Review of Tomb Reavers

Tomb Reavers is one of the most intriguing PDF games I've looked at in the last few months. While it's a game focused solely on looting tombs for treasure, it seems to take all the tropes of original D&D that made you scratch your head - experience based off treasure, levels, and random monsters wandering tombs - and makes them make perfect sense within the setting.

All characters in Tomb Reavers are "reavers," or people who raid tombs for treasure. It is the twilight of great civilizations, and the one that remains is authoritative and highly stratified in the classes. The only way for a person of low class to make any money beyond the bare minimum to feed his family is to steal. Of course, they don't see it as stealing. As the "Reaver's Guide" says, "anything less than a hundred years old is grave robbing." Reavers only target tombs that the soul has left. (In a neat twist, Tomb Reavers says the soul leaves the body "when every person the dead man knew has also died.") The characters are combinations of Indiana Jones, medieval peasants, and revolutionaries, a concept that's very grabby.

System: Most everything but the hitting

The character creation system, and the system as a whole, is very light. Characters are made up of two attributes, Physical and Mental (initially between 0 and 10, but with a maximum of 18); Hit Points; and some physical traits like "long hair," "crooked nose," or "heavily bearded." These physical traits actually play a part in the game, another twist which I find intriguing. Characters also have a level that plays heavily into their ability.

In order to determine success in any action, the player needs to roll greater than or equal to (21 - the relevant attribute) on a d20, which is modified depending on the difficulty of the task. This is simple, but has the same problems as AD&D THAC0 in that it introduces subtraction to a calculation that doesn't need it. (Later in the game, in an example, the system is redescribed as d20 attribute must be equal to or greater than 21. This description, while exactly the same, seems much simpler.)

In addition, the modifiers have some confusion throughout the text. For example, when using a heavy sword as a crowbar, the player has to make a 10 physical check in order to not break the sword. When climbing a very smooth incline, the player has to make a 7 physical check. It's obvious that the 7 in the latter example is a penalty (add 7 to the number you have to roll higher than or equal to), but it's not obvious in the former example: do heavy swords break very easily, or do you add 10 to your roll, making it hard to break one, which makes more sense? I don't know. On reaction rolls - a way of determining whether people like you or not - the modifiers are reversed: negative modifiers are bad, and positive modifiers are good.

Do not take the above as a harsh criticism of the system. It does make good sense with a thorough reading, and is simple and elegant. The reaction roll system is great: the GM has a list of physical traits to roll on to determine what random people like. If the blacksmith likes bearded men, you get a bonus if you have a beard. If he finds long-haired men to be shady and you have long hair, you get a penalty. The randomness of these decisions adds a depth to the reaction roll system that doesn't earn the players' ire like it would if it were based off GM fiat.

Characters go up in level by accumulating treasure from tombs. This seems like a throwback to older games, but makes perfect sense when looking at what the characters are.

More about system: Combat

Combat is simple and easy in Tomb Reavers: you make a physical check, and if successful, you do an amount of damage determined by your weapon. It's not realistic, if that's your bag, but it is quick and reminiscent of a good late-'70s/early-'80s dungeon crawl game.

The system does allow for parrying and dodging blows. In a neat twist, the game allows you to decide whether to blow your combat action on defense until after the opponent has rolled a successful attack. In addition, it takes fortune right out of initiative, instead relying on the length of weapons, surprise, and a slight advantage to the player characters. The system also provides for several other combat manuevers, such as wrestling and running by someone, and is simple enough for the GM to adjucate other actions.

Even more about system: Fun for the GM

The Tomb Reavers system really shines when it comes time for the GM to prepare for games. Remember how I talked about how it made traditional D&D tropes make sense? In Tomb Reavers, every tomb has a level determined by the type of person buried inside it. More honored people get bigger, better tombs with better protection against reavers. It's perfectly sensible, and integrates with the system perfectly. The tomb's level determines how much treasure it has, how many points the GM gets to spend on enemies and traps, and the number of rooms the tomb will have.

I really like the idea of giving the GM a number of points to make obstacles for the characters. Since Rune, I've loved the idea, and Tomb Reavers really shines in this area. Using five pages of charts, the GM can make detailed opponents and traps, both of which use the same system. The sorts of things that you can choose vary from "camouflage," to "explodes on death," and cool catch-all categories like "conditional double damage attack" (where, for example, a flying creature could do double damage when diving from above.) The treasure system uses the same tables, and allows the GM to make up unique magic items that beat out 1 swords any day of the week.

The GM's prep work in this game far exceeds the players', which I see as a benefit. Tomb Reavers would be great for a GM who likes planning, but whose players are more "show up and play" types. This adventure generation system is the game's strongest point, and is perfect for GMs new to the task, guiding them with excellent text on how to use the system.

The Setting

The setting for the game is "fantasy, somewhere, sometime," which works well. It does tell of a decadent and corrupt government that oppresses its people, and details three fallen civilizations and their tombs. It ties these in well with the mechanics, with some cultures preferring one of the three different types of tomb guardians (constructed, undead, and summoned) over others. It leaves much of the setting development up to the GM, though - this isn't Forgotten Realms, and we don't get a list of cities with the names of the town guardsmen in each. This is a bonus, in my opinion.

A detailed setting, The Tomb Coast, is part of the book, and does serve as a great starting point for a campaign and examples for the GM to use in writing his own adventures. This setting is exceptionally well written, and even contains a large number of NPCs for the GM to pick up and play.

Presentation

Tomb Reavers is a 107-page PDF file, split into three books (Reaver's Guide, Tomb Master's Guide, and The Tomb Coast.) The artwork is sparse, but functional. If you're looking for eye candy, it's not here, but each page is crammed with text and is a great value. (At the time of this review's writing, it was on sale for $6.25, but has a regular price of $9.95.)

Overall

Tomb Reavers is an odd mix of a game: heavy old-school trappings combined with some great innovation; a setting that focuses on dungeon crawling, but that makes sense, and is even exciting; easy to pick up and play on a whim, but with cool stuff for the GM to do to prepare. All in all, it works well, even with the few system flaws, and appears to be fun and exciting, with one of the best adventure creation systems I've ever seen.