Swords of The Serpentine - Hardcover Role Playing Game Book, Pelgrane Press

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Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell… Gonna be honest — this is more art than science. The idea — spend these points for cool effects — is clear, but the devil is in the many, many details. This is an area where the table needs to really be in sync — I can see a read of the game where the “free” clue is always very minimal, and there’s an expectation of spend. But I can also see a read where the free clue is cool and rewarding, and spends are bonuses rather than buy ins. Also, it might all just be a giant scam, or a might be a mix of real and scams. It’s not like the goddess is providing paperwork. ↩

The sly and clever villain is not necessarily puissant in combat. That, of course, is why they hire protection. Going into SotS, it had a few elements going in its favor and a few strikes against it. Against it was the Gumshoe system, which I’d never quite synced with. I genuinely love how it handles investigation and clues, but for more mundane actions it uses a pool system combined with hidden difficulties, which is a combination I don’t enjoy. However, Gumshoe has also gone through numerous iterations since the last time I looked at it, so I had hope.At the beginning of the GM Advice section, there are a few paragraphs introducing the concept of the X-Card, with a note to search for RPG Safety and Calibration Tools online. While the game presents tropes like being mentally dominated by sorcery, in many cases, characters have the option to take morale damage if they don’t want to be controlled by someone else, giving players a bit more agency when it comes to their autonomy. The way that the city's structure and story is woven into the setting and gameplay is illustrated by the Adversaries section. Each major faction in the city is detailed with an army list of commanders and minions, fully statted, so that any run-in with the City Watch or the Church of Denari can be immediately fleshed out with a complete cast of opponents. The corollary is that this is not a wilderness setting: the whole world where Eversink resides is detailed, with plenty of hints as to where you can take your characters for wilderness hex-crawling, but the action is clearly geared to Eversink itself. The spirit of the setting is closer to Early Renaissance with fireballs replacing firearms than medieval knights and castles, although there is some guidance for recreating Eversink as a steampunk setting if you want to shift the technological development needle. Out-of-the-box Eversink is such a rich and stimulating setting, though, that I doubt too many people will bother. In fact, I expect that, as with many Pelgrane products, gamers who aren't enamoured of Gumshoe will buy the book anyway for the superlative setting detail.

Guidance on NPCs and Monsters also. This is all fine, but it’s one of those areas where the size of the combat system really shows its head — the ratio of combat guidance to anything else is skewed really heavily in favor of combat, and it feels like lost opportunity. Outside of co-creating Dungeons & Dragons, the next biggest contribution Gygax may have made to fantasy gaming is Appendix N. I’m not going to defend Gygax’s taste in fantasy as being definitive by any means, but Appendix N introduced the concept of mapping your inspirational media. In my case, Appendix N introduced me to Fritz Leiber and the city of Lankhmar. More than about anything on the list, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories fired my imagination. The Drowned played a major role in our first playtest campaign for Swords of the Serpentine, serving as both enemy and ally as Colony pursued its own agenda to infect the goddess Denari Herself. Regardless of how they show up in your own game, the Drowned make excellent members of a secret conspiracy due to their ability to instantly pass information to the central fungus and the ability to theoretically infect almost anyone. Investigative ability: Ancestry (Drowned)When it’s summer, you smell her before you see her. As you come around the curve of the Serpentine river the scent of the open sea is replaced by the stench of low tide, of boat tar, of rare spices spilled from a smuggler’s ship; of cooking smoke and human waste. Bells ring out across the water and echo like the song of ghosts, loud enough to almost drown out the chanted prayers of your ship’s rowers. Chapter Eleven: Corpse Astray (example adventure about family, betrayal, body snatching, and revenge) Investigative abilities: Intimidation 1, Taunt 1; Skullduggery 2, Spot Frailty 1, Vigilance 1, Wilderness Mastery 1