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The cover doesn’t really convey “wonder and magic”, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, yes the font is cool, and I do like HERO’s green-on-black color scheme, but this doesn’t *show* us anything about the setting. No charioteers in battle, no bard in the king’s hall, no faeries in misty glades… not even a couple of drunks beating the crap out of each other outside an inn. How Celtic is that?
At least the rest of the book makes up for this, with the chapter headings written in a similar font, with each chapter having its own Celtic art pattern, and the general standard of art being fairly appropriate to the subject matter. As you’d expect, the flavor text lists a great many of the local heroes, place names and terms for the setting. One of the problems with this is that Gaelic (‘Tualan’) is probably one of the least phonetic languages in the Roman alphabet, and even though there’s a useful sidebar on page 8 for pronouncing the words, it isn’t nearly exhaustive enough; for instance, I still haven’t figured out if “pishogue” is pronounced “pie shoog” or “piss hog.”
Chapter One: The Chronicle of the Tualans is the tale of how the descendants of the great hero Tuala struck out and settled the land they call Tuala Morn. As they say, it is a long story, and epic in the telling. But to sum up, at the middle point of Tuala Morn’s history, the various nobles had to agree to let a High King be chosen from among them to resolve disputes. Recently however, the last High King suffered an untimely death and no one could agree on a successor. The real problem is that in Tuala Morn, as in the old Celtic myths, the King and the Land are one (to quote Excalibur). If the throne is not even occupied, that very absence creates a certain spiritual unease: Crops fail, tensions between nobles increase, and monsters rise up to terrorize the people. In short, the story is already set for a potential epic.
Chapter Two: King & Commoner- Tualan Society And Culture describes the daily life of Tuala Morn’s people in great detail. The social status of Tualans is determined by the dremir veith or “climb of rank,” and ranks are determined mainly by a system of mutual obligations called cailshaen, which superficially resembles feudalism but is at heart a more informal system, something that gained codification only with recent foreign influence. Standing outside the system are mercenary bands called fiontara (singular fionta), who are a perfect fit for RPG-style adventuring groups, and are actually mentioned in the Celtic tales to boot. One reason such groups can exist is that Tualan warfare is rather small-scale; a duke is described as a noble who can provide his king with a hundred warriors. Duels and contests of warrior honor are still common. Tualan law is not determined with guilt or innocence as much as compensation for the injured; this means that people who kill, even in self-defense, can expect to get into lawsuits. In this system even a peasant can sue a noble for damages, but the law also assigns a certain “honor price” for each person based on their class – so a noble who kills a peasant would pay the equivalent of pocket change while a peasant who kills a noble could be liable for far more. Matters of law are decided by a class of druids called brehons; once they make a ruling, all parties are expected to abide by it or face the Druid’s Ban (effectively excommunication).
To add to all this, there is the foreign influence of the “Vulkring” shore raiders and the knights and missionaries of Logres, a land deliberately modeled after Arthurian Britain. Of course, during the Dark Ages, Ireland and Scotland were likewise in conflict with both England and the Scandinavian kingdoms, but one difference between history and this fictional setting is that in Tuala Morn the monotheistic “Golden Temple” of the Logrens has yet to become a majority faith, and druidic paganism is still the norm. This may be because the Temple faith doesn’t have a visionary like St. Patrick or Muhammad. Or it may be because the Temple seems rather dull compared to the Irish brand of Christianity.
After touching on these issues, trade, the arts, and the Druidic calendar, the chapter goes over one of the more important aspects of Tualan life, especially for an adventurer: The geas (pl. geasa). A geas is a prohibition or doom laid upon a person, frequently determining how he will die, or compelling him to do a certain thing or avoid a certain action. Chapter Four goes into detail on how geasa work in game terms, but doesn’t tell how one gets to pronounce a geas on someone; the book just says: “In the right circumstances anyone, from the lowliest peasant to the High King himself, can lay a geas upon a hero (though a person cannot place a geas upon himself), but most geasa are imposed by druids, wizards, other high-ranking persons, or persons of great dramatic importance.” In other words, the concept is a huge GM Plot Device.
Chapter Three: The Ten Kingdoms – The Realms of Tuala Morn reviews both the geography and the political landscape of the land. Unlike Ireland, Tuala Morn is both a large territory (around 850 by 600 miles) and possessed of rather steep hills and mountain ranges, but then it’s intended to serve as a basis for a campaign setting, and the territory includes the equivalent of both Highland Scots (Duvarachan) and Celtic barbarians (Tir Barbatha). Each subsection details each king’s realm, including the High King’s demesne, now ruled by his widow. This section has a lot of useful background material, story suggestions, and at least one requisite cunning-and-evil noble.
Chapter Four: The Board of Notables – Characters is the section where you learn to make PCs. In this chapter, Long stresses that character creation needs to proceed according to certain rules and use certain Package Deals, much like taking the whole “class” package in a D20 game. To some extent this defeats the point-based/customizable nature of HERO System chargen, but Long points out that the rules are intended to convey the right “feel” so that the culture of the setting is preserved and Tuala Morn doesn’t become a generic fantasy game.
Generally, just as Tuala Morn’s religion is set to be mostly pagan with a slight medieval influence, the majority of warriors still use pre-knightly tactics with little or no armor, carrying spears and some swords. However, you still get the option to play a Knight. I’m not sure why Knights didn’t make Spearmen completely obsolete very quickly. It might be because it’s rather cumbersome and expensive to maintain a warhorse and plate armor. In game terms, Spearmen also get their own Martial Art, several Feats (skill-based power stunts), and they’re also the only Package that is allowed to buy Combat Luck (aka ‘bulletproof nudity’). This is the prime example of what Long is talking about when he restricts Package options; allowing Knights to gain the advantages of Spearmen, or allowing Spearmen or other groups to wear armor, would make the characters less unique.
Another aspect of this that isn’t brought up but probably should be: Most warriors except Knights don’t wear anything heavier than leather armor, and most non-warriors (like Bards and Druids) aren’t allowed to wear armor at ALL. This can be even more deadly in HERO System than in other games, and unlike other HERO settings, these classes aren’t even allowed to buy Combat Luck to make up for it. On the other hand, most of these classes enjoy a high enough position to where it’s actually considered unthinkable to strike them. In most settings, that’s just not practical, but Tuala Morn is the kind of place where the GM should arrange “the mystic forces of the universe” to protect non-combatant PCs and punish those PCs who try to abuse the privilege by attacking the unarmored.
In reviewing Disadvantages, the book points out that since a lord and his land are one, any scars or Physical Limitations will immediately disqualify a PC for kingship, and would require a sitting king to step down if he is maimed or “blemished.” In game terms, the Geas is a new type of Disadvantage resembling the Physical Limitation, except that it’s quite possible to get numerous geasa over the course of the game and get no points for them. If a PC starts with a geas, the points he gets depend on how hazardous it is- ”Cannot eat pork” is less an issue than “Must challenge every warrior you see to mortal combat.” It’s also possible for a character to buy a “beneficial geas” that determines how he is supposed to die, usually making him unkillable except through one apparently impossible event (e.g. ‘when Tulgey Wood marches to Dunsinane’). Of course, the more unlikely the event the more expensive the Power has to be. Also, the geas cannot stop the character from getting injured, only from getting killed; it only takes effect against an otherwise fatal blow.
Chapter Five: Tualan Magic - This chapter presents the three types of magic in Tuala Morn, “Druid and Wizard Magic,” Miracles and Smithcraft. The Magic chapter presents an interesting take on druid-style magic that has some obvious similarities to other Fantasy HERO products (including spells directly cribbed from other sourcebooks) but which, like The Valdorian Age, is also a pretty good example of how to rewrite the Powers rules to build a magic system that fits the setting.
Most spells in Tuala Morn are of the Druidic variety but also used by Wizards and Witches (the main differences between the three being social perception and the higher religious status of the Druids). This magic system also includes specialized spells used by Sorcerers and Necromancers (i.e. ‘evil NPC classes’). Each spell costs only 1 point, regardless of its Real Cost, but each spell also has a certain Rank, and the caster must also have a Perk with a cost equal to a certain Rank in order to buy spells of that Rank or less. (e.g. if a ‘Summer’ Magic spell has a Rank of 8 for that character’s class, he needs to have already spent 8 points for Rank 8 in Summer Magic, in addition to buying that spell for 1 point.) While Rank is based on the spell’s original Active Cost, it should be noted that the author has deliberately tweaked the Rank of several spells up or down to reflect how easy some spells should be to buy, and how specialized some classes are- for instance some of the more “witchcraft” type spells are of a lower Rank for Witches than for Druids and Wizards, who could also suffer a certain loss of reputation for learning such spells.
The spells are organized according to the four seasons, and each “school” costs half Endurance in its native season and 50% more in its opposed season (casting a Summer spell in the winter months, for instance). Each season also has certain associations, with Summer spells controlling fire, Winter controlling ice and wind, and so on. The powers associated with the seasons remind me of the magic system in White Wolf’s Dark Ages: Fae, and if you have both books, one can serve as great source material for the other.
By contrast, the Miracles granted to Priests of the Golden Temple are rather straightforward examples of generic Fantasy HERO spell design; each is given certain Limitations and bought at the full Real Cost, without any divisors (like in the Turakian Age system) or Multipower Frameworks (like in The Valdorian Age). On the other hand, there aren’t that many Miracles written up, given that Priests are apparently not supposed to rely on magic except as a means of defeating the “demonic” powers of others.
Finally, you have Smithcraft, given that the art of smithing is considered a magical skill in itself, which at its highest levels allows the Smith to forge magic arms and armor. This ability allows the character to buy item “creation spells” as per the rules on page 239 of Fantasy HERO. But since magic items are bought as “Independent” effects, Character Points spent on them are gone permanently. This setting allows the option of certain magical materials (like faerie blood) to serve as X number of points toward item creation; otherwise the Smith can have the character who commissions the item pay the Character Points for it (assuming the Smith isn’t making it for himself).
Chapter Six: The Tualan Bestiary, unlike most of the book, details its entries mostly as historical examples of myth, so for example Black Annis (Agnes) is an English faerie, the Redcap is a Scottish faerie, etc. although there are examples of “Tualan” Giants and Trolls. As you’d expect, most of these creatures are faeries, and almost all of them have a Variable Power Pool, meaning that they can come up with pretty much any spell the GM wants. The noble fae have VPPs putting them on the level of gods. So, as with the old stories, some of these things simply can’t be outfought, but as in Greek myths, they may have weaknesses or quirks that allow the heroes to outwit or bargain with them. After the “monster” section there is also a brief set of write-ups for knights, Picts, etc. with most of them getting an individual “example” character.
Chapter Seven: Beyond Tualan Shores is a rather brief overview of other realms in the setting, namely Logres, which directly borders Tuala Morn and has the most interaction with it. Looking at the map on page 275, it’s pretty clear that it’s a somewhat altered map of Europe with Aquitaine (just south of Logres) as France, “Vulkringland” as Scandinavia, and so on. One major difference between this map and the historical one is that Tuala Morn is actually an “outgrowth” of the island Logres is on, with the two being linked by a near-impassable mountain range west of Cwmbria (Wales).
Chapter Eight: The Bard’s Portion- Gamemastering Tuala Morn is the “GM’s chapter” of the book. It includes not only some “story seeds” but GM-only background information that would definitely spoil things for players in the campaign.
SUMMARY
I highly recommend Tuala Morn, which like Long’s earlier Pulp HERO conveys so much non-combat/non-gaming detail on its subject that it makes a great resource even if you’re not a HERO System player. If you are a HERO fan, the book’s magic system and character creation rules are mechanically very interesting and give a new perspective on how to use the game.
Style: 4
Tuala Morn is obviously a labor of love on the part of the author, and in this case Long’s attention to detail does a lot to help convey not only what a game in this realm would look like but how players are supposed to act in it.
Substance: 4
Tuala Morn gives a lot of new material for HERO players to work with and great source material for any role-playing fans of Celtic lore.
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