I was gifted a copy by friend of the blog C. Kinch over Christmas and am trying to get to it in less than a year this time. I had heard of Through Sunken Lands before, it had been spoken highly of by those talking about retroclones, OSR games and games that were simpler vehicles to deliver the same fun. There had also been mention of playbooks as one of the key things it did which I took for this to be a Powered by the Apocalypse system - very wrongly in fact - but that mistake is what had kept me from checking this out myself for a very long time.
First impression - decent thick hardback, some muted-tone, somewhat spooky art that conveys a more mythos-leaning sword and sorcery game. Lay out is nice and clean with one big 'huh' thing I would query which hides a great deal of the glorious promise of this book unless you hunt for it. When you first pick this up, you get the intro, then you are straight into the system and while the system is grand it is nothing so special to make this stand out from among many similar retroclones. The real meaty goodness of this book are in the later sections - but that is like saying 'the show gets good in season 4' - I'm long gone by then. You should in fact skip the core rules when you read this - intro, then How To Play, then Playbooks and Scenario Packs. Those are the three gold veins in this book.
So what is all this stuff you get in the box?
Core Rules - 50 pages including Intro
How to Play - 10 pages on how to play and run sword and sorcery games
Spells and Magic - 30 pages
Bestiary - 30 pages
Jundarr and the Sunken Lands - 20 pages - gazetteer
Playbooks and Scenario Packs - the treasure buried at the back - 62 pages
So what is in here chunk by chunk
The Core Rules have the two pages of introduction at the front got me intrigued and reading on where other similar books have been a slog. I pretty immediately ran aground on the system - it is grand, serviceable, but this is not what you are buying the book for. There was mention of playbooks and scenario packs and maybe this was just me being stupid but I read it as 'these are pillars of the system' and then spent a bunch of time going over and back through this rules section trying to figure out where the hell they were. Eventually I figured they were *at the back*, read them and saw what all the fuss was about. I have a passing familiarity with RPG rulebooks but this had me stumped.
How to Play - Great thematic explanations of what they are trying to hit (old school sword and sorcery) and tips of how to actually do it. My gripe is that this should have been up the front because it is only here we get the playbooks and scenario packs flagged and they are the real interesting differentiator that makes this a book worth getting. We get an interesting and specific playstyle described here, one tailored to a play experience of rocking up for a night with nothing but your dice, rolling up a character at the table, figuring out their connections to the rest of the table from the workflow in the playbook and being ready to roll from there.
For the DM we get directed to our bronze age inspirations, the mighty city states, the myriad realms, the plethora of minor gods and spirits. We get direction on how to use the scenario packs, where elements like NPCs and locations get added by players during character creation and then you think through the light structure from the scenario pack, stir in the hooks created by character generation and bake your game session there at the table. Not what you want for every occassion but great to see a bit more specificity for dealing well with specific game environments. There is some good general GM advice in here too - some things getting named that I know by other names but good to see these problems tackled - like illusionism which I know more commonly as 'the Quantum Ogre'. Good practical advice on running stuff and getting the swords and sorcery tone in here.
Spells and Magic has spells that are simpler and rules are looser. This is a game for rulings-not-rules. We get rituals which take more time and are more powerful to add to the mix.
Bestiary is a big block of monsters, these are fine with some interesting stuff in here tying to the overarching struggle of Law vs Chaos which underpins the setting.
Jundarr and the Sunken Lands is a gazetteer for the great city of Jundarr and the surrounding islands and lands. It comes with a map with a lot of blanks which is meant to be added-to from character generation. The setting detail we get is useful stuff for bringing the ancient-world tone to a sword and sorcery game. Flagging details like the many gods and what people think of them, the arena and the thieves guild it helps create a classic sword and sorcery city. We get paragraphs on each of the far flung lands for futher adventures or origins for characters. Not a huge amount of content but enough to get going.
Playbooks and Scenario Packs are the treasure buried at the back - took me longer to find than it ought to because they're just a one line in the contents page where I was looking for a section listing the playbooks and scenario packs. I love the playbooks - they remind me of the best of WHFRP career paths for which I have very fond experience - and they are explicitly framed as 'sit down, roll a character, get playing within the quarter hour' which is great. More than just 3d6 down the line but still fast and focussed on getting you gaming.
The second great set of tools for just getting the game to table are the scenario packs for DMs with prompts and hints.
To wrap up this is pretty great stuff; it knows what it wants to be - the thing you bring to table to run an open game where noone has prepped and you want to be done by the end of the session. It demands a chunk from the DM - this is more a toolkit for someone with a lock on the basics of keeping a session moving than a beginners guide. Use it with whatever old edition or OSR system you fancy and the playbooks will still work.
Other reviews on Signals from Delta Pavonis, Swords & Stitchery or Goatmans Goblet on twitter.
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