Review d20
From Glen Cook Wiki
Contents |
Overview
There are other reviews linked from this site, so why write another one?
Look at the other reviews and you'll find they were written by gamers for gamers. Me, I'm also a gamer, but this review is from the point of view of a Black Company fan.
A brief note on the mechanics: the publishers of this book also hold the license for Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing and it shows. No, this isn't a D20 version of Warhammer, but you can see where they've borrowed concepts.
The World
This book contains both a "history of the world" and a summary of all nine books. Needless to say if you haven't finished the books there are major spoilers. Reading through it there seem to be a few mistakes - things that made me go huh? - but basically it's a good summary of the world.
There's also a map. It looks a lot like the one I've seen on fan sites.
The Characters
No treatment of the Black Company would be complete without looking at the important characters from the books. The major (and some minor) characters are detailed here, with a few exceptions.
A few of the Taken are detailed, then there's a template for Generic Old Taken and Generic New Taken. Now if we were talking about The Hundred Who Were Taken or had Lady Taken the population of a small city I could see why they would have generic templates, but that wasn't the case. Maybe the writers didn't feel empowered to flesh out the talents of the Taken who didn't play a large role in the books or may it was another issue, but most of the Taken aren't in this book. To me that's a minus.
While the Dominator is there they had to come up with new rules for him - something to explain why he could be such a great wizard and still be strong enough to kill soldiers with one punch. Basically it treats him as a freak of nature who gets two attribute raises every three levels (rather than the standard one every four) and gives him other bonuses. While this explains how he became so powerful Lady doesn't have the same basic template which makes one wonder how she was able to resist being Taken.
The Magic
Overview
The gamer reviews go into detail about the mechanics of the magic system, but here's a look at how well it maps to the books.
In the books there were various levels of power. At one point they were defined as orders of magnitude. In my view they go a bit like:
Amateur (Raven)
Low Level Professional (better than Raven, less powerful than company wizards)
Professional (One Eye, Goblin, Silent, and Tom-Tom)
Good Professional (Smoke)
Great (The Circle of 18, New Taken)
Great with Experience (The Ten Who Were Taken)
Extremely Great (Dominator, Lady)
The game also has order of magnitudes (represented as feats), but fewer of them and you progress up the ladder as you gain levels. To put things in prospective: if One Eye hadn't focused on making his spear (in gaming terms taken a few levels of a prestige class) then he would have gain the power level of one of the Circle of 18. Yes, One Eye could have been in the same power class as those who were Taken.
There's even a way to advance to the level of the Dominator and Lady. While the Dominator was born with a leg up Lady appears to have advanced levels at an astonishing rate to there.
And yes, the Rite of Taking is explained. It gives various bonus (which is why the Taken were so much better off than the Circle of 18) that make sense.
But Does it Mesh?
Whenever I see and adaptation of a book to a game I always ask "Could a character made with these rules do what the characters in the book did?"
In this case the answer is no. While the book has the company wizards being jealous of their magical powers and not wanting to share their spells there is a place or two where they do teach each other spells. Under this magic system that's not allowed.
Going through the magic system and the various character write-ups I have to say that there were things the wizards did in the books that can not be done by their RPG versions.
Playing with the Company
There are various sections that deal with unit combat and how to run a game where the PCs are members of a military unit.
Much of this well written and you can see a heavy Warhammer influence.
Opinion
When I first heard that there would be a Black Company RPG I knew it would work or fail based on the magic system. The Ten Who Were Taken, Lady, One Eye and the other wizards played too large of a role for the magic system to be glossed over. Military tactics, rules for when armies clashed, and things like that would be important, but there are countless rules sets that handle that type of thing; any realistic version would work with the company.
Unfortunately the magic system just doesn't cut it. Maybe it was working with the D20 rules set. Maybe it was the fact that gamers like the power level of their characters to progress. Either way it seemed too easy for characters to reach the level of power where they would be in the same ballpark as the Circle of 18.
Then there are the limitations on the number of spells a wizard can know. Missing are the minor spells that One Eye and Goblin used in their pranks - or they are there and treated with the same weight as the major spells.
That said, having the world history and book summaries laid out is a plus and the way the magic system was handled was interesting. It having the world history worth the price of the book? Probably not.
