Endless Quest #5: Revolt of the Dwarves

"You are Galen, whose family is captured by dwarven warriors revolting against human rule.  Can you put a stop to the Revolt of the Dwarves?"  --from the back cover

Revolt of the Dwarves is by Rose Estes, and is a fairly creative story.  First of all, it takes one of the main player races of D&D and turns them into the bad guys.  It gives them a serious grievance, and reasons for their revolt (although you may never learn them, depending on which paths you take).  There are quite a few other encounters that don't play out the way you'd think they should just by looking at the listed alignments of the creatures in the rulebooks.  For these reasons, I like the book.

It does have some serious flaws, though.  First of all, your protagonist Galen is an 8-year old kid with a puppy (thankfully, Woofy never talks to you, only to pixies and his voice his never heard).  There are a lot of places where you're given the sorts of choices an 8-year old might actually choose (like giving up, or attacking recklessly against overwhelming odds), and these invariably lead to a bad ending.  The writing at times also reads a bit like it is begin written for an 8-year old reader, but not consistently.  I'm not sure what the target age for the EQ series was, but I was reading them when I was 10 to 15 or so.  I never read this one as a kid, but I think those places would have bothered me as being 'too kiddie' than I was used to from the series.

Next, and the biggest flaw, is the linearity of the story.  Revolt of the Dwarves has three main branches you can take, which is a good thing.  The problem is that once you start down one, you don't have much real choice. 

The first place you can make a choice comes 3 pages in to the story.  I thought that was a good sign, until I found out that the choices were an easily telegraphed bad ending, a choice that does nothing and sends you back to make another choice, and the correct choice that leads to another 6 pages (1 illustration) of text before you get to choose one of the three branches.

Those three branches are going to the dwarves' caves, going down the river, or going to the pixie forest.  While each of these branches has some interesting stuff, it's pretty clear that the dwarf cave branch is supposed to be the correct one.  On both the river and pixie branches, the first choice or two gives you the option to give up and go to the caves.

And an awful lot of choices aren't really choices at all.  Lots of them involve choosing A or B, reading a page, and then both A and B lead to the same page to continue the story.  Sometimes that gets changed into an A, B, or C choice, where A and B both work and take you to the same continuation, and C leads to an ending.  Or as the very first choice in the book, A works, B tells you to choose again, C is an ending.  Other choices tend to be simple A works, B is a quick ending types.

When you finally get to the 'good' endings, there can be a bit of variation.  But for the main part, this book doesn't offer a lot of meaningful choice.  Despite the flaws, though, it's got some interesting encounters, and despite the 8-year old protagonist, it still feels very "D&D" to me.  You can enlist some interesting allies along the way--an old blind deposed dwarf king, a 'Huck Finn' type kid only not as cool as Huck), or a vain prankster pixie chick.  And as I mentioned, quite a few monster encounters don't play out as expected.

The art is good.  It's got the required Elmore cover--although the raiders look a bit more like humans than dwarves in their proportions--and Holloway interiors.  I like Holloway.  I've said it before.  But I think he's great at getting lots of expression into his characters and details into his pictures without overloading them.  And he does another good job here.

Overall, I find the book a bit disappointing.  There's some good stuff in it that can make for some interesting situations in your home game.  But as a game book itself, it's limited choices make it not so fun to read.

Protagonist: another helpless child
Sidekick: a puppy (with old dwarf, another kid, and pixie as possible help)
Adventure:  lots of good ideas
Endings: quite a few where you lose but don't die and 'live the rest of your life regretting not making another choice.'
Art: Good.  Decent Elmore cover, nice Holloway interiors.
Overall: Average (good ideas, poor execution)

Free RPGs!

I'm sure many of you already know about this site, but some of you may be new to the RPG blogosphere, or have just never come across it. 

There are a ton of free games you can download at 1KM1KT (1000 monkeys, 1000 typewriters).  They haven't churned out any Shakespeare yet, but give them another 995 years or so...

A productive Sunday

Today we had an American style Thanksgiving lunch at church.

Did NOT spend all afternoon surfing the web.

I read a lot more of "Revolt of the Dwarves" but still not finished with it.  EQ fans, be patient.

Drew in about half a sheet of graph paper worth of dungeon.  (My new megadungeon layout, level 3.)  I think I had some clever ideas for making the level feel different.

Also, I'll be filling in about a quarter to a third of the remaining open space on that level with a 'dungeon town.'  Some place relatively safe, maybe a dwarf lair of sorts, where the PCs can rest up and resupply, perform transactions, hire new help, etc.

Talked to the folks on Skype for the first time in over a month.

Ordered that gold dragon (the Oriental one) I was talking about the other day, along with a few Papo figures that will work nicely as giants (a caveman, viking and barbarian).  That's my Christmas present.

My wife will be ordering me the illustrated, hardback, 70th Anniversary edition of The Hobbit for my birthday present.

Didn't get to take a nap, but I'm feeling refreshed and recharged.  Bring it on, Monday!

North Korea? Game on!

ze bulette asked, in the comments to my last post, "Incidentally, I hope things cool off over there. What's the vibe on the street where you live?"

To tell the truth, here in Busan there's little to no worry about war heating up between North and South Korea (and thanks, Sarah Palin, for putting me on the wrong side in the conflict!).  Koreans aren't worried about it (angry about it, but not worried).  Ignore CNN.  They're just milking the exchange for ratings.

I do think the situation is a great way to add some conflict to a setting, however.  Two nations with a similar culture but opposing philosophy, and bad blood because of an old conflict between them where they were both pawns of greater powers?  Lots of campaign hooks there.

Throw in a despotic ruler on one side, who's anxious to make sure his son is accepted by the nobility/military elite as his successor so he's acting more belligerent than normal--sending his killbots/zombie hordes/orcs in raids across the border.

But neither side wants all out war.  The despotic ruler's side would likely collapse from the over-expenditure a war would necessitate.  The more open and free side would lose what little edge it's gained recently against the bigger powers in the world (or galaxy...).

That right there is a pretty good campaign background.  Lots of simmering tensions that the GM can exploit as adventure hooks, and as consequences of PC actions.

Noir Frontiers: Murder on the Dramune Express

Had yet another idea for an adventure module I'd like to write, but the way things are going these days, I'll never get around to it.  I'm up to my eyeballs in private lessons.  Trying to save up for grad school.  But anyway, you're interested in gaming stuff, not my work.

Use Star Frontiers to run a murder mystery.  Set on a starship (with Star Frontiers' FTL rules, that would mean the characters have X days to find the killer before the ship reaches its destination, similar to the Orient Express).  Of course, it won't be simple.  With robots being reprogrammed, holobelts being used (including a few illegal doubles of real people), and several passengers with secrets to hide and possible motives for murder.

I think it could be fun, if written and played right.  And it would offer lots of chances to use not only the Bio-Social skills a lot, but also those Intuition/Logic scores and Personality/Leadership scores. 

And it would be fun to throw in some Noir type characters with a Frontiers twist.

Luddites vs. Amish

A simple question:

Do you feel that the OSR types are more like the Luddites or the Amish?

Luddites, smashing looms

Are we raging against some machine of modernization that we believe will ruin things?

Amish, growing beards

Or are we just opting out of the race for the newest, brightest, and flashiest because we believe life is better without all that?

I have no answers, only the question.

Pork Chop Sandwiches!

I'm only a short way into "Revolt of the Dwarves" the next Endless Quest book.  Haven't read this one before, so I can't skim if I want to do a good review.  And don't have much time.  May have even less time next week. 

Work sucks, but what can you do?

Sorry for the non-post here.  Have some funny video (warning, harsh language!):