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This book organizes its content into four chapters and an introduction. The Introduction is just like what you’ve come to expect from an Exalted product: a direct communiqué from publisher to gamer explaining what the book is about, how it’s put together and the sources from which this book came from. As usual, it’s short and direct in its approach; I’ve said many times before that I appreciate the way that White Wolf presents these things, and I’ll say it again here: I love the no-bullshit approach, and I want to see it used for years to come. The introduction also contains the bibliography; interested readers ought to look through the citied materials if they want to see where the writers came from with Savage Seas.
Chapter One is all about the sailing life, presenting both the common sailor and the officer’s life from start to finish, as it exists in Creation’s Second Age. It starts with the overview of the common elements of the profession, and then gets into more specific elements such as navigation and shipboard life. Sidebars appear as needed to address setting-specific issues such as the use of Charms in navigation and the interaction of spirits with sailors. The end of the chapter addresses the differences between blue-water sailing (i.e. going out to sea beyond sight of land), coastal sailing and brown-water (in-country sailing, such as on rivers and lakes)
Chapter Two gets into the sailing technology of Creation, focusing upon that which a character is most likely to deal with; some (mostly) lost technology from the First Age also makes an appearance, usually in the form of surviving warships and weapons, but this is enough to give the game that Final Fantasy flavor that a good Exalted game has in abundance. This chapter also goes into the care and upkeep of ships and how those chores factor into life aboard a ship; this is a good example of building upon previously presented information, thus ensuring that the reader understand what’s presented to him. The presentation—as alluded to above—straddles that middle line between riddled with technical jargon and aimed at the audience of Sailing For Dummies, ensuring that those not up on the lingo (and the reasons for it) can keep up while those in the know see that verisimilitude is established and upheld. This chapter also has playable stats for all of the common ships of Creation and any others worthy of note; sidebars address game play issues or adventure seeds.
Chapter Three presents maritime trade as it exists in the Second Age. Here’s where the political situation comes to the fore, as trade issues drive a lot of related problems such as piracy and corruption. Each naval power of note receives some attention, which includes a sidebar describing the leader (or leaders) of that power’s fleet(s), and there are plenty of ideas for adventures or even campaigns within those presentations. Delineations of fleet strength are in a mixture of percentages and fixed numbers, describing the composition of a given fleet and its capabilities. With political and mercantile issues at sea come the pirate and the privateer, so this chapter goes into some detail about them as well; famous (and infamous) pirate bands, such as the Lintha Family, receive some attention here. The rest of the chapter goes over to naval combat rules, which focuses upon the quick & dirty method of resolving such actions so that it doesn’t consume entire game sessions.
Chapter Four is all about creatures, spirits, treasures, etc. that one ought to encounter at sea or with naval characters. The bestiary focuses upon the fantastic creatures found on sea as well as inland waters, leaving more mundane creatures to the GM to figure out. There’s a sidebar that addresses common sea creature venoms, a passage talking about the Fair Folk of the sea (which are no less nasty than their landside counterparts) and a few spirits—from a lesser elemental dragon of water down to the common dolphin spirit—before a reader gets to the new Charms and artifacts. The Charms are Solar Charms, but the daiklaive variant and the other artifacts are as available for other Exalts as they are for Solars. These are optimized for maritime use, so don’t be surprised if none of the creatures or magic appears in a game, but in their element they do their job quite well indeed.
In conclusion, this book does what it sets out to do. If your game will deal a lot with the sea, sailing or other water-borne adventuring issues then get Savage Seas. Otherwise you can safely skip this book and suffer no problems for doing so, but it’s worth having in any event.
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