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The Hamlet of Thumble
This is actually the second review of Thumble I've written. The first
was actually sort of a preview review, and was a capsule review
(not playtest) from a manuscript. As it's a completely new
review, not just a revision, I'll cover the same basic ground,
just differently (and hopefully better, this time).
I've actually been meaning to write a follow-up playtest review
from the finished product for quite some time (6 months, I
think), but I've always found it somewhat tricky writing
adventure reviews. To a certain extent, reviewing sourcebooks (or
capsule reviewing adventures) just describes the contents, and
the gist of how they work, and how the rules in the book worked
(or didn't work). Adventure reviewing often require narrative
writing, which I'm not great at (Otherwise I would be writing
short stories and novels, not writing reviews), so I usually try
to describe my experiences in a paragraph or two.
Anyway, it came out in the summer of last year, and was one of
the first 3.5 D&D modules available. It's written by Ed Cha,
and is the first product from Open World Press. I call
it a module, but it's really more of an "Adventure
Setting", which is basically the author's phrase for a
setting built up by several adventures that also double as
location sourcebooks. Basically how the old D&D Known World
setting came about (only not as haphazardly in this case).
This adventure is set around Thumble, a small hamlet of
halflings. Really, they're not halflings in the 3e sense, they're
really hobbits. Besides being short, they're somewhat round and
chubby, somewhat rustic, quaint.
But all is not well in Thumble. They've been troubled by some
mysterious creatures, which they call "Yappies" (who
are actually kobolds). The PCs can either solve the problem with
the Yappies or aggravate the problem, depending on whether or not
they are evil or good.
But that really isn't the main attraction of Thumble. What's neat
is the attention to detail of the individual halflings.
One of the perils of running a store-bought adventure, is it's
often only a sketch of an area. If the players wander off the
main stage, or go someplace they're not supposed to, you're
forced to adlib. This can be tricky, at least for GMs like me,
who largely base my own NPCs on people I know or women I've dated
(or who have maced me).
But in this, the players can harass or talk to every halfling in
the place, and you'll have just about everything about them, from
names, names of their children, hair color, eye color, what they
do, and of course, their stats. Sometimes there are some sample
quotes.
For instance, there's Borendill, a pig and chicken farmer. He's
got brown hair and brown eyes and is a somewhat chunky (for a
halfling) 113 lbs. His wife is is named Tessee. She has blonde
hair and blue eyes. Their children are Wilby, Romelia, Delgrin,
Megran, and Luco. One of them has a funny birthmark.
Something like 50+ halflings are detailed like this, including
stats. It's a mix of odd characters and the traditional small
town archetypes, like the town drunk and spinster. I imagine the
recipe for "Halfling Stew" in the Yappie section, was
included because the author was so sick of coming up with
halflings and details about them.
This detail extends to just about all of the NPCs. Even some of
the minor encounters. For instance, one of the encounters on the
way to town involves a brush with a pair of con artists. Like the
halflings, we get a brief sketch of their past history, as well
as their descriptions.
Thumble is also fairly well developed, with quirks of it's own.
For instance, the inhabitants speak with a slight accent. Their
"O" sounds are sort of drawn out, "ooo-ooo".
So instead of D'oh, they say "D'oo-ooh" (It doesn't
mention if their cows say "Moooo-oooo"). The sample
quotes for the halflings all take this into effect, and are
sometimes kinda funny.
While the attention to detail is the best part, it still is a
pretty good adventure, largely because of it's non-linearity, and
various side quests/encounters.
As mentioned, basically, the PCs have to solve the Yappie
problem. If they're good PCs. If they're evil, they can help the
Yappies. But there are various ways to solve it, from either end.
On the downside, beside it's non-linear, it's shorter than the
sort of adventure where the PCs follows a preordained course,
room to room. If you skip the role-playing, and the side stuff,
it can be really quick. (Of course, the obvious solution is not
skip that stuff, though there is something of a time clock on the
PCs part, at least as written, because of a missing child.).
Also, one could argue there is a logical problem, that many of
the inhabitants of Thumble are actually tougher than the PCs
probably are (if the PCs are 1st level). But that's really a
problem/quirk/feature of the d20 System and D&D (or level
systems in general), and actually requires metathinking on the
part of those complaining about it. The PCs should probably think
they are tougher than halfling farmers.
The first time I ran the module, was as part of my normal d20
game, which is something of a SF/Fantasy cross-over, with some
Call of Cthulhu thrown in. My campaign is set about 500 years in
the future, on Carcosa, which is a planet revolving around
Aldeberan (and so in the setting, was named for the HPL stories,
it's not simply a coincidence). Anyway, as part of a Star Ocean
2-ish accident, an entire research colony was transported into a
fantasy analog or parallel universe (also greatly inspired by
Timothy Zahn's novel "Triplet", which ironically shared
a cover with some Gurps book). I mostly use a combination of Blood
& Space (tweaked a bit) and Traveller
20 (tweaked a lot) classes, gear & feats from Dragonstar,
and some other misc stuff (like the Quintessential
Witch).
So anyway, what I'm getting at, is the initial party I used was a
somewhat higher level than the module was meant for, 5th level or
so. And they had guns. And grenades. About half of them. The
other half was a Quintessential Witch/Ranger, and two
Fighter/Sorcerer types. (Sadly, no ninjas.)
Also in my game world, I don't really use alignment per se. I do
use it, but races and such tend to not have any inherent ones.
Thus, Halflings are not necessarily good, and Kobolds are not
necessarily bad. Both tend towards neutral.
So, this changed things considerably. Although I did up the power
level of the yappies in this, it's really really hard to compete
with grenades. So the Yappies surrendered, and a fairly equitable
peace was made between the two, with the help of Quiggles the
magic frog. That might not be so easy in the more traditional
sort of D&D world or the one that module envisions. But is
still possible (especially with the reward for saving Quiggles).
There actually was some combat at first, and I used part of this
as an example for my review of Torn Asunder, which is a critical
hit system for d20. This actually sparked off a controversy over
whether or not kobolds have tails, because I always thought they
didn't, largely based on an illustration in Dragon magazine, and
some of the pictures in this. (See the comments on my Torn
Asunder review for more on this, if you care :-p)
The second time I ran it, was when I first play-tested Stargate
SG-1. In it, I changed the Halflings to humans, I forget
which type, something weird, and the yappies to rogue Jaffa. As I
wanted to test the combat system, it was pretty bloody for a
while, but eventually the leader of SG-13 was able to defeat the
leader of the rogue Jaffa in single combat, and peace was made.
The Halflings convert to humans easily enough, if you just double
the height and weight.
The third time I ran it, which was recently, actually, I used in
a more normal setting, the levels it was intended for (1st-2nd)
and it was played from the point of view from the kobolds. I
still didn't want any halfling bloodshed, so I ran it from an
angle that the kobolds wanted to frighten the halflings into
paying tribute. In part, I used some of the spells from the Gnome:
Masters of Illusion book I reviewed last month. This actually
ended up with most of the kobold PCs getting clobbered.
So, while the adventure itself is perhaps a bit short, it can be
reused over and over, as can the hamlet itself.
The second half of the book is really more a sourcebook. 3 new
core classes (The Witch, the Shaman, and the Cavalier), a bunch
of spells, an advantage/disadvantage system, new magic items, new
weapons (just mundane items like household wares). And beyond
that, all sorts of advice and tips aimed at beginning DMs.
On paper, the classes all looked to be well done rules wise and
balanced. And while I still haven't tested them extensively, I
have used them as NPCs of varying levels, and they do seem to be
pretty solid. Considering Mongoose sells a single class for $3.50
in an 8 page minibook, these 3 classes by themselves just about
make Thumble worth buying (or a bargain if you buy it for the
adventure.).
There are a lot of witches for the d20 system (at least 6 others,
by my count), and this is a decent one. Besides the spells the
witch can cast (which are a mixture of enchantment and charm and
summoning with some minor healing), she can also shapechange. Not
quite the traditional witch, but not bad.
The Cavalier is great at fighting on horseback (or some sort of
mount). Elsewhere he's a bit weak (though pretty much like a
fighter without any bonus feats or abilities).
The Shaman is perhaps the most original of the three. It's
similar to a cleric, but worships animal spirits, and gets powers
based on the totems it worships.
There's also a reputation system, a disadvantage/advantage
system, lots of spells and probably some other things I'm
missing. If just the rules were released as a book, it would be
pretty hefty. In a way, it's almost a shame that they were
included, because they will probably be overlooked (and perhaps
the space could ahve been better used for more adventure
seeds/plots).
The GM advice is sometimes often somewhat obvious to long time
GMs, but is nonetheless worth mentioning, and should be great for
starting GMs.
Since I was working from a manuscript the first time, I just gave
"Style" a 3. However, the actual book is a lot better
than I had expected. Not to put down Mystic Eye Games (who this
is published under, it's one of those affiliated publishing
deals), but while their adventures were enthusiastically done,
they were somewhat ugly in terms of layout and art and such. I
was expecting the worst.
But it's actually a really snazzy looking book. The layout is a
bit crowded, because it's packed to the brim, but it's very easy
to read and to find things. There are a couple of slight glitches
in the text, the most notable is when the wife of a halfling
changes names from Lyneth to Eleree. In a really neat touch,
instead of the standard grey background you normally find used
for tables, it uses greyed out illustrations from the book. It's
hard to describe, but it's really classy looking.
As I did mention in the first review (since the art was up on a
web page for me to see), the art by Lee Smith and Diego Paredes
is quite good, and the cartography by Clayton Bunce is simply
stunning. Best cartography style ever, sort of isometric, and
hand drawn. Definitely an antidote to the ugly, dark, hard to
read computer-ish blobs that is the norm for maps these days.
Though ironically, the maps are a bit pixelated (I guess it must
have been a jpg or something at one time, or suffered a bit from
the scanning in process). But you really have to look close to
notice. And last but not least, the cover art is by Storn Cook,
and so is quite good.
In 2003, there were 3 d20 books that really stood out to me in
quality, originality, and energy. This, Lords of
the Night: Vampires, and Redhurst:
Academy of Magic. It's hard to choose which one is better, as
they are all so different, but this definitely gets an A+.
It's a really special book. If I were going to put out a
beginners boxed set today, I would put The Hamlet of Thumble in
it, much like The Keep on the Borderlands was in the old Basic
D&D boxed set.
It's still not for everyone (I mean, it is about a village of
halflings), and I expect it's probably not for the average
RPG.netter, but I think if you remember the old D&D days
fondly, but have moved on in style (from just hack & slash to
a bit more on role-playing) you'll love it. I call it the Quiggles test - if you find the idea of a magic frog named that amusing, then you should like it. If you don't, then stick with White Wolf stuff
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