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Testament is designed to provide D&D players with the tools to plan the peoples of the Old Testament in the setting of the Old Testament. It’s primarily designed to allow for players to play as Israelites, although more than enough information is included to allow players to play Egyptian, Babylonian and Hittite characters.
The cover does a good job of introducing you to the venue. The title is hewn from rock like a commandment, and the cover graphic is a depiction of Pharaoh’s armies being swept away by the waters of the Red sea. The bottom of the cover is a little busy, with a fair sized d20 logo, the Green Ronin logo and a logo for the Mythic Vistas line.
Mythic Vistas is a new setting line from Green Ronin. Testament is the first book in the line; Skull & Bones, a d20 setting from the classic age of piracy and Mindshadows, a setting of psionic adventure, will follow it.
The game’s first chapter provides information for creating a Testament PC; it outlines a number of eras in which you can set a game, such as the Antediluvian period before the Deluge, the Exodus from Egypt or the return to Judea.
As well, there are a number of nations from which players can create their characters. These aren’t races or anything similar, just cultural variations. A character’s nation will determine the gods he follows and the classes he can take.
Each character must also take a Flaw, which does not provide them any benefit but just provides an internal force for pcs to struggle against.
The game’s crunchy bits are delectable. It starts out with giving a dozen new classes (core and prestige). These include culturally independent classes such as Spies and Desert Hermits, and culture specific classes such as Levite Priests and Champions of Israel and Qedeshot dancers (think Delilah).
There is also a magic using class from Babylon known as the Magus of the Starry Host; these magi can take an astrologically directed pilgrimage to gain great magic (spells or feats/lore). I wonder what spell you get when you go to see the birth of a messiah?
There’s also a new characteristic to be used in place of Alignment. A character’s piety will shift based on how faithful they are to the precepts of their religion. This can affect how some creatures and spells will affect a character, and whether they qualify for certain feats or classes. It’s a very good way to allow players to eliminate alignment while still providing a moral compass. It’s also fun to read the punishments for various crimes.
For an Israelite, punishment for bestiality is ostracism, unless it’s for foreign religious purposes, in which case they’ll put you to death. Death is also the punishment for exporting a cat from Egypt, probably to prevent Israelites from having sex with them for foreign religious purposes.
Piety is optional, and rules are given for using the standard alignment system in its place.
New feats are provided, including a selection of Mythic feats. The Mythic feats are essentially feats you should think twice before letting players have, as they’ll drastically unbalance a game. The Nazirite feat, for example, adds +8 to an attribute of your choice, as long as you don’t drink alcohol, drink wine, cut your hair, or let your Piety drop below 10 (by, for example, dallying with a Qedeshot dancer and letting her cut your hair).
The standard feats include a variety that help enforce the feel of the setting, allowing PCs to be better farmers, shepherds, or sailors, or gain the knowledge of working iron, a boon in the bronze age.
A chapter is dedicated to a system for replicating Biblical battles. It’s a fairly simple system, following the basics of the d20 system. My only quibble with it, as with any battlefield system, is the extra complexity it adds to a game. It isn't a horribly complex one, but another meta system is something I'd rather do without. At the very least, there are the new battlefield feats available for PCs.
The section that covers the economics and communities of is just a bit too short. The barter system is fairly simple. Buying equipment is hard when you don’t have a handy bag o’ gold pieces, and Appraise becomes a much more valuable skill.
The section on communities allows PCs to take an integral role helping their villages grow, letting them participate directly in the growth process. Helping your civilization to thrive is one of the goals of the game. As the book says, it helps bond PCs to their relatives and neighbours and is an easy way to introduce the setting to the players.
There’s a significant section on magical items, spells and monsters. I particularly like the ancient Egyptian Mekhtets, small, affordable, one-use magical items. They help capture the feel of the magically saturated Egypt of ancient myth. The monsters include panoply of devils and angels, as well as classical beasts of the bible such as Behemoth and Leviathan. It also includes the Sea Goat, a giant creature with the hindquarters of a whale and the chest, neck and head of a goat. It’s CR 15. Those wacky Israelites. There are also some artefacts of the time, including the Ark of the Covenant; it’s not as good as certain films make it out to be.
The final portion of the book contains extensive detail on the various cultures that players will be a part of. You get historical info on the Israelites, the Babylonians, the Canaanites, the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians. The section on the Israelites is the most extensive, but the chapter on the ancient Egyptians is just great, and is probably the best treatment I've seen for the culture in an RPG sourcebook.
The one ‘odd’ bit about this section is the NPC stat blocks. I don’t know about you, but there’s just something about stats for Moses and Saul that just strikes me as a bit strange. It is good that Bennie felt that the game must be subservient to the setting.
Elisha, for example, has two levels of Commoner and nine levels in prophet, even though his write-up points out a second level commoner would not quality for the Prophet prestige class.
The book wraps up with a discussion on campaigning in the biblical age, and a few alternate campaign ideas.
Visually, the book is laid out black on a gray background; unless you have difficulty reading that kind of layout, it is pleasing enough to the eye. The art runs a gamut, from good to less so (the Champion of Israel illustration has a rough, sketch like quality to it, and the Judge looks vaguely Picasso-esque).
The book does a wonderful job capturing the feel of the biblical age. It’s been a setting that’s never gotten the opportunity it deserves as a role-playing (shockingly enough, no GURPS Bible exists), but Testament is a strong, well, testament to how engaging a game setting the period can be.
