This is my follow up review for the Hand of Fate book.
The book itself is very slim, only 110 pages including the index, and cost me 21.99. That is roughly twenty cents a page, by the way. Rather pricey, to me. Anyway, the cover art is as evocative as the art in the main book, if not quite as slick. Lets talk contents then, shall we?
Right inside the cover, very abruptly, is the table of contents, squeezed along side the credits and a fat block of the gibberish text that is a hallmark of this line. If you buy the HoF screen it comes with a translation wheel, but I am far to lazy to translate all this stuff. I've read some samples on line, and it doesn't make much more sense, being essentially 'in game fiction' taken from 'source documents' and is fragmentary. If you like puzzling it out, you might enjoy the process.
Chapter One: The Running of Secrets of Zir'an.
At the beginning of each chapter is a full page piece of artwork. Since there are five chapters, you are paying a dollar for this, keep that in mind. Actually, chapter one's lead in art is somewhat evocative, in that we can see a man being transformed, presumably by a Fane, into a shadowkin. The chapter title tells you most of what you need to know about the chapter. One of my positive remarks regarding the game in general was how easily it supported a wide variety of play styles. Here you get six or so pages about various types of narration and game play, from Horror, to High Society, each with story hooks to show you how to 'get started'. All in all not bad, but of dubious use to more expirenced GMs. There is some discussion in this chapter about 'Secrets', which are actually posed as questions for the HoF to answer. Not so good. I'm paying good money for the book, I'd like something a bit more concrete then 'make it up yourself'... I can do that on my own. Rounding out the chapter is a short discussion on handing out rewards based on how expirenced the party is, and some information on building towns and villages, including some brief samples. Much better stuff, but I think a bit more space could have been dedicated to this.
Chapter Two: Environment
The intro art for this chapter is rather blah, just a guy reporting on having fought a cheesy anime monster.
As for the chapter itself, it was sort of hit or miss. It leads off with weather effects, move to breaking things, then on to vehicles, in very short order. In fact, all that took about three pages... sort of makes you wonder why it isn't in the main book. To be fair, after vehicles you have your rules for drowning, falling and electrocution, all told roughly ten pages of 'quick and dirty rules' to simulate the sorts of things that happen in adventures. Again, surely these could have been shoehorned into the main book. Then we run into my first major beef with this book. You see, when I first reviewed the Secrets of Zir'An, I complained that there was a host of equipment that was left essentially undefined, namely the various alcohols and drugs. They are all faithfully recreated here, only this time each includes a brief description, not more than a paragraph. Surely THIS should have been in the main book. In fact, you wouldn't even have had to add page count, since most of the bulk is duplicated. Following this is a very nice two page spread on diseases and poisons and that ends the chapter.
Chapter Three: Conspiracies
The intro art is a bunch of thuggish looking individuals including a very human looking guy with elf ears. These are members of the Carousel.
After two pages of Allies and Villains, mostly 'motivations', you get to a section on NPC packages. There are six in the section, and only one really has any good reason not to be a PC package. Sort of an artificial seperation between what PCs can do, and what they can't. Here is the mythical 'Rules for Fane'. It takes less than a page. Essentially they are really high powered Shadowmages who go insane. I waited for This? Maybe it IS best if I make up my own secrets. Of course, nothing is stopping the HoF from allowing expirenced heroes from buying the Fane Valdryr/package. It would be their only one, but still. WIth ten aptitudes and x5 shadowmagic, what more do you need? Of course, I found a minor 'inconsistancy' that might be 'retconned' away. Namely the statement that 'only Ianer' can be Fanes. What about the Gorgachi Fane? Well... Then comes the actual conspiracies. The first two are the Draken Watch cult, something I think is completely new, and the Mirkule Cult, which was mentioned in the main book. Each gets two pages, including a couple of pre-fabbed NPC's, what I like to see. Then comes the builders. Engineer ninjas. Okay, that's a joke. Actually, there is something to that. The builders have 'secret doors' that only they can use built into building all over the world. Think extra dimensional travel. Uh... yeah... I'll get back to you on that one.
This is followed by some information on Ianu Voss merchants, complete with some nice buildup of Ianu Voss culture, then you have Bhuket slavers, Pirates, and a host of other regional archtype NPCs with various amounts of information. All in about four pages.
And then we have the Carousel. Now, some of you might recall that I took exception to the hyper cliched Elves, the Zhalanti, in the main book. The fact that the Carousel was founded by a 'cooler than thou' Zhalanti does not improve my opinion of them. The carousel are a world wide super mafia... that the players can't be part of, unlike the Cyrooni crimanals already established, or the more generic criminal packages you can buy in character creation. So, why are these criminals unlike PC criminals? Apparently they are cooler. They've got super secret agents that come back from the dead, and a Capo that only is known as "Lord Night"... like I said, they are too cool for PC's. Seriously. And to round out the chapter we have some spy organizations, including the Avrionne underground LAO, the Section Seven spies of Vallunei (who seem custom designed for PC's, but are listed as NPCs...) the Khagda Dovra, which are Cyrooni spies, and the Tzerte Viazhe...
A word on the Tzerte Viazhe. I remember complaining about the constant reappearence of this group in the original book, and the difficulty I had in finding out exactly who and what they were. So, you'd think I was happy to find two coherent pages of information on them, yes? Not so. You see, I had already learned all of this in the main book, though through some effort. So, these two pages added very little knowledge, they just presented it better. I'm glad Paragon Games managed to improve their layout skills, but I couldn't help but to feel that I was wasting time with this particular entry.
Chapter Four: Magic
Another blah peice of art work here, some bland mage reaching for a magic d20 against a flat grey background. Why bother?
In the main book there is talk of a 'fifth form' of runecasting that isn't discussed. It is here that you will find it, and, for those who couldn't be bothered to figure it out, yes, it is 'permanent enchantments'. Cue a page and a half rehash of what Runes are, followed by some simple rules, a tiny number of new common runes, and then Greater Runes for six of the Gods. Oddly, none of the runes seem particularly suitable for 'permanent' casting, being more on par with what is already available.
There are two new cardinals for Shadowmagic, though here we can see why they might be HoF material. The Polyform Cardinal, at Elite mastery would allow you to become 30 feet tall and destroy small towns. Sounds perfect for villians, less so for heroes.
Ending the chapter are three pages of 'Items of Power' which, in D&D terms would be major artifacts. These things are incredibly cool plot devices, for the most part. The Lost Abbey is slick, the Paran's brood 'magic weapons' are disturbingly potent. The others are more hit and miss. The Pearl Vestments are just cool armor that lets you resist 'shadow attacks', the magic doll is sort of 'meh', but the Verband Chain sounds like a perfect plot device.
Chapter Five: Antagonists
Hit or miss opening art, it's either evocative of the sort of trouble Heroes get into, or you have unanswered questions about it, like what is that robed thing that has the hero in it's death trap? Better than the Magic chapter artwork, that's for sure.
This chapter is pure goodness. Finally moving away from 'Shadekin' as the only viable villian, you have walking dead, a 'jack the ripper as possessing ghost' plot hook, you've got a dragon, a yeti,carnivorous goats and more. In fact, I think this chapter is three times as cool as the chapter in the main book, though I suspect they are about the same size. As always there seems to be a lot of pages of 'talking about the critters' rather than 'explaining' them, which I think can be wasteful. One problem with this chapter is that there is a two page repeat of the intro to the Antagonists chapter from teh main book, expaining how to read the stat blocks again, which is doubly annoying when you realize that if you understand charactersheets, you can read the stat blocks just fine as is.
On the other hand, everything is illustrated, very important when introducing wild and crazy monsters to people. Knowing what things look like is very nice, and can beat paragraphs worth of descriptive text any day.
And then there was the index.
Overall impressions: This has got to be the most expensive Errata I've ever bought. To begin with, three fifths of the book SHOULD have already been in the main book. Namely, the Magic, Antagonists... and most importantly, the environment chapters. There is no excuse for this. I'll bite that the antagonists chapter is just 'further expansion'... and I might swallow that the various runes and cardinals were 'expansions' as well, not really needed for play. But the rules for 'Talisman' casting were so simplistic that there is no good reason they couldn't have been put into the main book. I should hope that if a 'second edition' is ever done for the game line that what is in this book gets put into the main book.
Personally, chapter one had two good pages for me, and a bunch of advice that many people could use, but isn't really necessary. Chapter three alternated between redundant and silly, with the stuff that wasn't either occupying a very tiny amount of space. I would expect that the 'reality bending' abilities of the Fane, after being so 'hyped' would have been more impressively developed than 'high power shadowmagic', so that was sort of a letdown. I'm baffled why the various spy agencies, or the carosel for that matter, are handled as a vague sort of NPC only deal, when so many character concepts, and even game ideas could so easily revolve around being members of one or more of these groups.
Over all, I'd say there are things in here that make this book a necessary purchace for anyone wanting to run a Zir'An game. The quality of the book isn't bad, but it is overpriced. Taking into account the 20 cents a page, and completely discounting good or bad artwork, you are buying, by my estimation...four dollars of filler. Note that I don't count even the bad artwork in that. If you strip out the redundant pages, the filler work, the chapter art and intro text, you are left with less than half the page count when 'squeezing' it into the main book, an eminantly practical idea. In other words, I wanted so much more from this book, and instead I got what I was missing from the main book.
So, for Style: I say that its pretty good stuff, overall. Better, cleaner, layout than the main book, smarter use of the gibberish text, plenty of decent artwork scattered throughout, I will give it a four.
For Substance: Not so good. There is plenty of meat in here, but also way too much filler for the cost. This has the weight of a 15 dollar book to me, and once I did the math, I can see it really should have been a 15 dollar book. On the other hand, the meat inside is very tasty for the most part, so rather than a 2.5, I'll make it a nice, even three. This book is Necessary in so many ways.
Please help support RPGnet by purchasing the following (probably) related items through DriveThruRPG.
