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conversion from Storyteller over into d20. Adventure!'s original Storyteller version was a FANTASTIC pulp game, possibly the best on the market. It was a one-book game that won an Origins Award and provided an amazing historical background for the rest of the Trinity Universe.
Aeon prevails. -bard, Gentleman for Hire and Mystery Archaeologist]
Product Information & Book Description:
Storyteller Adventure! (A!ST) was published in 2001 as the last book in the Trinity Universe line, this time focusing on pulp action in the 1920s (funnily enough, its chronolgy puts it as the first Trinity Universe game). It was a one-book game, with only the core announced with no future room for supplements (though there are numerous fan-related probjects have been written online).
Like Aberrant d20, Adventure! d20 (A!d20) has the same back and front covers. It is a hardcover book of 229 pages and standard dimensions. The front cover shows a picture of the settings signature character, Maxwell Anderson Mercer, fighting against some odd worms in a weird looking catacomb. The back cover shows a woman wearing a veil and holding a Tommy gun.
Interior Art
Aside from the new pieces of art used in the Class and Prestige class descriptions, all the art in the book is identical to A!ST. Like Aberrant d20, the inside panels are nicely done. They show newspaper shots from all throughout the interior art of the book. It's pretty nice. The first 90 or so pages of in-character material are identical to A!ST, though the book doesn't have the same "newsprint"-color of paper used in the original version. This is actually kind of nice, because, coupled with the larger print size as the pages were blown up to fit the new book size, makes some text that was previously difficult to read, quite readable. The new class pictures aren't all that great. They're decent, but some of them really aren't all that appropriate looking (the Inventor looks like someone out of Deadlands, or very possibly a soon-to-be-deceased Tinker Gnome).
Chapters One to Four These chapters are all taken wholesale from A!ST, so there's really not much to say. The covers look better in 8x11 size, though.
Chapter Five: Character
Like Aberrant d20, A!d20 requires the 3.5 PHB to use, which is pretty standard stuff. It talks about how the setting affects characters, the rough start date of IC plot stuff (Spring 1924), and typical causes of Inspiration. Once again, standard stuff.
The Human racial template is included, though considering that Human is the only template availible in the Adventure! setting anyway (as humanity doesn't encounter alien races, in Trinity Universe canon, until the early 22nd century) this seems a bit redudant. The Inspired Templates are then provided. Inspired Templates stack on top of the human racial template (just like in Aberrant d20), and are divided into Daring, Psychic, and Superhuman (which in A!ST were called Daredevils, Mesmerists, and Stalwarts). This ends up as one of the places where the book shines. In A!ST, your type of Inspiration decided whether or not you could create Innovative Super-Science, and what type of Knacks you could purchase. In A!d20, the templates provide a much more system-oriented bonus to differentiate them from each other.
First, each of the three templates provides bonuses to a different attribute (Daring enhances Charisma or Wisdom, Psychic enhances Intelligence, and Superhuman enhances Constitution). Secondly, Inspiration is derived from a different source for each template (Daring gets Inspiration equal to Charisma bonus, Psychic gets it from Intelligence, and Superhuman from Constitution). Overall, besides the different Knacks (which have been renamed as as Daring, Psi, and Quantum, whereas in A!ST they were called Heroic, Psychic, and Dynamic), the templates now have a greater degree of differentiation from each other. Just like in Aberrant, you can purchase Daring, Psychic, and Superhuman levels (1 for Daring, 2 for the others) which grant standard class bonuses (increase in BAB, AC, and Saves), as well as additional Background feats and access to greater levels of Knacks. Daring is the one exception, since it has no Knack levels (all Daring knacks are the same level), so taking a level of Daring simply means that you receive a Daring Knack every 2 levels instead of every 3rd.
After that come the core classes: Aristocrat (gentleman adventurers, wealthy dilettantes, etc.), Entertainer (traveling circus performer, musician, actor), Investigator (cop, freelance reporter, PI), Scholar (professor, archaeologist, inventor), Scoundrel (thieves of various sorts), and Warrior (fighters of any sort). I like these classes in the Adventure! setting a lot more than I did for Aberrant d20. They seem to fit the general archetypes of pulp characters much better, especially since there's no "Everyman" type of pulp hero, they're all exceptional in some way, shape, or form. I'd figure that, given the main cast of Adventure!, Scholar (in the form of scientist), Investigator, and Warrior are the most common, though Aristocrat could well fit someone like Maxwell Anderson Mercer, and I think that Crackshot probably has a few levels of Entertainer on her.
Prestige classes come next, providing a MUCH more genre appropriate, and less combat oriented, selection than Aberrant d20. The first is the Ace, which is great because intrepid pilots are so much a part of the setting (as highlighted with key NPC, Jake "Danger Ace" Stefkowski, and Jude Law's recent performance in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"). The Barbarian Lord is a real niche class, but I suppose you can twist it to fit everything from tribal warlords in the deserts of Egypt to the greatest warrior of a jungle tribe in the deep of the Amazon, to a Mongol warlord on the steppes of Asia. The Disciple comes next, covering all the various types of pulp martial artists, from world boxing champions, street fighting gurus, to kung fu monks. It's not too bad a class, and like the Barbarian Lord fits a niche that can be toyed with to fit it into a lot of situations. After this is the Explorer, which is your basic Indiana Jones/Elijah Snow-type of character, who's particularly skilled at archaeology and knowing when NOT to step in the quicksand. Inventor comes next, but I'll deal with that in a seperate paragraph because I have the most to say on it. After that comes Mercinary, who is exactly as it sounds, and kind of redudant given that there's already a Warrior Class (this perhaps would have been better renamed as "Military Veteran" or possibly "Grizzled Veteran"). Occultist is a neat prestige class, but utterly useless considering that there is no magic in this setting. While Occultist does provide some decent class abilities (Occult Lore would be very useful for, say, debunking charlatans, like Harry Houdini did at one point), and at higher levels some resistance to Inspiration-based energy powers, but overall while it is a good class for completness sake, I think it could be better suited as with a more academic angle. Next is the Spy, which is really a pretty funky class and works well within the setting. Finally, there is the greatest, and most appropriate (though least accesible to most PCs) prestige class in the game: Mastermind. Yes, that's right, criminal masterminds of the like of Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty get their own prestige class, which focuses on being a criminal genius, presumably also with your own criminal empire of variable size (it also provides bonuses to escape certain death, deliver disheartening monologues, and freeze the heroes' blood in their veins with the tale of your diabolical plan).
Inventor represents...well...inventors. The covers super-scientists of all types and flavors, though it does have the strange quirk that you learn how to make super-machines, then super-chemicals, then super-bio-engineering. What this means is that you need to have 3 levels in the class if you want your character to be a super-chemist (though at this point you are a super-engineer as well), and 5 levels if you want to be a super-doctor. This is drastically different from A!ST, in which most most super-scientists were only specialized in one or two fields, and it was entirley feasible to play a super-doctor who was a proto-biotech manafacturer (see Trinity) who had no knowledge of advanced super-mechanical engineering. While you can take the individual Invent abilities as Feats for other characters, one would think that the Inventor Prestige Class would focus on one area of super-science rather than building up over all of them.
The Skills are more or less identical to Aberrant d20, and really aren't worthy of mention (though there IS a Perform category for "Vaudeville", which was a nice touch), mainly becuase they're so generic and feature no real rules changes.
Chapter Six: Feats
Like Aberrant, the General Feats are nothing to call home over. They're pretty standard stuff, though there IS the nice inclusion of the "Bonus Knack" feat, which lets compartivly weaker characters still have a goodly number of Knacks to play around with (though at the same time, this is at a loss of a Feat slot). The Invent special abilities under the Inventor class are dealt here individually, allowing Scholars to customize their characters (whereas the Inventor becomes a general super-scientist who's a master of everything). These are the only real changes to the General Feats. Background Feats are where the conversion over from White Wolf's Storyteller System really shines. Like Aberrant d20, these are divided into three different levels, encompassing levels 1, 3, and 5/6, bleeding over into the Background Enhancements (level 6 Backgrounds) that were availible in A!ST. Some of the conversions aren't the greatest, but some of them (like the Gadgets) work perfectly.
Daring Feats (Knacks used by Daredevils) are also covered here. They're relativly faithful conversions of the A!ST knacks, working on more or less the same scale. Some, in fact, work BETTER than in A!ST (mainly Universally Deadly, which now acts as as a universal Weapon Proficiency rather than giving a +1 die to hit and not taking penalties for really exotic weapons). One noticeable, and somewhat annoying, change, though, is the division of the Wheelman Knack. In A!ST, Wheelman was subdivided into Pilot, Ride, Drive, and Sail. Now it appears as four completly seperate Knacks: Wheelman, Barnstormer, Sea Dog, and Trick Rider. This is mainly annoying because the knacks basically all refer back to Barnstormer. There was really no reason to waste the space on what are essentially four identical Knacks that apply to four different Skills. Additionally, the Lightning Reflexes knack is renamed as "Greased Lightning", which sounds more thematically appropriate, really.
Chapter Seven: Inspiration
This chapter deals with Inspiration in general. It's a relativly short chapter, no more than 10 pages or so. It starts off dealing with how the characters gain and spend "Inspiration" Points. This is, in itself, a typographical error, since these are called Power Points everywhere else in the book (they were called Inspiration Points back in A!ST), and in its two sister books: Aberrant d20 and Trinity d20. While a minor typo, it's a little confusing after you've set yourself on reading all points listings as "power points". Furthermore, the actual amount of power points that you have is not clearly stated like in Aberrant and Trinity d20, in bold. Rather it's in the second paragraph under "Gaining Inspiration Points". The gains system is pretty similar to the one in A!ST, where in some circumstances (rolling a natural 20 on a skill roll but gaining no additional degree of success from it, being really entertaining, etc.) you gain power points back.
After this it deals with Inspiration Facets (Intuitive, Reflective, and Destructive). These run from 1 to 5 and you divide your current Permanent Inspiration between them at character creation (and then assigning points when you gain new levels of Inspiration after that). Once again, these are pretty faithful to the A!ST writeups, though somewhat less effective. A +1 to Initative in d20 has a lot less effect than a +1 to Initiative in Storyteller. Destructive becomes more effective, though, allowing you to spend a power point to roll your Destructive Facet in d4s when you're trying to break something (or someone), which can give a signifigant boost with more assured damage than a few extra dice in Storyteller.
Finally, the chapter closes off by dealing with Dramatic Editing. For those not familiar with the system, Dramatic Editing allows the players to essentially spend points to temporarily take control of the plot. They can have a plot twist drop the floor out from under the villain, happen to find that the cultists forgot to remove the hero's trusty bootknife before tying him up, or conveniently have a spare can of gas in the back of the car so you don't lose too much time chasing the villain. The unfortunate fact about the d20 conversion, though, is that it now requires a roll in addition to points spending. While this means that some things can be done with JUST a roll, which is nice since power points in A!d20 are in pretty short supply. But the roll takes away from the out of game bidding aspect, which allows for players to simply declare "I'm spending an Inspiration Point for a minor extension to find the parachute the pilot left under the cot at the back of the plane before it crashes into the mountain!" Still, the system is pulled off decently, but the roll business leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth.
Finally, there's Improved Dramatic Editing, which gives you cost breaks in certain situations dependent on your class(es). You get this cost break once a given core class pushes 4th level, or a prestige class pushes 3rd. This is a nice thematic touch that I really like the addition of, and I think it really shows that the writers put some thought into how to play with the d20 class mechanic to the greatest effect.
Chapter Eight: Knacks and Super-Science
Chapter eight deals with knacks, the special abilities of the Inspired, and Inspired Super-Science. The Knacks are taken directly from A!ST, but put into a "spell format" writeup. This means that some Knacks that were not resistable once upon a time, or were only resistable by Soak are now dodgeable or resistable. They are, however, most often still effective. The powers work nicely, overall, and I think the conversions are decent. I still think the Storyteller system is better for them, but d20 manages to handle them adequatly. They also all recieve a classification (whether they're Psi or Quantum, and if Psi what Aptitude they relate to) which allows for easier conversion work with Aberrant and Trinity d20. This is nice, because cross-conversion was always a problem with the A!ST, because it was never clear how to bring Stalwarts and Mesmerists into the games, or more importantly how their powers evolved. Now we know that, say, Inspirational Aura is an effect of either Biokinesis, Telepathy, or Vitakinesis, or that Sleight of Will is Teleportation. They're all, mostly, self evident (though Evil Eye as Telepathy and Vitakinesis is a bit odd since it technically puts a counter-luck hex onto the target), but its still nice to have it said.
The Super-Science system from A!ST also gets transported over, almost directly. The rolls are different, of course, and there are DCs instead of difficulty numbers, but really its the same system with different notation. The one big difference is that some of the chemical and medicinal Advancement options weren't properly converted. +2 Strength is a BIG deal in A!ST, where it could conceivably pump a character over the human trait maximum of 5. In D20, however, it comes off practically as a racial bonus. It really doesn't change things all that much. Mind, of course, that you can do something like the Strength enhancement three times over, increasing someone's Strength by 6, which WILL have a noticable different (hey, it made the difference between whimpy Steve Rogers and the strong, talented Captain America). Devices also suffer the same problem, though...+1 to +3 damage dice in A!ST were big and funky (a machine gun that went from dealing 5 Lethal to 8 Lethal is pretty badass). But a machine gun that does 2d10+3 isn't really that big a deal. Still, with a bit of tweaking (say playing around with the amount of time for different damage die types), this can be worked around depending on just how powerful a given GM wants the weapons to be in his game.
Chapter Nine: Adventuring
This chapter is of decent length, and deals with the Wealth system (out of D20 Modern, really), and the stats for modern weapons, armor, and equipment. Vehicles also get a good look, since they're such an important part of the setting (since the world is so much larger than in, say, 2008 or 2121). Like Aberrant d20, the pursuit mechanic from Spycraft is imported over, and I think it serves better in Adventure!, which has more use for complicated chase scenes and aerial dogfights.
Chapter Ten: Roleplaying
This chapter is pretty much transported directly over from A!ST, with very little change. It's your typical "How To Run a Game of [X]" chapter.
Appendix One; Heroes and Villains
This is one of the things that made A!ST great. All the main members of the Aeon Society, and their foes, get general personality and background writeups, along with suggestions as to what Knacks and special abilities they might have. The Ubiquitous Dragon's power "Curse of Many Dragons" also gets a d20 writeup, which is nice.
Appendix Two: Odds and Ends
This Appendix heralds one of the things we were promised when Adventure! first came out: stats for playing intelligent apes. Yes, that's right. Enkidu (from the historical fiction in the first half of the book) and his family are now fully playable as PCs. This si really welcome and refreshing. Plus they can become Inspired. Monkey Fist, anyone?
After this it goes into the general timeline for Adventure!, taken right out of the A!ST book, which is fine because its nice and big and detailed (much more so than those for Trinity and Aberrant). The only real addition to this chapter other than the Sentient Ape Template, though, is the addition of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" in the Film and Television section of the "Inspiration and Resources" section. It's nice, and the movie really DOES fit the game.
Conclusion:
Of the three Trinity Universe d20 games, Adventure! d20 is, by far, the best converted. The classes and Knack system works the best for it, and the game really comes together as Adventure! that many Storyteller fans know and love, only with a different system. This book got some real love on it, which is really nice to see. For general starting level, I'd suggest grabbing Core Class 3-5/Prestige 1-2/Inspiration 1, creating a range of about Level 5-8 or so for a starting character. This ensures a decent Inspiration rating, a good spread of Knacks, and some skills and abilities that will be very useful.
I'm awarding a 4 for style, the game is pulled off with much of the same flair as the original Storyteller printing. However, I'm only giving 3 for Substance, because while it's a pretty good d20 game, I think that the system was lacking in just enough places to be inferior to the original ST version.
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