Review of The Heroes & Magic Sourcebook

The Heroes & Magic Sourcebook is 0one Games first foray into producing a D20 game product. It is freely available in PDF format from their web site.
This product is a twelve-page booklet that gives a very brief overview of what types of characters exist and how both arcane and divine magic function in the land of Arthad. While you're at their site, be sure to take a look at the video trailer for The Legend of the Steel General. Pretty impressive work and a unique use of computer animation to market a traditional pencil n' paper game.
This booklet seems to be squarely geared for use by players as information tends to be a bit sparse on the vagarities of the cultures and concentrates more on the attribute adjustments, skill point changes, and favored classes of each. While I realize that these mechanical issues must be addressed, there was flavor text that was included in the racial descriptions that I was curious about and would have liked a bit more information on. For example, in a description of the Land Kings, reference is made to Donnet Greysmart and then two sentences later mention is made that his wife died in a riding accident about two years ago. Now, up until this point, I wasn't impressed with the Land People, but this raised questions. Was it really an accident? If not, who wanted her dead? Another political power? Revolutionaries? Greysmart himself? Lots of fun potential plots there in that one sentence alone.
Unfortunately, what this did mean was that some of the "races" (all races in the booklet are human… I think ethnicity might have been a better term to use) come off sounding a bit flat in my opinion with only the occasional burst of interesting nugget. This is not to say that others will not find them interesting. The Nath and the Drakand are appealing to me but the others didn't really spark that much interest. Two races, the Scinthy and the Zenith, are included but not recommended to be player characters by the authors. I am assuming that they will play some major part in the "Seven Avengers Saga" of which this booklet is a bit of an introduction to.
Arcane and divine magic are where the game really begins to take off. Arthad is a low-magic world, which I happen to enjoy. +1 weapons are the things of legend and mages are extremely powerful, feared and rare. First level spells send commoners into panicked flight and warriors are revered for their skills with the blade rather than the sword itself. Arcane spells can be boosted in strength by taking advantage of various mystical "hotspots" much in the same vein that ley lines work in Rifts. Unfortunately, people like to kill mages because they are "unnatural" so most mages are loath to reveal their abilities.
Clerics are the ones to really get the short end of the stick. After the defeat of the Dark God and the routing of his minions, the other good-aligned gods either died off or left. However, the presence of divine powers on Arthad left it infused with power that the faithful can pull upon. Each day clerics must make a Harmony Check to see if they can tap into the divine power. A failure means that they gain no spellcasting until they can make a successful check again. On the upside, however, is the fact that nobody really intends to kill clerics. Clerics tend to congregate into Brotherhoods that worship some former aspect of their favored God in the belief that their essence still is personified by particular items or circumstances.
The layout of the book is clean and very professional looking. The art is also pretty good for an upstart fan-based company. Lets face it, anybody making a product that isn't a full-time professional game publisher can't afford top-notch artists. O'Bully's art is passable in this case and in certain instances, such as the Nath Rogue, very good. I think a switch to digital coloring instead of the what looks like colored pencil work that the artwork in this booklet consists of would help out a lot.
I realize that I've sounded a bit negative at several points in this review, but only because this booklet raises more questions in regards to the races than it answers. If this was the intent of the authors, they've done a fine job of making me curious and very likely to purchase The Legend of the Steel General when it is released in January to see what they are planning for the world of Arthad.