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Review: Cosmere Roleplaying Game:: This Cosmere System
Posted: Thu, 10 Sep 06:52:03
First off this system reminds me very strongly of Daggerheart. Not because of any rules, and not even because of the feeling it invokes, but because its a d20 system that borrows from a lot of well recieved RPGs and just 'bolts' systems on.
Players have goals. Goals need a number of ticks before they are completed. Completed goals give characters rewards (such as contacts and allies). This is the clock system from Blades in the Dark.
There are six stats, several skills, each skill has skill ranks, and each skill uses the modifier of the stat. You have three defenses, physical, mental, spiritual. Your target number is 10+(the two specific stats for this defense). I'm looking at 4th edition with its three types of AC. I do like that when you roll to hit with a weapon, you add your "light weapon skill" to hit or damage (or other relevant weapon skill). It folds skills into combat. This for D&D was always a problem, there was a combat part of the character sheet, and in combat players looked there first. So whilst you could always interact with the environment this was only an option when you were out of good ones.
Roll a d20 (sometime with advantage or disadvantage), sometimes a hope die (which either gives you a boon for the scene, or it gives you a +2 or +4 and gives the GM a boon for the scene).
You have your meta currency (focus / Stormlight) which power your abilities. Abilities are driven by making choices, and these choices are just a feat tree.
Skill challenges are an intergrated thing.
Combat is on a grid, roll a d20 to hit, roll other dice for damage. You have three actions in combat (hello Pathfinder 2). There is no initiative (hello Daggerheart). There are fast monsters, and slow monsters. At the top of the combat round any player can declare they are going fast, this looses them an action (so they only have 2) and these fast players go in any order they like. Then fast monsters go. Then slow players go. Then Slow Monsters go. No drawing cards, or lots of dice, or lists, its very elegant. Honestly for a d20 combat system I've become more of a fan than I'd expect. Some boss monsters get to move in both the fast and slow blocks.
The theme is ..... pretty good? I read Mysborn, but not way of Kings. I can engage in the scenario. There are absolutely callouts to the books other players love. And we are clearly trekking over the land hitting the 'highlight spots'.
I have admitted before that I am a system snob. A system purist if you will. I like one elegant core mechanic in a game. This game is not that. It's a 'throw lots of good things from other systems in and let it mix up'. The end result is clearly something 'like D&D' and yet 'not D&D'. And it is a change, IMO for the better. Combat frequently involves using skills, particularly to hit a mental or spiritual defense. Players push toward their goals.
For a game where you want to play the story of the zero to hero, and where you want some aspects of power fantasy, particularly at the later parts. This is a solid choice. It solves a lot of problems D&D has, by ripping that part out and putting something else in. Long lists of spells - gone. Long lists of combat options - gone. Some stats being more useful than others - gone. Perhaps this is what a game needs to do to be successful now - be a d20 roll high system, and have enough similarity to D&D it doesnt' feel like learning a whole new game.
Posted: Thu, 10 Sep 06:52:03
by jodokast
I write this review with about a dozen sessions under my belt. I've been a player. The GM is running the campaign that came with the Kickstarter.First off this system reminds me very strongly of Daggerheart. Not because of any rules, and not even because of the feeling it invokes, but because its a d20 system that borrows from a lot of well recieved RPGs and just 'bolts' systems on.
Players have goals. Goals need a number of ticks before they are completed. Completed goals give characters rewards (such as contacts and allies). This is the clock system from Blades in the Dark.
There are six stats, several skills, each skill has skill ranks, and each skill uses the modifier of the stat. You have three defenses, physical, mental, spiritual. Your target number is 10+(the two specific stats for this defense). I'm looking at 4th edition with its three types of AC. I do like that when you roll to hit with a weapon, you add your "light weapon skill" to hit or damage (or other relevant weapon skill). It folds skills into combat. This for D&D was always a problem, there was a combat part of the character sheet, and in combat players looked there first. So whilst you could always interact with the environment this was only an option when you were out of good ones.
Roll a d20 (sometime with advantage or disadvantage), sometimes a hope die (which either gives you a boon for the scene, or it gives you a +2 or +4 and gives the GM a boon for the scene).
You have your meta currency (focus / Stormlight) which power your abilities. Abilities are driven by making choices, and these choices are just a feat tree.
Skill challenges are an intergrated thing.
Combat is on a grid, roll a d20 to hit, roll other dice for damage. You have three actions in combat (hello Pathfinder 2). There is no initiative (hello Daggerheart). There are fast monsters, and slow monsters. At the top of the combat round any player can declare they are going fast, this looses them an action (so they only have 2) and these fast players go in any order they like. Then fast monsters go. Then slow players go. Then Slow Monsters go. No drawing cards, or lots of dice, or lists, its very elegant. Honestly for a d20 combat system I've become more of a fan than I'd expect. Some boss monsters get to move in both the fast and slow blocks.
The theme is ..... pretty good? I read Mysborn, but not way of Kings. I can engage in the scenario. There are absolutely callouts to the books other players love. And we are clearly trekking over the land hitting the 'highlight spots'.
I have admitted before that I am a system snob. A system purist if you will. I like one elegant core mechanic in a game. This game is not that. It's a 'throw lots of good things from other systems in and let it mix up'. The end result is clearly something 'like D&D' and yet 'not D&D'. And it is a change, IMO for the better. Combat frequently involves using skills, particularly to hit a mental or spiritual defense. Players push toward their goals.
For a game where you want to play the story of the zero to hero, and where you want some aspects of power fantasy, particularly at the later parts. This is a solid choice. It solves a lot of problems D&D has, by ripping that part out and putting something else in. Long lists of spells - gone. Long lists of combat options - gone. Some stats being more useful than others - gone. Perhaps this is what a game needs to do to be successful now - be a d20 roll high system, and have enough similarity to D&D it doesnt' feel like learning a whole new game.
Review: The Pillars of the Sky:: The Pillars of the Sky Review
Posted: Thu, 10 Sep 06:51:52
First Impressions:
- My very first impression looking at the softback book is that it looks cool... I'm terribly sorry for making such a predictable pun - I couldn't help myself. Now for real; the icy and light blue mountainscape is calming to look at even though you just know that it's going to be a very dangerous place once you get adventuring there. The ancient ship in the middle of the front cover somehow transported high up a mountain is a mystery that really invites you in. Is there treasure in it? Undead crew waiting to sap the life out of any hapless adventurer? I already want to dig in. On the back cover we have a single character in mountain climbing gear making their way towards the ship. I love it when book covers wrap around like this instead of the back cover just repeating the image from the front cover or something like that. And you don't need to picture some terrible monster to make a book cover interesting like now both of the VulcanVerse books that I've handled have proven.
- This book is equal in thickness with The Houses of the Dead (which I played through previously) but there are 240 paragraphs more (for a total of 1076). It means that on average the paragraphs must be substantially shorter in this book. I do like books with descriptive writing style and long paragraphs but perhaps THotD went a bit overboard with that and it was very heavy to read and play. Hopefully the higher paragraph count means that this book lets the player act more.
- The large-ish (20 x 25 cm) size of the book is a good fit for a gamebook. I've played some smaller brick-like gamebooks and they've been unwieldy to play.
- My black&white copy of the book has been printed by Amazon Distribution. The paper quality is pretty average. The covers have a some kind of protective coating that gives them a sheen and make them smooth to touch but the edges are already showing white here and there meaning they aren't very high quality either.
(I took the images with my phone camera while holding the pages with my other hand so that's why the curvature of the pages shows and the images are lit a bit weirdly.)
Rules:
The rules are the same as in the first book of the series. You start from paragraph 1 and proceed to other paragraphs from there based on your choices or if you are coming from another book in the series you have been told there which paragraph you should go to in this book. Sometimes a paragraph checks if you have some codeword on your character sheet or if there's a ticked box attached to the paragraph (for example some paragraphs allow you to search for random loot three times and that is tracked with check boxes) and if the conditions are met the book directs you to immediately turn to some other paragraph.
Your character has four attributes (charm, grace, ingenuity and strength) ranging typically from -1 to +5. Items in your inventory can boost the attributes with +1/+2 and you can also earn one-time extra bonuses to dice rolls. When you need to check an attribute (for example to fight an enemy) you roll 2d6 and add your applicable modifier and see if you met or exceeded a target number. You can find godly blessings (you can have up to three) which allow you to reroll a failed attribute check once.
Your character doesn't have health, like in most gamebooks. Instead you often simply die if an enemy manages to hit you or else you get a wound and if you ever would get a second wound that means immediate death. Dying means you get a 'Scar' (having too many scars for example might make some NPCs shun you), dump all your carried items to a special vault and then you get resurrected at a random location in the game world (from a few of possibilities). You'll have to traverse back to the vault of the region you died in to get your items back and that serves as a penalty for dying (basically you lose a bit of playing time and that's it).
Your character can carry up to 20 items in their inventory. You can sometimes gain special titles, companions and glory (renown in the game world and it's used as a gate to make you first complete easier quests before you can access more difficult quests and so on).
Artwork:
- As I wrote in the first impressions I like the coloured covers but honestly speaking the black&white images on the pages of the book don't make much of an impression to me. There are just eight unique images (if you include the map) which is a very low amount for a gamebook of this length. I would have liked to see a lot more of unique images. Most gamebooks I've played feature small 'filler' images between paragraphs here and there in addition to half- or quarter-page images but this gamebook doesn't have those. With 154 pages chock-full of text it's rare to even glimpse an image. Most of the time you are just looking at walls of text.
- The watercolour art style probably looks great and dreamlike when printed in colour (like the cover does) but in black&white it's not at its best. It looks crude and doesn't have much details to draw you in. The colour printed book costs like three times as much as the b&w book does and with how few images there are I just don't think it's a very good investment.
- It would seem that the images on the pages haven't been made for any specific paragraphs of the book. They are mostly just images of generic snowy mountain vistas and since each of the images is used a couple of times I'm quite confident in my inkling. In my opinion gamebook art simply is better when it depicts something that happens or can be seen in accompanying paragraphs.
- I appreciate the map of the region (The Mountains of Boreas) where the adventure takes place. It makes finding your bearings much easier while playing.
Thoughts while Playing:
This section is reserved for my notable thoughts while playing the gamebook. I use them as a basis for writing about the positives and negatives below plus they might be of interest to other players who've played the book. I've kept my observations purposefully somewhat vague in order to avoid any big spoilers but I've spoiler tagged my notes just in case.
[o]- It's annoying that it has been only a bit under three months since I played through The Houses of the Dead but I can't remember which of the items in my inventory are super important quest items and which aren't so. Kingslayer Dagger? Tapestry of Arachne? Daemon Blood? Bone Flute of Kore? Should I stash some of these or should I carry them around just in case? The 20 item inventory limit is extra annoying coupled with design philosophy in which you will often miss out side quests if you are not carrying some specific item when the quest comes up.
- The foreword that summarizes what you can do in this book sounds pretty epic. Labyrinths of a lost civilization, mechanical marvels built to plumb the depths of the cosmos, a sea battle, avenge your brother's death, build a city and raise it to the heights of glory, etc.
- I left the City of the Dead where I had parked myself at the end of the previous book and made my way to the Gate of Ivory where I could pass to the Boreas mountains. I aimed at the Harpies' Nest on the map but strangely I couldn't get there so I kept going northward. I met a poet dishing out poor jokes? He'll need to search for a better audience. An orange carnelian door set into a rockface? Didn't open for me. A troubled stranger? Well, a hero needs to help those in need.
- I tried to help a some kind of cat down from a tree but I failed the skill check and the cat died. Oops.
- I've now had the book query me about three possible different companions in order to access special paragraphs. I haven't yet encountered anyone who'd offer to join me on my adventures!
- Uh? I found the ship pictured on the cover of the book? I thought it would be a harder ordeal. Behind a quest chain and not that you could just walk there.
- I knew it - I unloaded some items from my inventory I thought I wouldn't need when I set on my journey from the City of the Dead to make space for new items I'd acquire in this book but now a quest requires one of those items I left in storage. I'll have to traverse back to go fetch it. Not very exciting usage of time.
- A bird pooped on me?
- I saw a naked oread playing with a waterfall. She was surprisingly talkative. She had a small riddle or rather a test of knowledge for me. I had played Pandora's Legacy relatively recently so I immediately knew the answer.
- I met some miners and they wanted to present a riddle to me. Unfortunately I got it wrong. I'd have rather gone drinking with them - all that talking left my mouth dry.
- I had some more strange encounters and after those I finally met a legendary minotaur!
- I had a chance to explore an eyot. I had never encountered the word before so naturally I was curious to see what it was.
- My throat got ripped out fighting a kopis.
- After returning back to life I went to get some gear from my dwelling in THotD before trekking back to the Boreas mountains. I really need to find where the items I lost when I died are waiting for me and get them back.
- I happened upon an atlas tree. Unfortunately I couldn't approach it because it was guarded.
- Chthonic regions? Is that a real word? After googling I can tell that apparently it is. It's not the first time playing this book I've encountered something I hadn't heard about before and I ended up looking it up from wikipedia.
- I lost in a singing contest. It annoys me that I would have won if I had found and reclaimed the items I lost when I died. Alas I still have no idea how to get to where they are waiting for me. I'll need to explore more.
- I've now played for over four hours and I'm still pretty much wandering around aimlessly. I have no idea what is the main quest or where to start it. I've managed to complete one simple side quest but that's it. I found another side quest but when I asked the NPC that gave me the quest where I need to go to find the objective of the quest it just told me to go and search and not ask stupid questions. Yeah... A lot of aimless wandering. There are two named locations left on the map I haven't yet gotten to so I hope either of those will offer me the main quest.
- Amazingly I managed to steal some items from a hippogriff's nest and escape without any serious injury.
- I met someone freezing inside a hut even though there was a fire burning. I bet there's a curse or something.
- I encountered a shrine to Artemis but I wasn't able to do anything there.
- I rummaged through a harpy nest and it turned out to be a very bad idea.
- I got rid of my invisible tormentor in a very unexpected way. I thought it would take gathering some magical items from all over the place but the solution was much more easier.
- There was a four tiered checkbox system to give me a clue about a possible location of a quest. The quest sounds like a side quest but I hope the location can be used to learn information about other available quests too.
- I beat a fat man in a strongman contest. A real heroic moment that was.
- I slipped trying to scale a mountain and fell to my death. Slightly annoying. I was carrying several quest items and now they are in the vault I haven't found yet together with all the items I lost earlier and I can't proceed in the quests until I get the items back.
- Weird. I thought I finally managed to find the place where the main quest of the book starts but I was served a wound and then banished out. What should I do now?
- I watched a lousy play. Even the peasants watching it were bored.
- I found a locked entrance to an underground realm.
- What. I found the vault and it required much less work to access than I thought it would take.
- I got hit by... thunder? Why am I bleeding then?
- I encountered a boat hurled on top of a tree. Weird.
- I was wise enough not to trek too far onto frozen sea. Something was luring me further away from the shore but I broke the trance I was in.
- I got a side quest that required me to go skin a cat. Uh-huh. Well, I already know where I can encounter a cat stuck in a tree.
- I saved a sacred creature of my patron god and got a nice special blessing.
- Believing in gods really pays off here. I received another blessing and now my body feels more agile. The flipside is that it's easy to become cursed by offending them too.
- Getting back to where I needed to turn in the catskin was troublesome. There are very few routes that lead back there and I spent some time going in circles.
- I tried to hunt a mammoth but the dice didn't favour me and I died fairly gruesomely.
- I completed a side quest and on my way back to the central region I got ambushed by an undying pursuer and the dice provided me some low rolls which led to me dying yet again.
- Solved a crime involving a locked room with an unbroken lock.
- I probably should have done it earlier but I finally visited a large gloomy city. I didn't know the local customs so I accidentally offended a nobleman and a couple of failed skill checks later I got killed. The book said I lost my items for good this time around but I decided to ignore that - I've spent hours of playing time collecting them and I simply don't feel like replaying all that just because of a couple of bad dice rolls.
- Exploring a necropolis I found a couple of interesting tunnels.
- All in all I spent around an hour of playing time exploring the city but honestly I didn't net much from it. No new quests or anything important like that.
- The book has been nudging me towards a certain location in several occasions and it sounded like the main quest of the book. When I finally went to visit the location I did acquire a quest but the book again didn't give any hints where the objective of the quest could be. Not even the cardinal direction or can you find the objective in this book or do you need to search in another book in the series... It's rather frustrating really.
- One of the last places I hadn't yet been to was a mountain citadel. It had an oppressive atmosphere. I had to use stealthy methods to get into places where I shouldn't be but obviously had to be visited if you wanted to push forward the quests in the book. The quest I got said to search for a certain thing in THotD without giving any specific information where to search.
- I'm honestly a bit lost now. I think I've explored every single location on the region map and I still haven't found the main quest of the book. I thought for sure that the citadel I just visited would be the starting point of the main quest of this book but apparently not so. I guess I'll have to go through my notes to see if there's a place I've missed and/or visit the rumour monger I found some hours ago and hope that'll provide some guidance.
- I died hunting a kopis but managed to pull it off after resurrecting and attempting it again.
- I tried searching a certain location to see if the start of the main quest was hidden there and for daring to nose around the book said to lose the reward item I got for completing the main quest in THotD. It felt extremely unfair as a player who has invested tens of hours of playing time into these books so I simply decided to ignore what the book said to do.
- My frustration with the book had grown pretty considerable and I had to admit to myself that I seemed to be unable to find the main quest. I had visited every location I could think of within the region and tried every choice I could within them. I figured there must be a link or codeword I missed and decided it was time to simply skim through the pages of the book to see where the main quest started. I was extremely surprised to learn that I hadn't missed a codeword or anything like that and instead one-third of the main quest was hidden behind a dice roll I thought was to avoid getting pickpocketed so naturally I had avoided it after succeeding in it during my first encounter with it.
- Knowing where to go I managed to complete the first part of the main quest without too much trouble. The book again didn't provide any clues where to go from there. I had a lead to go rescue someone from Hades and even though it sounded like a side quest I decided to check that out.
- Luckily I had made a map/flowchart of Hades when I played through THotD and it was easy to check from that where the quest keycode I got in this book had blocked my exploration. I travelled there and... the book revealed that I needed a certain item from the Borean Tundra to attempt the rescue. Yeah. These books really do love making the player run back and forth fetching items. So much fun.
- After getting the required item the rescue was quite easy. The involved skill check DCs were lower than what I've lately encountered in TPotS quests.
- The rescue proved to be a side quest and after having completed it I was again wondering how to find the remaining two-thirds of the main quest.
- After going through my notes once again I deduced that it's very likely that you need items or keywords from the three books in the series I haven't yet tried. I decided to skim through the pages and check if my deduction was correct. It was and that meant I had now done everything I could do in this book for now. Have to say this kind of design didn't feel very smart.
[/o]
Playing time: 17h 15min
Positives:
- The book is outright cheerful compared to the bleak and depressing THotD which is the first book in the series that I played. There's still a lot to read though so you definitely can't call this an easy read.
- 1076 paragraphs is quite outstanding for a gamebook.
- THotD explained a bit poorly in my opinion why the player character resurrected after dying and why your carried items were treated like they were (placed to a dedicated storage vault). The poor explanation in that book made me unsure about whether I was playing correctly or not. I think that this book explains it much better. You are a hero under the protection of a patron god and should you happen to die they will intervene with the journey of your soul and arrange for a new physical shell for it. However the items your previous shell was carrying can't cheat the rules similarly so they must stay in the realm where you died. However your patron god can transport them to a special vault accessible only to you within the realm so you can go get them back should you need them. I guess the design intent is to have a small penalty to dying but not so big that you'd be inclined to cheat. I think it's an excellent idea backed by story to solve the problem of what to do if you happen to die in long a gamebook / series like this.
- The playing experience slightly changes based on have you found the regional vault or not. I happened to find the vault in THotD very early so I didn't really need to avoid dying while playing through that book. In this book I had explored majority of the locations before I managed to access the vault so that resulted in adhering to a much more careful play style.
- There are a few riddles. I like puzzle games so naturally the book gains a few points for having riddles. The riddles aren't very difficult though and you can easily solve them by for example checking relevant Greek mythology from Wikipedia.
- The playing time vs cost of the book equation is outstanding (at least for the b&w version). I did waste some time trying in vain to fully complete the main quest and it led to frustration but more about that in the negatives below.
- Attribute checks carry meaningful consequences. If you fail an attribute check you either simply die or in the best scenario you just get wounded (which means you'll immediately die if you happen to receive another wound).
- The codewords, check boxes and title systems work well. The book 'remembers' what you have done previously and events and encounters with characters change based on those. Though it does take a lot of tracking.
Neutral:
- I'd say this book is not for casual gamebook players. This gamebook takes a lot of commitment and patience. It and THotD probably are the 'heaviest' gamebooks I've played. The book will make you play fetch blindfolded even for the tiniest of rewards. The book will not tell you where you need to go for quests or how to complete them - some of the quest givers will even call you an idiot if you try to ask for directions. If you want to complete the gamebook it will be a very long journey with dozens of visits to the same locations plus you will need to own the other gamebooks in the series.
- The art aspects of the book are a bit weak. The covers look nice but the images on the pages of the book are all right at best. There's the colour printed version available but it's very expensive and thus most players will probably get the cheaper b&w version. I do have to admit that the images on the pages of this book are better designed than in the first book. You can actually see what they depict. That said they mostly just show mountain vistas so the images get pretty repetitive even though they are thematic. Perhaps images of monster encounters and NPCs would have made them more interesting. The amount of images is also very low (there are just eight unique images besides the covers).
- THotD had a lot of cases of an annoying design philosophy which made you miss out side quests if you didn't happen to have in your inventory some specific item at the moment when you first ran into said quest opportunity. There was a lot less of that in this book. Just a couple of such cases I think.
- It's not a very challenging gamebook. Yes, you'll die several times trying to complete it but it's pretty much unavoidable because often living and dying hinge on getting good dice rolls. Dice luck aside you really don't need to think hard how to build your character or how to prepare for fights because the game doesn't provide you tools for that.
- I'm honestly a bit lukewarm towards Greek mythology which this gamebook is based on. The main reason is that I've been over saturated with it. There's little surprise in stories using that mythology. For example you'll immediately know what kind of character is in question when you hear such names as Zeus, Poseidon, or Charon. On the other hand some less known names or concepts in the book might make you want to check the Wikipedia for them and lead to you learning something new from the real world. You can also use that knowledge or method to solve some of the riddles in the book.
- For some players the lack of combat might be a positive thing, for some a negative thing. I listed it in neutral aspects. Combat is just an attribute check in this gamebook while usually in gamebooks it's a separate thing with separate rules. I can play a gamebook just fine without special combat rules but I can't deny the 'fights' in this gamebook didn't feel very exciting.
- Just a statement so I put this in the neutral aspects: playing this gamebook requires a lot of note taking. You'll be reading a lot (so it's not possible to remember it at all) and you'll have to keep track of a lot of items, codes, quests, check boxes and clues you come upon. You'll also have to visit the same locations dozens of times while you run around doing tasks so it's extremely easy to forget some conditional triggers (for example some locations change the first few times you visit them).
- Ordered from Amazon (and thus printed by Amazon Distribution) the print quality is ok but nothing more. After playing through the book the edges of the covers show noticeable bits of white on the edges and there are crease marks (the protective coating of the cover has wrinkled) where my fingers have regularly held the book. The protective coating of the covers has slightly detached on one edge.
Negatives:
- The biggest negative of this book is that it is designed so that you can complete only about 40% of it without buying the other books in the series. The foreword lists a lot of things you can do in this book but in reality you can do less than half of them if you own just this book of the series. It really is a game design crime that you can only complete one-third of the main quest if you have just this book. I'm terribly sorry if I offend someone with this but in my opinion that's just idiot design. I'm totally fine with some side quests requiring you to travel to other gamebooks in the series and having an exciting series spanning mega-quest but in my opinion each gamebook in a series should work as a standalone too and not force you to buy more. It makes the player feel like they've paid for a 'full' game only to discover that the final boss is locked behind a purchasable DLC. Perhaps I could accept such design if I hadn't played Legendary Kingdoms books and I didn't have experience about better open world design...
- Another very annoying design of the book is that certain side quests are locked behind random d6 rolls - it's easy to think you've avoided a pickpocket or a trap and later you can't understand why you can't proceed in the book. There's also a case in which obtaining a certain important quest item requires that you first go to a certain location, die there (or if you are lucky escape only wounded) and then return to the same location and find the all-important quest item just waiting for you there. The author probably thought that super hilarious but I found it annoying. You'll have to spend playing time searching every location a minimum of two times because of such tricks.
- Travelling between the locations is unnecessarily difficult. Some of the routes can only be traversed one-way meaning you'll have to take a long route to get back if you need to. I could understand if there was a waterfall or such a natural obstacle but noooo apparently these paved roads go one-way only.
- I can't say about the parts that I wasn't able to complete (because those parts would require me to go fetch items and keywords from the three books in the series in which I haven't yet set foot on) but for those parts that I was able to see there really was just one way of completing them. The book doesn't allow the player to make any meaningful decisions for the story. You get to explore a lot and to decide which direction on the map you want to go and at first it seems like the book lets you make a lot of decisions but eventually you'll notice that the book doesn't let you to make decisions that would actually affect the story. Do you want to attempt this side quest or do you want to ignore it? Do you want to go north or south? Do you want to open this chest you found or not? The decisions the book lets you do are often quite meaningless. You'll have to say 'yes' to every side quest on the off-chance that they'll reward you with something you need for the main quest or gear that boosts your stats. Same goes with chests, there is simply no point in not opening them. And so on...
- The rules are designed so that you can (and will) die several times during the course of your adventure but you get to resurrect due to the grace of your patron god. The penalty for dying is that you get a scar (which you can heal in several ways but it takes a bit of travelling ie costs a bit of playing time) and you have to go fetch back the items you were carrying when you died (again, takes a bit of travelling). I think it's a great design idea for a gamebook that takes more than ten hours to play through (and a series which takes dozens of hours to play through) and in which dying is easy. With those rules already in place I do not fathom why the author has decided to write half of the deaths on the lines of 'you died in such a stupid way that your god won't save you - scrap your character and start the series from the beginning' or make you gain such big permanent penalties to attributes that you might as well scrap the character or make you permanently lose gear you've painstakingly collected as quest rewards which also means you might as well scrap the character (because you will lack bonuses that you will need to succeed in harder quests). Personally I just ignored all of those permanent deaths, attribute penalties and item losses because they felt so unfair and against the spirit of the rules.
- At certain points it feels like the book purposefully stretches the time it takes to play through it. For example a certain NPC you'll need to visit a few times during different quests recides on top of a certain mountain. You'll need a result of '1' from the die to be allowed to attempt meeting the NPC (if you get results 2-6 the book moves you a couple of paragraphs away and you'll need to flip through a couple of paragraphs to attempt the whole procedure again) and once successfully at the top of the mountain you'll need to succeed in a skill check to actually meet the NPC. If you fail that skill check you either get wounded and driven away (meaning you'll have to start again from the bottom of the mountain and likely you'll want to go get healing first) or if you were already wounded you outright die. Knowing that there was the threat of falling to death while getting up for the first time made it exciting but I can say all the excitement was gone and it simply felt annoying by the time I needed to get up there for the third time.
- I already wrote this in my review of THotD but there's no big bad evil sending minions to defeat you. There's no desperate last-ditch mission to defeat a terrifying lich king like in Domain of the Deathless King. You don't need to carefully decide which faction to ally with in order to defeat a great criminal organization like in The Raiders of Dune Sea. The game world feels... empty of motion. It feels like all the NPCs simply wait still for the player hero to come and solve all the problems. It feels like the world is a simulation for the sake of the player whereas some gamebooks I've played have managed to make the world in them feel like something that continues to breathe and change even when the player is not there.
- The inventory management is a hassle. The rules say that you can carry a maximum of 20 items. You are running to that limit quite soon meaning you'll have to traverse to and back from where you can store excess items. Honestly it gets very boring after the 50th round trip doing that. I think gamebooks where you can only equip a certain amount of items but otherwise have unlimited inventory space or item weight based inventory systems are way more player friendly and respect the time players put into the game more.
Minor Issues:
- For some reason the book doesn't have a link to the printable adventure sheet and map file. If you need those use this link: https://sparkfurnace.com/wp-content/uploads/Vulcanverse-Adve...
- It's possible to get a very nasty attribute lowering debilitation in paragraph 366. The book says its permanent but it felt pretty unfair because there was no prior warning so I decided to houserule that I could get rid of it by dying and resurrecting or by receiving magical healing.
- I don't understand paragraph 202. The links are possibly switched. If you have a queen bee you die but if you don't you survive?
Summary and Verdict:
All right. It seems like my review became a wall of text. I guess I wanted to thoroughly explain my opinions. If you think that there was too much text to read here's a summary of the positive aspects: it's refreshing to adventure in crisp mountain air, considering the cost of the book there's an outstanding amount of content and the playing time is long, the dying/resurrection mechanic is explained well this time around and works fine with the story, there are some fun riddles to solve, attribute checks carry meaningful consequences and the codewords and other systems in the game work well.
The list of neutral aspects is fairly substantial too: the book is not a good fit for casual gamebook players, the art aspects are a bit weak, you will miss out on some side quests if you guess wrong what items you need to carry around and I don't think it's a very smart way to design an open world gamebook, playing through the book takes endurance instead of skill meaning it's not very challenging, basing a story on Greek mythology isn't very original, fights are just an attribute check instead of being an exciting separate thing, the amount of notes you'll need to write gets a bit ridiculous and the physical qualities of the book are kind of average.
The biggest negative and what frustrated me is that there's more that you can't do than there's what you can do in this book unless you also own the other books in the series. Another annoying design feature is that the book hides some important quests and such behind random d6 dice rolls and other trickery. The book also makes playing through it take more time than necessary by making some travel routes one-way and placing locations you need to visit several times behind random dice rolls and deadly attribute checks. The book doesn't allow the player to make any kind of meaningful story related decisions, there are many situations where to book instructs you to trash your character even though there are rules for dying and resurrecting, the game world feels a bit stale and the inventory management takes way too much time and energy.
Did I feel that the gamebook was bad? No, I just think it could have been better. The amount of content is great but it's very annoying that you can't access half of it unless you also own the other books in the series and that doesn't feel right as a player. I'll call The Pillars of the Sky a good book for a gamebook enthusiast and give it a rating of 7.5 using the BGG/RPGG scale. It gets placed on slot forty-three on my gamebook ranking list for now.
~ Damdael
Posted: Thu, 10 Sep 06:51:52
by Damdael
I got interested in gamebooks a few years ago. First I found joy in playing books from Season 4 Graphic Novel Adventures and then I fell in love with Legendary Kingdoms books. Since then I've played through some sixty gamebooks. I try to write reviews of the books I've played in order to lure others into this rabbit hole. In my reviews I try to have comparisons to other gamebooks and place the books I review onto my ranking list so that readers can find other books to try out.First Impressions:
- My very first impression looking at the softback book is that it looks cool... I'm terribly sorry for making such a predictable pun - I couldn't help myself. Now for real; the icy and light blue mountainscape is calming to look at even though you just know that it's going to be a very dangerous place once you get adventuring there. The ancient ship in the middle of the front cover somehow transported high up a mountain is a mystery that really invites you in. Is there treasure in it? Undead crew waiting to sap the life out of any hapless adventurer? I already want to dig in. On the back cover we have a single character in mountain climbing gear making their way towards the ship. I love it when book covers wrap around like this instead of the back cover just repeating the image from the front cover or something like that. And you don't need to picture some terrible monster to make a book cover interesting like now both of the VulcanVerse books that I've handled have proven.
- This book is equal in thickness with The Houses of the Dead (which I played through previously) but there are 240 paragraphs more (for a total of 1076). It means that on average the paragraphs must be substantially shorter in this book. I do like books with descriptive writing style and long paragraphs but perhaps THotD went a bit overboard with that and it was very heavy to read and play. Hopefully the higher paragraph count means that this book lets the player act more.
- The large-ish (20 x 25 cm) size of the book is a good fit for a gamebook. I've played some smaller brick-like gamebooks and they've been unwieldy to play.
- My black&white copy of the book has been printed by Amazon Distribution. The paper quality is pretty average. The covers have a some kind of protective coating that gives them a sheen and make them smooth to touch but the edges are already showing white here and there meaning they aren't very high quality either.
Rules:
The rules are the same as in the first book of the series. You start from paragraph 1 and proceed to other paragraphs from there based on your choices or if you are coming from another book in the series you have been told there which paragraph you should go to in this book. Sometimes a paragraph checks if you have some codeword on your character sheet or if there's a ticked box attached to the paragraph (for example some paragraphs allow you to search for random loot three times and that is tracked with check boxes) and if the conditions are met the book directs you to immediately turn to some other paragraph.
Your character has four attributes (charm, grace, ingenuity and strength) ranging typically from -1 to +5. Items in your inventory can boost the attributes with +1/+2 and you can also earn one-time extra bonuses to dice rolls. When you need to check an attribute (for example to fight an enemy) you roll 2d6 and add your applicable modifier and see if you met or exceeded a target number. You can find godly blessings (you can have up to three) which allow you to reroll a failed attribute check once.
Your character doesn't have health, like in most gamebooks. Instead you often simply die if an enemy manages to hit you or else you get a wound and if you ever would get a second wound that means immediate death. Dying means you get a 'Scar' (having too many scars for example might make some NPCs shun you), dump all your carried items to a special vault and then you get resurrected at a random location in the game world (from a few of possibilities). You'll have to traverse back to the vault of the region you died in to get your items back and that serves as a penalty for dying (basically you lose a bit of playing time and that's it).
Your character can carry up to 20 items in their inventory. You can sometimes gain special titles, companions and glory (renown in the game world and it's used as a gate to make you first complete easier quests before you can access more difficult quests and so on).
Artwork:
- As I wrote in the first impressions I like the coloured covers but honestly speaking the black&white images on the pages of the book don't make much of an impression to me. There are just eight unique images (if you include the map) which is a very low amount for a gamebook of this length. I would have liked to see a lot more of unique images. Most gamebooks I've played feature small 'filler' images between paragraphs here and there in addition to half- or quarter-page images but this gamebook doesn't have those. With 154 pages chock-full of text it's rare to even glimpse an image. Most of the time you are just looking at walls of text.
- The watercolour art style probably looks great and dreamlike when printed in colour (like the cover does) but in black&white it's not at its best. It looks crude and doesn't have much details to draw you in. The colour printed book costs like three times as much as the b&w book does and with how few images there are I just don't think it's a very good investment.
- It would seem that the images on the pages haven't been made for any specific paragraphs of the book. They are mostly just images of generic snowy mountain vistas and since each of the images is used a couple of times I'm quite confident in my inkling. In my opinion gamebook art simply is better when it depicts something that happens or can be seen in accompanying paragraphs.
- I appreciate the map of the region (The Mountains of Boreas) where the adventure takes place. It makes finding your bearings much easier while playing.
Thoughts while Playing:
This section is reserved for my notable thoughts while playing the gamebook. I use them as a basis for writing about the positives and negatives below plus they might be of interest to other players who've played the book. I've kept my observations purposefully somewhat vague in order to avoid any big spoilers but I've spoiler tagged my notes just in case.
[o]- It's annoying that it has been only a bit under three months since I played through The Houses of the Dead but I can't remember which of the items in my inventory are super important quest items and which aren't so. Kingslayer Dagger? Tapestry of Arachne? Daemon Blood? Bone Flute of Kore? Should I stash some of these or should I carry them around just in case? The 20 item inventory limit is extra annoying coupled with design philosophy in which you will often miss out side quests if you are not carrying some specific item when the quest comes up.
- The foreword that summarizes what you can do in this book sounds pretty epic. Labyrinths of a lost civilization, mechanical marvels built to plumb the depths of the cosmos, a sea battle, avenge your brother's death, build a city and raise it to the heights of glory, etc.
- I left the City of the Dead where I had parked myself at the end of the previous book and made my way to the Gate of Ivory where I could pass to the Boreas mountains. I aimed at the Harpies' Nest on the map but strangely I couldn't get there so I kept going northward. I met a poet dishing out poor jokes? He'll need to search for a better audience. An orange carnelian door set into a rockface? Didn't open for me. A troubled stranger? Well, a hero needs to help those in need.
- I tried to help a some kind of cat down from a tree but I failed the skill check and the cat died. Oops.
- I've now had the book query me about three possible different companions in order to access special paragraphs. I haven't yet encountered anyone who'd offer to join me on my adventures!
- Uh? I found the ship pictured on the cover of the book? I thought it would be a harder ordeal. Behind a quest chain and not that you could just walk there.
- I knew it - I unloaded some items from my inventory I thought I wouldn't need when I set on my journey from the City of the Dead to make space for new items I'd acquire in this book but now a quest requires one of those items I left in storage. I'll have to traverse back to go fetch it. Not very exciting usage of time.
- A bird pooped on me?
- I saw a naked oread playing with a waterfall. She was surprisingly talkative. She had a small riddle or rather a test of knowledge for me. I had played Pandora's Legacy relatively recently so I immediately knew the answer.
- I met some miners and they wanted to present a riddle to me. Unfortunately I got it wrong. I'd have rather gone drinking with them - all that talking left my mouth dry.
- I had some more strange encounters and after those I finally met a legendary minotaur!
- I had a chance to explore an eyot. I had never encountered the word before so naturally I was curious to see what it was.
- My throat got ripped out fighting a kopis.
- After returning back to life I went to get some gear from my dwelling in THotD before trekking back to the Boreas mountains. I really need to find where the items I lost when I died are waiting for me and get them back.
- I happened upon an atlas tree. Unfortunately I couldn't approach it because it was guarded.
- Chthonic regions? Is that a real word? After googling I can tell that apparently it is. It's not the first time playing this book I've encountered something I hadn't heard about before and I ended up looking it up from wikipedia.
- I lost in a singing contest. It annoys me that I would have won if I had found and reclaimed the items I lost when I died. Alas I still have no idea how to get to where they are waiting for me. I'll need to explore more.
- I've now played for over four hours and I'm still pretty much wandering around aimlessly. I have no idea what is the main quest or where to start it. I've managed to complete one simple side quest but that's it. I found another side quest but when I asked the NPC that gave me the quest where I need to go to find the objective of the quest it just told me to go and search and not ask stupid questions. Yeah... A lot of aimless wandering. There are two named locations left on the map I haven't yet gotten to so I hope either of those will offer me the main quest.
- Amazingly I managed to steal some items from a hippogriff's nest and escape without any serious injury.
- I met someone freezing inside a hut even though there was a fire burning. I bet there's a curse or something.
- I encountered a shrine to Artemis but I wasn't able to do anything there.
- I rummaged through a harpy nest and it turned out to be a very bad idea.
- I got rid of my invisible tormentor in a very unexpected way. I thought it would take gathering some magical items from all over the place but the solution was much more easier.
- There was a four tiered checkbox system to give me a clue about a possible location of a quest. The quest sounds like a side quest but I hope the location can be used to learn information about other available quests too.
- I beat a fat man in a strongman contest. A real heroic moment that was.
- I slipped trying to scale a mountain and fell to my death. Slightly annoying. I was carrying several quest items and now they are in the vault I haven't found yet together with all the items I lost earlier and I can't proceed in the quests until I get the items back.
- Weird. I thought I finally managed to find the place where the main quest of the book starts but I was served a wound and then banished out. What should I do now?
- I watched a lousy play. Even the peasants watching it were bored.
- I found a locked entrance to an underground realm.
- What. I found the vault and it required much less work to access than I thought it would take.
- I got hit by... thunder? Why am I bleeding then?
- I encountered a boat hurled on top of a tree. Weird.
- I was wise enough not to trek too far onto frozen sea. Something was luring me further away from the shore but I broke the trance I was in.
- I got a side quest that required me to go skin a cat. Uh-huh. Well, I already know where I can encounter a cat stuck in a tree.
- I saved a sacred creature of my patron god and got a nice special blessing.
- Believing in gods really pays off here. I received another blessing and now my body feels more agile. The flipside is that it's easy to become cursed by offending them too.
- Getting back to where I needed to turn in the catskin was troublesome. There are very few routes that lead back there and I spent some time going in circles.
- I tried to hunt a mammoth but the dice didn't favour me and I died fairly gruesomely.
- I completed a side quest and on my way back to the central region I got ambushed by an undying pursuer and the dice provided me some low rolls which led to me dying yet again.
- Solved a crime involving a locked room with an unbroken lock.
- I probably should have done it earlier but I finally visited a large gloomy city. I didn't know the local customs so I accidentally offended a nobleman and a couple of failed skill checks later I got killed. The book said I lost my items for good this time around but I decided to ignore that - I've spent hours of playing time collecting them and I simply don't feel like replaying all that just because of a couple of bad dice rolls.
- Exploring a necropolis I found a couple of interesting tunnels.
- All in all I spent around an hour of playing time exploring the city but honestly I didn't net much from it. No new quests or anything important like that.
- The book has been nudging me towards a certain location in several occasions and it sounded like the main quest of the book. When I finally went to visit the location I did acquire a quest but the book again didn't give any hints where the objective of the quest could be. Not even the cardinal direction or can you find the objective in this book or do you need to search in another book in the series... It's rather frustrating really.
- One of the last places I hadn't yet been to was a mountain citadel. It had an oppressive atmosphere. I had to use stealthy methods to get into places where I shouldn't be but obviously had to be visited if you wanted to push forward the quests in the book. The quest I got said to search for a certain thing in THotD without giving any specific information where to search.
- I'm honestly a bit lost now. I think I've explored every single location on the region map and I still haven't found the main quest of the book. I thought for sure that the citadel I just visited would be the starting point of the main quest of this book but apparently not so. I guess I'll have to go through my notes to see if there's a place I've missed and/or visit the rumour monger I found some hours ago and hope that'll provide some guidance.
- I died hunting a kopis but managed to pull it off after resurrecting and attempting it again.
- I tried searching a certain location to see if the start of the main quest was hidden there and for daring to nose around the book said to lose the reward item I got for completing the main quest in THotD. It felt extremely unfair as a player who has invested tens of hours of playing time into these books so I simply decided to ignore what the book said to do.
- My frustration with the book had grown pretty considerable and I had to admit to myself that I seemed to be unable to find the main quest. I had visited every location I could think of within the region and tried every choice I could within them. I figured there must be a link or codeword I missed and decided it was time to simply skim through the pages of the book to see where the main quest started. I was extremely surprised to learn that I hadn't missed a codeword or anything like that and instead one-third of the main quest was hidden behind a dice roll I thought was to avoid getting pickpocketed so naturally I had avoided it after succeeding in it during my first encounter with it.
- Knowing where to go I managed to complete the first part of the main quest without too much trouble. The book again didn't provide any clues where to go from there. I had a lead to go rescue someone from Hades and even though it sounded like a side quest I decided to check that out.
- Luckily I had made a map/flowchart of Hades when I played through THotD and it was easy to check from that where the quest keycode I got in this book had blocked my exploration. I travelled there and... the book revealed that I needed a certain item from the Borean Tundra to attempt the rescue. Yeah. These books really do love making the player run back and forth fetching items. So much fun.
- After getting the required item the rescue was quite easy. The involved skill check DCs were lower than what I've lately encountered in TPotS quests.
- The rescue proved to be a side quest and after having completed it I was again wondering how to find the remaining two-thirds of the main quest.
- After going through my notes once again I deduced that it's very likely that you need items or keywords from the three books in the series I haven't yet tried. I decided to skim through the pages and check if my deduction was correct. It was and that meant I had now done everything I could do in this book for now. Have to say this kind of design didn't feel very smart.
[/o]
Playing time: 17h 15min
Positives:
- The book is outright cheerful compared to the bleak and depressing THotD which is the first book in the series that I played. There's still a lot to read though so you definitely can't call this an easy read.
- 1076 paragraphs is quite outstanding for a gamebook.
- THotD explained a bit poorly in my opinion why the player character resurrected after dying and why your carried items were treated like they were (placed to a dedicated storage vault). The poor explanation in that book made me unsure about whether I was playing correctly or not. I think that this book explains it much better. You are a hero under the protection of a patron god and should you happen to die they will intervene with the journey of your soul and arrange for a new physical shell for it. However the items your previous shell was carrying can't cheat the rules similarly so they must stay in the realm where you died. However your patron god can transport them to a special vault accessible only to you within the realm so you can go get them back should you need them. I guess the design intent is to have a small penalty to dying but not so big that you'd be inclined to cheat. I think it's an excellent idea backed by story to solve the problem of what to do if you happen to die in long a gamebook / series like this.
- The playing experience slightly changes based on have you found the regional vault or not. I happened to find the vault in THotD very early so I didn't really need to avoid dying while playing through that book. In this book I had explored majority of the locations before I managed to access the vault so that resulted in adhering to a much more careful play style.
- There are a few riddles. I like puzzle games so naturally the book gains a few points for having riddles. The riddles aren't very difficult though and you can easily solve them by for example checking relevant Greek mythology from Wikipedia.
- The playing time vs cost of the book equation is outstanding (at least for the b&w version). I did waste some time trying in vain to fully complete the main quest and it led to frustration but more about that in the negatives below.
- Attribute checks carry meaningful consequences. If you fail an attribute check you either simply die or in the best scenario you just get wounded (which means you'll immediately die if you happen to receive another wound).
- The codewords, check boxes and title systems work well. The book 'remembers' what you have done previously and events and encounters with characters change based on those. Though it does take a lot of tracking.
Neutral:
- I'd say this book is not for casual gamebook players. This gamebook takes a lot of commitment and patience. It and THotD probably are the 'heaviest' gamebooks I've played. The book will make you play fetch blindfolded even for the tiniest of rewards. The book will not tell you where you need to go for quests or how to complete them - some of the quest givers will even call you an idiot if you try to ask for directions. If you want to complete the gamebook it will be a very long journey with dozens of visits to the same locations plus you will need to own the other gamebooks in the series.
- The art aspects of the book are a bit weak. The covers look nice but the images on the pages of the book are all right at best. There's the colour printed version available but it's very expensive and thus most players will probably get the cheaper b&w version. I do have to admit that the images on the pages of this book are better designed than in the first book. You can actually see what they depict. That said they mostly just show mountain vistas so the images get pretty repetitive even though they are thematic. Perhaps images of monster encounters and NPCs would have made them more interesting. The amount of images is also very low (there are just eight unique images besides the covers).
- THotD had a lot of cases of an annoying design philosophy which made you miss out side quests if you didn't happen to have in your inventory some specific item at the moment when you first ran into said quest opportunity. There was a lot less of that in this book. Just a couple of such cases I think.
- It's not a very challenging gamebook. Yes, you'll die several times trying to complete it but it's pretty much unavoidable because often living and dying hinge on getting good dice rolls. Dice luck aside you really don't need to think hard how to build your character or how to prepare for fights because the game doesn't provide you tools for that.
- I'm honestly a bit lukewarm towards Greek mythology which this gamebook is based on. The main reason is that I've been over saturated with it. There's little surprise in stories using that mythology. For example you'll immediately know what kind of character is in question when you hear such names as Zeus, Poseidon, or Charon. On the other hand some less known names or concepts in the book might make you want to check the Wikipedia for them and lead to you learning something new from the real world. You can also use that knowledge or method to solve some of the riddles in the book.
- For some players the lack of combat might be a positive thing, for some a negative thing. I listed it in neutral aspects. Combat is just an attribute check in this gamebook while usually in gamebooks it's a separate thing with separate rules. I can play a gamebook just fine without special combat rules but I can't deny the 'fights' in this gamebook didn't feel very exciting.
- Just a statement so I put this in the neutral aspects: playing this gamebook requires a lot of note taking. You'll be reading a lot (so it's not possible to remember it at all) and you'll have to keep track of a lot of items, codes, quests, check boxes and clues you come upon. You'll also have to visit the same locations dozens of times while you run around doing tasks so it's extremely easy to forget some conditional triggers (for example some locations change the first few times you visit them).
- Ordered from Amazon (and thus printed by Amazon Distribution) the print quality is ok but nothing more. After playing through the book the edges of the covers show noticeable bits of white on the edges and there are crease marks (the protective coating of the cover has wrinkled) where my fingers have regularly held the book. The protective coating of the covers has slightly detached on one edge.
Negatives:
- The biggest negative of this book is that it is designed so that you can complete only about 40% of it without buying the other books in the series. The foreword lists a lot of things you can do in this book but in reality you can do less than half of them if you own just this book of the series. It really is a game design crime that you can only complete one-third of the main quest if you have just this book. I'm terribly sorry if I offend someone with this but in my opinion that's just idiot design. I'm totally fine with some side quests requiring you to travel to other gamebooks in the series and having an exciting series spanning mega-quest but in my opinion each gamebook in a series should work as a standalone too and not force you to buy more. It makes the player feel like they've paid for a 'full' game only to discover that the final boss is locked behind a purchasable DLC. Perhaps I could accept such design if I hadn't played Legendary Kingdoms books and I didn't have experience about better open world design...
- Another very annoying design of the book is that certain side quests are locked behind random d6 rolls - it's easy to think you've avoided a pickpocket or a trap and later you can't understand why you can't proceed in the book. There's also a case in which obtaining a certain important quest item requires that you first go to a certain location, die there (or if you are lucky escape only wounded) and then return to the same location and find the all-important quest item just waiting for you there. The author probably thought that super hilarious but I found it annoying. You'll have to spend playing time searching every location a minimum of two times because of such tricks.
- Travelling between the locations is unnecessarily difficult. Some of the routes can only be traversed one-way meaning you'll have to take a long route to get back if you need to. I could understand if there was a waterfall or such a natural obstacle but noooo apparently these paved roads go one-way only.
- I can't say about the parts that I wasn't able to complete (because those parts would require me to go fetch items and keywords from the three books in the series in which I haven't yet set foot on) but for those parts that I was able to see there really was just one way of completing them. The book doesn't allow the player to make any meaningful decisions for the story. You get to explore a lot and to decide which direction on the map you want to go and at first it seems like the book lets you make a lot of decisions but eventually you'll notice that the book doesn't let you to make decisions that would actually affect the story. Do you want to attempt this side quest or do you want to ignore it? Do you want to go north or south? Do you want to open this chest you found or not? The decisions the book lets you do are often quite meaningless. You'll have to say 'yes' to every side quest on the off-chance that they'll reward you with something you need for the main quest or gear that boosts your stats. Same goes with chests, there is simply no point in not opening them. And so on...
- The rules are designed so that you can (and will) die several times during the course of your adventure but you get to resurrect due to the grace of your patron god. The penalty for dying is that you get a scar (which you can heal in several ways but it takes a bit of travelling ie costs a bit of playing time) and you have to go fetch back the items you were carrying when you died (again, takes a bit of travelling). I think it's a great design idea for a gamebook that takes more than ten hours to play through (and a series which takes dozens of hours to play through) and in which dying is easy. With those rules already in place I do not fathom why the author has decided to write half of the deaths on the lines of 'you died in such a stupid way that your god won't save you - scrap your character and start the series from the beginning' or make you gain such big permanent penalties to attributes that you might as well scrap the character or make you permanently lose gear you've painstakingly collected as quest rewards which also means you might as well scrap the character (because you will lack bonuses that you will need to succeed in harder quests). Personally I just ignored all of those permanent deaths, attribute penalties and item losses because they felt so unfair and against the spirit of the rules.
- At certain points it feels like the book purposefully stretches the time it takes to play through it. For example a certain NPC you'll need to visit a few times during different quests recides on top of a certain mountain. You'll need a result of '1' from the die to be allowed to attempt meeting the NPC (if you get results 2-6 the book moves you a couple of paragraphs away and you'll need to flip through a couple of paragraphs to attempt the whole procedure again) and once successfully at the top of the mountain you'll need to succeed in a skill check to actually meet the NPC. If you fail that skill check you either get wounded and driven away (meaning you'll have to start again from the bottom of the mountain and likely you'll want to go get healing first) or if you were already wounded you outright die. Knowing that there was the threat of falling to death while getting up for the first time made it exciting but I can say all the excitement was gone and it simply felt annoying by the time I needed to get up there for the third time.
- I already wrote this in my review of THotD but there's no big bad evil sending minions to defeat you. There's no desperate last-ditch mission to defeat a terrifying lich king like in Domain of the Deathless King. You don't need to carefully decide which faction to ally with in order to defeat a great criminal organization like in The Raiders of Dune Sea. The game world feels... empty of motion. It feels like all the NPCs simply wait still for the player hero to come and solve all the problems. It feels like the world is a simulation for the sake of the player whereas some gamebooks I've played have managed to make the world in them feel like something that continues to breathe and change even when the player is not there.
- The inventory management is a hassle. The rules say that you can carry a maximum of 20 items. You are running to that limit quite soon meaning you'll have to traverse to and back from where you can store excess items. Honestly it gets very boring after the 50th round trip doing that. I think gamebooks where you can only equip a certain amount of items but otherwise have unlimited inventory space or item weight based inventory systems are way more player friendly and respect the time players put into the game more.
Minor Issues:
- For some reason the book doesn't have a link to the printable adventure sheet and map file. If you need those use this link: https://sparkfurnace.com/wp-content/uploads/Vulcanverse-Adve...
- It's possible to get a very nasty attribute lowering debilitation in paragraph 366. The book says its permanent but it felt pretty unfair because there was no prior warning so I decided to houserule that I could get rid of it by dying and resurrecting or by receiving magical healing.
- I don't understand paragraph 202. The links are possibly switched. If you have a queen bee you die but if you don't you survive?
Summary and Verdict:
All right. It seems like my review became a wall of text. I guess I wanted to thoroughly explain my opinions. If you think that there was too much text to read here's a summary of the positive aspects: it's refreshing to adventure in crisp mountain air, considering the cost of the book there's an outstanding amount of content and the playing time is long, the dying/resurrection mechanic is explained well this time around and works fine with the story, there are some fun riddles to solve, attribute checks carry meaningful consequences and the codewords and other systems in the game work well.
The list of neutral aspects is fairly substantial too: the book is not a good fit for casual gamebook players, the art aspects are a bit weak, you will miss out on some side quests if you guess wrong what items you need to carry around and I don't think it's a very smart way to design an open world gamebook, playing through the book takes endurance instead of skill meaning it's not very challenging, basing a story on Greek mythology isn't very original, fights are just an attribute check instead of being an exciting separate thing, the amount of notes you'll need to write gets a bit ridiculous and the physical qualities of the book are kind of average.
The biggest negative and what frustrated me is that there's more that you can't do than there's what you can do in this book unless you also own the other books in the series. Another annoying design feature is that the book hides some important quests and such behind random d6 dice rolls and other trickery. The book also makes playing through it take more time than necessary by making some travel routes one-way and placing locations you need to visit several times behind random dice rolls and deadly attribute checks. The book doesn't allow the player to make any kind of meaningful story related decisions, there are many situations where to book instructs you to trash your character even though there are rules for dying and resurrecting, the game world feels a bit stale and the inventory management takes way too much time and energy.
Did I feel that the gamebook was bad? No, I just think it could have been better. The amount of content is great but it's very annoying that you can't access half of it unless you also own the other books in the series and that doesn't feel right as a player. I'll call The Pillars of the Sky a good book for a gamebook enthusiast and give it a rating of 7.5 using the BGG/RPGG scale. It gets placed on slot forty-three on my gamebook ranking list for now.
~ Damdael
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Reply: RPGGeek Help and How-To:: Re: What is the audience for session reports?
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GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Characters Thrymheim by Ksurls (D&D 5e)"
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Nice list! Are these all games that you have played?
S04E22 - The Beat-Down Express (Karmageddon)
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S04E22 - The Beat-Down Express (Karmageddon)
