The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Issue 2 of Undiscovered Quests & Adventures (by http://www.eilfin.com) is out.

This is the E-Zine for their swords & sorcery role-playing game, Undiscovered: The Quest for Adventure, while I reviewed for them awhile back. The newest issue has two adventures, a bunch of the standard features, and adds a large number of new spells to the game.

The opening adventure is pretty much a "dungeon crawl" that happens to not be occurring in a dungeon as the PCs help out a town that was raided by trolls. It's fairly combat and strategy heavy- you'll fight the same sort of foes repeatedly, but in different areas under different circumstances. You'd better have magical healing available, too, as the adventure involves a new monster (the mokrel) whose attacks have a chance of crippling the target (sadly, it's a flat chance, not modified by any of your stats, only whether or not you're wearing armor). Roleplaying opportunities were pretty minimal, but there was at least one good opportunity for creative problem solving. Most groups will probably just play through it as a tactical exercise, though. The PCs looked like they might be outgunned by the enemy "boss," but his scripted actions keep him from being as deadly as he might otherwise be.

I originally had objections about the unlikelihood of the mokrels, but the followup write-up of the more powerful vormokrel makes it clear that these are a kind of elemental, thus explaining some of the oddities about them. They also figure prominently in the short story in this issue's Slather's Secrets. Because of that, the write-up is actually placed after the story, rather than directly after the mokrel description. Vormokrels are certainly interesting creatures, and I applaud the fact that they are described as acting quite sensibly in combat and only fighting when they need to. Their alliance with dwarves allows for some interesting potential plots for dwarven PCs, as acquiring a bonded vormokrel as an ally could be quite useful for a low-level dwarf.

The Showcase (for artists) is pretty short this time, but has two very nice pieces courtesy of Jon Hodgson who's done a fair bit of professionally published RPG art already.

After that, we have another half-breed race (the previous issue detailed the Half-Alfar), the Half-Dwarf. They are quite similar to humans, but their dwarven heritage grants them dark vision and double hit points. In a nice, somewhat realistic touch, half-dwarves are a sterile crossbreed, much like mules. They don't discuss the place of half-dwarves in society, so I would assume that it varies from area to area. Still, a little discussion of what sort of stigma (if any) is commonplace would have been nice.

"Caught Under My Spell" details 18 new spells, with 3 for each magical coven (one Lesser, one Regular and one Greater spell). These are nice, and some are quite creative. I did have a few questions, though... for example, the Acute Insight spell (Coven of Truth) allows you to scry a particular target and see everything around them for a duration based on your skill at the spell. This is pretty cool, but how much do you have to know about the "target" to cast it? Will it work if you know the target under a false name? Can you be general, such as "I cast it on that guy we saw in the distance yesterday"? Is there any way for the target to realize that they are being spied upon? Basically, I'm just worried that this spell may be too cool, and unbalance the game. Certainly if the nobles of the world knew that they could be effortlessly spied upon at any time without them knowing about it, they'd take extraordinary precautions to keep their secrets hidden.

Mask Face is also pretty nice, though I might have put it in the Coven of Lies instead of Change, since Lies already has spells that allow you to take other forms. A really cute touch is that whatever other alterations you make to your appearance, Mask Face can never change the caster's eyes. I really like details like that.

Soften Stone seems awfully powerful for its ability to slow or trap a large group in mud. And since your movement rate in the mud slows to one foot per combat round at best, you might well end up being trapped in it when it solidifies again. Also, since the higher level versions of this spell increase the duration more rapidly than they increase the area of effect, you may see mages who prefer to cast it at the Initiate level rather than extend the duration and make it easier to get out before it solidifies again.

While Acid Storm really rocks, I question why it's so much better than the existing Lightning Bolt spell from the Coven of Destruction. For the same mana cost, you get a spell which is save-for-half-damage instead of save-for-none and affects more targets. Admittedly, it doesn't have quite as good of a range, and the higher ranks of Lightning Bolt do a little more damage, but still... Acid Storm is pretty darn nasty, especially since it leaves scars wherever you got hit that last a year.

The Coven of Protection spells are all quite impressive, ranging from Resist Magic (which makes you temporarily immune to all lesser spells), to Metallic Dragon Hide (a cool spell which temporarily changes your skin into magic and weapon-resistant dragon scales) to the utterly gross Chaos Orb which protects you from all physical attacks. Of course, all of the Greater Protection spells are pretty powerful, but Chaos Orb is still up there with the best of them.

The Coven of Enchantment gets Levitate, Entangle (with a cute illustration showing it at work on a hapless warrior) and Weightless Object. Luckily that last one doesn't affect really heavy items, but its long duration does make it possible for you to lug that gemstone-encrusted throne back home instead of contenting yourself with a few pilfered rubies the way the GM expected you to. Oh, and since I did this once with a similar spell, be sure to introduce your PCs to it by having a friendly NPC throw some huge boulder or statue at them (magically weightless, of course) as a practical joke. They'll love it. Honest.

Finally, the Coven of Lies gets Bend Light, Unlight and True Invisibility. I'm assuming from the description that folks benefiting from Bend Light have to stay in the area of effect to keep receiving the benefits, but it's not 100% clear.

All in all, the spells were all pretty cool and your mages will definitely want them. They were quite original, too, something that I do like about Undiscovered's magic system. These spells are not just carbon copies of the old D&D standbys.

After that, we get another character profile, this time on Doesh the Auroral Guardian, the high priest of Eos, goddess of the dawn. I liked the fact that despite his enormous personal power (as an 86^th level character), he still has a soft spot for children. The illustration is quite nice, too, and very fitting. This is the sort of incredibly powerful NPC that your party could meet on the streets and think of as "that nice duster who gave them directions" without realizing exactly who they just met.

Then we get the profile of Rhoantha the Meui-Laon K'Lev'Waeran of the Astman Jungle. Don't worry, they actually explain what every word in her title means and even show how they all fit together in the local tongue. Translated, it's "high priestess - of Luna - of the clan of the Jaguar Totem." Her illustration is a little exploitative, but I'll accept that a were-jaguar in a jungle environment probably wouldn't wear too many clothes anyway. I thought that her face-paint was a bit stereotypical, but after a closer look it's actually a cute touch. The paint mimics the facial pattern of a jaguar, making it quite appropriate.

Then we have what's probably my favorite recurrent feature, What's Happening in the World Today. This is a single page of recent rumors to give out to your PCs, including references to published adventures and little scenario-nuggets to whet your creativity. Even if your players never follow any of them up, it's nice to have an easy source for topical news and events.

Jungle Raiders is a nice little short story with a good illustration. It would work well as a background piece in most campaigns, since it concerns the site of a potent magical struggle and the aftereffects thereof.

After that we have a detailed write-up of the town of Zutum for Breaking the Ice, the second part of their 3 part adventure. These town write-ups are very nice. We get an overhead map with important locations marked, Zutum's history, short descriptions of many notable locations in town, and similarly short descriptions of various NPCs. Some descriptions are very sparse (for example, a few folks are described only by their occupation), but there are a lot of them, so there's a lot of background info here for your game.

I like the fact that the adventure offers a way to get the party involved even if they haven't played through the first part in the previous issue. There are a few typos (one of the maps uses "alter" when they meant "altar") but nothing major. The referee may have to steer the players in the right direction, though, as most of the adventure takes place in a single building. If they investigate other locations in Zutum, you'll have to come up with more details yourself. It has an assortment of unsavory NPCs, not all of whom are truly rotten, and some opportunities for good roleplaying. In fact, other than two all-but-unavoidable fights, it's entirely possible that the adventure might be solved without any combat at all.

Of Tests and Deals is another piece of fiction, this one a self-contained adventure / love story. It's pretty cute.

The Astman Jungle is an interesting place to set adventures. There are humans in the swamps and jungles here, but they are largely enslaved by the evil cherruves (a race of half-human, half-snake creatures with innate magical powers). They aren't innately evil, but they've spent generations worshipping a huge black dragon and offering her tribute to keep her from assailing their city... and, well, it would be better to use human slaves for tribute than sacrifice fellow cherruves, right? In addition to the write-ups of several different wild animals of interest (don't mess with the poison arrow frogs), they have some new monsters, too, like the cherruves, a species of giant bats, and the stats for werejaguars. If that's not enough to make your players regret travelling there, there are four different noxious diseases they can catch, with detailed descriptions of each.

My overall opinion of the E-Zine? It's another nice issue with adventures and useful add-ons. If you play Undiscovered, I think it would be well worth the five bucks.

Style: 4, Substance: 4

Undiscovered Q&A 2
Undiscovered Q&A 2 Capsule Review by Frank Sronce on 06/10/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty) a nice issue for Undiscovered Product: Undiscovered Q&A 2 Author: various contributors Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Eilfin Publishing Line: Undiscovered Cost: $5 Page count: 102 Year published: 2002 ISBN: SKU: Q&A2 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Frank Sronce on 06/10/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	Issue 2 of Undiscovered Quests & Adventures (by http://www.eilfin.com) is out. This is the E-Zine for their swords & sorcery role-playing game, Undiscovered: The Quest for Adventure, while I reviewed for them awhile back. The newest issue has two adventures, a bunch of the standard features, and adds a large number of new spells to the game. The opening adventure is pretty much a "dungeon crawl" that happens to not be occurring in a dungeon as the PCs help out a town that was raided by trolls. It's fairly combat and strategy heavy- you'll fight the same sort of foes repeatedly, but in different areas under different circumstances. You'd better have magical healing available, too, as the adventure involves a new monster (the mokrel) whose attacks have a chance of crippling the target (sadly, it's a flat chance, not modified by any of your stats, only whether or not you're wearing armor). Roleplaying opportunities were pretty minimal, but there was at least one good opportunity for creative problem solving. Most groups will probably just play through it as a tactical exercise, though. The PCs looked like they might be outgunned by the enemy "boss," but his scripted actions keep him from being as deadly as he might otherwise be. I originally had objections about the unlikelihood of the mokrels, but the followup write-up of the more powerful vormokrel makes it clear that these are a kind of elemental, thus explaining some of the oddities about them. They also figure prominently in the short story in this issue's Slather's Secrets. Because of that, the write-up is actually placed after the story, rather than directly after the mokrel description. Vormokrels are certainly interesting creatures, and I applaud the fact that they are described as acting quite sensibly in combat and only fighting when they need to. Their alliance with dwarves allows for some interesting potential plots for dwarven PCs, as acquiring a bonded vormokrel as an ally could be quite useful for a low-level dwarf. The Showcase (for artists) is pretty short this time, but has two very nice pieces courtesy of Jon Hodgson who's done a fair bit of professionally published RPG art already. After that, we have another half-breed race (the previous issue detailed the Half-Alfar), the Half-Dwarf. They are quite similar to humans, but their dwarven heritage grants them dark vision and double hit points. In a nice, somewhat realistic touch, half-dwarves are a sterile crossbreed, much like mules. They don't discuss the place of half-dwarves in society, so I would assume that it varies from area to area. Still, a little discussion of what sort of stigma (if any) is commonplace would have been nice. "Caught Under My Spell" details 18 new spells, with 3 for each magical coven (one Lesser, one Regular and one Greater spell). These are nice, and some are quite creative. I did have a few questions, though... for example, the Acute Insight spell (Coven of Truth) allows you to scry a particular target and see everything around them for a duration based on your skill at the spell. This is pretty cool, but how much do you have to know about the "target" to cast it? Will it work if you know the target under a false name? Can you be general, such as "I cast it on that guy we saw in the distance yesterday"? Is there any way for the target to realize that they are being spied upon? Basically, I'm just worried that this spell may be too cool, and unbalance the game. Certainly if the nobles of the world knew that they could be effortlessly spied upon at any time without them knowing about it, they'd take extraordinary precautions to keep their secrets hidden. Mask Face is also pretty nice, though I might have put it in the Coven of Lies instead of Change, since Lies already has spells that allow you to take other forms. A really cute touch is that whatever other alterations you make to your appearance, Mask Face can never change the caster's eyes. I really like details like that. Soften Stone seems awfully powerful for its ability to slow or trap a large group in mud. And since your movement rate in the mud slows to one foot per combat round at best, you might well end up being trapped in it when it solidifies again. Also, since the higher level versions of this spell increase the duration more rapidly than they increase the area of effect, you may see mages who prefer to cast it at the Initiate level rather than extend the duration and make it easier to get out before it solidifies again. While Acid Storm really rocks, I question why it's so much better than the existing Lightning Bolt spell from the Coven of Destruction. For the same mana cost, you get a spell which is save-for-half-damage instead of save-for-none and affects more targets. Admittedly, it doesn't have quite as good of a range, and the higher ranks of Lightning Bolt do a little more damage, but still... Acid Storm is pretty darn nasty, especially since it leaves scars wherever you got hit that last a year. The Coven of Protection spells are all quite impressive, ranging from Resist Magic (which makes you temporarily immune to all lesser spells), to Metallic Dragon Hide (a cool spell which temporarily changes your skin into magic and weapon-resistant dragon scales) to the utterly gross Chaos Orb which protects you from all physical attacks. Of course, all of the Greater Protection spells are pretty powerful, but Chaos Orb is still up there with the best of them. The Coven of Enchantment gets Levitate, Entangle (with a cute illustration showing it at work on a hapless warrior) and Weightless Object. Luckily that last one doesn't affect really heavy items, but its long duration does make it possible for you to lug that gemstone-encrusted throne back home instead of contenting yourself with a few pilfered rubies the way the GM expected you to. Oh, and since I did this once with a similar spell, be sure to introduce your PCs to it by having a friendly NPC throw some huge boulder or statue at them (magically weightless, of course) as a practical joke. They'll love it. Honest. Finally, the Coven of Lies gets Bend Light, Unlight and True Invisibility. I'm assuming from the description that folks benefiting from Bend Light have to stay in the area of effect to keep receiving the benefits, but it's not 100% clear. All in all, the spells were all pretty cool and your mages will definitely want them. They were quite original, too, something that I do like about Undiscovered's magic system. These spells are not just carbon copies of the old D&D standbys. After that, we get another character profile, this time on Doesh the Auroral Guardian, the high priest of Eos, goddess of the dawn. I liked the fact that despite his enormous personal power (as an 86^th level character), he still has a soft spot for children. The illustration is quite nice, too, and very fitting. This is the sort of incredibly powerful NPC that your party could meet on the streets and think of as "that nice duster who gave them directions" without realizing exactly who they just met. Then we get the profile of Rhoantha the Meui-Laon K'Lev'Waeran of the Astman Jungle. Don't worry, they actually explain what every word in her title means and even show how they all fit together in the local tongue. Translated, it's "high priestess - of Luna - of the clan of the Jaguar Totem." Her illustration is a little exploitative, but I'll accept that a were-jaguar in a jungle environment probably wouldn't wear too many clothes anyway. I thought that her face-paint was a bit stereotypical, but after a closer look it's actually a cute touch. The paint mimics the facial pattern of a jaguar, making it quite appropriate. Then we have what's probably my favorite recurrent feature, What's Happening in the World Today. This is a single page of recent rumors to give out to your PCs, including references to published adventures and little scenario-nuggets to whet your creativity. Even if your players never follow any of them up, it's nice to have an easy source for topical news and events. Jungle Raiders is a nice little short story with a good illustration. It would work well as a background piece in most campaigns, since it concerns the site of a potent magical struggle and the aftereffects thereof. After that we have a detailed write-up of the town of Zutum for Breaking the Ice, the second part of their 3 part adventure. These town write-ups are very nice. We get an overhead map with important locations marked, Zutum's history, short descriptions of many notable locations in town, and similarly short descriptions of various NPCs. Some descriptions are very sparse (for example, a few folks are described only by their occupation), but there are a lot of them, so there's a lot of background info here for your game. I like the fact that the adventure offers a way to get the party involved even if they haven't played through the first part in the previous issue. There are a few typos (one of the maps uses "alter" when they meant "altar") but nothing major. The referee may have to steer the players in the right direction, though, as most of the adventure takes place in a single building. If they investigate other locations in Zutum, you'll have to come up with more details yourself. It has an assortment of unsavory NPCs, not all of whom are truly rotten, and some opportunities for good roleplaying. In fact, other than two all-but-unavoidable fights, it's entirely possible that the adventure might be solved without any combat at all. Of Tests and Deals is another piece of fiction, this one a self-contained adventure / love story. It's pretty cute. The Astman Jungle is an interesting place to set adventures. There are humans in the swamps and jungles here, but they are largely enslaved by the evil cherruves (a race of half-human, half-snake creatures with innate magical powers). They aren't innately evil, but they've spent generations worshipping a huge black dragon and offering her tribute to keep her from assailing their city... and, well, it would be better to use human slaves for tribute than sacrifice fellow cherruves, right? In addition to the write-ups of several different wild animals of interest (don't mess with the poison arrow frogs), they have some new monsters, too, like the cherruves, a species of giant bats, and the stats for werejaguars. If that's not enough to make your players regret travelling there, there are four different noxious diseases they can catch, with detailed descriptions of each. My overall opinion of the E-Zine? It's another nice issue with adventures and useful add-ons. If you play Undiscovered, I think it would be well worth the five bucks. Style: 4, Substance: 4

Undiscovered Q&A 2