Dragon Wizards Fantasy e-Book
Review by C. Demetrius Morgan
Synopsis
This is a review for the illustrated novel Dragon Wizards, which comes with 52 game cards for the RPG card game of the same name, and is currently available through RPGnow for $3.49 (marked down from $5).
Rating: As a novel: 0. As a game tool/supplement suitable for mining ideas from: 1. As a campaign journal: 3. As a game transcript: 4. Mean Rating: 2.
Initial Impressions
You know that feeling you get deep down in your gut when you are approaching a intersection where you see blue lights flashing, you know the lights I mean, the ones that tell you something has happened up ahead but you aren’t sure what? Of course you, like every other rubbernecker on the road ahead figures it’s either a bad wreck or someone the cops had to pull over for some violation or another. But until you actually get there and are able to move on by you have that uneasy queasy butterflies in your gut feeling. You know what I mean? Well that’s about how I feel right now as I type these words. The plain simple fact is I do not know what to make of Dragon Wizards. On the one hand I was lead to believe it was a PDF novel, on the other hand what I am seeing is not so much a novel as it is. . . You remember those old choose your own adventure books from the 80s? There is sort of that vibe here, sans the choose your own adventure bits. Did I mention that this goes on for 261 pages and there are 52 character cards, err, illustrations, which is to say poser renders done up as cards complete with stats? No? Well they are, or did, or whatever. What were we talking about again?
Summary
It all began innocently enough, as it often does; which is about as clichéd as the music played by gypsy ice cream trucks meandering through the streets by a park full of children on a blisteringly hot summer day. That said I am going to do something different here, as I feel any feeble words I might struggle to put together would never approach within a supernova flare of the shocking luster or disarming uniqueness of those found within this novel. So, to appease the morbid curiosity of the gathered onlookers, namely you, the reader, I am going to quote a bit from the novel. Are you sitting down? Good. Here it comes.
``Mizzou glances over the meatless bones into a stone hallway curving sparsely to the west. Alex cautiously positions herself behind him searching for space to throw her javelin.
"Can I position it through your legs?" she nervously concedes, as the sharp phallus extends passed Mizzou's orifice.
"These corridors are tight, and being prepared is necessary," she articulates while using him as a shield. Rounding the corner the pair encounter a Lepidoptera Sprite. A small monarch butterfly winged female who lives in this corridor concealing its pupa in the chalky walls. The one-and-ahalf foot size of the hybrid insect plus its deadly wing speed gain the advantage as it sprints to attack.’’
Now, I ask you in earnest, what can one possibly say about that?
Lest you think I have merely chosen this unique gem as the showcase jewel of the piece I present you with the following, which is a quote taken from a segment of text that hotly follows that which came before:
``"Druids know how to avoid the rain," she mutters to herself.
Gwenith glances at the melee watching an unbalanced battle. To enhance the odds she casts a mystical illusion creating a mirror image of her body near Alex. The vision has long coiled pinecone colored hair framing pale skin and cold lips. Her face has a sharp nose and tight cheekbones built around piercing black eyes. Her robe is made of tanned bison hide with a long dress of green cotton.
"Spell casters generate memory points through careful study of the language of magic. The sounds of empowerment, where a magic verse is repeated many times to imprint its power like a song into the mind," Gwen explains the principle of magic.
The illusion follows Gwenith's every move and stares at the sprite with dull lost eyes.’’
Humbly do I beseech you, dear friends, and impose upon your sage wisdom to ask once again: What can one possibly say about that?
Appraisal
Words fail. Somewhere, in the pitiless depths of the darkest corner of the Crimson Hells, a dread god of spite, or demon of revenge, is laughing. Probably both. That said, this is a novel length game transcript, pure and simple, not a novel. Possibly a game transcript translated into English, but I can not be certain until I follow-up with questions to the author. (Sadly, as I have stated elsewhere, I appear to have lost what contact information I had. So I shall bravely trudge on, and hope this turns out well.) Even so if ever a shadow of doubt existed then certainly it would be dispelled in light of the following:
``They arrive near dusk at the burial grounds and are amazed to see thousands of recently opened graves covering a hill top. The ground erodes beneath their step as a hole opens in the earth displaying a crew of skeletal excavators. The ring of iron picks channel the light sedimentary level in the ground. The deep layer of matrix is usually reserved for sacred animals which have been mummified. Zero kicks an exposed coffin lid, opening a rats nest which filters to the mud chasm below.
The skelly's are strange genus of undead skeletons who use their own as body parts as potential projectile weapons, losing many of them during melee. They collect bones and materials binding them to a newly constructed commander. They slot giant bovine hips into the collected puzzle of bones. A skeletal dog is located and fashioned into one arm plus a cow head becomes a battering shield on the other. The skelly's work in a group of six, constructing their leader and altering the irregular jigsaw. The newly created leader has magical treasures dropped into the bone bucket of a rib cage. Pieces of flesh hangs from the ventilated frame as a blue magical aura grows.’’
I urge everyone to hold final verdict until all the facts, such as I can find them and relate to you, have been gathered together. Alas, I fear, the text quoted thus far speaks for itself. Harsh volumes. Now then, to pick back up where I left off above- which was actually a while ago- I am sad to say I seem to have lost the contact information for this product. Thus, rather than keep the review sitting on the old HD another languorous week here’s a summary of what I’ve been able to discover:
Based on the information at the e-Books home site and RPGnow I would have to venture a guess that this document was an attempt to piece together a blow-by-blow detailed account of a campaign session using the Dragonwizards RPG. Yes, you read right, there’s apparently an RPG of the same name behind all this. Or rather a “Fantasy Card & Dice RPG Game” with this e-book being “introduction to our full Fantasy pencil, paper, dice and card RPG system available on CD”. Either way this document needs massive revision, wrangling by an editor, and an attempt to sharpen the focus of the text so that it is either turned into an proper novel or re-edited into a coherent campaign journal with side-bars explaining about the game as you read.
Negatives: This document is 261 pages. A PDF novel. Let me repeat that: 261 pages of a PDF novel. Beyond that this entire document reads like a transcript of a game session. Which is bad. Especially since this bills itself as a novel. A early rough draft of a novel, perhaps, but one in desperate need of revision and polish.
Positives: There are bookmarks. The PDF is presented in a single column format with a very crisp and clear font. No complaints about font clarity here. Illustrations are also all clear and crisp. Game “cards” are in JPEG format, 200 DPI, which one would assume might be sufficient enough for printing. If just barely.
Suggestions: Based on what I have seen this document has two potential routes of redemption, after an quick exorcism: 1) Total rewrite. 2) Editing the existing text into a proper game module. While the latter would be easier to accomplish, if this is to be truly called a novel it will require the former to be done post-haste and with surgical precision.
Happy gaming!
Copyright © 2004 C. Demetrius Morgan
