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Review of Symbaroum - Davokar Gamemaster Screen
Blurb from the publisher: 'This Game Master's Screen for the Symbaroum roleplaying game is designed to function as an aid when exploring the wilderness areas of the game world, and more specifically the vast forest of Davokar. Inside, the Game Master will find a summary of the exploration guidelines that were introduced in the adventure module Symbar - Mother of Darkness, along with a collection of tables related to the rules. In addition, the Davokar Game Master's Screen introduces a unique list of treasures, along with a number of tables which can be used to randomly generate ruins that will challenge and entice any group of explorers.
No matter if traveling through the wilds is a goal in itself or a remarkably eventful stretch of a much grander journey, this Game Master's Screen will prove a valuable aid and help avoid the need to excessively browse the rulebooks.
Note that the content of the screen can be used without access to other products, but that it does not come into its own without the Symbaroum Core Rulebook and Symbar - Mother of Darkness.'
What you get: Your EUR 18,80 or equivalent will buy you the Symbaroum - Davokar Gamemaster Screen in both paper and pdf form. This is a three-panel, lansdscape screen that accompanies Symbar - Mother of Darkness, a full-colour, 240-page hardcover sourcebook and adventure for the Symbaroum game line.
The pdf version can be purchaed alone for EUR 4,40.
The physical and the pdf edition are also included in the Symbar Bundle. Said bundle includes Symbar - Mother of Darkness, Journey to the Temple of Exaltation, the Symbar & Davokar Hexagon Map, and the present screen.
The present screen should not be confused with the Symbaroum Gamemaster Screen and Adventure Pack 1. Their size and shape are identical, their aesthetics are similar (even though the imagery is different), the content however is vastly different. All in all, the two screens have only a single table in common.
Contents: The screen is a three-panel construct on landscape mode with a size per panel of 30 x 21,5 cm. It depicts a pair of armed men walking in an enormous forest, facing away from the players, just as they are about to pass under an enormous fallen tree trunk. The art is purposefully dark, with blue and black hues.
The screen is divided in three parts, even though each part does not correspond directly to a single panel: Expeditions in Davokar, Excavations in Ruins, and the Ruin Generator. These draw tables, processes and information from a number of books, namely the Core Rulebook, Symbar - Mother of Darkness, and Karvosti - The Witch Hammer.
Expeditions in Davokar is about the process of handling an expedition and what can happen every day that passes. That involves rolling on four different tables (Ruins, Enemies, Terrain, and Encounters) with results that vary in frequency. Excavations in Ruins demonstrate what kind of item can be found, namely nothing, curiosities, mystical treasures and artifacts. The only table pertaining to these items a 20-entry table which is totally different to the 100-entry table of Symbar - Mother of Darkness. The Ruin Generator reproduces six tables about the original purpose, overall features, traits, entryways, entryways to other levels, and details of ruins found in the wilderness. These were initially found in the New Mechanics chapter of Karvosti - The Witch Hammer.
The strong points: Now that's a new approach: a screen that caters towards a very particular aspect of exploration. I do not think that Free League's objective was to make Symbaroum's GMs sit behind six full panels of screen, so the answer to the question 'how do I use this screen' is rather obvious. Set up both screens, one immediately behind the other. Are the players exploring the woods? Have this screen closer to you, so that you can read its GM side, while the players enjoy the artwork of the game's initial screen. Is exploration over, and do you have to spring back into action, with the usual tables on taint, abilities and attributes, etc? Put that other screen closer to you, so that you can consult the action-oriented info. Ta-dah! It sounds unwieldy, in reality however works without issues.
The tables are useful, and most of them include page references on where their material can be found. Expect the same sturdiness and overall production values that we encountered on the previous screen. The artwork sums up what the screen is about, and fits nicely as a visual: the players will see soldiers exploring a forest, when they themselves explore a forest. If you don't like my approach (which admittedly will deprive that view from your players at the time they engage in such action), just exchange one screen for another when you need to.
The pdf is good. It is a single file, yet it contains both a unified version of the screen (both sides, of course), as well as each panel separated (again, both sides), for those who wish to construct their own screen. Good job.
The weak points: The product includes the screen only, and not any additional material in the form of a booklet or an adventure collection, like Symbaroum's initial screen did. That's not necessarily a bad thing; many screens are marketed like that. It needs however to be stated.
The elephant in the room relates to whether there are GMs that do this kind of GM-intensive work on the fly during a session while their players are twiddling their thumbs. I admit I do not belong to that category. Randomness in these aspects often leads to missed opportunities for plot development and narrative immersion. Yet, I am not saying outright that this screen shouldn't have been. Its potential is there, and if it can help a dinosaur like me to change some of his practices for the better, then it is already successful.
Space management is far from ideal. I have been complaining about the margins in every single Symbaroum product, yet I would have never expected to see tables misuse their space so badly. Their format is easy on the eye, I give them that. Yet the space they waste is enormous.
The same applies to the screen's use of full sentences outside of tables. Screens are not about narratives: they are about bullet points, about options, about the gist of a process or its results. This screen babbles as if it were the rulebook, or as if the designer is paid by the word (a case in which he has an extremely lenient editor). In the heat of things, I want to see if_then_else formulations, things like 'Test blah against blah. Success: blah. Failure: blah', not a narrative with fully formed sentences that are distractive to read while running the game. This is an issue that had also plagued the previous screen, potentially even more than the present one. In this one however the waste of space is so obvious that it hurts.
In the end, space wouldn't have mattered, if all the tables that are pertinent to expeditions and excavations were reproduced. They are not. The tables on curiosities, mystical treasures, and artifacts are nowhere to be seen. Even more inexplicably, there is a 20-item curiosity table with brand new items that were not included in the relevant table of Symbar - Mother of Darkness. What is that about? I am a fan of new material in screen-related products, this however usually relates to what accompanies the screen, and not what is on the screen itself. The only thing this brand new table succeeds in doing is discourage the GM from ever using the much more extensive, original table in Symbar - Mother of Darkness. Why the own goal? With a relatively simple rearrangement, all three tables from the book could have been included, the two bigger ones in an abridged form, without any confusion for the GM.
The screen references its material (yey!), but not always, and not as precisely (boo!). I can't understand it. It would have taken 2 additional minutes to write proper, precise, concise references. Instead of writing this comment here, we would have been talking, in the strong points, about how awesomely referenced the screen is. Two minutes. Two!
Conclusion: The Symbaroum - Davokar Gamemaster Screen is a clever idea about organizing the chaos of ruin exploration and allowing you to instantly create ruins, inhabit them, and equip them in front of your players. It is not perfect: it jabbers at times, wastes space like there is no tomorrow, and is rather loose when it comes to page references. Depending however on the use that you make of Symbar - Mother of Darkness, and how much you are going to milk the concept of exploring Davokar in other campaigns, it can prove a valuable tool.
For more info on the Davokar Gamemaster Screen and Symbaroum overall, visit Free League Publishing at https://frialigan.se.
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