Ghostwalk

Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes

Ghostwalk by Wizards of the Coast is a new d20 campaign supplement for inclusion within an established setting or an entirely independent game setting. This campaign is centered about the city of Manifest where the boundaries between life and death are thinner than usual. In fact, Manifest is built atop a veritable portal, the Veil, through which the spirits of the dead pass into the True Afterlife, never to return, or at least not without the usual magics. This mysterious place is unknown to the living and even the dead who have not yet crossed the barrier. Because of the physical status of the portal to the True Afterlife in this locale and perhaps the uncertainty of what lies beyond the Veil, the willful dead can manifest their spiritual forms into solidity for a time. Some dead do so to wait for their bodies to be delivered for final ceremonies, the process of the Ghostwalk for which the campaign is named. Others may stick around just for the thrill, having their bodies stored in the city just in case they decide life is worth living a bit longer. Fortunately, only humanoids are able to form these ghost forms after death, limiting the flow of deceased to relatively manageable levels. While this prevents traffic of countless hordes of dead insects and the like, it does lead to a few embittered intelligent races that do not become ghosts aiming to destroy Manifest. Undead sort of fall into this category, and the taint of their unlife is seen as an even greater perversity of the natural order where the dead are as active a part of the community as the living. This campaign offers a tangible way to deal with dead characters in a unique way that does not require a game master to stretch plausibility to give easy access to raise dead or the higher-level equivalents. Instead, dead people wandering about actively provoking changes among the living are part and parcel of the setting. That is the main innovation of this particular setting.

From the product website:

“The city of Manifest rests atop ruins from ancient times and far above the entrance to the land of the dead. Here, the world of the living is shared equally with the deceased, who linger in physical form before finally passing through the Veil. Whether currently living or dead, residents and visitors are assured of an eternity of action and intrigue.
Ghostwalk contains everything needed to run a stand-alone campaign in and around the city of Manifest, or to integrate it into an existing world, including rules for playing ghost characters and advancing in the new eidolon and eidoloncer classes, several new prestige classes, over 70 new feats and 65 new spells, three complete adventures, four highly detailed encounter sites, and fourteen new monsters and templates.”

The first chapter deals directly with the new form of ghosts, describing their traits, advancement as ghosts, and other ghostly powers. This includes the two ghost glasses, the eidolon and eidoloncer. The main difference between the two is that eidolon gets more bonus ghost feats and a better base attack bonus which the eidoloncer trades them in for spell casting improvements. This allows physical character types and spell slingers stick to type, even in the hazy stages of death. There are also four prestige classes for the living included here. Two are derived classes linked to the elvish and dwarven groups in the area, while the other two are focused on the non-living either as a hunter of the undead or assassin of the dead. There are some minor modifications of skills, mostly assigning new uses related to ghosts, but no new skills as such. In contrast, the seventy-three feats presented do have many new feats. Most are ghost feats, related to some train of ghostly powers, such as inflicting damage with the touch of death, possessing people, or telekinetically manipulating objects. There is also a selection of new feats that add flavor to the setting. Some of these are derived from assorted sourcebooks, complete with references back to their original books. Others are entirely new, including some generic smite ghost type feats and some region specific ones that link one to the spirit trees of the elves, allow a worshipper of one of the deities to participate in circle magic rituals, and a trio of feats that touch on a fairly cool Bene Gesserit style neighboring kingdom, complete with genetically engineered citizens to maximize the race’s power. There are some very interesting concepts lurking among these newer feats. Changes to the rules resulting from the setting are described next. These changes mostly involve describing new uses for spells and of magic items related to ghosts. For instance, since ghosts do not need to breathe, bags of holding become an alternate residence for them, which with a little furniture and a new coat of paint could be quite cozy. In addition to new uses for old features, there is a selection of new equipment and new magics. Most of the spells related to ghostly effects, but there are also a number of handy spells for the living and undead repeated from Magic of Faerûn and a couple new spells such as Irresistible Force. There is a new spell descriptor called ectomancy provided, to deal with all the spells relating to ghosts, soles, and ectoplasm, and it is applied to a list of existing spells as well as many of the new spells detailed in this section. The new magic items include several new qualities for armors and weapons, two unique armors, several specific arms, one new potion, two rings, four staves, two artifacts, and quite a few wondrous items including three new figurines of power and another ioun stone. All of the items are listed with tables that link allow game masters to role to see if items from the core items in Core Rulebook II or new items are found and tables for adding the new spells to the selection of magic scrolls and wands are provided. The use of existing items from other sources is relatively minor among the magic items is rather minor with only nine items derived from other sources, so there is a significant number of new items here.

The second chapter describes the city of Manifest. This includes a brief history, a description of gods unique to the setting, a review of races living and dead within the city itself, and descriptions of the city. The descriptions of Manifest describe the place by each of the five wards, then diverges to describe the government and other organizations, before returning to describe the Undercity and the Spirit Wood that surrounds the city. It makes for a somewhat broken description as it gets into describing locations and then breaks it in the middle with an altogether different topic. Chapter three is exclusively for game masters as it provides guides for running a campaign with this setting. Thematic considerations are offered as well as potential sources of adventures using the Undercity, and the various groups opposed to the city. Unfortunately, this chapter then discusses what lies beyond the Veil that lies beneath the city. This is a ruinous revelation, since throughout the book it is emphasized that no one knows what happens once a ghost passes through the Veil and anyone who is brought back by resurrection magics cannot remember what was there. By describing what lies beyond the Veil opens up the option that some players will end up there. This inevitably leads to problems once the players finagle to get back to the land of the living and are then forced to have their characters mysteriously forget everything they knew or miraculously be the first to return and know. Either situation is a little jarring and destructive to an otherwise excellent setting. The fourth chapter returns to open topics that could be partial reviewed by players as it describes the surrounding nations. Six separate nations are described here and some of these are as intriguing a setting option as Manifest.

Chapter five is back to game master materials. New monsters are provided in this chapter, including new templates for ghosts. Most of these creatures are either undead or incorporeal, but there is also a plant, some vermin, and a humanoid. In addition to the ghosts, four other of the monsters are templates. Unfortunately, the monsters use the older listing style for the game statistics, rather than the more highly detailed format of Fiend Folio or the 3.5 revision. The next chapter offers seven adventures for first, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, and twelfth level characters. A few of these are short adventures worth a single session or two and some are extensive plots with far reaching links and impacts to the setting. There are a number of errors scattered through these adventures, though. For instance, one of the maps has three warehouses that are Warehouse 3 through 5, which are labeled by numbers that appear as map key location numbers. Having placed the word ‘Warehouse’ with the numbers or setting the numbers in Roman numerals might have been a little less confusing. A more significant error is the inclusion of a half-orc assassin in the fourth adventure. The problem with this character is given a spell list for his assassin levels and the default racial statistics, which prevent him from being able to cast any assassin spells. Aside from details like this, the adventures are pretty good, with a mix of surface politics, dungeon crawls, and effective wilderness encounters although these last are still in the Undercity area. Some of the main foes of the city are employed in these adventures for that epic dire threat taste, while some are more incidental dangers simply resulting from some group trying to better their own lives with little consideration of what damage they do to the area.

Ghostwalk offers an interesting campaign twist. As a book, it has some excellent features, such as the referencing of materials derived from earlier Wizards of the Coast’s products back to their original sources. However, there are also some major gaffs. The poor arrangement of the materials that flip flop in potential player accessible and game master exclusive chapters or the break in location descriptions back to politics in the chapter on Manifest are one such glitch. Forgetting to print the regional map in chapter four is just as big of a problem. The geographic references that describe how the nations are laid out next to one another are a little tricky to visualize without a corresponding picture. The inclusion of a specific reference to the map, which strangely states that the particular feature under discussion was not marked on the map, makes it pretty clear that a map was supposed to have appeared. The layout is otherwise good and the editing is pretty professional. The glossy pages with their full color frames are sharp and the artwork, ranging from full color to gray scale images, are captivating or useful. Labels on the monster portraits might have been nice or captions on some of the images to relate them more clearly to the topics depicted, but generally the art works with the text. This is a pretty good campaign setting with some interesting ideas. Even if a setting of active ghosts is not appealing, there are plenty of other ideas in this setting that can be readily translated elsewhere. Incidents of haunting for not taking a look are unlikely, but there is always the chance that regret might come to haunt, so why risk it? Pull out the witchlight and give this book a read.

For more details on Wizards of the Coast and their new d20 campaign supplement, Ghostwalk, check them out at their website http://www.wizards.com/dnd and at local game stores.

(Product Summary)

Ghostwalk
From: Wizards of the Coast
Type of Game: d20 campaign supplement
Written by: Monte Cook and Sean K Reynolds
Developed by: Stan!
Edited by: Thomas M. Reid
Editing Assistance by: Del Laugel, Bill McQuillan, and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
Managing Editor: Kim Mohan
Creative Director: Richard Baker
Art Director: Dawn Murin
Cover Art by: Brom
Additional Art by: Thomas Baxa, Dennis Cramer, Michael Dutton, Emily Fiegenschuh, Jeremy Jarvis, David Martin, Puddnhead, Vinod Rams, Wayne Reynolds, Scott Roller, Richard Sardinha, and Ron Spencer
Graphic Design by: Dawn Murin and Sean Glenn
Cartography by: Todd Gamble
Number of Pages: 224
Game Components Included: Hard Cover Book
Retail Price: $34.95 (US)
Retail Price: $48.95 (Can)
Item Number: 885660000
IBSN: 0-7869-2834-4
Phone: 1-800-324-6496
Website: www.wizards.com/dnd

Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes

Added: September 30th 2003
Reviewer: Wayne Tonjes
Score:
Related Link: Ghostwalk at Wizards of the Coast
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Language: eng