Review: Martial Power

I’d been looking forward to Martial Power, the fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement for martial characters, for some time.  Happily, Amazon got it to me a day early, so I’m able to review it.  Does it meet expectations?  I obviously haven’t been able to play with the new content yet, so this is based on just a reading, but my initial reaction is:  Yes, mostly.

Wizards of the Coast, like TSR before them, has a history of putting out player-oriented supplements in large numbers.  Generally these are broken down by class “groupings” — so we have the Complete Priest’s Handbook, covering second-edition clerics, specialty priests and druids, or the Complete Arcane, covering third-edition arcane spellcasters, including wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks.  Martial Power follows in that tradition.  Its content is oriented, not surprisingly, toward the four classes that employ the martial power source:  fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords.

These lines of supplements have one other thing in common:  their quality was always variable, and their content best taken by the GM with a grain of salt.  While I’d put Martial Power pretty high on the quality scale, at least on first glance, I did take note of a couple of things that might warrant some GM attention.

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Battlegrounds: On Deck

It’s been a little while since I’ve taken a look at battlegrounds.  This post is long overdue, having been in draft stage for over two months now.  So for the comeback post, I’ll be taking a look at a setting fairly common to fantasy roleplaying games:  aboard a ship.

Shipboard combat is a staple of some genres.  Any pirate-themed or nautical campaign will feature plenty of them.  Standard fantasy characters often have reason for a voyage on the high seas at some point during the campaign, as well.  Even if they’re inclined to stick to land, there’s always the possibility of Viking-style raiders pillaging coastal towns.  For the purposes of this article, I’m going to consider mostly larger seagoing ships, but many of the same considerations could apply to smaller boats.

The first thing to take into account for any shipboard combat is the water.  Deep water is very dangerous terrain to those who swim poorly — and, obviously, to those who weigh themselves down with equipment or armor.  Falling overboard while wearing the more complex metal armor, such as plate, is likely a death sentence, unless the character has access to some form of magic that might save him.  Even lighter armor would need to be shed quickly.  Bulky backpacks and cloaks are not a swimmer’s friend, nor are heavy weapons.  Exposure to water will render bowstrings unusable.

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Resource: Crime Library

Thought I’d share a site I sometimes use in planning my games.  Crime Library is devoted to murderers, gangsters, serial killers, terrorists, and spies, and all of their various crimes and operations.  Its tales are very detailed and well-researched — check out the feature on Sidney Reilly, the British spy thought to have inspired James Bond, for instance.

In addition to the features about individual criminals, there are articles about criminal psychology, organized crime, unsolved crimes, the police, and criminal investigation methods such as forensic toxicology.  The articles cover both contemporary and historical crimes, although there’s a significant bias toward the more modern.

Crime Library is of obvious use to anyone planning to run a game in, say, the Prohibition era, or a plot featuring a historic serial killer or spy.  Its stories can also serve as a source of plot inspiration in general, and many of them are simply fascinating to read.

CommentLuv

I heard from the Dice Bag that the author of the CommentLuv plugin is hosting a contest. To enter, all you need to do is post a relevant comment on any participating blog (including, as of this posting, this one). I presume that you may need to allow some scripts to function, too, if you use a Firefox addon like NoScript.

CommentLuv.com has details, including registration information.  From that site, in case you were curious:  “The prizes will range from cash via paypal to electronics such as noise-reducing headphones, memory cards, ipod speakers, and more.”

I really like the idea of CommentLuv, and I’ve been using it myself for some time.  (Although it cut out for a while after I accidentally changed something I shouldn’t have… oops.)  I know quite a few other blogs on the RPG Bloggers Network do, too.  Even if you’re not interested in the contest, give the site a look.

One other thing:  please don’t spam in an effort to win the contest.  For one thing, Akismet’ll probably catch it all anyway.  For another, you’ll just end up disqualified.  See the part about “relevant” comment, up there?  Yeah.

Hanging in the Balance

Game balance has become a relatively hot topic again this week among the RPG blogs.  On Friday, Unnatural 20 posted Game Balance is Unnecessary for Fun.  True or False? Among the responses is RPG Blog II’s Ok, Let’s Talk Game Balance.

It’s a topic that seems to occasionally recur since (at least) the release of third edition, and the release of fourth edition only seems to have given it new life.  Some people see game balance as a necessity.  Some think that it actually stifles the fun by normalizing everything.

I think one of the main problems is that the phrase game balance is used by different people to mean wildly different things.  Additionally, these different areas are of different importance to a given campaign.

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