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Review of Yndaros - The Darkest Star
Blurb from the publisher: 'The shimmering virgin white snow that had fallen during the night lay like a covering blanket over Yndaros' filth, but guardsman Elgalo knew what hid underneath. Neither the snow nor all who toiled at scrubbing and decorating the streets in honor of the Duchess' wedding could erase the true rot, no more than they could wash away the shadows.
"My shilling is on the barbarians," his newly recruited colleague Arala muttered.
Elgalo nodded agreement without really agreeing at all. That someone would try to transform the upcoming celebrations into a bloodbath was inevitable, but the candidates were so many he had a hard time picking a favorite - the elves, the refugees and the fallen templars were all equally close to hand.
It felt as if the kingdom held its breath, as if all Ambrians believed that the alliance with the High Chieftain would smother the many fires that flared hotter and hotter among them. He was of a different opinion...
"Or the Dark Lords," Arala continued, "if the rumors are true."
Elgalo made an effort to snort at the idiocy; what came out sounded more like a painful groan. He looked up at the Queen's palace, cleared his throat and forced a scornful smile.
But the good guardsman did not get to express his contempt; he had not even the time to utter a single word, before his world ruptured and all was fire.
A warm welcome to Yndaros - the aching heart of the Ambrian realm, and the stage where episode three in the Chronicle of the Throne of Thrones plays out. This book features resources for both players and Game Masters, describing a new setting, introducing new rules and presenting an epic adventure where the players' wits, as well as the characters' abilities, will be pitted against truly daunting challenges.
Yndaros - The Darkest Star features:
• The adventure The Darkest Star, taking place during a fateful period in the history of the realm.
• An extended account of Yndaros' history, activities, factions and conflicts, meant to be read by both players and Game Masters.
• Twenty-five unique establishments where player characters may rest, eat, drink, gather information or seek an audience with local dignitaries.
• A comprehensive chapter for the Game Master, describing what lurks beneath the city's surface, with plenty of plot hooks to develop into adventures or entire campaigns.
• An introduction to the noble houses of Ambria, an in-depth description of Ceremonial Magic plus plenty of additional rules including new abilities, traits, artifacts, monsters and adversaries.'
What you get: Your EUR 33,43 or equivalent will buy you Yndaros - The Darkest Star, a full-colour, 176-page hardcover sourcebook and adventure for the Symbaroum game line, along with its pdf edition. The physical edition has not one but two cloth bookmarks attached, one silver/white and the other red. I will refrain from repeating the tome's contents, seeing how good a job the publisher's blurb does. If however one wants to get a better idea of where the mega campaign will lead, he can always download The Throne of Thorns, a 14-page pdf from the publisher's website free of charge. Fair warning: that free pdf is one big fat spoiler; download and read at your own risk.
For those who don't care about dead-tree books, the pdf iteration of the present product can be purchased alone for EUR 19,99.
Spoiler warning: As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the adventure, parts of the scenario might be revealed while discussing the strong and less strong points of the book. If you intend to participate in it as a player, stop reading now.
Contents: The book is divided in three parts in a concept that mirrors the presentation of both Wrath of the Warden and The Witch Hammer, the two sourcebook-adventures which preceded the present tome.
The 30-page City of Contrasts covers Yndaros, the capital of Ambria, greatly expanding the information found in the Core Rulebook. It covers seven memorable events from the areas . The more the characters know the better they will perform in the adventure. As expected, it covers many of the people and places of the city, including, but not limiting itself to food and drink, housing, entertainment, trade, and the authorities. Six pages are devoted to Yndarien, the duchy of Queen Korinthia herself. The chapter discusses (and shows, in a full two-page map) some of its baronies and counties, along with its wilderness.
The Game Master's Section is divided in four parts. An Aching Heart covers the Queen's imprisonment by the Dark Lord, snippets of the land's history, as well an exposé of the dwarves' relation to Küam Zamok. It also covers the Ambrian calendar, nine different factions and houses, including the Church of Dead Prios and the Iron Pact, as well as ten different adventure seeds. Noble Houses' eight pages cover some of the noble houses of the land, including Vearra, Kalfas and Kohinoor. Expect texts on their properties, prominent individuals and relations with the other factions. Ceremonial Magic introduces a dramatic tool for the gamemasters to use. In other words, these new rituals that require groups of mystics and which are powerful enough to alter the history and geography of the setting are not to be used by the players. If it isn't clear just how strong these magical events are, we are talking about thing like stars falling from the sky, insect swarms, and mass resurrections. Finally, New Mechanics covers new abilities like two-handed finesse, new traits like corruption sensitive and dimension walk, a new mystical ritual. I also count five new artifacts, new miscellaneous rules on issues like sleep deprivation as well as a couple of new creatures (Crawlers and Darklings).
The Darkest Star is the book's 94-page long adventure. It is divided in three acts. It is mostly linear and partially scripted on events that the characters can neither influence nor control. It starts with the characters investigating the world-altering events and will progress down darker paths and will reach its culmination with them visiting the Yonderworld and brushing upon the setting's best kept secrets. The adventure requires characters which have accumulated around 180 experience each (that is quite the experience, mind you). At least one of them should be a Loremaster at master level, while the characters' exploits should also be thematically appropriate, with them having made a name as problem solvers for at least one Ambrian faction. The book provides advice on how to create adventurers from scratch which satisfy the adventure's requirements. The Darkest Star is full of exploration and intrigue. The characters should be ready to meet some of the setting's most influential characters, both living and dead. Events will run parallel to the adventurers' quests irrespective of how they react to them. The adventure's Aftermath sets up this adventure's temporary ending... before the next product in the line takes the torch and ups the ante even more.
The strong points: The Throne of Thorns line is big on 2-in-1 products, and Yndaros couldn't have deviated from the rest of the line. This is the first time a supplement of the line tackles the setting's biggest city. Since this isn't a dedicated sourcebook don't expect Yndaros to be covered block by block (something that The Heroes of Thornwall, a product from another line, gives lessons on how to do). The information is however adequate to create and run a few mini adventures before tackling the Darkest Star. In a nod to practices of yore, the book includes numerous heraldic symbols of the setting's different houses as well as the principles under which these symbols are created. This brought back some nice City of Greyhawk memories. A lot of information that the book contains will need to be shared with the players. Do so only after you have filtered it appropriately.
The background of the adventure is brilliant, it will require however very crafty players who are intimately familiar with the setting and can connect both visible and invisible dots. The intrigue-o-meter has shot through the roof, even though the adventure is linear in nature. For the third time in a row I enjoyed the diagram that is a summary of the adventure and a flow chart in one; it clarifies things when it comes to order of appearance. Each act is different to the previous one and radiates a different sort of feeling. There are many discoveries that the characters will feel proud about, and especially after they deal with the red herrings and dead ends that might distract them. Finding the skull of the last emperor of Symbaroum is no mean feat, yet would you recognize it even if it was staring you in the eyes? The passage to the Yonderworld is only a glimpse of what the setting can offer outside of the tropes of standard fantasy. When it comes to theme, this is what the line should keep on exploring; it is unique, original stuff that few lines have pulled successfully before. The idea behind the Stone Ship kicks ass even though its implementation could have been better. Yet, the feeling, the horror, and the anticipation for what is going to happen fit in very tightly.
Symbaroum as a game line has very high production values. I am not talking just about the quality of the hardcover book, the full colour imagery or the cohesive look. I am also talking about the two bookmarks, something that was also the case in the previous adventure. When you find yourself using one for the supplement part and another for the adventure, you suddenly realise how useful both are.
The weak points: As much as I praised the setting's initial publications, I admit I am tired of seeing the exact same mistakes repeated again and again, product after product. The sourcebook/adventure books that started with Wrath of the Warden are particularly offending, and unfortunately The Darkest Star is not an exception. One must be already very heavily invested in the setting to understand what is going on. The book is unforgiving when it comes to the amount of information that it presents, with names, events, places, anecdotes and whatever have you hitting the reader fast and hard. No gamemaster likes to fish information through walls of text. No care has been taken to differentiate the info that should be made freely available to the players from the information that should be tightly kept next to the gamemaster's chest. Yet, without that background and knowledge of history, Symbaroum comes out as hollow, uninteresting, and ultimately irrelevant. If as a GM you care about the tone of your adventures, you will be obliged to take copious notes in order for your players to organically get to know the setting, as opposed to you bombarding them with exposition every second scene.
Even worse, these notes should not limit themselves to facts and events. NPCs are once again dumped in the adventure, and woe to the GM that doesn't have the time or the energy to organize them. No list; very few images, about how these guys look like; unfocused and scattered role-playing suggestions, or more accurately, insinuation of role-playing suggestions that the GM should fish out of the text after multiple reads. The fact that other products in other lines like Tomb Of Annihilation or Rough Nights & Hard Days perfectly address these issues doesn't appear to touch the editors of the line who insist with an obviously failed approach. This might have been kosher a couple of decades back; it definitely isn't now. If you are to present that much information, you have to organize it, be it through charts, tables, indexes, bookmarks and whatever have you, in both physical and electronic format. A GM is not there to do the writer's chores; he is there to breathe life into a product that contains all the necessary elements already.
Under no circumstances can this adventure be played as an autonomous affair, and even more so, by players who are not well-acquainted with the setting. No background info, no previous accomplishments, and no firm attachment to the world will lead the great trans-symbaroumian railroad from one facepalm to the next. Frankly, the adventure begins with a surgical rocket strik- sorry, magical 'starfall' which miraculously doesn't turn the city into Hiroshima, which the characters will be pushed into exploring. Overall, the characters will be pushed into exploring many things under the flimsiest of pretexts and dubious motivations (see: 'just because'), on a very dense and highly treacherous political background, to the point that there are very few characters who would actually be interested in pursuing any of this no matter how powerful they are. It is one thing to offer a rich background, and another to mire it into inaction while pushing the adventure like a happy tchoo-tchoo. Negative elements of the previous adventures (hand-waving of events and facts, constant exposition of things that should have been basic character knowledge, and an overall lack of organization) also plague The Darkest Star to the point that I wonder whether all the work to run it is actually worth it. Dozens of NPCs, dozens of factions, crucial details that the GM cannot afford to omit, and none of the groundwork laid down. Without the chores having already been concluded for him however, how can the GM run the adventure convincingly? How can the characters manipulate the corridors of power, confront numerous factions and live to tell the tale, travel to very dangerous locations that no Symbaroum player knew up to now, and triumph through the adversity while accomplishing feats that nobody else has?
The book's writing style is unfortunately unfocused. It is bombastic at all the wrong places, full of details, ornaments and cool stuff in places where the GM is obliged to keep the information to himself, and rather scant, uninspired, and muddling through the issue where the GM really needs powerful, well-crafted texts to present as is. Again, this isn't the first time that the problem is encountered. It is clear that the line's creators know their material so well that they take it for granted. The fans however, and even more so, the readers, do not. This line urgently needs an editor that has zero previous knowledge of it, so that all those narratives, texts, and well-meant effort create results that can be used as is, without requiring the energy, patience and perseverance of a mega-fan.
I have lost count of the times that I complained about the line's impossibly big margins. Add the well-documented repetition of imagery that has already been seen elsewhere, and there you have it: Symbaroum loses a lot of punch and presents less content than it purports to do.
For the umpteenth time: Symbaroum is deadly. The gamemaster must be on his toes in order not to create inadvertent total party kills which will bring the adventure to a grinding standstill. These can happen on every other combat-intensive environment, and especially nearer the end. Scraping the dirt that covers the lost secrets of the setting comes at a terrible price.
The artwork keeps being repetitive, even though the present book is actually an improvement over the previous ones. I keep on writing the same things and it's boring, yet that's how things stand.
I am not convinced by the need to include the two page map of Yndaros thrice in the printed product: once with the references for the places of interest, a second time with the references for the important points of the adventure, and a third time as a blank map for the players to explore on their own. This stuff should have been made freely available for everybody to download without taking up valuable space, which could have then been devoted to even more material, either for the setting or for the campaign itself.
The pdf's bookmarks go only as deep as chapters. I no longer know how to comment in this. If the publisher makes all the effort to put sub-chapters in the table of contents, is it really that much work to transplant that table of contents in the pdf, in the form of bookmarks? That's the minimum one would expect. The fact that the exact same (lazy) mistake is repeated for a third time in a row is patently annoying.
There are a couple of typos in the text, they will not however diminish your enjoyment of the book. As much as I would have preferred seeing none, their numbers keep being reduced book after book.
Conclusion: The usability and enjoyment of Yndaros - The Darkest Star correlates to how big a fan of Symbaroum one is. Disorganized information, an unfocused way of writing, and a blatant disregard to a GM's extremely practical needs mean that one needs to invest a lot of time and effort in order to understand the adventure before running it. Seeing how this is Symbaroum's third adventure, the chances of this happening become thinner and thinner. Why would one work as much in order to keep on receiving diminishing returns? The Darkest Star is not a bad adventure if run properly. Yet, it doesn't help to be run, taking the queue from its equally lazy and unfocused predecessors. In a world as dark and involved as that of Symbaroum, this is probably the biggest hybris of them all.
For more info on Yndaros - The Darkest Star and Symbaroum overall visit Free League Publishing at https://frialigan.se.
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