Random Acts of Kindness Week - Free Godsend Agenda and High Valor

Apparently, it is International Random Acts of Kindness Week, and a couple of awesome RPG industry folk have decided to honor it by giving away digital copies of their games.

Tommy's Top Six and Birthday Blog Giveaway

I reviewed a LOT of games since I opened my blog last year, and I wanted to take a special moment to recognize the six that captured my attention the most, provided that they fit under the following criteria: 1) I had to have reviewed the title on my blog from January 1st through December 17th. Unlike some year end awards, I'm not concerned with actual release dates, but when the books actually made it into my hands. 2) Only one book per company was allowed. This rule came in because one draft of the list had four books by two companies. The Top Six itself is a purely arbitrary number...I like the number six, nothing more.

There were a lot of products that I really enjoyed, that didn't get tagged for a certain reason, and I plan on doing a follow-up with a couple of those, explaining why I didn't choose certain titles.

Without further ado, in alphabetical order:

BASH ULTIMATE EDITION (Basic Action Games)

Why You Should Buy It: I love superheroes. It's part of the reason I write comics...(even though I have yet to do a traditional superhero book, unfortunately). Marvel SAGA is my favorite RPG of all time, flawed though it is...I've read a lot of superhero games since then, but none have captured my imagination in the same way as BASH, and I am hard pressed to think of a superhero game that does as much, with as little work. It has an "equalizer" for characters of multiple power levels on the same team, it provides plenty of options for making characters without the same level of bean counting that you get with Mutants and Masterminds or Champions, and it scales up from gritty to cosmic, all in the main rulebook. It currently holds the distinction of being the only game that I have ever purchased twice, once in PDF format and once in softcover. In fact, if the new version being released through Cubicle 7 is full color, I may go so far as to buy it one more time (and donate my black and white copy to someone). Chris Rutkowsky has made what is, to my mind, one of the best RPGs I have ever read, as it hits pretty much all of my sweet spots without a ton of work. For me, certain other major superhero RPGs are either underwritten, or incredibly overdone to the point of being Too Much Work...but BASH never has that problem. With Vigilance Press and Daring Entertainment coming aboard as third party licensees, I hope that BASH gains the following that I feel it truly deserves.

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, and look for the print version in 2011 from Cubicle 7.

HIGH VALOR (Silverlion Studios/Better Mousetrap Games)

Why You Should Buy It: I love fantasy gaming, but I can't make myself do Dungeons & Dragons anymore. I want epic, high fantasy, not dungeon crawls...and, as you may have guessed, I don't want it to be Too Much Work. High Valor is pretty much rules light, but never goes too far away from being a game. Just because you have three stats (kinda like you do in BASH, actually), and monsters only have one, doesn't mean it's not still a game. I love the mechanic of borrowing back and forth between your pools when you REALLY need to accomplish something, and I really like the fairly freeform nature of Magic and Miracles. I think one thing I love the most is that your experience comes from your Triumphs and Dooms...even epic failures help to define you, as you and your legend grows over time. Be Epic. High Valor wants you to. Don't kill a monster and take its stuff, risk life and limb to destroy an elder troll terrorizing the region, and take its head as a warning to all other foul creatures...and if it happens to rip your eye out? Then your legend is even more epic. The setting is dark, but not TOO dark...providing a growing storm of evil, sure, but you're expected to fight it *and win*. To boot, Tim Kirk seems dead set on making books that stand alone, so if you buy this? All you need is this...plus, the system is incredibly easy to convert to, since the monsters are basically one stat plus flavor text. Now, this isn't a highly tactical combat game...but it is a pretty damn awesome fantasy epic.

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, or the print version at Lulu.

INTERFACE ZERO (Gun Metal Games)

Why You Should Buy It: This is precisely what Savage Worlds settings could (and, IMHO, should) be. I'm not saying that every Savage Setting needs to ape Interface Zero, I'm saying that publishers shouldn't be afraid to make their game. Gun Metal Games does not hesitate to provide you with new Hacking rules, Cyberspace, cybernetics and the single coolest equipment chapter I have read since, well, Pinnacle released a whole book for Deadlands (both the Interface Zero equipment chapter and the Deadlands book - Smith & Robards - are written as catalogs). I'm also a sucker for random tables, as anyone that reads my reviews should know, and so not only does Gun Metal Games provide an adventure generator, but they also provide a random Bounty generator! The crazy part is that as comprehensive as this book is (at 300 pages), there is still a TON of room for development! Psychics will be coming this year, and publisher David Jarvis has been hyping it pretty heavily over on the Savage Worlds forums at www.peginc.com, if you wanna check that out. Also, Gun Metal Games and Silver Gryphon Games have announced that we will be getting an "Interface Zero" version of the latter's Wellstone City...and given the people involved, combined with the Savage Worlds system, I can't feature it not being twelve shades of awesome. In the meantime, get IZ and get acquainted with a world where life is cheap, especially if you were born in a vat (or built from the ground up).

Buy the PDF at RPGNow.

Leverage (Margaret Weis Productions)

Why You Should Buy It: Oh, man, what a year these guys had, and all because of two releases: Smallville and Leverage. Smallville was a GREAT game...but I'm not a fan of the show. Leverage was a GREAT game, and I AM a fan of the show. However, making a faithful adaptation of the show wouldn't have been enough to make the list. And luckily, they did more than that: Sure, you can run the Leverage crew, no problem...and you can build your own crew from the ground up. However, the book walks you through basically every step necessary to set up your world and run your game, including (YES!) random generators for making Jobs for your Crew to take! When I read the quickstart, I was excited, but scared to death: I mean, seriously, how in the heck do you run LEVERAGE as an RPG? For me, it seemed awfully daunting...and then came one of the best GMing chapters I have ever read. At that point, I was mostly just sad not to have the opportunity to run it right now. Great concepts get mangled in translation all the time, but Margaret Weis Productions took this opportunity and knocked it out of the park. Just an amazingly well-written rulebook and a phenomenal translation of the TV show.

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, or order the hardcopy from Margaret Weis Productions.

War of the Dead Chapter One (Daring Entertainment)

Why You Should Buy It: One of the most ambitious projects ever released for Savage Worlds, War of the Dead is a four part, epic campaign beginning on a simple cruise ship and changing the world forever. This is the zombie apocalypse come to Savage Worlds in a way that Zombie Run could never have been. Chapter One is the first thirteen weeks of the campaign, taking your hapless, Novice characters from their life-changing cruise, back to land, including a conflict with a ruthless biker gang and relative safety in one of the remaining refuges left. The world is familiar and filled with inside references to famous zombie creators like George Romero and Robert Kirkman, but most importantly, Lee Szczepanik understands the strengths of the system he is writing for, filling adventures with massive battles against zombie hordes that would have GMs pulling their hair out under many systems. Also, I'm a big fan of how many of the episodes feature random encounter charts, using card draws, specialized for the location and situation. Plus, of the books on this list, the support for War of the Dead absolutely blows the other picks away, with freebie adventures that fill the gap between Chapter One and Chapter Two, as well as one of the coolest sets of paper miniatures I have seen in The Paper Dead, including a printable RV with "anti zombie" attachments! If you like The Walking Dead or Night of the Living Dead, and wanna play something like it, this is it, right here. Chapter Two is in the home stretch now, and has even eclipsed Chapter One in some ways, though it has never failed to live up to the promise of Chapter One, even at its low points, in my opinion. I admit, when this project was first announced, I threw up my shoulders with a resounding "eh"...but going on nearly twenty six installments now (not even counting the free adventures), and Daring Entertainment has produced a Savage Worlds campaign with some amazing promise, as well as a scope rarely seen in this genre (again, The Walking Dead is the closest thing that comes to mind).

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, or order the print version from Cubicle 7.

Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade (Third Eye Games)

Why You Should Buy It: I like superheroes, high fantasy, zombies, Leverage...I'm not BIG into cyberpunk, but I'll try anything in Savage Worlds. I kinda hate most anime, and I'm just not into oriental mysticism/mythology/history, etc. So why is Wu Xing here? Because I am not into those things and this book just stood out as one of the coolest books I have read in recent memory, perhaps ever. I had no real experience with Third Eye Games before this year, though I did get Apocalypse Prevention Inc. in the Haiti Bundle, but it kind of got lost in the shuffle when I was trying to download and read EVERYTHING. After Eloy Lasanta approached me about the game, I gave it an honest go, and really loved what I read there...so I checked out Wu Xing on the strength of API (which is right up my comfort zone, genre-wise)...what I found was a very cool, over the top, albeit westernized (to the annoyance of some, not me) martial arts fantasy epic.  The production is fairly light in this day and age, but that just means the book is filled with content. Plot hooks are all over the thing, and Third Eye Games doesn't truck in metaplots, meaning that if you want to expand something there and run with it, or answering one of the burning questions, there is no wrong answer and you are not likely to find something completely invalidated by a future book. All of the clans just come alive, and what could easily have been a rigid, "not much else to do" setting is instead loaded with intrigue and plot hooks. Any RPG that can take a genre I pretty much can't stand and make me go "oh, crap, I GOTTA play" is a big winner in my book. Wu Xing is just full of "cool".

Buy the PDF at RPGnow (where Wu Xing is also listed as Print on Demand option for those who have it available) or pick up the print version at Beautiful Brains Books & Games.

And now, the cool part:

These six publishers have pledged to give you, dear readers, a chance to win PDFs of these games, as part of the "Thank you" for reading the blog and the reviews of their fine games. Here are the prizes:

- Three (3) PDF copies of BASH Ultimate Edition (awarded separately) -OR- a Basic Action Games PDF of your choice, if you already own BASH.
- A PDF copy of High Valor.
- A PDF copy of Interface Zero plus a poster-sized PDF of the cover.
- Three (3) PDF copies of the Leverage RPG.
- A complete War of the Dead Chapter One PDF bundle, including the entire War of the Dead Chapter One, The Paper Dead and all of the Freebies released to date, everything you need (except for the Savage Worlds rules) in order to jump into Chapter Two.
- A PDF copy of Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade.

To enter, simply send me an e-mail to tommyb(a)sstelco(dot)com, with the subject (minus the quotes) "Happy Birthday Blog", listing your order of preference for the prize. Once I have closed entries by 11:59 PM Central Time on January 15th, I will use a randomizer to determine the winners...#1 gets their first choice, #2 gets their first available choice (their first choice if it wasn't taken, second if it was, and so on). If you are wanting a BASH PDF that isn't Ultimate Edition, specify it in the e-mail.

Thank you all so much for reading this blog, thanks to Michael Wolf at Stargazer's World, whose shoutout helped spike my blog traffic immensely over the summer, thank you to the Top Six publishers for the prize support for this giveaway, thank you to every publisher who gave me product to review over this last year, and thank you to Sean Patrick Fannon of RPGnow for allowing me in the affiliate program, which literally allowed me to make it to and from work when I started a new job last summer and otherwise had *nothing* to put in my gas tank.

Next up on the slate: A few products that were exceptional, but why I didn't pick them for the Top Six, reviews of the Squawk RPG as well as Dust Devils Revenged, an overall look back on 2010, some WWE thoughts for old times sake, probably a full on review of Smackdown vs Raw, the Legendary installment of Savage Worlds Characters Are All The Same, the new Supers version of it, and a look at RPGnow's new Print on Demand program (as I was apparently one of the last ones in the pilot program to get my book...despite ordering two hours after it launched).

Thank you, have a Happy New Year, and come back soon!

Tommy

Tommy's Take on The Inn of Lost Heroes

The Inn of Lost Heroes is the second adventure by Small Niche Games, written by Peter Spahn for Labyrinth Lord.

No, I haven't suddenly started playing Labyrinth Lord since I reviewed Blood Moon Rising. Like that review, I will be examining this adventure for utility with other RPGs, namely Savage Worlds and High Valor.

The Inn of Lost Heroes is a 38 pag PDF, bookmarked, and largely black and white. As it goes with adventures, please be prepared for spoilers, though I'll try to go light.

Tommy's Take on Blood Moon Rising

Blood Moon Rising is the first adventure for Labyrinth Lord by Small Niche Games. I'm going to be approaching this from a little different tack: I don't play Labyrinth Lord or D&D or any of the retroclones. However, I do likes me some adventures, and good ideas can be stolen for other games.

***WARNING***

I try to go light in spoilers...BUT...it is impossible for me to leave them out completely. If you are going to be playing in this, do yourself a favor and go away.


Seriously.

***END WARNING***

Blood Moon Rising is set up as a "sandbox"/timeline type adventure for 3-6 characters of 1-3 level. Basically, the book gives you a town with NPCs and a backstory, and the timeline of events that will occur during their big festival celebrating an ancient warrior that they all revere.

From there, the PCs interact with whatever they will, until the whole thing is resolved. The action rises, as action tends to do, until the PCs should find it virtually impossible not to realize that something isn't right (in fact, there is a very nice hook on Day One to draw them deeper into events unless they are completely self absorbed).

I love adventures that give you freedom, and this one does from the beginning, not even making any assumptions about the reason the PCs are in the town, just giving you some excuses if you need the help.

The background section gives you the backstory of the village, which has mutated considerably until it has become a very...inaccurate...local legend.

The village of Garanton is pretty small, about 200 people, and utterly normal for the most part...except for the interesting little spring on the edge of town with strange healing properties...until the New Moon...then I wouldn't want to bathe in it.

The Feast of St. Garan is a five day festival celebrating this great warrior that liberated the land, and is presented in the book as a series of events in the manner and order that they will occur, should the PCs not interfere.

The fifth night of the festival is the Blood Moon, hence the name of the module.

We are first presented with the normal order of events, followed by the major events from each day. Warrior types can compete in the Honor Games over the five day period, with the possibility of a title and a sweet, sweet magic item out of the deal. There is also the possibility of Honor Duels, which can be fought using non-lethal damage, to first blood or to the death, if a heated issue spirals out of control.

On Day One, the first Honor Game is held, which is a simple test of strength...but characters can discover some helpful clues about the true nature of the festival from the rocks.

A potential hook is also set in which a local artist asks the PCs to pose for a portrait...but he's fated to go missing overnight.

Day Two likely starts with news of a local farmer's cows being slaughtered and the PCs missing their appointment with the artist, because he's gone missing.

Day two also provides a Test of Nerve in the Honor Game, which has the potential to set the PCs on a collision course with an orc tribe that has become drawn to the area. Overnight, the a farmhouse is attacked by creepy demons (who killed the cattle the night before), further escalating tensions and making the mood somber.

The Day Three Test of Steed can provide slight financial benefit for a participant, but no plot-worthy extras like the first two days.

Day three also ratchets up the tension with the first human casualties, at least one of which is not what it seems.

Day four provides the opportunity for the PCs to uncover the truth about one of the attacks, as well as a possible battle that can turn them into instant heroes. However, the growing darkness over the events are driving people away now, before the end of the festival.

Finally, on Day Five, the Honor Games will conclude and - that night - a nasty group of demons attack the village. If the PCs have stuck around, they have a chance of driving off the demons...if not, the village is slaughtered.

It sounds simple enough, but there's plenty of action and excitement for a rookie party over a few sessions.

Twenty random encounters are also present, which include large, drunken women hitting on the PCs and not taking "No" for an answer, a young warrior being hazed, a fan club for one of the PCs, the possibility of scoring a very special mount and more.

Another series of encounters are present for those leaving the village, including the possibility of investigating the Tomb of St. Garan (and finding the good "saint" to be a sealed away undead Wight), as well as precisely what can happen if the PCs venture to the Demon Gate that is releasing the night demons on the village, and lays seeds for continuing adventures with much more powerful beasties trying to break through the gate (for when the PCs are higher level, of course).

The final resolution of the adventure is up the PCs, depending on what they did and how much exploration they indulged in, as they could uncover the truth about the area's history (effectively ending the annual festival), inadvertantly unleash an undead plague on the land to go with the demonic one, and allow an infernal beacon to draw all manner of evil to the area (if they don't destroy the Demon Gate).

All of the important (and semi-important) NPCs are given stats and summaries, and an appendix provided adds in a new spell (Lesser Charm Monster), as well as a pair of magic items (the Mantle and Sword of St. Garan) and two new monsters (the Night Demons and Demon Grubs).

My thoughts?

I will never run this as written...because AD&D/Labyrinth Lord/OSRIC/etc do not appeal to me.

HOWEVER...I would absolutely convert this to Savage Worlds or High Valor and use it as a potential launching point for a new campaign. For $4.95 you not only get a good sandbox adventure, you get a potential "home base" for PCs with a couple of plot hooks that could spawn into minicampaigns (or full blown epic conflicts in the case of the Demon Gate and what it's holding back) down the line.

Very cool stuff, and worth it even factoring in the necessary conversion work I'd have to do (not that High Valor or Savage Worlds would require a ton of work).

Great stuff...better than most of the modules I remember getting back in the day.

Tommy's Take on High Valor

Disclaimer: I consider Tim Kirk to be a friend of mine.  That said, he and I both know we don't necessarily agree on all things regarding game design.  However, Tim trusts me to give him a fair review and I'll do that.  It's all I've ever tried to do with these things.  Honestly, if anything, I'm probably being a tad rougher in some areas because of it.

Silverlion Studios just released their second RPG, High Valor,  which is a new fantasy RPG designed for heroic fantasy role-playing.  The author states up front that he's not trying to reinvent the wheel, just provide an alternative for those who aren't pleased with their current choice of fantasy role-playing, or even those who just want to try something new.

High Valor was just released on RPG.now for $12.95 in PDF format.  The PDF not only has a table of contents and index, but is fully bookmarked and searchable for easy reference.  The book was released in black and white, but this was a thematic choice on the part of the designer, and honestly I really think it works.  Similar to how most of the supplements for the Midnight game line were all in black and white, it helps enhance the feel rather than take away from it.  I do know the author just received a print copy of the book, so I imagine a print release is also on the horizon, though I don't have those details at the time of this review.

High Valor hits a few of my pet peeves right off the bat, in that it includes dwarves and elves, but renames them Dvegr and Sidda, respectively.  I don't mind dwarves and elves being in the game, but I'd just prefer them be called dwarves and elves.  The second pet peeve is that PCs are largely defined by traits and challenges, which are player defined (not unlike FATE or Over the Edge).  This one is alleviated, however, by a LARGE list of examples from various kinds of traits, rather than just a couple of examples to choose from.  The third thing that gave me an eye twitch was when I got the bestiary: Monsters and adversaries are pure description with a challenge score.  That is, say, a troll is a Heroic challenge, and that sets the difficulty for defeating a troll outright.  You can try to wear it down by making less difficult actions and thus taking less risk, however.  The final thing isn't a pet peeve per se, but High Valor is a “players roll” system, meaning that, well, players roll dice and the GM doesn't.  I don't have a problem with this, but in my experience this always leads to a few oddities in the system and I've picked up the odd place in the magic system where this might be the case.

From a design standpoint, there are a few places in the book where font selections made the text a little more difficult to read.  The author said this was meant to emulate a “handwriting” type of feel, and that would have been fine if those sections were just flavor text, but actual game information is in there, and that makes it disconcerting.

That said, those are my complaints.

High Valor is set in a world called Aiea, which is nearing the end of their Dark Ages when the Black Gate falls and the demonic Fane Lords return.  Thus, the time is ripe for heroes to rise and protect the world from the Fane Lords and their minions.  The setting is detailed, but not heavily so.  In fact, the timeline is left with blank spots for the GM to fill in their own events to flesh out the world.  The author provides details like coinage, verbage and the like to help give the world its identity, but there is meticulously detailing of every major NPC like you might find in a lot of fantasy settings.

Character creation goes in steps and is largely freeform.  First, pick you concept and then your kinship.  Kinship is equivalent to race in your typical fantasy game and includes the Dvegr and Sidda, as well as Humans, the magic-twisted Sidhain (still kinda human, just...different) and Fomoradgh, the animalistic former footsoldiers of The Fane Lords who have decided to fight their former masters.  Every kinship has an inherent trait and challenge or, in the case of the Sidhain, a list of traits or challenges to choose from.  After that, you pick background traits keyed to being a member of your kinship.  From there, select a profession and traits related to that and then three open traits for fleshing out.  Traits add to your die rolls where applicable and are ranked from Lesser (+2) up to Mythic (+10).  The challenge scale works on a similar scale of Lesser (8) to Mythic (28).  Character generation gives you the option in places of taking, say, fewer traits at a higher level, or more traits at a lower level.

Once your traits are complete, you have 5 dice to distribute among your FEAT Pools, which are Valor, Will and Faith.  Each starts off at 1, so you get that freebie.  Valor is generally used for physical type stuff, Will for mental type stuff (including magic) and Faith can be used to invoked divine miracles as well as ward off dark forces.

Everything you do involves rolling from those pools and applying relevant traits.  You take the highest die and add your traits.  HOWEVER, for every “10” that you roll, you keep it AND add the next highest die.  So if you roll four dice and get 3, 5, 6 and 9, you take the 9 and add the two highest relevant traits.  Had you rolled 3, 5, 6 and 10, you get the 10 and the 6 plus the traits!  You must roll higher than the target number to succeed.  If you roll equal to it, that's a stalemate and the GM or the player can take a minor setback for the character they have involved in the conflict in order to take the upperhand, or they can call that action a draw and move on to the next action.

When things are desperate, you can use other pools to bolster an active one.  Say you are locked in a physical struggle with a giant and you think your physical Valor will not be enough, you can borrow a die from your Will pool to bolster yourself for the struggle.  Or, say, a dark force is trying to corrupt you and your Will is fading...so you invoke a Prayer and add Faith to your pool.  The downside is that doing so diminishes the pool you borrowed from for an entire scene.  The only limits are that you cannot use Faith to bolster magic and you cannot Will miracles into existence.  However, your allied can lend you dice and they have no limitations on how they do that...literally, your allies can will you to greater heights.

The stakes for failure are based off of the difficulty of the action.  If something is of a Lesser difficulty, there shouldn't be any danger of death.  However, a Mythic challenge is very, very harrowing and so on.  When faced with a challenge that is just too overwhelming, with the GM's (or “Teller's”) discretion you can take smaller, less difficult actions to whittle the challenge down and increase your chances of success.  I definitely think this is something that'll take some getting used to for myself and my players, but could be very cool regardless.

Just about everything in the game is a Trait.  If you have a sword, but not a Sword trait, you roll Valor.  If you have your Father's Battle-Worn Blade (+4), you roll Valor +4.  Since you can add two relevant traits to an action, if you have your Father's Battle-Worn Blade (+4) and Swordsman (+2), roll your Valor +6.

Enchanted items work the same way, and a sample of Items of Power are included in the book, as well as tips on converting existing equipment to Items of Power, something I've always loved.  Don't get me wrong...it's cool finding a Vorpal Weapon +3....but it's a LOT cooler when you plunge your sword into a demon's fiery heart and from that day forward your blade is covered in glowing veins that are poison to those of demonic blood, am I right?

As noted above, there are two kinds of metaphysics in the game: Faith and Magic.

Faith has smaller applications, such as Blessings.  They can be used to lay a protective blessing on children, ward off demons for a day and so forth.  Minor miracles are the next step, and some of the examples supplied include gusts of wind knocking arrows aside or the sun emerging from the clouds to blind a foe.  Major miracles can summon Angelic aid, raise the dead and open sinkholes under enemies.  Note, however, that miracles can have setbacks and they can be intense, such as drawing the attention of evil forces or even encouraging the High Power to call the miracle invoker home...(death, basically).

Magic is divided into Low and High magic, which is not unlike the Blessings/Miracles division.  Low magic are very minor effects, that can be reasonably denied.  They generally add, at best, a +2 to an action like a Lesser Trait.  High Magic, on the other hand, can do wondrous things, but requires relevant skills to perform and can have much greater consequences.  In fact, every use of High magic WILL have setbacks...though the caster, with time, preparation and ritual can reduce the level of setback.  The simplest is Shadowplay, which is creating a short rhyme for the spell, said out loud, and reduces the setback level by 1 step.  No matter how much the caster prepares, though, they cannot eliminate the setbacks altogether.

Using a similar set-up to the Faith and Magic system, the book also details a list of herbs, poisons and plants that can be used to provide a variety of traits, such as mandrake, which can be used to both knock a person unconscious or kill them, the furze tree, which acts as a barrier against trolls and can be burnt to ward off all evil, and coltsfoot, used specifically to heal horses and their riders.

High Valor uses an interesting advancement system, in which you track your Triumphs and Dooms.  These are your major successes and failures.  Once you have accumulated ten of them, you can advance your character, either by improving a Trait, adding a die to a pool, adding a new trait or removing a challenge.  The key in each is significance.  Beating up a shopkeeper and taking their money?  Not impressive.  Rallying the impoverished town together to wage war against the demon-influenced overlord and overthrowing his reign of oppression?  Much better.  And even if that attempt fails, the town is crushed and you're left for dead, that's still gonna fall under a Doom.  The key is to think Big.

The cover is very indicative to what High Valor is all about: A lone warrior, spear in hand, standing over fallen foes while another group of enemies rushes him and the demonic head of a Fane Lord appears overhead.  The setting included into the book has dark forces brewing, but unlike a Midnight or a Ravenloft, there is no sense that heroes will be crushed for fighting evil.  Quite the opposite, in fact...great evil is there to allow the PCs to rise up and BE heroes.  That's how I like my fantasy.  Heck, that's how I like my games, period: Dark, but not hopeless.  There must be a little spark that can be fanned into a glorious flame, and for the misgivings I laid out at the beginning of this review, that is exactly what High Valor provides.

High Valor is designed to provide the kind of fantasy adventure I wanted from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, but never quite found because so much of the system was still geared towards killing things and taking its stuff.  High Valor provides a vehicle for that kind of epic, storytelling adventure while still keeping the “game” part of it present.