Tommy's Take on Agents of Oblivion

Agents of Oblivion, the latest offering by Sean Preston and Reality Blurs, is a Savage Worlds Spy-Horror game written by Preston and Ed "Pinebox, Texas" Wetterman.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: First off, layout wise, don't expect anything quite on the level of Reams of Cthulhu. The layout is a bit more spartan, nothing ugly, just more "functional" than "eye catching", which isn't a bad thing.

The premise is a conspiracy-filled monster-mashing modern world, in which the PCs are, um, Agents of an organization called Oblivion. Oblivion characters gain a few perks, including some free skills and a choice between a free Edge OR a free Attribute increase!

Additionally, they can belong to one of three branches (Assault, Occult and Operations), which can grant them temporary Edges as well! The "Defining Interests" mechanic from Realms of Cthulhu makes a return appearance as well.

The Skills List is expanded, adding notable additions such as Demolitions and Forgery, valuable assets for any spy.

Reality Blurs apparently does not like Power Points (which is fine, neither do I) as all of their uses of the Powers system in this book ditch Power Points completely. Speaking of, in addition to some fairly standard powers options (Magic, Psychic and Sacred), you can essentially be a "mutant", starting off with a power that you were born with.

Of course, there are new Edges to play with, like Gun Fu (which allows guns to be fired even in close combat), Hindsight (which actually means you are immune to gang up bonuses) and Silent Kill (pretty much a must for assassin types). Powers Edges can let you tweak your powers and Professional Edges like Hacker and Cleaner help the agents specialize.

I always love to see Legendary Edges, and there are some great ones here, like Last Man Standing (allowing the Agent to ignore all wound penalties), Empty the Clip (for when you absolutely MUST unload the entire gun) and Up Close and Personal (allowing an in-close gunman to force their target to default to the generally much easier to hit Target Number 4).

The Setting Rules include some tweaks to the Powers as well as new uses for existing skills, like applying your skills to a manhunt, for instance. This section also includes the Requisiton point system, as agents rarely have to deal with money hands on.

The equipment section covers most of the bases you would expect, as well as Perks, which are awesome bits like Emergency Evacs, a Cover Identity and, yes, an Air Strike. You can even, with GM discretion, "buy" Edges in the form of enhancements that mimic the mechanics of Edges (and there are enhancements available for a good chunk of the Edges, like the Flip Chip, which makes you ambidextrous). There are even Single Use devices that mimic powers: Like an Anti-Grav device that lets you Fly.

The GM section provides background in the form of Oblivion and the Pandora Institute, essentially rival organizations, one hoping to surprise the Bad Stuff in the world and the other hoping to use it.

That said, the book does more to provide a framework for you to work off of, with a number of factors on a sliding scale of None, Low, Moderate and High: Alien Factor, Conspiracy Factor, Occult Factor, Horror Factor and Technology Factor, along with example campaign types and how to combine them (like the "settings" for an X-Files ish campaign, for instance).

A ton of agencies are detailed, divided by their regions of origin, including Pandora, the Thule Society, the Bilderbergs, Al-Qaeda, the Illuminati, and more. Each is "ranked" by their involvement with various factors, and each is purely optional, but are rather inspirational.

More importantly, we not only get a random mission generator (somewhat based off of the Realms of Cthulhu one, but definitely tweaked for the setting), but an Agency generator and a monster generator.

Seven campaign arcs are provided, one for each of the campaign types given earlier in the book, each with the major "plot points" broken down. While none of them are fully fleshed out adventures, a GM with some experience should be able to run with what's given. The X-Files style arc, for example, involves a world domination plot partially orchestrated by parasitic aliens and another shadowy agency.

While we don't get a bestiary per se, we do get a list of generic stat blocks, as well as the major players in each of the Savage Story Arcs fully detailed.

WHAT WORKS: A great alternative for people who may have liked BLACK OPS or CONSPIRACY X but decided they weren't fans of GURPS of Classic Unisystem anymore (like me!). The book is all about options, options, options, not about shoe-horning in a single way to play...(sometimes, that shoe-horning is fine, and sometimes, you just want options, options, options). And I do so love me some random tables, even more than I do Legendary Edges.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: I always prefer a character sheet IN the book, and the PDF is also sans index. Now, while that's not a HUGE issue in a searchable, bookmarked PDF, it can be noticeable in a printed book. Also, I likes me a good bestiary, and this does look a true bestiary (though there is a sample alien or two to play with, to say nothing of the generator).

CONCLUSION: At only $10, I'm not shocked at all that this book shot to the top of the sales charts upon release. You can do straight up spies, you can do X-Files, you can do mutant super agents if you like, and it's at least 95% compatible with other Savage Worlds stuff to boot, so how can you go wrong? (Bonus points if you combine it with the Gritty options from Realms of Cthulhu for some real bone breaking action).

The Walking Dead Brings War of the Dead Sale!

To celebrate the beginning of The Walking Dead Season 2, from now until the end of the month, you can get War of the Dead Chapters 1-3 half off at RPGNow!

War of the Dead is an epic zombie apocalypse campaign for Savage Worlds that is building to a head in Chapter 4 next year, and exploding into the Savage Setting World of the Dead! You should get caught up now, before Chapter 4 comes out.

Chapters 1 and 2 were reviewed by me, and Chapter 3 edited by me!

Demon Codex: Lochs is currently on sale

Just a quick post to let everyone know that Eloy Lasanta and Third Eye Games has put Demon Codex: Lochs for Apocalypse Prevention Inc on sale for half off at their website. API is pretty great stuff, and the Lochs really come alive in the Demon Codex. Pop on over here for my full review, then on to the Third Eye Games website to order.

Tommy's Take on the Totems of the Dead GM's Guide

Apologies for the lack of reviews...working on some deadline intensive products, including the
two Horror of Trevala releases coming out later this month.

The Totems of the Dead GM's Guide came out four days ago, so let's take a look at it.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The PDF is $13 and 140 pages, and pretty entirely for the GM, as you may have guessed. The production values are the same, top notch values we have come to expect from
Gun Metal Games, including a fantastic cover by Jason Walton.

The GM chapter is a good guideline for making your own adventures, as well as providing a few campaign frameworks for Totems of the Dead. Not quite as robust as some setting books, but useful. One nice touch is the NPC Personality chart, which links each of the 20 personalities with animals, very appropriate for the setting.

A BIG chunk of the book is made up of the bestiary, so if you like monsters, here ya go. The first chunk are animals, with giant snakes and scorpions, wolverines and sabretooth tigers...as well as creepy things like pterodastros, which are weird bat/bird/lizard hybrids. The next section, Spirits and Monsters, is where things start getting really interesting. Corrupted Ones are dark magicians who can evaporate water with their lips, and the Void Dweller Demons are 9 foot tall winged demons who avoid sunlight. There are multiple varieties of mummies (including arctic ones), and snake-like vampires. And the wendigo...yeesh. It is a very evocative bestiary with some unique twists on old favorites, as well as some plain old unique surprises. With several of the beasts, the real trick is to learning what the weakness of the beasts are.

As is always great in a setting, especially one not set on modern earth, a series of NPCs archetypes are presented, like different types of Feral Ones, hunters, assassins, neanderthals and so on.

Also included: An adventure generator, and we're gonna play around with that right here.

Adversary: Angered Spirit - That's not good.
Adversary's Agenda: Recognition - Huh...that's kinda interesting.
Adversary's Ally: Beast - Hm...you usually see beasts having issues with spirits, not joining them.
Major Supporting NPCs: Wanderer - A drifter of some sort.
The Call To Adventure: Wrong Place, Wrong Time - Seems to fit the drifter more than the PCs, but could work either way.
The Setting: Large settlement/City - Easy enough, especially with the Wrong Place, Wrong Time stuff.
The Plot: Crimes of Love/Lust - Huh.
Plot Complications: Ally's Capture/Betrayal - Well, at this point, I like to make the ally the bad guy and the adversary misunderstood.
Reward: Wealth - Always a good thing.

Anyway, that gives you an idea as to the elements of the adventure generator. As with any random table, you're gonna get some...interesting...elements.

Also included is a nameless horror generator, for those times when you need something just completely off the wall, rather than the "standard" monsters in the bestiary.

A dozen Savage Tales are included, spread out over the various regions of the game world, with each region also including a random encounters table for that region. Each Savage Tale even includes a "Further Adventures" section for building off of the events just played through.

The Savage Tales are followed by a series of plot hooks that aren't fully fleshed out adventures, but give you plenty of information (at least a paragraph...in some cases two or more), further developing each region.

A slew of diseases, poisons and traps fill out the book, followed by a character sheet and map.

WHAT WORKS: I love a good bestiary, and this is a very good one, as well as random tables, and this has both an adventure generator and a nameless horror generator. Worth the price of admission right there.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: In a perfect world, it would be nicer if the Player's and GM's guides had been folded in together, but my understanding is that would have proven prohibitive to printing costs, if for no other reason than the information in each book feels SO complimentary to the other that each book feels a bit anemic on their own.

CONCLUSION: Totems of the Dead is a nice twist on the Swords and Sorcery genre, and with the release of the GM's Guide, players and GMs have a ton of material available for tribal butt-kicking action. The monsters in the bestiary may be a tad too specific to the setting to be of use for non-Totems of the Dead games, although a little re-skinning can go a long ways, and that Nameless Horror generator can be busted out in a variety of games...(say you need something for the Whateleys to summon in a pinch in your Deadlands game, for instance). Another great product from Gun Metal Games.

Tommy's Take on Realms of Cthulhu

Savage Worlds is often, erroneously, cited as only being playable one way: Pulpy, high action games. The Cthulhu mythos is often cited as only being playable one way: Dark, defeatist, investigative horror in which you are almost certainly doomed to insanity or death or both. Realms of Cthulhu has developed a bit of a reputation for proving both theories wrong.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Well, the first thing you need to know is that Realms of Cthulhu is on sale right now over at Reality Blurs' website, and you can get it at RPGNow in PDF format or in hardcopy from Beautiful Brains Books & Games (since this review should remain up WELL after the sale ends). This review covers the PDF version, which is 162 pages and layered for printer friendliness. It is not complete in and of itself, requiring a Savage Worlds rulebook in order to play.

The format covers the standard "formula" for Savage Worlds books, and I want to stress that this is not a bad thing. In addition to standard Savage Worlds character creation, characters have a Sanity score (2 + half your Spirit minus your Corruption) as well as Corruption. Characters also have Defining Interests, which can be used to add a bonus to a Common Knowledge roll.

Realms of Cthulhu also includes a number of new Hindrances and Edges, like Glass Jaw (making Soak rolls harder) and Flexible Thinker (allowing characters to get around madness penalties).

The book assumes three different time periods: The 1890s, the 1920s and modern day, with the equipment lists divided up among them (with appropriate costs and availability).

The Setting Rules allow you to twist and turn the dials up and down, with Pulpy and Gritty damage options for both Physical and Mental damage that can be mixed and matched for different play styles, with other options (like losing all of your bennies when you roll snake eyes on a roll, as well as options that tip things in the PCs' favor, like giving them the Common Bond Edge for free if they Rank Up together).

There is an extra level of complexity added with these setting rules, but they are both flavorful and they build off of existing rules. They also add guidelines on team "roles", much like Reality Blurs did with Iron Dynasty.

The Campaign section also adds another optional rule, for those times in which you need to replace a PC (due to death or insanity): They can keep the previous PC's Knowledge (Mythos) skill, but with the the same cumulative, negative effects.

Magic is an important part of the game, but Realms of Cthulhu not only removes Power Points, but also Arcane Backgrounds...meaning that anyone with access to reference books can attempt to cast the spells within...with casting being based off of Knowledge (Mythos)...and yes, there is a Backlash table for it.

In addition to a whole slew of new spells, namely rituals that can be used to find and summon elder entities and the like (as well as a disturbingly easy to cast Resurrection spell), the magic chapter not only includes important tomes (such as five versions of the Necronomicon), but a generator that you can roll on to create your OWN tomes, complete with the spells found within.

There IS also a Mythos Tales Generator, and I love that sort of thing. For instance:

Hook: Supporting Cast (Friend) - So a friend needs help.
Lynchpin: Supporting Cast (Friendly) - They could easily be one and the same. Or the Hook could be the spouse of the Lynchpin, who has gone missing, for instance.
Location: Ruin/Lost City/Temple - Thinking we could see where they went missing at.
Proximity: Regional - Within a day or two's travel.
Plot Type: Escape - Hmmm.
Plot Complication: Shock/Revelation - The gimme on this one seems to be "Old flame calls Investigator up because their spouse has gone missing near the investigators area of operation. The Investigators discover a hidden temple there and find out that the spouse is, in fact, trying to summon some Lovecraftian horror and must now be stopped."

There are also generators provided for rolling up Tainted Humans, Servitor Races and so on. And, unlike some settings, it's okay if you get something just completely off the wall, ya know?

There are no plot points, though there are four Mythos Tales, and a location called Drake Manor, with its own Mythos Tale, NPCs and such.

A number of generic NPC stats are provided, as well as an extensive bestiary, ranging from cultists, ghouls, rat things and such on up to named entities such as Dagon, on to a whole other section on Elder Gods and Great Old Ones, with a paragraph or so detailed them as best as one can describe something like, say, Cthulhu.

Conversion notes are included in the back, for folks who might want to use their Chaosium Call of Cthulhu stuff with Realms of Cthulhu. Special notice must be given to the character sheet, which is one of my favorite character sheet designs I've ever seen.

WHAT WORKS: Savage Worlds can only be played one way? Think again. Sean Preston and Reality Blurs tackled the enormous task of taking a game known for high octane adventure, and making it entirely feasible to run it as a dark, gritty, defeatist setting...or you can keep the dials turned up to 11 and scream back into the face of madness, as befits your group. That's a win right there. The character sheet is a fantastic design, and the PDF is a gorgeous piece of work.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: We'll go with...I dunno...could have used more Savage Tales. OH. Deity was mispelled Diety in one heading (at least on my copy of the PDF), SO THERE.

Conclusion: I would call this an almost essential buy for a Savage Worlds GM, especially as the options inside go a loooong ways towards helping you adjust your own games to fit the lethality or harshness you may want from it. I'm working through the Complete Works of HP Lovecraft myself right now, and so this review was very timely for me to do right now. Just an amazing product on every level, and a fine example of the potential of Savage Worlds.

Hurricane Irene Flood Relief Bundle

Hey folks...

I'll try to get back to regular reviews and such in the coming week, but I wanted to toss a shout-out regarding this Hurricane Irene Flood Relief bundle, meant to help out the Schoharie County Community Action Program in New York.

There's some great stuff in here from several companies, but I'll say that Killer Thriller, Little Fears Nightmare Edition, Savage Suzerain and Zeeks alone make it WELL worth your $25.

Hellrazer: The Series begins!

I was gonna do the whole "press release" thing over here, but it would be a bit disingenuous.

HELLRAZER, the first comic project that I worked on that saw any kind of publication (okay, only), has officially launched as a webcomic over at DrunkDuck. It's inspired a bit by shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as Marvel's old Midnight Sons books. It'll be updated every Tuesday and Friday, and the stories will be bundled together for print purchase after their completion online.

I sure do hope you check it out...I'm VERY excited about what's to come here.

Tommy's Take on Museum Mayhem, Moreau-1 Files and Copperhead Guard

MUSEUM MAYHEM

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: This Action Scene for ICONS is a little pricier than the Vigilance Press Battlescenes that have been released in the past, but you're also looking at about an additional 10-12 pages this time. The premise is a hostage situation at a museum, in which a sorcerer and his minions are repelling the authorities, so your superheroes get called in to do the deed.

What ensues is a nice set-piece against a sorcerer who has a variety of minions from generic thugs to mystics to mummy wraiths. If the villain's plan succeeds, it provides (intentionally or not) a shot out to the X-Men villain the Living Monolith. The adventure has lots of sidebars and "What Ifs" to help you out in case the whole thing is going too smoothly or two simply.

Two pages of figure flat stand-ups are included, for those who like such things (and I do), as well as a new power: Summon (more commonly used by villains than heroes, but laid out here just the same).

WHAT WORKS: Some VERY nice art here, my favorite piece being an action scene on page 6. A good amount of flexibility is written into the adventure, to help the GM along. The adventure is set in the USHERverse, the "modern day" of Vigilance's WWII setting, but you could easily replace USHER with SHIELD or AEGIS or whoever, if you wanted to move it into a new setting.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: And here we start getting into the problems of open content: Redundancy. Misfit Studios' DOOM filled in the same gap of a missing "Summon" type power, so now we have two third party versions of the power out there...and what happens when Adamant decides to do it themselves? My only other gripe is that I wish Vigilance had handled the new power the way Adamant handles new powers, by providing a "substitution suggestion" for the Summon power, for folks who prefer rolling up characters versus point buy (I hate ICONS point buy).

CONCLUSION: Not surprisingly, this is another great product by Vigilance, with sleek production values, lots of stat blocks you can use for your own stuff, printable stand-ups and more. I believe Vigilance will continue to be a growing force in supers gaming in the future.

MOREAU-1 FILES

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The Moreau-1 Files is seemingly unconnected to the USHER setting, the Wargame setting or the world being laid out in the Field Guide to Superheroes, but also seems like it would be very simple to insert in a number of settings. This $1 supplement is basically two full character write-ups: The android Moreau-1, and his creation Erapato. Moreau-1, as his name implies, is all about genetic engineering, tinkering with people and animals. It is laid out in the form of stolen intelligence, setting up the menace of Moreau-1. Erapato is an interesting creation, a type of elephant man designed to be the leader of Moreau-1's new race, though he's not so much a fan of his creator's tactics. Three plot seeds are also provided for using the material within.

WHAT WORKS: Moreau-1 and Erapato both have interesting character hooks, with Moreau-1 serving both as a supervillain arms dealer and a mad scientist, and Erapato perhaps attempting betrayal of Moreau-1 could make for some fun gameplay. As noted, the characters could fit well into a variety of supers settings with little work.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Not much, especially for the price.

CONClUSION: Personally, I see a fair amount of potential use just out of this release (the first of three). There seemed to be a weird shift in fonts on the adventure seeds, but nothing to get too excited about. Thumbs up.

WARGAMES: COPPERHEAD GUARD

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: A while back I reviewed WARGAMES: HEROES AND VILLAINS OF THE COLD WAR, which introduced General Venom (who is really kinda cool)...this supplement is The Copperhead Guard, General Venom's elite force of female assassins. Incidentally, the sole character image works, because the women all wear uniforms and tend towards similar hair styles (reddish, what with the copperhead image and all).

WHAT WORKS: Well trained mook stats are always nice. And really, anything without an individual name shouldn't be much more than that.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Qualities and Challenges got swapped, unfortunately. This really just feels like an add-on to General Venom, as they are his bodyguards with nary a real personality to be found.

CONcLUSION: Not bad, but nothing particularly interesting, especially compared to, say, Moreau-1 Files, which is the same price but feels "heftier". It is worth noting that the Copperhead Guard aren't complete pushovers, especially when you factor in their Specialties.

Tommy's Take on Deadlands One Shots and Angel & Faith #1

DEADLANDS: MASSACRE AT RED WING

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The second one shot in the new Deadlands series by Image Comics has much  closer ties to Deadlands canon than the first one, as the main character is the illegitimate daughter of Raven, who is kind of a big deal in the Deadlands spectrum. Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray and drawn by Lee Moder, Massacre at Red Wing is a revenge tale with action taken straight from the Deadlands Reloaded playbook. The back-up continues the tale of The Kid, in a flashback explaining how he came to be aware of the monsters in the Deadlands world.

WHAT WORKS: Avenging, nameless characters are kind of a staple in westerns, and Raven's daughter doesn't really reach much further past that archetype, but that is perfectly acceptable in this genre. It is nice seeing a hard tie-in to Deadlands canon, of course.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: The Kid's follow-up is a bit of a letdown to the "WHOA" from his introduction, but the whole story is only something like 12 pages once the whole thing is complete, so you can't blame 'em. Raven's Daughter's costume is overtly cheesecake. I'm also not sure where she got her looks from after seeing her father and mother. No "bonus" in this issue for Savage Worlds players, unfortunately.

CONCLUSION: While this one is more of an archetypical western tale than the Devil's Six Gun was, it's not quite as strong as the previous issue, in either the main tale or the back-up. Raven's Daughter's design is very "comic book", and not in a good way, with an outfit that is sure to cause wardrobe malfunctions. The ending is almost surely a set-up for next year's comics, which are promising to tell "The" Deadlands story. Good stuff, if not quite quite as good as Devil's Six Gun.

DEADLANDS: DEATH WAS SILENT

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Written by Ron Marz and drawn by Bart Sears, Death Was Silent is the third Deadlands one shot. When I read that Bart Sears was drawing a western, I was...skeptical. Sears does great, muscular superheroes, but he managed to adapt his style very well to the genre, drawing a tale that is darker and grittier than I expect. This is the tale of Hoyt Cooper, a mute bounty hunter who rides into town with a couple of secrets...and a dead body strapped across his horse. The back-up features more flashbacks from The Kid.

WHAT WORKS: Sears transforms his style to fit the genre very well, producing a very moody piece of work that is, thus far, the pinnacle (no pun intended) of the Deadlands releases, stylistically speaking. Hoyt Cooper wears a magic item on his chest that, at first, had me banging my head at the lack of reaction to it, but it all makes a ton of sense by the end. Not surprisingly, Marz' script holds up nicely, making for a great combination.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: More and more, I think I would have liked that back-up strip turned into its own comic, as the pacing just doesn't seem to work for it here, making the long awaited debut of Billy the Kid a little anticlimatic. Again, I lament the lack of a "bonus" for Savage Worlds players.

CONCLUSION: The potential for great Deadlands comics was always there, but Visionary Comics have really brought their "A-Game" with the releases thus far, landing not only name creators, but *quality* creators who are putting forth great comics. I assume that these one shots, and the Billy the Kid back-up, are just setting the stage for year two, which sounds to be an even more ambitious undertaking...and I, for one, look forward to it.

ANGEL & FAITH #1

So long as they avoid the annoying
sexual tension subplot.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: If you stopped following the Buffyverse after the Buffy and Angel shows went off the air, you're going to be a bit lost. However, the set-up is pretty simple: Angel has done Very Bad Things again, and is trying to make amends. This time, his Very Bad Things are at LEAST as bad as his Season 2 stint as Angelus, without the same level of deniability, and Faith is the only one willing to give him a big shot on the whole "redemption" thing (in a call-back to why she's not dead or a villian herself). So Faith and Angel are using the Watcher's Files compiled by Rupert Giles to clean up the world in the aftermath of Buffy Season 8.

WHAT WORKS: Christos Gage does a fantastic job setting the stage for the new status quo for Angel and Faith, capturing their voices very well. Rebekah Isaacs does a nice job drawing the comic in the "style" of Georges Jeannty, who has been handling art duties on Buffy for most of Season 8, making sure that you can tell that Giles is Giles, Angel is Angel, Faith is Faith and that surprise character from YEARS ago on Buffy looks like their TV counterpart.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Not much. I mean, we get two brand new characters introduced, who apparently served Angel during his stint as Twilight in Buffy Season 8, and "created for the comics" characters have been a crapshoot through the last few years of Buffy comics, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

CONCLUSION: Angel is one of my favorite characters of all time, and Christos Gage is a fantastic writer, so I had high hopes for this book. If this is any indication, the "back to basics" approach for Buffy Season 9 should work very well, and at the least, Angel & Faith is off to a great start.

Tommy's Take on Beasts & Barbarians Player's Guide

If someone had managed to get a Conan adaptation for Savage Worlds out, it really would have been the Summer of Savage Swords and Sorcery, between this and Totems of the Dead.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Currently available in PDF format for $6.99, The Beasts & Barbarians Player's Guide is a primer on the Dread Sea Dominions, a fairly classic swords and sorcery setting for Savage Worlds. The book is 76 pages and includes pretty much everything you need to run a game in the setting.

As might be expected from a book that is detailing a setting, rules and all, brevity is the order of the day, detailing the world - from history to current gazetteer - in a little over 25 pages. The included map has a rough, old school feel to it, more like the ones you would see in old fantasy novels as opposed to the ones you would see in old Dungeons and Dragons books.

One bit specifically pointed out in the setting chapter is that the world is evolving, with cultures developing new technology over time. As it is, steel and magic are the order of the day.

Character creation is pretty standard Savage Worlds fare, of course adding new Edges and Hindrances (Damsel in Distress is a particularly interesting Hindrance basically forcing you into a non-combat role...and it is NOT gender exclusive). Many of the Edges are very interesting, such as a barbarian dichotomy of Savage and Brute, the former helping you survive in the wild while the latter helps make you more ferocious in combat...and Ghoulblood, which provides you with a very unnatural affinity to the (un)dead.

There are even Edges allowing for bare chested "armor", in fitting with the genre, though the book does lack Legendary Edges, which would seem to be a no-brainer for the setting. Arcane Backgrounds in the setting are Lotus Mastery, Sorcery and the Path of Enlightment. Lotus Mastery is kinda like alchemy, but focuses specifically on using Lotus plants to power effects. Sorcery is kinda like magic, except you can Wound yourself for Power Points and the Backlash table is really cool...and potentially quite hazardous (as Backlash should be). The Path of Enlightment is practiced by the monks of the setting, transcending their earthly limits. A few new powers are present (like Analyze Foe, which gives a bonus to a target based off of your roll, and will be stolen like crazy by me for future games even outside of this setting).

Another feature of the book that I am a big fan of is the After The Adventure chart, where you can draw a card to determine what happens while you are between adventures...with both positive and negative outcomes available. For instance, you may get really drunk and be hung over on the next adventure...or you may temporarily retire from adventuring, only to return with a new skill (and a bit of "road rust" until you get back into the groove of things).

There IS a GM's section despite this beinga player's guide, and it gives advice on dialing the setting up and down, making is more or less gritty - or humorous - as your group sees fit. In fact, it also gives advice for tweaking the setting for groups that only consist of PC duos, or even solo heroes (common occurences in my games).

Relics and a small helping of creatures are also provided, though it is far from an extensive bestiary.

WHAT WORKS: Some great setting rules, as well as Edges and Hindrances, which are always welcome. I'm a very big fan of the After the Adventure chart, but random tables are right up my alley. The Ghoulblood Edge nearly made a character spring to mind almost fully formed. The interior artwork is, by and large, fantastic. Early signs are that support for the setting will be strong, with two free adventures released thus far.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Still room for expansion (although that may be a pro, you decide), especially in the bestiary (in my opinion). The setting does nothing to really GRAB me...nothing bad, mind you, just nothing that makes me say "Dread Sea Dominions is THE Swords and Sorcery setting". No Legendary Edges, especially in a genre like this, disappoints me.

CONCLUSION: GRAmel enters the Savage Worlds ring in a big way with a stacked setting book and strong support for the line. They made the best of their page count, providing a lot of material for the price. There are several cool bits that can be lifted for other games if you so choose, and the book heartily embraces flexibilty in your play style within the genre...(I demand a minisupplement of Comedy Edges). Anyone coming into the game with shoutouts to David Jarvis and Sean Preston alongside Shane Hensley probably has their head on straight, and Beasts & Barbarians is a strong addition to the Savage Worlds library. GRAmel should have a bright future in the publishing realm. Strong recommendation.