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Things that remain the same for the most part, includes layout, art, maps, and other general physical qualities. The biggest differences include adding new core classes, map has been reduced to a single page, and the starting adventure has been pulled out to (probably) account for the page increase from the classes which take up a considerable amount of space to detail their powers. For those who don’t have the old edition though, what does that mean? In terms of art, it’s all over the place. Several of the pieces, especially those near two-full page spreads between the chapters, wouldn’t look out of place in a Wizards of the Coast or Paizo product. Others use some fan favorites from the early 3e era and still others look well below production standards. Part of this is so notable due to the variety in artists and art styles. For example, the symbols of the gods look very ameutrish. This is a silly thing to point out, but when looking at the official products, Wayne England often did them and they had a lot of power and energy to them, even though they were static images. If this was a company without access to any artists, I could see this being a non-issue, but since a lot of this art is reprinted, and there are excellent pieces in it, to me, there should have been more effort to raise the bar, not just rely on the old material for everything. Layout is standard two-columns. The class formatting means that there is a lot of ‘wasted’ space in that class abilities generally don’t carry over from page to page. Art has been resized from the previous book and in some cases, such as the chapter breaks, has been enlarged to an almost two-page spread.
The map of the setting, having been reduced from a double page spread to a single one, suffers. It’s a very busy map and it’s an old style design that isn’t… ‘clean’. It’s very busy and in an almost charcoal like style. Readability suffers some from this. The black and white coloring, while probably essential in making the book affordable, doesn’t do it any favors. For my days, the ‘old school’ maps were ones that could come out of the book. Not so here.
There is only the one map of the entire setting. Several cities and other stop points are described but no maps. Even the old Atlantis setting by Bard Games included several maps. Maps are gamer porn in a sense. One of the things that I compare this book to the way Wizards of the Coast does their books, is that an overall campaign book with everything in it is a little bit of a disservice. With both Eberron and the Forgotten Realms, by breaking the material into a players guide and a game master’s guide, the company was able to put material most of interest to each audience in the ‘right place’. The Blackmoor book, limited to a single tome, tries to do both, and succeeds, but doesn’t provide all of the handy tools that the WoTC books provided by breaking it up. On the player’s side of things; Blackmoor takes many of the non-standard races as new discoveries; dragonborn recently meet and befriended, eldarin coming back to the world because the wheel has turned, and tielflings are being born in greater numbers and where before they could easily pass as human, now the tell tale signs are occurring. On one hand, this is hand waving to accommodate these non-classic races. On the other, having some catastrophe where whole chunks of the setting are wiped out in an effort to bring in the 4e flavor leaves a far worse taste in the mouth and the methodology that the authors have made here, is very non-invasive and can easily be ignored or altered for those who want something different. The inclusion of a new race, a Halfling sub culture, is in my opinion out of place. A warrior breed of Halfling, this type of creature, the non-fat, active Halfling, has been around for an edition or so now. If the book notes that there are no game mechanical differences between the two branches of elves, going out of the way to make mechanical differences for the Halflings seems even further fetched. By having several new classes in the book, the book must flush them out with powers and paragon paths. In doing so, each class is similar to say, a wizard of the old edition where the majority of the character’s abilities aren’t found under the class, but in what the class can do which requires pages and pages. And like most efforts I’ve seen, with the way the class powers are laid out, to make it more readable, especially because this is a black and white product and its color coding doesn’t follow the standard Wizards of the Coast, there is a lot of white space.
It’s not, in my opinion, a deliberate effort to waste paper and make the reader pay for more. It’s simply the way these things line up and it’s a shame because even not meaning to be wasteful, it is. So what could be in those pages? A sample adventure to get things started or a larger map to ease the strain of reading it.? The former would probably be better than the latter, especially since many of the newer players might be unaware of the vast history of the setting and even more important, many new game masters for 4th edition, may be wondering what exactly to do with this new setting. In addition, Wizards of the Coast has a huge advantage over all third party publishers in its suite of electronic tools. I know that when reading the character classes and reviewing their abilities, my eyes tend to glaze over. It’s one of the reasons that when I play, I almost always use the character builder. It makes picking things out and reading them over much easier. It eliminates copying all of that text. This is an advantage WoTC has against all 3rd party parties and as the official library grows, the online tool becomes more useful. So for me, especially as a person who runs the game more than plays in it, the new classes aren’t a feature. But for the many players who are interesting in new crunch…
A new power type is introduced, spiritual. . To me, these power types are useless. It’s not that there isn’t so potential in them, but overall, there is so little done with it that it may as well be written out. It’s not like the solid dividing line between arcane and divine spells, a barrier that was greatly reduced in 3rd ed as clerics and druids came into many a damaging spell of their own. For players though, there are some opportunities to flex the old role playing muscles. The new classes start off with the arcane warrior. This is a defender that uses arcane magic to augment their physical abilities. This class has some history in the background of the setting and can make a nice ‘touch stone’ if the GM includes those nods as references to the player’s current character.
Next up, the elderkin, a controller that uses a divine power source, not from the gods mind you, but a divine connection to a family ancestor. Using orbs, rods, and staffs, the elderkin uses an ancestor control the battlefield. An interesting effect of this are the abilities called trifles that have little impact on the game but add flavor. Things like sense undeath where as a minor action your spirit guide tells you if a creature is undead. There are mechanics involved with the telling and it’s not an automatic ‘gimme’.
Third in line, the idolater is another controller, but this one is spiritual. Implements include orbs and… yes, idols. These individuals are named because they focus their power through the idol that they carry.
The mystic is a defender but seems a little underhealthy for such a role. A spiritual source only provides 12 hit points to start with and only goes up to hide armor. Without extensive game play however, it’s hard to say if the 11 + Con modifier healing surges added to the powers of the class are enough to make up for that.
The leader of the group is the noble. There are some great role playing potentials in the classes in the setting. The noble especially, could become the center point of a campaign due to the frontier nature of the game. A game master could easily send out a party of nobles to lands not inhabited and in need of heroes. Or a noble could go and hire the players, that include a noble of their own to act as a go between the noble and the rest of the party.
The wokan uses a priaml power type and is a role of hybrid. This is unusual in that most if not all official classes clearly have a role to fill even when they can spot for a secondary role.
Each class has two builds, powers all the way to the top, several paragon paths and in this version at least, fit into the setting providing numerous hooks for players and GMs to use.
In addition, there are new magic items, feats, rituals, and paragon paths that players may wish to use for characters not build of the new Blackmoor classes.
On the GM side of things. The book includes enough history to get the game going. Deities of not only the north, but also of the dwarves and elves are included . It’s a nice mix. Information includes the name, status, common name/titles, who worships the deity, holy symbols, alignment, portfolio, favored weapon and generally two paragraphs of background detail. One of the sections includes non-player characters. Some of these have the problem of being old and having, what I consider, terrible ‘joke’ names. For example, the Egg of Coot. I know there are a lot of old school gamers howling in outrage that someone dares think that name stupid but I’ve thought that name was stupid for probably twenty years. Seeing it in 4e doesn’t’ make me go, “Ah, yes, now I understand the sublime genius of Coot.” Rather, it makes me wish that as they white washed in the new races, they replaced Coot with something more sinister sounding at the very least. “Formerly known as….” Would have been a great way to do that. Many of the other NPC’s include allies and enemies that are well known in many circles. Not all of them include game stats. Comparing some of them to the previous edition, the previous edition tended to have the game stats. Nonetheless, these characters act as a nice springboard if the GM needs examples of what types of characters are found in the setting, and these individuals can act as long term patrons and allies for the players. Blackmoor is a solid book. The new classes, especially for those always trying something different, are worth a look. For game masters needing new monsters, there are several to whet the appetite. It’s a small enough campaign setting that it can be popped into another campaign setting like the Wilderlands or Forgotten Realms with little difficulty. Blackmoor’s cover calls itself The First Campaign and you could do far worse than to view the book and make your own decision.
Note the print version is $40 and the PDF is $30. http://www.codemonkeypublishing.com/
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