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Song of the Blade
Song of
the Blade is a beginning adventure from Goodman Games for Monte Cook Presents:
Iron Heroes*. For those who aren't familiar with it, Iron
Heroes is a D&D variant. Basically it's D&D, but with
different classes and a magic system. I actually don't have Iron
Heroes, but from what I can tell, it seems to place an emphasis
on physical combat and swashbuckling as opposed to magic. While
it seems to have magic, it's very rare and completely different
from the traditional D&D fire & forget system.
That said, there seems to be little that would keep this module
from being used for D&D or just about any other d20 game. The
main difference in the stats seems to be that in this, armor
provides damage reduction, not an improved AC, the same basic
tack that Conan and Spycraft (among others) take. While the
classes are different, they can be quickly converted, or used as
is, since the stat blocks provide most of the relevant info on
abilities.
The Module Itself...
The module itself is also a departure from the typical D&D
scenario. It's more dark fantasy, or really, almost a horror
scenario. It starts off innocuously enough. The PCs are asked to
investigate the origin of a mysterious artifact. It seems the
local mayor of the town the PCs are in (Axenbough it's called)
just acquired this mysterious hat from a woodsman, who says he
found it in some ruins in the forest. Since the mayor is fond of
strange hats, he wants them to investigate the site and see if it
has any more. Presumably the PCs agree.
The place the woodsman found it in turns out to be an ancient
ruined hillfort. It seems the area used to be inhabited by a race
of really evil arachnids. So the PCs presumably explore this
ruined fort and find more mysterious objects. This bit is pretty
much just a dungeon crawl (and a relatively short one).
The second part (the module is divided into three parts) is where
it starts to differ from the typical D&D type scenario. It
deals with the revelation that there is an evil cult who worships
these mysterious ancient hat wearers. They first must locate a
mysterious NPCs with the improbable name of "Grandmother
Hickory" (sounds like a coffee) and win her trust in a
somewhat amusing encounter. Then they need to learn more about
the cult and the mysterious race they worship.
The last part is basically the big showdown with the evil cult.
In true action movie fashion, the bad guys have stolen an npc,
and it's up to the PCs to rescue him. And of course, the showdown
takes place in a fairly dangerous area.
It's actually sort of a two part showdown. They have to storm one
stronghold (of sorts) then discover the real villain, and then go
storm the real stronghold.
I really like the final showdown. If the players are smart, they
should be able to handle it okay, but if they rush into it
blindly, they will get killed. In a way it reminds me of how
combat in Guild Wars (or perhaps any online RPG), where you have
to sort of pull groups of critters away from each other, to take
them on a few at a time. And beyond that, the major villains have
a surprise up their sleeves (or should I say heads, though they
don't know that), which is gruesome but good.
Since I don't own Iron Heroes, I can't vouch that the stats are
correct. But the editor is apparently a staff reviewer for a
certain site who happens to have a reputation for knowing d20
like , er, well, someone who knows d20 really really well,
producing reviews that contain huge lists of stat mistakes. So
any stat errors are likely printing errors.
Also, presumably an Iron Heroes standard thing, is listings of
possible "stunts" that PCs can do in various combat
locations. Swing off of rafters, jump on tables, that sort of
thing. Again, I don't know how they work, but there's a large
number of them listed, at least in the major combats.
Physically, it's a somewhat spartan looking book. They tried
to mimic the design style of Malhavoc Press, which I personally
never cared much for. Too much white space, it's like reading
bird prints in the snow. But many seem to like it. The art is
okay, some of it is a bit amateurish looking, but others are
excellent.
Final Thoughts
It's a pretty good module. I liked how the author tried to
avoid railroading the PCs. On the downside, I really thought it
should have some details about the village it's set in,
Axenbough. Surely the PCs will want to spend some time there, and
so the DM will have to do quite a bit of work fleshing it out
(which sort of defeats the purpose of a module). Similarly, if
the PCs get to know the townies, there should be a small chance
of them realizing that perhaps there is a sinister cult amongst
them. Especially since around 3% or so of the town seems to be a
member.
Of course, conversely, by not including any information about the
town itself, the adventure itself is longer. Just a guesstimate,
but I would say it would take about 6 game sessions of 3-4 hours
each to play. (about 1 1/2 for the first part, 2 1/2 for the 2nd,
2 for the third), which is about on par with a 96 page module. On
the other hand, once the module is run, it's pretty much no
further use, unlike a module with a developed town.
So this is perhaps a preference issue. I fall on the side of
having a fully developed (or at least somewhat developed) town.
Also, some of the names are somewhat out of places. I mean, you
have 2 NPCs named Jakkel and Hyid. Then there is the name of one
NPC, "Sammael", which pretty much is a dead give away
that he is notable. In this day and age you can pretty much find
an unlimited number of "fantasy" names either on the
web or from free programs. Resorting to puns and a major, major,
major bad guy from Judeo-Christian theology (or worse yet, a
Robert Jordan series) is just silly.
While I joked a bit about them, I did like the mysterious ancient
race. They remind me a lot of the critters from the excellent "Quatermass and
the Pit", only in this case they are spider like, not
preying mantis like. Some might find spiders a bit over done in
the d20 fantasy arena, but this provides a common theme to tie in
all those many spider monsters.
Iron Heroes is designed for action, and Song of the Blade
delivers plenty of it. But perhaps at the expense of
role-playing. So I give it a B+,
or in terms here, a 4.5 for substance (rounding up to 5) and a
3.5 for style (rounding down to 3)
* It's actually apparently by Mike
Mearls, not Monte Cook, but presumably Monte Cook's name on a
product sells better than Mr. Mearls. Which really shouldn't be
the case, as Mr. Mearls is generally considered to be one of the
top d20 designers around, but I guess it's like how Quentin
Tarentino gets his name on movies from Asia he had nothing to do
with. At least Mr. Mearls doesn't have to direct Jean-Claude Van Damme
movies (or write RPGs based on them).
