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The Valdorian Age is the Hero System/Fantasy HERO sourcebook for the “Swords & Sorcery” genre of fantasy, and something of a sequel to Fantasy HERO’s earlier High Fantasy book, The Turakian Age. It’s not quite as thick as The Turakian Age, being about 200 pages, although like that book it costs $26.99.
The cover by Patrick McEvoy in some ways sums up the book’s content: Well-executed but extremely generic. You’ve got a white horse. Atop the horse is a hugely-muscled, long-haired, mostly naked barbarian who’s almost as big as the horse he’s riding. In his left hand the barbarian brandishes a sword. In his right hand he’s cradling a half-naked blonde damsel. They’re riding down a rocky path marked with poles topped with fanged skulls. In the distance, you can see the bloody corpse of the evil sorcerer that the barbarian has just killed, and further off (on the back cover) you can see a hellish landscape and a path leading to the sorcerer’s fortress, which is shaped like a fanged demon’s skull. Like I said, extremely generic but well-executed. If I ever start a heavy metal band, I wanna buy the rights to this piece and use it for my first album cover.
INTRODUCTION
The premise of The Valdorian Age is that the Turakian Age of Earth’s pre-history ended with the “final” defeat of the evil Kal-Turak, in a war so devastating that it re-arranged the continents and caused a decline in the power of magic. But between the end of the Turakian Age and the beginning of the Valdorian Age described in this book, several thousand years came and went, and several new civilizations developed. One of these was Abyzinia, a nation of dark-skinned humans whose noble class learned sorcery and pacted with demons in order to protect their people. (Any resemblance to Stygia is probably not coincidental.)
Another great empire was ruled by a nonhuman race called the Drindrish. The book always spells the word Drindrish in italics, perhaps because it’s supposed to be *pronounced* in italics, like Frau Blucher! In any case, the Drindrish were a colony of surviving Turakian Age elves, grown decadent and cruel over time. (Any resemblance to Melnibone’ is probably not coincidental.) Fearing the rise of humanity, the Drindrish invaded the nearest continent and enslaved its native humans. Generations later, one of these humans, a strong, black-haired hero named Valdor, led a slaves’ revolt and won victory after victory, forcing the Drindrish to flee the continent and the known world altogether. This was possible not merely because of Valdor’s heroism, but because the power of magic was rapidly ebbing, depriving the Drindrish of their main advantage.
Valdor went on to found the Valdorian Empire, a semi-feudal state that nevertheless affirms the freedom and dignity of all its subjects, and is probably one of the most just and better-run realms of the age.
Of course, a peaceful, just and well-run society is not a good setting for a fantasy role-playing game, especially not for one based on Swords & Sorcery. Which is why The Valdorian Age spends almost a third of its pages focusing on…..
ELWEIR, an inland river port just outside the Valdorian border realms. Given that Valdoria bans slavery, the wiser Valdorian rulers agreed to maintain Elweir’s independent status, because it is Valdoria’s only point of contact with slave-holding realms like Abyzinia. However in recent generations, Elweir has been menaced by a ring of “Bandit Lords” to the east that was capable of enforcing a severe protection racket against the free city. Unsure how long they could maintain tribute to these criminals, the leaders of Elweir reluctantly agreed to a Valdorian noble’s offer to turn their city into a protectorate. For now Elweir retains most of its laws, but no one knows how long the status quo will last.
Elweir is a humid, sweaty, dirty town, where the rich screw each other to maintain position, the poor screw each other for mere survival, the various priesthoods screw each other to maintain their precarious hold on public faith, and everybody watches everybody else. Elweir is the closest thing to a cosmopolitan city in the current age.
And yes, any resemblance to Lankhmar is probably not coincidental.
Chapter One of the book, going from pages 4 to 62, covers Elweir, first with a general overview including discussions of the local laws and currency standards, then details on each neighborhood in turn, along with outlying neighborhoods.
Chapter Two, “The Known World,” goes over everything else. The “known” world (what natives call Il-Ryveras) isn’t much, although sidebar text indicates that the other side of the globe includes territories that will eventually become Lemuria and Atlantis. This chapter first deals with Valdoria itself, east of which is the Cynthian Plains, inhabited by primitive tribesmen who are actually descended from the ancient human empire that originally built Elweir. East of them are several other barbarian tribes and small fiefdoms, most of which would give a pretty good background for a tough warrior character.
North of Valdoria’s continent is an archipelago ruled by pirates (quaintly referred to as the Maggot Isles), and next to this is the landmass dominated by Abyzinia. North of that continent is the island of Khor, inhabited by a Viking-like race of seafarers.
None of these realms are quite as well-detailed as Elweir, and several locales are mentioned only in passing as rumored homelands of alien and beautiful women, or the last colonies of long-dead civilizations, lands where a traveler could gain paradise, or get instantly killed for violating the local customs. If it seems like this book would make a good setting for a sailors/pirates game, well, it would.
SWORDSMEN AND SORCERERS
Chapter Three, “Characters in the Valdorian Age,” gets to the rules for making characters in this system. And it is effectively a sub-system of Fantasy HERO, as the author had to make several rules changes to create the right “feel.”
First, enforcing the idea that this is a mean, gritty age diminished from the time of the Turakian Age, characters start with 8 as their Characteristic base instead of 10. This is when I started going, “Huh?” Now, in the GM’s section at the back of the book, author Allen Thomas explains that this is not merely for story reasons but to encourage more stat variation between characters, which is always something of an issue in HERO System. While I can understand that reasoning (and I’m glad that there *is* a section where the author explains why he made the rules changes he did), this causes problems, especially if you’re making your characters on Hero Designer software. Adjusting the base down means adjusting the Normal Characteristic Maxima (which is always the base +10), which means that characters start paying double for stats over 18. However, The Valdorian Age adjusts the base on its NPC and monster writeups, but one villain in the book has a 20 DEX that he paid for normally (12 points of DEX plus the 8, with no doubling after 18).
The GM’s section also says that if you want to maintain the desired “gritty” feel without adjusting the rules so much, you can just give the PCs a maximum of 50 Disadvantage points instead of the normal 75. I’d advise on doing it this way, as it doesn’t require screwing with the rules, existing character sheets or the Hero Designer, and accomplishes the desired effect (since a character with a base of 8 spends 25 points to bring all his Characteristics up to a ‘normal’ 10).
Then they bring up the second rules change: Skill Maxima. All non-combat Skills have a maximum roll of 13 or less. Buying the Skill Roll higher requires double the normal points (usually 4 instead of 2). This is when I really started going, “Huh??” Again, in the GM’s section, the author explains that this is to encourage some variation in skills between PCs, and also because certain elements of the system, namely Sorcery, hinge on the possibility of failure. Skill Rolls are also important because non-sorcerer characters get most of their combat stunt/Talent-like abilities from a Power Skill called Fighting Tricks (in subcategories of Archery Tricks, Brawling Tricks, etc.). These are similar to combat Talents written up in Fantasy HERO but require a Fighting Tricks roll to work, or even a Skill vs. Skill roll. This is rationalized on the grounds that some of these abilities (like Crippling Blow) require defenses that normal people wouldn’t otherwise have but might be able to dodge or avoid through superior skill. This is a neat idea, and in some cases ought to be retroactively applied in The Turakian Age.
Other changes: A roll of 3 is always a critical success and a roll of 18 is always a critical failure (which is a long-standing house rule but officially applied here). Levels with Defense, and the Combat Luck Talent, do not apply if a character is wearing more than 15 kg of armor (the Conan/Gor style “Bulletproof Nudity” effect). There are several new Talents that are intended specifically to minimize the results of the aforementioned critical fumbles, or critical hits against oneself (one is called “Not The Face!”).
Eventually you get to the rules for Sorcery, which are really pretty interesting. In the Valdorian Age, sorcery is a remnant of spellcasting made necessary by the decline in magic and the fact that the gods have abandoned mankind to its wickedness. As with Elric/Stormbringer, you don’t use magic to change the weather, you summon an air elemental to do it for you. All sorcery involves summoning and pacting with various spirit beings, with the four ‘schools’ mentioned being Black Magic (summoning of demons), Divine Magic (summoning of spirits who claim to serve the old gods), Elementalism (summoning of elementals) and Necromancy (summoning spirits of the dead). The problem is that all these beings are almost all hostile to humanity: Demons are evil by definition, the spirits of the dead are… well, ghosts, and the elementals despise civilization and engineering, thinking of these as violations of their very being. Even the ‘divine servants’ have an agenda of their own and are not friendly towards those who dare to command them.
Thus, when, not if, a sorcerer fails his Skill Roll, he doesn’t actually fail to make his spirit appear; rather the spirit appears but is now in position to make demands of the caster. In game terms this is handled through a system of Favor Points, similar to how the basic system handles Contacts and Favors, with each point a Sorcery Roll is failed by equaling 1 Favor Point. You can buy Favor Points to get more of an edge with spirits, or to cancel negative Favor. Enough negative Favor will lead to the caster owing debts to the spirits he calls upon. Leaving this debt for too long, or refusing to pay a price for sorcery, causes all kinds of bad luck and problems. There are several methods for gaining more Favor Points or working off Favor debt. A sorcerer could summon a spirit and ask it to give him some task, with completion of the task earning a certain number of Favor Points. More deviously, the sorcerer could invest some of his negative Favor Points into a token and have someone accept it; this person then becomes a 'scapegoat' and takes those points. A sorcerer cannot coerce someone into accepting the token but might deceive him into picking it up. This is, of course, a classic Swords & Sorcery plot device. "We've had rotten luck ever since you stole that stupid idol!!"
THE GM’s VAULT
Chapter Four, “Gamemastering the Valdorian Age,” begins with a few ideas for starting campaigns with the setting. Most of them focus on Elweir, including one idea for having the PCs gain or somehow inherit a local tavern, which would lead to being in the midst of all sorts of neighborhood chaos. Contrasted with this Low Fantasy approach is the concept of an Epic Swords & Sorcery game where PCs try to contact the gods and return them to earth.
The majority of this chapter is the “GM’s Vault” section that most recent Hero Games sourcebooks have. In the case of The Valdorian Age, the GM’s section needs to be looked over very thoroughly. Most of the text in Chapters One and Two is dealt with in terms of the secret histories of Elweir, the Bandit Lords, the Drindrish and various other things that the GM needs to know, and which are often quite different from what’s presented in the players’ section up front.
In addition, the GM’s Vault includes the aforementioned authors’ notes on the rules changes in Chapter Three, which are fairly enlightening. This section includes advice on exactly what kinds of tasks a sorcerer’s supernatural “allies” will put him to, and what sorts of Powers are appropriate to buy for a sorcerer character. Finally, the chapter concludes with a “historical” account of the end of the Valdorian Age.
Chapter Five, “NPCs”, is straightforward. It starts with writeups of some of the spirit monsters that a beginning sorcerer can summon, some having more practical uses than others. These monsters are written up with the base 8 in stats, so they’re rather weak, but then, the PCs are going to be rather weak. An interesting thing is that all spirit monsters have to take some sort of appropriate weakness as a condition of gaining material form; clever PCs, like Swords & Sorcery characters in books, can take note of these weaknesses and defeat the monster even if it has defenses vs. their conventional attacks. For instance, the Demon who controls blades has Susceptibility vs. getting bashed with shields.
The section concludes with writeups of four NPCs, two of whom are fairly major villains and two of whom are neutral-to-friendly characters built at the level of beginning PCs. One of the four is an experienced (and nonhuman) sorcerer who demonstrates what power a sorcerer can gain with experience, and the other is a sorcerer built at the PCs’ level- which is important given that the book doesn’t give Package Deals or hints on how to build a sorcerer PC except for the rules on sorcery itself.
SUMMARY
Let me begin with the ‘bad’ part of the book: As I already said, it’s incredibly generic. Now, if you have a universal RPG system that you’re trying to establish as a valid game for Swords & Sorcery, you could argue that this generic flavor is not a bug, but a feature. Thing is, one could say the same for The Turakian Age, and that book contained elements (like the Drakine race, the cursed Ulronai warriors, and South Asian cultural influences) that, while not exactly unique, were not quite so well-used as the European/Tolkienish influences of High Fantasy and D&D.
Moreover, if you’re looking for a game that offers pulp adventure, dark sorcery and flavor text written by Robert E. Howard himself, we already have the Conan RPG. I personally consider Conan to be quite superior, even if it is OGL/d20 based. But there’s the rub. There are quite a few people who really don’t like d20 games, and would much rather use HERO System for their rules- or rather, they would *even* use HERO System instead of d20/OGL.
Which leads to the good part. Overall, The Valdorian Age intends to present itself as a valid Swords & Sorcery setting using HERO System rules. It succeeds largely because of the focus on Elweir, which is well-detailed and gives a lot of ideas for adventures, and because of the rules for Sorcery- which as with Conan, imply that the sorcerer is going to become an unscrupulous and untrustworthy character, and as with Elric, imply that you could still play a sorcerer if you and the GM are willing to handle the angst.
Style: 3
The Valdorian Age, as with a lot of HERO System books, has a rather no-frills layout, although it does make good use of city maps in the Elweir section. There isn’t much art, but most of it is reasonably good.
Substance: 3
The Valdorian Age isn’t as thick or informative as The Turakian Age, but it has some rules changes for its genre that HERO GMs may want to look over.
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