Review of The Last Gods


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Okay, before I say anything bad about this mini-scenario for the D20 system, I should state the following highlights: first, it is only $2.49, less than the cost of most comic books, and it takes at least as long to read. Second, it is only 16 pages of material (plus the covers), and so you can't really expect anything too brilliant here in such limited space. In other words, you should sort of expect that you get what you pay for (which isn't much on both counts).

Now, for the bad stuff. This is a scenario featuring a mad god who is sorry for his nasty ways, and wishes to thwart his younger self from destroying the universe by using the player characters to change history. The PCs, which should average levels 9-12, are now in for a classic high-level dungeon adventure that suffers from way too much "What kind of ridiculously nonsensical trap room can we think of next?" designing and not enough of the, "What kind of coherent environment that makes even the remotest sense?" approach.

Case in point: you have a room in which you need to aquire a key (in fact, you need to find a key in every room to advance to the final stage). To do so, one PC must step up and sacrifice his/her self, which while necessary for the plot (and the PC does get to return at the end) is an inprobable action for a reasonable scenario designed to insure that everyone playing gets a fair shake. In fact, most of the odd puzzles in this little scenario require either that sort of "try and try again" logic in which you simply learn what works by stumbling over what doesn't (such as a room where you open boxes at random to see what happens), or presumes that the PCs will be kind enough to play along with the script. Well, maybe a lot of scenarios have these problems, but that doesn't make it right. If the scenario doesn't assume some room for flex when the PCs come up with the ingenious, here-to-for unimaginable extra solution, then the writer is just fooling himself about the usefulness of his module.

The other problem with this module is a lack of effort in visual imagery and style. This is a very bland dungeon, considering that there are gods and cosmic powers afoot throughout the scenario. The scenario lacks the power to instill a sense of reality about it, as it fails to take the high-falutin' concepts of the plot and carry them out in any meaningful and interesting way. I was running this kind of game eighteen years ago when I was 12, and while it was a blast then, it's just droll in a product that tries to masquerade as a professional scenario.

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RPGnet Reviews2001-01-01 Tori Bergquist's Summary: Go to the full review for more information.

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