RPGnet : The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Introduction.

[Caveat: I apologize for all typos and formating issues I may have overlooked-sorry!]

In Wintertop's Shadow is the latest offering from The Unspoken Word,

a small UK-based company that devots itself to produce source material for Issaries' Hero Wars RPG [soon to be continued as HeroQuest].

Three books have been published so far, In Wintertop's Shadow being the fourth.

All are similar in terms of appearance and content - each features a different region and/or culture of Glorantha, the setting world of Hero Wars and RuneQuest,
and contains everything a Narrator needs to run a campaign in the particular region.

The geographic and cultural informations is enriched by cameos, scenario seeds and short adventures, as well as rules material concerning character creation and magic.

The Unspoken Word #2 The Thieves' Arm is the sole exception to the above so far, as it contains geographic information and adventures only.
All the areas explored so far are set in different regions of the Dragon Pass, a strategically important region in which dozens of different cultures and races collide.

In Wintertop's Shadow describes a mountain range in the middle of the so-called Dragon Pass.

The land is rough and wild, and the oppressive Lunar Empire has recently conquered the area on its way through the pass. Some of the natives have surrendered, the remaining lead a guerilla war against the suppressors, having withdrawn into the unhospitable areas of the mountains and hills. The rebels have some features in common with the Scots in Braveheart or the Germans in the very beginning of Gladiator, while the Lunars resemble your average Roman Empire.

As rough as the land is the culture and the customs of the so-called Exiles - they keep slaves by tradition and their religion involves a lot of blood rituals and sacrifices, as well as earthquakes and bone-shaking war magics. A tough place to be, but at least one in which the fronts are clear - either you are a dirty and fanatic barbarian who only descends from your mountain range to raid and plunder, or you are a civilized Soldier defending the passes and valleys against the former.
I exaggerate a bit, but that's the setting of In Wintertop's Shadow, painted in very broad strokes.

At First Glance.

The book has 64 pages, standard size, perfect-bound, which is the first time for The Unspoken Word - previous books were saddle-stitched - and it's really an achievement!, and comes with a full color cover on the front and a color map on the back cover. The latter is well quite done, drawn in the same style as the map of the Lunar Empire and the one in Tarsh In Flames [map here!].
Personally, I found all the above a bit 'too green', which makes distinctions a bit hard at times. The use of stylized images for woods/trees isn't my cup of tea, too, but again it strongly depends on your personal taste.
I found the size of the map rather suboptimal - it covers two thirds of the page at most, and is additionally buried under the map key-box and an advertising textbox for the book itself. That doesn't leave much room for the actual map...

I really had my gripes with the cover illustration. Compared to the previous The Unspoken Word publications this really disappointed me when I first opened the package. It has this crayon-fandom-feeling and since the artist has proven that he can do a lot better before, I guess the cover was rushed to be done in time.

The interior is b&w and well done for the most part. The layout is as clear, easy to read and aerated by inserted textboxes and generous use of illustration, same as in all products from The Unspoken Word. The illus vary in style and quality, but do their job unobtrusive and efficiently. Since they are quite small when compared to industry standards, i.e. not exceeding one-fourth of a page, they are more ornaments to the accompanying text than stand-alone pictures. I like this.

In my review of The Unspoken Word #2 The Thieves' Arm [review here!], I wrote that I had my problems with some more comical images. In Wintertop's Shadow avoids them with the sole exception on page 54, but at least this time it feels more appropriate.

What I didn't like was the use of rune-stone images that adore many pages. Though they look very good, I found their realistic style doesn't match the rest of the book.

When I said that the cover looks rushed, the same is true to the layout here and there. Page 50 is especially striking, since the rune-image buries the text in parts. We're talking about five lines missing the first three letters each, so that does not detract from the overall value of the book, but this and similar though lesser issues like typos or images not being clean cut & pasted, deserve to be mentioned. I won't go so far to call this 'sloppy editing' since it's still by far superior to many of Issaries' own products, but on the other hand the previous books' standard was so high, that In Wintertop's Shadow can't live up in terms of accurateness.

Re-reading my review so far I think one could easily the impression that I'm panning the book!

Hell, no!

All the above is nit-picking and minor.

That kept in mind I come to where In Wintertop's Shadow really shines:

Content.

In Wintertop's Shadow is exactly what Thunder Rebels was supposed to be: A comprehensive and praxis-oriented guide to a gloranthan culture, its history, its religion and its homeland, rounded with cameos and full adventures to give the narrator a feeling for the particularities and possibilities of the setting and the culture. Strangely enough, the success of the book depends on the rather oberwhelming, generic and esoteric Thunder Rebels. Even stranger, this dependance, foremost among others, acts as In Wintertop's Shadow's greatest drawback and severly limits its target audience. But I'll come back to this later...

The books is divided into four parts, each with several sub-chapters as well.

The first features a general introduction and a very long historical synopsis of the past 500 years in the region.

The book starts with a nearly one page long evocative self-portraying text and an even shorter text introducing the culture of the Exiles and the book itself in a neutral/narrator way. Both are quite good and the reader begins to feel comfortable with the book's style and the culture that's presented.

The next three pages are devoted to an extensive timeline for the Exiles and the regions they've been living in. It's quite detailed and, while great for Glorantha veterans, it's destined to confuse the newbie pretty much with all those places and names.

Without access to Thunder Rebels, Storm Tribe, King Of Sartar and the Glorantha book, and other sources, one will soon get lost in the plethora of people, places and events.

I found the placement of the timeline in the very beginning of the book not very resonable, since people could be put off by the sheer amount of material.

A general overview of the way of life of the Exiles comes next, which pretty neat sums up the main hooks and themes of the book. It's accompanied by a 'first hand account' of a Lunar Officer who writes home about the barbarians rebels he has to take care off, which is useful to picture the 'enemies' attitude towards the natives.

The second part is six pages long and gives a closer, but still broad look at the region geographically and the tribes that live there.

Four pages of geographic overview including a b/w version of the back over map come first. The information is clear and though short it's detailed enough to get the reader's imagination working. There are pretty few hard facts when it comes to settlements, which is fine by me, since it allows the average Narrator the customize the setting towards his/her own needs. Others may not like this, but I consider it not a bug, but a feature. The inclusion of the map is well-meant, but since it's a colour map printed as b/w it's much too dark to find anything on it easily. No cookie.

The different tribes of the Exiles are given a quick glance on two pages and again, it's short but enough to give you basic ideas of what people are like and not too much to restrict your own ideas.

Part number three is devoted to game-related material. It's nineteen pages long.

Character keywords and a chapter on the religious specifics to create Exile characters are provided in two chapters, ie. 10 pages. Good and solid work. Noticeable here is the fine and [more or less] subtle differences to the average heortling type Orlanthi as found in Thunder Rebels. The seven pages that follow provide even more insights in the culture, customs and habits of the Exiles, and here the differences are very conspicuous. That may be one of the key attractions of the whole book - when a narrator uses the Exiles as temporary hosts for heortling characters from Sartar or the Holy Country. They will find that both cultures have much in common, but there are a lot tiny little differences that provide plenty of role-playing opportunities and communication 'traps'.

Most heortling characters, who are considered 'Barbarians' by the people of the allmighty Lunar Empire, will find the Exils to be cruel and wild, which kind of reverses the situation for them. It's best compared to meeting somebody from a far-off part of your country - same nation, same culture, but strange regional customs and they speak so funny... :)

Even if you're not in for 'cultural' roleplaying or if you want your PCs to come from the Exiles, the book provides a lot of nice character-details, -quirks, -attitudes, -motivations, and plot hooks that are inventive and easy to extract from the pages.

Earlier, I wrote that In Wintertop's Shadow strongly depends on Thunder Rebels. To state this more precisely, Thunder Rebels provides the cultural framework, the base, the foundation for ALL Orlanthi cultures and In Wintertop's Shadow only expands and supplements this with corrections, additions and special cases. That means, you MUST own Thunder Rebels and have fully read and understood it, which is not a too easy task. Otherwise you'll find yourself lost.

While I have to admit that one COULD skip the parts where Thunder Rebels-knowledge is required and still use the book, I think that not the way it was intended and I believe that it's not a satisfying way at all. That's a pity, because all information in In Wintertop's Shadow comes clear, clean, easy to understand and to use, and digestable, but you still have to read the generic, vague and discursive Thunder Rebels. I can't imagine a way the author could have evaded this problem without inflating the book's size by 200%, but because of this dependance In Wintertop's Shadow is not the great introductionary primer it could have been, given the quality of the content.

Anyway, I digress.

Adventures in Exile is the fourth and last part, being 30 pages long.

A short but quite informative essay sums up the situation in which new campaigns and adventures can be set and some kid of campaign calendar follows. The latter treats season by season, explains what's to do [e.g. raiding or hay making], lists special and holy days and what's happening then, and gives plenty suggestions for special occurances, all related to the respective time of the year. This is a real treat, those three pages contain a life-time campaign in the hands of an average Narrator.

Two full scenarios follow, 7 and 15 pages long. The first is a fine regional variation of the cattle raid that came with Barbarian Adventures. Tough simply structured and executed straight it contains some challenging situations, both martial and verbal [something I really like about Glorantha and Hero Wars!] and captures the atmosphere of the place and the people quite well. A short clan write-up and a fully described Hero Band are inclusive, too.

King For A Day, the second scenario, is somewhat more demanding, I won't spoil anything, but let me say that it makes very good use of the setting's superstruction and it is sure to be well-received by players and Narrator alike. It's epic, it's magic and it's deep in the setting - what else do you need?

Four pages of clan generation conclude the book. This is an add-on to the clan generator that's in Orlanth Is Dead [see my review here] and won't work as stand-alone. No big surprises here, but a thoughtful addition, since the original generator does not work well for the culture of the Exiles and In Wintertop's Shadow provides what's missing.

The Good.

In Wintertop's Shadow is a strong package.
It is written very well, clear, very concise and always with actual gaming in mind. By the author's style one can tell that he really had his own campaigns there. The whole book is a pleasure to read and the clear layout adds to this treat, too. The style is kept at its high standard all through the pages, skips all that's redundant, and retains only vital information without being dry.

The portrayed culture is easy to picture, due its savage nature quite interesting and provides endless hooks for your campaign, both minor and major. Everything one needs to start his campaign is provided, although one should be warned that in accordance with the rules-light and narrative Hero Wars system there aren't too many hard facts. I never found this a drawback, since everything I would ever need is in the pages, simulationsts could miss stuff like weather-dependant-export-import-relationship-modifier-adjustment-tables, but I don't really think so.

It works really good in conjunction with The Unspoken Word's previous books Tarsh In Flames and especially Thieves' Arm and supplements the information there smoothly.

The Bad.

Some minor layout issues.
Both maps could have been better presented.
The cover.
Maybe the sequence of the chapters - I found the timeline a daunting opener.
The chapters seem to have been written independent from each other and sometimes the transition feels a bit snatchy.
Nothing to make you really worry.

The Ugly.

The very annoying fact that you must own FIVE other Hero Wars setting/culture books from Issaries in order to make full use of In Wintertop's Shadow, not even taking the Glorantha-book into account.
That's not only an editorial malfunction [on behalf of Issaries], but it is very inexpedient to find references and impairs the general ease of use considerably.
On the other hand, this isn't the author's fault, nor his editors'.

The Verdict.

In Wintertop's Shadow is the best book in the Unspoken Word series so far.
The author presents a perfect starting point for new campaign in Glorantha.
Conflicts and character motivations are very concrete and with these it's easy to introduce new players to Glorantha.

It's the author's credit that the book provides plenty of impressive meat for Thunder Rebels' and Barbarian Adventures' generic bones.
Some nuisances prevent my highest praise, but tragically none is the responsibility of the author.
Ian Cooper made his debut and he did very well, actually impressive.
Together with the ever-reliable Runemaster Mark Galeotti he gave life to a culture that now will begin to rival Sartar in popularity.

If you hesitated to start your campaign in Glorantha's famous Dragon Pass till now - wait no further, do yourself a favour and buy this book.

All Hero Wars/Glorantha campaigns in other parts of the world may find it hard to extract something of superordinated use.

Newcomers should ask themselves if they are willing to invest in all the other books needed and the use for non-gloranthan campaigns is close to non-existent.

In Wintertop's Shadow
In Wintertop's Shadow Capsule Review by Stefan Drawert on 13/11/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!) The best from The Unspoken Word so far. If you hesitated to start your campaign in Glorantha's famous Dragon Pass till now - wait no further, do yourself a favour and buy this book. Product: In Wintertop's Shadow Author: Ian Cooper, additional material by Mark Galeotti Category: RPG Company/Publisher: The Unspoken Word Line: Hero Wars / Hero Quest Cost: $ 12 Page count: Year published: 2002 ISBN: 1-904241-03-4 SKU: UW 1004 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Stefan Drawert on 13/11/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	Introduction. [Caveat: I apologize for all typos and formating issues I may have overlooked-sorry!] In Wintertop's Shadow is the latest offering from The Unspoken Word, a small UK-based company that devots itself to produce source material for Issaries' Hero Wars RPG [soon to be continued as HeroQuest]. Three books have been published so far, In Wintertop's Shadow being the fourth. All are similar in terms of appearance and content - each features a different region and/or culture of Glorantha, the setting world of Hero Wars and RuneQuest, and contains everything a Narrator needs to run a campaign in the particular region. The geographic and cultural informations is enriched by cameos, scenario seeds and short adventures, as well as rules material concerning character creation and magic. The Unspoken Word #2 The Thieves' Arm is the sole exception to the above so far, as it contains geographic information and adventures only. All the areas explored so far are set in different regions of the Dragon Pass, a strategically important region in which dozens of different cultures and races collide. In Wintertop's Shadow describes a mountain range in the middle of the so-called Dragon Pass. The land is rough and wild, and the oppressive Lunar Empire has recently conquered the area on its way through the pass. Some of the natives have surrendered, the remaining lead a guerilla war against the suppressors, having withdrawn into the unhospitable areas of the mountains and hills. The rebels have some features in common with the Scots in Braveheart or the Germans in the very beginning of Gladiator, while the Lunars resemble your average Roman Empire. As rough as the land is the culture and the customs of the so-called Exiles - they keep slaves by tradition and their religion involves a lot of blood rituals and sacrifices, as well as earthquakes and bone-shaking war magics. A tough place to be, but at least one in which the fronts are clear - either you are a dirty and fanatic barbarian who only descends from your mountain range to raid and plunder, or you are a civilized Soldier defending the passes and valleys against the former. I exaggerate a bit, but that's the setting of In Wintertop's Shadow, painted in very broad strokes. At First Glance. The book has 64 pages, standard size, perfect-bound, which is the first time for The Unspoken Word - previous books were saddle-stitched - and it's really an achievement!, and comes with a full color cover on the front and a color map on the back cover. The latter is well quite done, drawn in the same style as the map of the Lunar Empire and the one in Tarsh In Flames [map here!]. Personally, I found all the above a bit 'too green', which makes distinctions a bit hard at times. The use of stylized images for woods/trees isn't my cup of tea, too, but again it strongly depends on your personal taste. I found the size of the map rather suboptimal - it covers two thirds of the page at most, and is additionally buried under the map key-box and an advertising textbox for the book itself. That doesn't leave much room for the actual map... I really had my gripes with the cover illustration. Compared to the previous The Unspoken Word publications this really disappointed me when I first opened the package. It has this crayon-fandom-feeling and since the artist has proven that he can do a lot better before, I guess the cover was rushed to be done in time. The interior is b&w and well done for the most part. The layout is as clear, easy to read and aerated by inserted textboxes and generous use of illustration, same as in all products from The Unspoken Word. The illus vary in style and quality, but do their job unobtrusive and efficiently. Since they are quite small when compared to industry standards, i.e. not exceeding one-fourth of a page, they are more ornaments to the accompanying text than stand-alone pictures. I like this. In my review of The Unspoken Word #2 The Thieves' Arm [review here!], I wrote that I had my problems with some more comical images. In Wintertop's Shadow avoids them with the sole exception on page 54, but at least this time it feels more appropriate. What I didn't like was the use of rune-stone images that adore many pages. Though they look very good, I found their realistic style doesn't match the rest of the book. When I said that the cover looks rushed, the same is true to the layout here and there. Page 50 is especially striking, since the rune-image buries the text in parts. We're talking about five lines missing the first three letters each, so that does not detract from the overall value of the book, but this and similar though lesser issues like typos or images not being clean cut & pasted, deserve to be mentioned. I won't go so far to call this 'sloppy editing' since it's still by far superior to many of Issaries' own products, but on the other hand the previous books' standard was so high, that In Wintertop's Shadow can't live up in terms of accurateness. Re-reading my review so far I think one could easily the impression that I'm panning the book! Hell, no! All the above is nit-picking and minor. That kept in mind I come to where In Wintertop's Shadow really shines: Content. In Wintertop's Shadow is exactly what Thunder Rebels was supposed to be: A comprehensive and praxis-oriented guide to a gloranthan culture, its history, its religion and its homeland, rounded with cameos and full adventures to give the narrator a feeling for the particularities and possibilities of the setting and the culture. Strangely enough, the success of the book depends on the rather oberwhelming, generic and esoteric Thunder Rebels. Even stranger, this dependance, foremost among others, acts as In Wintertop's Shadow's greatest drawback and severly limits its target audience. But I'll come back to this later... The books is divided into four parts, each with several sub-chapters as well. The first features a general introduction and a very long historical synopsis of the past 500 years in the region. The book starts with a nearly one page long evocative self-portraying text and an even shorter text introducing the culture of the Exiles and the book itself in a neutral/narrator way. Both are quite good and the reader begins to feel comfortable with the book's style and the culture that's presented. The next three pages are devoted to an extensive timeline for the Exiles and the regions they've been living in. It's quite detailed and, while great for Glorantha veterans, it's destined to confuse the newbie pretty much with all those places and names. Without access to Thunder Rebels, Storm Tribe, King Of Sartar and the Glorantha book, and other sources, one will soon get lost in the plethora of people, places and events. I found the placement of the timeline in the very beginning of the book not very resonable, since people could be put off by the sheer amount of material. A general overview of the way of life of the Exiles comes next, which pretty neat sums up the main hooks and themes of the book. It's accompanied by a 'first hand account' of a Lunar Officer who writes home about the barbarians rebels he has to take care off, which is useful to picture the 'enemies' attitude towards the natives. The second part is six pages long and gives a closer, but still broad look at the region geographically and the tribes that live there. Four pages of geographic overview including a b/w version of the back over map come first. The information is clear and though short it's detailed enough to get the reader's imagination working. There are pretty few hard facts when it comes to settlements, which is fine by me, since it allows the average Narrator the customize the setting towards his/her own needs. Others may not like this, but I consider it not a bug, but a feature. The inclusion of the map is well-meant, but since it's a colour map printed as b/w it's much too dark to find anything on it easily. No cookie. The different tribes of the Exiles are given a quick glance on two pages and again, it's short but enough to give you basic ideas of what people are like and not too much to restrict your own ideas. Part number three is devoted to game-related material. It's nineteen pages long. Character keywords and a chapter on the religious specifics to create Exile characters are provided in two chapters, ie. 10 pages. Good and solid work. Noticeable here is the fine and [more or less] subtle differences to the average heortling type Orlanthi as found in Thunder Rebels. The seven pages that follow provide even more insights in the culture, customs and habits of the Exiles, and here the differences are very conspicuous. That may be one of the key attractions of the whole book - when a narrator uses the Exiles as temporary hosts for heortling characters from Sartar or the Holy Country. They will find that both cultures have much in common, but there are a lot tiny little differences that provide plenty of role-playing opportunities and communication 'traps'. Most heortling characters, who are considered 'Barbarians' by the people of the allmighty Lunar Empire, will find the Exils to be cruel and wild, which kind of reverses the situation for them. It's best compared to meeting somebody from a far-off part of your country - same nation, same culture, but strange regional customs and they speak so funny... :) Even if you're not in for 'cultural' roleplaying or if you want your PCs to come from the Exiles, the book provides a lot of nice character-details, -quirks, -attitudes, -motivations, and plot hooks that are inventive and easy to extract from the pages. Earlier, I wrote that In Wintertop's Shadow strongly depends on Thunder Rebels. To state this more precisely, Thunder Rebels provides the cultural framework, the base, the foundation for ALL Orlanthi cultures and In Wintertop's Shadow only expands and supplements this with corrections, additions and special cases. That means, you MUST own Thunder Rebels and have fully read and understood it, which is not a too easy task. Otherwise you'll find yourself lost. While I have to admit that one COULD skip the parts where Thunder Rebels-knowledge is required and still use the book, I think that not the way it was intended and I believe that it's not a satisfying way at all. That's a pity, because all information in In Wintertop's Shadow comes clear, clean, easy to understand and to use, and digestable, but you still have to read the generic, vague and discursive Thunder Rebels. I can't imagine a way the author could have evaded this problem without inflating the book's size by 200%, but because of this dependance In Wintertop's Shadow is not the great introductionary primer it could have been, given the quality of the content. Anyway, I digress. Adventures in Exile is the fourth and last part, being 30 pages long. A short but quite informative essay sums up the situation in which new campaigns and adventures can be set and some kid of campaign calendar follows. The latter treats season by season, explains what's to do [e.g. raiding or hay making], lists special and holy days and what's happening then, and gives plenty suggestions for special occurances, all related to the respective time of the year. This is a real treat, those three pages contain a life-time campaign in the hands of an average Narrator. Two full scenarios follow, 7 and 15 pages long. The first is a fine regional variation of the cattle raid that came with Barbarian Adventures. Tough simply structured and executed straight it contains some challenging situations, both martial and verbal [something I really like about Glorantha and Hero Wars!] and captures the atmosphere of the place and the people quite well. A short clan write-up and a fully described Hero Band are inclusive, too. King For A Day, the second scenario, is somewhat more demanding, I won't spoil anything, but let me say that it makes very good use of the setting's superstruction and it is sure to be well-received by players and Narrator alike. It's epic, it's magic and it's deep in the setting - what else do you need? Four pages of clan generation conclude the book. This is an add-on to the clan generator that's in Orlanth Is Dead [see my review here] and won't work as stand-alone. No big surprises here, but a thoughtful addition, since the original generator does not work well for the culture of the Exiles and In Wintertop's Shadow provides what's missing. The Good. In Wintertop's Shadow is a strong package. It is written very well, clear, very concise and always with actual gaming in mind. By the author's style one can tell that he really had his own campaigns there. The whole book is a pleasure to read and the clear layout adds to this treat, too. The style is kept at its high standard all through the pages, skips all that's redundant, and retains only vital information without being dry. The portrayed culture is easy to picture, due its savage nature quite interesting and provides endless hooks for your campaign, both minor and major. Everything one needs to start his campaign is provided, although one should be warned that in accordance with the rules-light and narrative Hero Wars system there aren't too many hard facts. I never found this a drawback, since everything I would ever need is in the pages, simulationsts could miss stuff like weather-dependant-export-import-relationship-modifier-adjustment-tables, but I don't really think so. It works really good in conjunction with The Unspoken Word's previous books Tarsh In Flames and especially Thieves' Arm and supplements the information there smoothly. The Bad. Some minor layout issues. Both maps could have been better presented. The cover. Maybe the sequence of the chapters - I found the timeline a daunting opener. The chapters seem to have been written independent from each other and sometimes the transition feels a bit snatchy. Nothing to make you really worry. The Ugly. The very annoying fact that you must own FIVE other Hero Wars setting/culture books from Issaries in order to make full use of In Wintertop's Shadow, not even taking the Glorantha-book into account. That's not only an editorial malfunction [on behalf of Issaries], but it is very inexpedient to find references and impairs the general ease of use considerably. On the other hand, this isn't the author's fault, nor his editors'. The Verdict. In Wintertop's Shadow is the best book in the Unspoken Word series so far. The author presents a perfect starting point for new campaign in Glorantha. Conflicts and character motivations are very concrete and with these it's easy to introduce new players to Glorantha. It's the author's credit that the book provides plenty of impressive meat for Thunder Rebels' and Barbarian Adventures' generic bones. Some nuisances prevent my highest praise, but tragically none is the responsibility of the author. Ian Cooper made his debut and he did very well, actually impressive. Together with the ever-reliable Runemaster Mark Galeotti he gave life to a culture that now will begin to rival Sartar in popularity. If you hesitated to start your campaign in Glorantha's famous Dragon Pass till now - wait no further, do yourself a favour and buy this book. All Hero Wars/Glorantha campaigns in other parts of the world may find it hard to extract something of superordinated use. Newcomers should ask themselves if they are willing to invest in all the other books needed and the use for non-gloranthan campaigns is close to non-existent.