Valdorian Age Review

[Killer Shrike]

Just posted this to rpg.net; will take a few days to post, but here it is for fellow forumites:

 

NOTE: this is a comped review. I rated the book 3 for Style, 4 for Substance.

 

The Valdorian Age

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Purpose

 

This book is intended to provide a Fantasy setting to run games with using the HERO System.

 

What this book isn't:

Not a Rulebook

Not a How-to for Character design

Not a RPG supplement masquerading as an art book with glossy color maps or inserts, suitable for filling out barren Coffee Tables.

 

What this book is:

A lower-magic, grittier Fantasy Genre Setting.

Evocative of "Swords & Sorcery" style pulp fantasy, with more of a Conan, Lankhmar, Theives World, or Black Company feel.

General Use: This book is most useful to HERO System GM's that want to run campaigns in a more low-magic, grim and gritty setting. It's of less use to players, though the package deals and general background information would be useful to more enterprising/self sufficient players.

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Description

 

Form Factor: The Valdorian Age (TVA) is normal bookcase sized and about half an inch across the spine. The interior uses most of the page space with a standard font on white background. Very easy to read. Sidebars are present on all pages, used for sidebar entries in many places, but otherwise blank. Chapters are divided with a full page art spread.

 

Cover Art: A very Conan-esque cover, sporting a shirtless barbarian on horseback, sword upraised to strike (at thin air apparently) and a scantily clad woman draped over his bulging-thewed lap.

 

On the upside the cover pretty clearly communicates that the overall theme of the book is Sword & Sorcery. Anyone in the hobby with an interest in Fantasy and some familiarity with the mores of the genre should think 'old school' when they look at it.

 

On the downside, a critical appraisal of the artwork would lead me to say that the main characters look stiff and unnatural, the horse is too small for the rider (much less rider + helpless damsel), the skull-on-post in the foreground draws the eye from the main focus of the composition, and the title overlaps the barbarian's sword in an arrangement that looks like it was meant to be clever, but for me detracts from the overall effect. Finally in this regard, the most well-rendered and interesting bit of the cover art is actually on the portion of the 3/4 wrap around that ends up on the back of the book -- the entire piece makes a lot more sense as a scene when you consider that "hidden" part of the cover; from a layout perspective that's an odd choice.

 

Also, from a more stylistic perspective, I think the piece overall could have been either more vibrant with a greater saturation of orange in the background, or a more dark tone in the background or a combination of both -- I think this would have evoked more of the bold bright on dark oils style of Frank Frazetta -- see Conan the Usurper, or the original (standing) Death Dealer and Death Dealer 5 & 6, or Against the Gods, or several other examples of this color scheme in use. Frazetta basically exemplified the look of the pulp Sword & Sorcery era (in my humble opinion), to the point that artwork of that style is immediately associated with the sub genre. Flavoring the artwork more towards that end would have helped to brand the product more strongly I think.

 

Overall however, the cover works and has a distinct look. It catches the eye at walking-into-the-store-and-scanning-the-new-releases distance, and conforms to the house style of all the DOJ era soft covers.

 

Interior Art: DOJ needs an art director. Why? A few of the pieces of artwork in this book are really good; as good as anything you'll see in the industry. Evocative, appropriate to the sub genre, and reinforcing the all important look & feel of the setting. Far more common however are clumsy and/or cartoony illustrations that have quite the opposite effect. A picture really is worth a thousand words -- making sure they're the right words is an important decision. When it comes to look & feel more is not better.

 

Look at product lines like the original Shadowrun and Vampire the Masquerade -- mediocre to poor mechanics, interesting settings, and a consistent and cool look & feel. Just flipping thru the books, not reading a word, communicates very clearly the kind of experience one can expect playing in those settings. They express implicitly what those games are all about. Reading the text after that is just shaping the How's and the Why's and to a much lesser extent the When's -- the Who's What's and Where's are mostly covered illustratively -- around 50% of the critical information is imparted in a hyper-efficient, memorable, and stylish fashion. The HERO System could really benefit from a style injection along those lines.

 

Pros in this regard: a lot of well rendered maps ensure that you generally have an idea of the Where's being described in the text. Not only are they practical, the maps also help give the product a facelift, tightening up the somewhat saggy jowls of the interior art. Further, as mentioned, a few pieces of art are really interesting and jive with the general feel I get from reading the setting flavor text. The artwork on pages 91, 101, 136, and 185 are strongest in this regard for me.

 

Cons: Most of the rest of the art jars with the general feel I get from the book, and detracts from the book as a product overall. As a good example of the differences between well chosen art and ill chosen art, I present the character illustrations on pages 187, 189, 191, and 194. The later two are high-detail light pencil renderings with a more draped, shaded, and artistic approach. The first two are more dark-line cartoony illustrations. Either pair are potentially good for a product as part of an overall look and feel, but they are not good together in my opinion -- mixing the art styles like that just sends mixed messages. Personally, I think the later two pieces are more in keeping with the theme and feel of the book; unfortunately they are exceptions rather than the rule.

 

Overall, I find that in general the illustrations chosen detract from the product, but a selection of nice maps brings the curve up a bit.

 

 

Name: The Valdorian Age is unique as a product name, which is always important. Valdor sounds like Valor, which may or may not be coincidental but evokes a response nonetheless, and it rolls of the tongue well. It sounds like it should be spoken by a stentorian lecturer with a heraldic bent, or Mako in a voice over to the brooding opening scene of the campaign, complete with brass horn and kettle drum soundtrack. "Lo they were the years of the VAL-DOOR-IAN AGE, an era of HIGH ADVENTURE and DARK MAGICS, when men were MEN and barbarians could become KINGS!!!!!....". Or something like that.

 

Pros: The name is catchy, and takes a less traveled path of not naming a fantasy setting after a particular nation or an abstract concept. Instead, this book forwards itself as an era, with a distinct beginning and presumably a distinct end. It's kind of Conan-esque in that regard, which is appropriate to the theme of the book. It also follows in the footsteps of the other currently printed setting for Fantasy HERO, The Turakian Age, although that may not be a good thing from the perspective of this being a separate setting in execution.

 

Cons: Nothing in the title or the cover indicates that this is a setting book. It's not labeled "The World of.." or "The Kingdom of..." or "The [something] Lands" or any of the usual verbal cues that the product is a setting book. What is it, exactly? Unless you already know, the only way you're going to figure it out is to pick it up and flip to the back to read the caption or peruse through the book itself -- which on first glance thru looks like a city book (more on that later). Some might consider this a plus -- draw the interested party to pick up the book and hope they carry it to the counter to buy it, but in my opinion clear labeling is more likely to draw interested parties consistently.

 

Basically, the name works -- its distinctive, memorable, and doesn't sound like Italian seafood. However, it is a bit obfuscated, and an effort should have been made on the cover to compensate for the lack of clear intent.

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Itemized Review

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Introduction

Short and sweet. Allen Thomas seems to like to cut to the chase, eschewing wordy intros. Set the tone, summarize the chapters, ba-da-bing ba-da-boom, oh look, it's Chapter One.

 

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Chapter One: The City of Elweir

In an odd move, which doesn't work for me personally, the first chapter dives right in to describing the City of Elweir, the so-called "heart of the world of Il-Ryveras...the vast sprawling, stinking, city that sits at the confluence of the Serpentine and Worm Rivers. Filled with adventures enough to last a lifetime, it's the primary focus of most Valdorian Age campaigns....or at least their starting point."....I guess this is supposed to be the Lankhmar equivalent of this world.

 

Personally, this gets me off to a bad start right away -- I'm not overly excited by a setting that is mostly just a single city. But then again if I think about it, most campaigns are anchored around a single locale so maybe that's not a terrible idea; how many campaigns have I run or played in that were mostly resolved in and around Greyhawk or Dyvers or Waterdeep? So I try to keep an open mind and move on.

 

The customary art spread starting Chapter One is actually a map of the City of Elweir. That's useful. The map is well rendered too, and has a small inset showing a higher elevation shot of the city relative to the environs. However, looking at the map, I can't help but wonder, who the hell would build an enclosing wall in such an irregular shape? It's extremely impractical. And the "Gold's Reside" district is a perfect rectangle....which is just kind of jarring compared to the otherwise highly irregular shapes on the map.

 

Finally the names used don't work for me -- the districts of Elweir are Gibberish, Uphill West and Uphill East (on opposite sides of the city), Lowtown, the Canals, Worm's Hole, and Snake's Den, plus the aforementioned Gold's Reside; further the city is built on the joining of the large Serpentine river and the smaller Worm river. These names just seem really unlikely to me, and kind of silly all things considered. I turn the page hoping that these are just the "street lingo" argot being applied for flavor, and that there will be more workable proper names revealed later.

 

A five page history of Elweir follows, but lacking any grounding in the setting as a whole, it just seems to lack context, and to also be overly self-referential to me. Everything seems overly super-simplistic at this point. Short version, to the west is a big but fractured moralistic empire (Valdor), and somewhere else there is a slave-based, sorcery-ruled, doesnt-sound-like-a-nice-place-to-visit nation, from which most of Elweir's income apparently flows. Elweir is kind of in the middle. They used to be an independent, corrupt, money-driven sinkhole of depravity, but then the so-called Bandit Lords with charming pirate style names like Lord Rape and Jac Plunder moved in to the local swamp and basically did very scary things, killed the ruler, and extorted a nice fat protection fee from the city to avoid future unpleasantness.

 

End result is the new youthful ruler reached an arrangement with the Duke of a neighboring Valdorian Duchy, becoming a protectorate effectively. Under the stern gaze of the new Valdorian influence, Elweir has had to make some concessions in the corrupt and depraved department, or at least be seen to do so publicly. This mostly seems to be covered by moving the slave market outside of the city walls a few yards into the so called "Foreign Quarter" to loophole the Valdorian proscription against slavery.

 

Why the not-so-nice-other-nation didn't just, you know, conquer Elweir at some point isn't really detailed, but I know that if I were the Witch Queen or Grand High Demon Summoner Poobah of that nation, that would likely have been on my to-do list. I certainly wouldn't sit around with my thumb up it while the goody two-shoe Valdorians took over.

 

End of story, the history is not terribly griping or intriguing and doesn't really make me want to jump in and play an Elweirian campaign. There's hints of an ancient and more advantaged people that lived in this area in the past, and lots of hyperbole about how petty and venal the Elweirian people are, but other than that I feel like I could probably have skipped the History section. But perhaps that's the point -- maybe the underlying message here is "who cares what went before; worry about what's happening now". Sword & Sorcery books were never very long on makes-sense or detailed back stories; many of them read like the author was making it up as they went along. Maybe that's the target feel intended here....maybe.

 

 

A good Climate section gives way to Geography. We learn about the rivers and the bridges of Elweir. The names continue to underwhelm me. Some other interesting large features are summarily described, and then we're shuttled directly into capsule descriptions of the neighborhoods of Elweir.

 

Next up is a section describing, rather fuzzily, the calendar in use. The names continue to lag -- the month names are particularly unlikely, unwieldy, and just don't work for me...I just can't get into names like "Heirs Month", "Fake Heirs Month", and "True Emperor's Month". Were supposed to accept a people that can't be bothered to name the place where they live any better than "Gibberish" or "Worm's Hole" to utter things like "I'll meet you anon one month from today....in Coward's Month."? Doesn't quite roll of the tongue.

 

Some Holidays are covered, with local festivities described. Next up is currency; apparently the setting is completely silver based, which I prefer. However it is so much slanted towards silver based currency, that some average adventurer displaying actual gold is likely to be arrested. Hrm. Names continue to be an issue -- the principle unit of currency is called a...."Coin". No, really. A smaller unit is called a "Bit", which is synonymous with "Quarter", so-called because they are simply coins cut into 4 equal pie-shaped parts. Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits! Finally, there are slivers, which are actually shavings from silver coins. Of course, shaving silver coins is illegal, but possessing or using the shavings is not. Supposedly, the motivation to use them is that they are easily hidden about your person, but personally it seems like the hassle of handling them and converting them into coinage by weight and at a loss to the usurers would make it impractical to bother with it.

 

Next is property, including slaves, and then we get into some NPC descriptions of the cities upper crust. The groaner names proceed apace, turning almost allegorical. The Prince is named Summerset...perhaps because his selling out to Valdor marked the end of the cities "summer" and the beginning of its "fall" in a poetic sense? His cabinet includes Lord Fawn Speckmore, the Chancellor; Lord Sandover Reed the Exchequer; Sir Tyche Longglass the Astronomer, Capra Lustshine the Magistrate of the Gold's Reside district; Sir Monshun Windlock, The Royal Mason; Lord Drake Saltbraid, the Portmaster; and Sir Yrvenus Hollow, the Divine Advisor. Of a similar bent, somewhere along the way it was mentioned that the ruler of the slave-owning sorcerer nation is named Zenobia T'numbra, which could be decrypted a few different ways.

 

Anyway, other broad types of notables ranging from the wealthy Fifty Families to the Port Authority and Guards are overviewed, crimes, the underworld, several gangs, religion, and daily life are covered concisely and we move on to a much more detailed description of each neighborhood.

 

This is where the book starts to pick up steam. The names continue to really bug me, but there's some fun flavor, some interesting ideas, some compelling story hooks tucked here and there into the flavor text of each of the neighborhoods. It becomes clear that the intent is that each neighborhood should be like a microcosm unto itself -- entire campaigns could conceivably transpire not just in the city, but primarily in one neighborhood. Also, the maps of each neighborhood are a very nice bonus feature.

 

Finally a few pages are given over to the immediate environs of Elweir, called the Outlands, and page 62 sees an end to Chapter One. So 56 pages of 192 page book (not counting the index or the contents) is Elweir...about 30% of the book basically.

 

Overall, the detailed treatment of the neighborhoods is the meat and potatoes of this chapter; the more cursory overview style coverage book-ending it is much less satisfying for me.

 

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Chapter Two: The Known World

The rest of the setting is revealed herein, and many of the places described are much more interesting to me than Elweir. Valdoria is explained, as well as lesser dogs and cats inhabiting the continent, which is called Sarth. We also discover that the not-so-nice land ruled by our dear Witch Queen Zenobia, called Abyzinia, is actually on the northern continent of Pelosa, which might explain (somewhat) why they haven't bothered to take over Elweir over the years. Also, they depressingly seem to be fond of peace and trade in an historical perspective which begs the question of whatever happened to all the evil, power-mad despotic Witch-Queens of my youth, ripe for either slaying or wooing (or both) by the right mighty thewed hero?

 

Anyway, some other smaller concerns on Pelosa are covered and page 90 ends the chapter. So 64 to 90 = 26 pages of setting-other-than-Elweir, or about 14%. Kind of disproportionate, but actually, it's starting to work for me in the spirit of a micro-campaign. Places other than Elweir are there to provide fodder for characters that come to Elweir from there, places for bizarre artifacts and strange villains to hail from, and much more rarely, places to venture to and back on one-off quests and misadventures.

 

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Chapter Three: Characters In The Valdorian Age

We start this chapter off with a bang, or perhaps a whimper. In an unusual move, it is revealed that PC's are held to the same reduced characteristic starting values normally reserved for NPC's in the HERO System -- in English they start with 8's in all their primaries rather than the standard 10. Effectively this means that Valdorian Age characters have 2+6+4+4+2+4+2+1 = 25 fewer character points than other starting HERO System characters.

 

Some Archetypes and Package Deals follow, just some sample skill and characteristic sets to basically frame in various character types in the setting.

 

Another nerf-bomb is revealed in the Skills section. A Skills Maxima is in effect and to go over it costs double. Further Skill Levels are not allowed. Wow. I'll have to digest that for a while to decide if I like it. It definitely keeps things gritty and error-prone, that's for sure. An interesting variant for Critical Failures and Successes are introduced for Skill resolution as well. Personally I've used a home ruled Crit/Fumble system for years, but this one is good too, and is integrated into the game directly via new Talents, which I heartily approve of. Another interesting move is that DCV levels are not usable by characters wearing more than 15kg of armor -- ouch!

 

Fighting Tricks are also presented, but are basically just Talents with a Fighting Tricks skill prerequisite. This is nothing new, but being a fan of using talents to encapsulate setting appropriate extraordinary abilities, I approve of their use here. On the downside, I would prefer that they just be listed under "New Talents" rather than treated as a separate category -- it's needlessly confusing to newbies.

 

And speaking of New Talents, there are several in the Talents section, all revolving around interacting with the formal crit/fumble rules. Good shtick; we like.

 

Under combat we're informed that the Valdorian Age formally uses the mook/goon concept -- called Minions here. This is an age-old hero tradition used by many GMs for unimportant opponents, simply formalized for the setting; the main addition being that while Minions can have critical fumbles, they do not get critical successes, and further might not use the Hit Location chart vs PC's if the GM sees fit.

 

Next up is Sorcery, a hybrid Magic System combining a Summon bought straight up, a Multipower, and both a Power Skill and a Knowledge Skill. It is END Reserve based with stringent lims on the END Reserve REC, and adds in a novel retasking of the Favor Perk as a form of supernatural debit/credit system. Short story: all Magic must be accomplished via "summoning" a supernatural being of some sort, rather explicitly with the Summon power or implicitly as the SFX of miscellaneous powers in the MP. Doing so always requires a Sorcery skill roll, and failing results in a negative balance of favors owed. Once indebted to supernatural powers, a sorcerer must do increasingly unpleasant things to pay off the juice. There are also four flavors of sorcerer; a Black Magician, a Sorceror-Priest, a Necromancer, and an Elementalist, but they mechanically behave the same.

 

The system works on paper. It's actually really similar to a system I had been playing around with on the side for the past year or so that I was calling "Rifting" -- intended to be a process of working magic via summoned elementals, with a kind of Al Quadim flavoring. However, I never was happy with any of the mechanics I toyed with to handle the idea of bartering and owing supernatural entities. The Favor idea works perfectly for that and I think Ill "borrow" it moving forward.

 

This Magic System is a big feature for the setting, really capturing the Sword and Sorcery feel, offering a system that is still capable of being powerful, but hampered enough to ensure that Sword-swingers and roguish never-do-wells have an edge in combat. Top-notch.

 

Descriptions and various magical effects for each flavor of Sorcery finish out the Chapter at page 136.

 

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Chapter Four: GMing The Valdorian Age

The Chapter starts off with several plot themes and seeds, and then rolls into the "GM's Vault", where bits from the setting write up that are for GM's only reside. Typical GM goodness, plus a section broad-brushing the end of the Valdorian Age which is a nice touch.

 

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Chapter Five: NPC's

A bevy of supernatural things (of dual importance due to their use by Sorcerers of different stripes), some summary stats for goons, and four NPC's finish up the book. The supernatural bestiary is brief but very solid, with good names and a high degree of reusability.

 

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References

I really like a reference page, as it gives me a good clue as to where the author(s) are coming from creatively -- it hints at what paints they've chosen to load their palettes with in a way, and serves as a good measuring stick as you consider the content provided. Many of the DOJ era books have them, but sadly this one doesn't and it really should, in my opinion. Drawing from a sub genre whose heyday was many decades ago, it would have been a good move to list some of the high points of the Sword & Sorcery era of fiction and related media.

 

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Summary

I started off not liking this book. Some of the design decisions, particularly the decision to focus so heavily on a single city, were off putting to me. The names pretty consistently irritated me. But as the book picked up speed it won me over bit by bit. In the end I would probably retool a lot of the material if I were to run it, but the bulk of the material is workable.

 

Overall, it's a pretty good pass at Swords and Sorcery, but somehow it doesn't quite seem to hit the mark square on -- perhaps because many of the elements that were part of the often machismo-laden Sword & Sorcery pulps back in the day are simply not PC in today's world and thus are lacking from the book. Also, all of the great Sword & Sorcery books of the past were in many ways defined by the principal protagonist, and being an RPG Setting the PC's are assumed to be the proxies for such characters and thus go undescribed.

 

So despite some high points and a good solid core of mechanics and flavor, I have to give this one a 4 for substance. It's a good buy for people really jonesin' to play Sword & Sorcery with the HERO System, but not friendly enough to cannibalization for other gamers, in my opinion.

[James Gillen]

Re: Valdorian Age Review

 

Interestingly, I've got a Valdorian Age review queued up on RPG.net too.....

 

JG

[Xotl]

Re: Valdorian Age Review

 

Thanks for the review. I'm looking forward to running a game in my own world with a similar flavour, and I think the rules treatments of low-powered adventuring and extra realism will be just the thing.

[James Gillen]

Re: Valdorian Age Review

 

Here's mine:

 

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11199.phtml

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Valdorian Age Review

 

Posted:

 

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11210.phtml