you won?t like it. This book offers plenty of interesting choices that leave a lot of room for creativity. The adventures range from normal combat encounters to hooks that can easily become a long campaign. Previously I mentioned that there was supposed to be an adventure here about the ghostly city of Baalgor but it got scrapped.

Experience Tables This section provides experience tables for new O.C.C.s and R.C.C.s presented in the book. These are:

Baalizad R.C.C.: Baalizad are a race of underground beings who despite their monstrous appearance are good at heart. In the recent years they decided to try and leave on the surface. Baalizad R.C.C. is just like the Vagabond O.C.C.

Gosai Assassin R.C.C.: Gosai are a race that was brought to Palladia by the elves during the Elf-Darf War. Gosai assassin is just like a normal assassin with the exception that he never uses hand-to-hand weapons and knows a special type of martial arts technique called Skudasa. Because those assassins don?t use close combat weapons, they get more skill picks. They are also banned from learning horsemanship and disguise skill. While I can understand horsemanship, I don?t get why they never use disguise skill. They are assassins after all.

Quillback Scavenger R.C.C.: Quilbacks are a cute race of small humanoids who spend their time wandering the world and surviving by their wits. This R.C.C. is identical to vagabond O.C.C. except that the skill selection is slightly different.

Quorian Oneiromancer R.C.C.: Quorians are another race brought to Palladia during the Elf-Dwarf War. They are sworn enemies of Gosai. Oneiromancers are shamans specializing in dream travel and visions. However, we are told that they are exactly like the Psi-Mystic O.C.C. except that they start with different psionic powers. I think that this R.C.C. needs some major reworking. I would like to see them get different skills than Psi-Mystic and some sort of unique magic. Just few new original spells would satisfy me.

Crusader of Life O.C.C.: This is a unique O.C.C. available to minotaurs from the Adraodan tribe. Crusaders of Light are champions of good and justice. They are just like Knight O.C.C. except that their skill selection is slightly different and they get some psionic powers.

Harbinger of Chaos O.C.C.: This is for minotaurs from the Kkairojan tribe. They are an opposite of Crusaders of Life. Their mission is to spread evil and serve dark powers. This O.C.C. is supposed to be exactly like the Witch O.C.C. with the exception that Harbingers of Chaos have different spell selection. They also receive some bonuses to their hit points and combat abilities.

Overall, I think that the new O.C.C.s are the weakest point in the entire book. The Harbinger of Chaos seems good, but the rest needs some more work. Most of them rely on the principle ?It?s just like another O.C.C. but this and that skill are different.? In my opinion they should have spend three or four more pages to develop the new O.C.C.s and maybe a page or two more for a couple of Oneiromantic spells. These few pages wouldn?t boost the price too much. Or, to offer another solution, they could have cut few descriptions. Just eliminate a gromek war camp here, an Eandroth caravan there, the stupid fiction and the pointless text praising Bill Coffin and you end up with few pages that can be used to flesh out the O.C.C.s.

In Conclusion Baalgor Wastelands is a very good book sold at a good price. It offers a lot of interesting information. Granted, it suffers from a couple of weak spots, but they are very minor in nature. Besides, show me a flawless RPG product. The O.C.C. need some work, but even this can be easily overcome by a creative GM who has some time. In conclusion, I recommend this book to all fans of Palladium Fantasy RPG. Those who are thinking about running a game in another world in some wasteland and lack information can use this book for inspiration.

Palladium RPG Book 9: The Baalgor Wastelands
Palladium RPG Book 9: The Baalgor Wastelands Capsule Review by Tomasz Zieba on 03/07/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!) Baalgor Wastelands deals with a harsh land where survival is a challenge and where inexperienced characters die very quickly. Despite some very minor flaws, the book is a good read. Product: Palladium RPG Book 9: The Baalgor Wastelands Author: Bill Coffin Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Palladium Books Line: Palladium Fantasy RPG Cost: 20.95 Page count: 216 Year published: 1999 ISBN: 157457-02-2-6 SKU: Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Tomasz Zieba on 03/07/02 Genre tags: Fantasy Post-apocalyse	The Book The Baalgor Wastelands for Palladium Fantasy RPG describes the part of Palladia known as Baalgor Wastelands. It is a softcover book with 216 pages, but only 209 of them contain game material (I counted). It was written by Bill Coffin. Price I found this book on used books shelf. It cost me just $14 (Canadian dollars, I live in Canada). For this price I got excellent deal. At the back of the book the regular price is listed as $20.95 (U.S. this time). I think that this is still a good price for what you get in the book. And besides, nowadays d20 books sell for the same although they have one-fourth of the material this book has. One of the things I love Palladium for is that their books are reasonably priced. Art The cover of the book is in color and shows a quorian (quorians are a race of humanoids living in the Baalgor wilderness) fighting some giant lizard. Overall it is not a bad illustration, although I find it somehow lacking in comparison to other Palladium books. In general, Palladium likes to put on their cover a lot of characters and plenty of detail. This one seems lacking of both. The Rest of the art is in white and black and ranges from very good to average. Introduction The book starts with one-page introduction from the author. We have two texts here. One comes from Bill Coffin. He uses it to explain that Baalgor Wastelands is a harsh land and it is not for low-level adventurers. He is right. Most of NPCs given in the book are of high level (usually from eight to ten) and even their lowest henchmen range from level two to four. The monsters are also pretty tough and even the weather can be very deadly. This means that Baalgor Wastelands is only for experienced boys and girls. Beginners will die here pretty quickly. The other text, slightly longer this time, is from Kevin Siembieda (another big name in Palladium) and talks about how great Bill Coffin is and how great future he will have in the company. At this point I must inform you that this book is from 1999. It was at that time that Bill Coffin came to work for Palladium. That?s why we get this whole ?Bill Coffin is so great and smart? text. Personally, I think that this second text is a complete waste of space. I don?t give a rat?s ass about Bill Coffin and his future in Palladium. They should have scraped the whole thing and put some game material on it instead. Part One The book is divided into four parts. Part one deals with the history of the land and its condition. But first there is some game fiction. It is written by some scholar who came to Baalgor to explore this land. I normally like fiction, but this one is not interesting at all. All the guy ever says is that the place has many mysteries and strange inhabitants. I could tolerate this fiction part if it was only at the beginning of the book, but it is at the beginning of every part. I?m not saying that it is horrible or something, but it does not say anything interesting at all. After fiction we get the history of the land. It can be resumed like this. What is today Baalgor Wasteland was once the heart of the elven empire. At its center was the elven capital city of Baalgor and the rest of the region was covered with jungle. Then came the Elf-Dwarf War and after hundreds of years of struggle dwarves finally besieged the city of Baalgor. They were beaten back and in despair they used something called ?Elemental Circle of Absolute Power,? which was something like a magical nuke. This spell destroyed the entire landscape and turned once beautiful land into harsh desert. End of story. After that we get rules on how to survive in the wilderness, how different ways of travel work and different weather occurrences. I must say that this part is interesting and full of detail. The rules are very helpful and seem ok, although they could have provided a table to sum up all they are saying. Part Two This part is about denizens of the wastelands. Some of them are intelligent races suitable for playing as PCs, others are mindless monsters. This part seems good and I found no problems here. Part Three Ah, Part Three. Part Three occupies the lion?s share of the book. It takes each region of the Baalgor Wasteland and describes it. Each section starts with an overview, continues with most important groups/settlements/NPCs and finishes with a table of encounters. I must say that I especially liked the encounters section. Encounters range from simple monster attacks to things than can easily turn into a long campaign. They also leave enough freedom for the GM to turn them into anything he wants, at least in most cases. One major problem I noticed is that the author sometimes writes too much. For example, at one point he tells us that in such-and-such region there is such-and-such number of gromek (gromek are race of aggressive, giant, flying lizards) war camps and then describes each and every one. I think that he should leave some things without description so that the GM can have fun with them. Yes, I know that there is such a thing as the Golden Rule, but sometimes it just seems too much for me. There should be more space left for GM?s imagination. Of course, that?s my opinion. If you like your game books to be packed with plenty of info, then you will like this one. So lets go over the regions one by one. 1. Rocky Coastline This is a very rocky part of Baalgor Wastelands that borders the Sea of Scarlet Waters. It is mainly inhabited by colonists from Western Empire and pirates. Some desert tribes come here to trade with colonists or to plunder them. So, encounters with natives from the deeper parts of the wastelands are common and can be friendly or unfriendly. Here also lies the Free City of Troker ? the only large city in the entire region. Its king makes sure that it is a place of law and justice. Unfortunately, his idea of law and justice is to allow crime to flourish as long as criminals have some measure of control, leave certain people alone and pay part of their income to the king. This means that the city is the gathering point of all sorts of scum where trade in illegal goods and stolen goods is conducted openly and takes place on large scale. The city is well described, there are some nice maps and we are given some prominent NPCs living there. One weak point I found are the undead. Let me explain. The city was once inhabited by elves who got all slaughtered during the Elf-Dwarf war. As a result many of them came back as undead. There are some 20.000 inhabitants in the city and 2000 undead. As you can see, it would be interesting to explore this issue a little bit more. After all, these undead must live next to the living inhabitants, but how these two groups interact with each other is never explained. Just few more paragraphs on this topic would satisfy me. 2. Stony Desert Stony Desert is stony and it occupies most of the region. We are told that it is inhabited by dragonmen (primitive humanoids) tribes, eandroth (a type of lizardmen) caravans, quorian wandercamps, bandits and gromek war camps. We get few examples of each. 3. Sandy Desert Sandy Desert is at the center of the Baalgor Wasteland. Contrary to Rocky Desert, this desert is full of sand. It was here that once stood the elven capital of Baalgor. And it was here that the Circle of Absolute Elemental Power was centered. The Circle completely atomized the city and despite constant rumors to the contrary, no part of it remains. However, the psychic energy of those who died there causes the ghost of the city to reappear once every hundred years. We are also told that there is an adventure about it in the last section of the book. The problem is that there is no such adventure. I once read on the Palladium forum that the adventure was scraped for some reason. Pity, because it seems interesting. I don?t understand why they decided to scrap one of the more interesting parts. Anyway, the desert is inhabited by some gosai (another new race) tribes, some more eandroth caravans and minotaur tribes hiding underground. 4. Rocky Desert Rocky Desert is where the Elemental Circle of Absolute Power hit the Baalgor Mountains and shattered them. The whole area is covered with stones raging from small pebbles to mountain-sized rocks. Here we find some more eandroth caravans, some giant strongholds, baalizad (they are an underground race) burrows, a couple of more underground minotaur tribes and quillbacks (a cute race of little humanoids). 5. Eastern Baalgor Mountains These mountains separate Baalgor Wastelands from the Yin-Sloth Jungles and the Old Kingdom. Here live more underground minotaur tribes. (At this point you have probably noticed that Bill Coffin has a soft spot for minotaurs living underground.) Giants and gromek, who are fighting a vicious war with each other, occupy the rest of the mountains. We are provided with the description of their most important bases as well as maps of the two largest strongholds, each one can be considered a small city. Part Four Here are a couple of adventures. They are all scarce in detail and they all need some work from the GM. I think that it is better to have few adventures lacking detail than one with plenty of it. When you have just one adventure, there is always the risk that you won?t like it. This book offers plenty of interesting choices that leave a lot of room for creativity. The adventures range from normal combat encounters to hooks that can easily become a long campaign. Previously I mentioned that there was supposed to be an adventure here about the ghostly city of Baalgor but it got scrapped. Experience Tables This section provides experience tables for new O.C.C.s and R.C.C.s presented in the book. These are: Baalizad R.C.C.: Baalizad are a race of underground beings who despite their monstrous appearance are good at heart. In the recent years they decided to try and leave on the surface. Baalizad R.C.C. is just like the Vagabond O.C.C. Gosai Assassin R.C.C.: Gosai are a race that was brought to Palladia by the elves during the Elf-Darf War. Gosai assassin is just like a normal assassin with the exception that he never uses hand-to-hand weapons and knows a special type of martial arts technique called Skudasa. Because those assassins don?t use close combat weapons, they get more skill picks. They are also banned from learning horsemanship and disguise skill. While I can understand horsemanship, I don?t get why they never use disguise skill. They are assassins after all. Quillback Scavenger R.C.C.: Quilbacks are a cute race of small humanoids who spend their time wandering the world and surviving by their wits. This R.C.C. is identical to vagabond O.C.C. except that the skill selection is slightly different. Quorian Oneiromancer R.C.C.: Quorians are another race brought to Palladia during the Elf-Dwarf War. They are sworn enemies of Gosai. Oneiromancers are shamans specializing in dream travel and visions. However, we are told that they are exactly like the Psi-Mystic O.C.C. except that they start with different psionic powers. I think that this R.C.C. needs some major reworking. I would like to see them get different skills than Psi-Mystic and some sort of unique magic. Just few new original spells would satisfy me. Crusader of Life O.C.C.: This is a unique O.C.C. available to minotaurs from the Adraodan tribe. Crusaders of Light are champions of good and justice. They are just like Knight O.C.C. except that their skill selection is slightly different and they get some psionic powers. Harbinger of Chaos O.C.C.: This is for minotaurs from the Kkairojan tribe. They are an opposite of Crusaders of Life. Their mission is to spread evil and serve dark powers. This O.C.C. is supposed to be exactly like the Witch O.C.C. with the exception that Harbingers of Chaos have different spell selection. They also receive some bonuses to their hit points and combat abilities. Overall, I think that the new O.C.C.s are the weakest point in the entire book. The Harbinger of Chaos seems good, but the rest needs some more work. Most of them rely on the principle ?It?s just like another O.C.C. but this and that skill are different.? In my opinion they should have spend three or four more pages to develop the new O.C.C.s and maybe a page or two more for a couple of Oneiromantic spells. These few pages wouldn?t boost the price too much. Or, to offer another solution, they could have cut few descriptions. Just eliminate a gromek war camp here, an Eandroth caravan there, the stupid fiction and the pointless text praising Bill Coffin and you end up with few pages that can be used to flesh out the O.C.C.s. In Conclusion Baalgor Wastelands is a very good book sold at a good price. It offers a lot of interesting information. Granted, it suffers from a couple of weak spots, but they are very minor in nature. Besides, show me a flawless RPG product. The O.C.C. need some work, but even this can be easily overcome by a creative GM who has some time. In conclusion, I recommend this book to all fans of Palladium Fantasy RPG. Those who are thinking about running a game in another world in some wasteland and lack information can use this book for inspiration.

Palladium RPG Book 9: The Baalgor Wastelands