I reviewed Izirions Enchiridion of the West Marches here after backing it on Kickstarter - and recently another block of stretch goal goodies came through my door. These were a real treat - a DM's Screen with the cover artwork which was nice and a wilderness generator in the form of a pair of card decks that is fantastic and a ton of fun to play with.
First the screen which was pitched as "all of the quick-reference material a West Marches GM might need: conditions, travel speeds, weather tables and effects, common hazards, foraging and navigation DCs, and more."
Solid delivery here, I like the screen a lot with good choice of travel and encounter tables fore-grounded. Design is nice, the gray and green works well and as and when these plague-times pass and we get to return to tables this may well become my go-to. It has a nice heft to it as well, with good quality joins that I have faith will stand up to use.
Then the cards - I completely misunderstood what these were supposed to be when I backed the kickstarter and am very pleasantly surprised. These are a pair of decks - standard sized 'environment' cards with 4 bays marked onto each around a descriptive centre. The smaller 'region feature' cards then stack up onto the bays to provide the conditions, creatures, hazards and structures to be found there.
Conceptually this is nice but what really elevates it to great is the art. A shuffle through the decks just to see the art is inspiration in itself, mix and matching the conditions and things provides and amazing spark-list to inspire hex-fillings, wilderness locations and all sorts of things you could run into.
Besides the name and the art, each of the cards come with questions tied to what they describe to help draw out more inspiration. These are a great tool, clearly a lot of effort and heart went into them and it pays off. Players deciding to head off for parts unknown on the map is now easily met with a quick shuffle through these decks. The variety of combinations and the possibility to stack up a couple of different modifiers give infinite replayability. The same place that has drawn a bunch of 'landform' modifiers vs a couple of structure modifiers are going to feel very different - and even with all those being the same, the draw of hazards and creatures (if any) are going to make the difference between a visit to the location feeling light sight-seeing at an awesome natural wonder or a tense sneak past some dire threat. Wide vistas can be an awe-inspiring view or a terrible threat of exposed ground depending on who else might be about.
All in all, a great little tool for the toolkit and a pleasant surprise to land on my doormat completely unexpectedly.
For those interested, the core rules can be found here for free or you can get the finished product on DrivethruRPG.
No comments:
Post a Comment