Age of Mortals

Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes

Age of Mortals, a new d20 campaign supplement developed by Sovereign Press and sold and distributed by Fast Forward Entertainment, is the latest edition in the long line of Dragonlance products that have entertained fantasy gamers and readers alike for the last two decades. Wizards of the Coast has made Dragonlance their third retooled setting for the current d20 System, with their release of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting in August. That book adapted Krynn, that has been in play under the First and Second Edition as well as the SAGA® rules system, to the latest 3.5 Revision of the game. The same design team, under a different company, developed this supplement to the main campaign book, with a more exclusive focus upon the events and reversals of the Fifth and latest Age of Krynn. This volume only deals with the four decades after the Chaos War ravaged the continent of Ansalon, the expansive locale developed in the Dragonlance line. Most of the book deals with details of this changed land instead of game mechanics, although some of the devastations wrought during the age have mechanical effects on various magic classes. Some game material is presented to address new developments of roles and foci in the Fifth Age. These include two new player character races, one full class, thirteen prestige classes, a selection of feats and magics, two creature templates, two dragon types, and a new category of dragon advancement.

From the product website:

“The Fifth Age of Krynn—known as the Age of Mortals—has been a turbulent time for the world of Krynn. The gods who watched the world were absent for decades, mighty dragon overlords warred and conquered vast territories, and old magic had to be learned to replace the new. An epic War of Souls had to be fought to restore some of what was lost-ushering in a new and exciting era, full of possibilities for both good and evil. …

Age of Mortals contains an update on the races of Ansalon, many new prestige classes, feats, equipment, magical items, and spells. It details many important potential adventuring locations in great detail, as well as mighty dragons and many important characters of the era.”

The book is broken into six chapters, although the table of contents does not list them, but instead focuses on haphazardly selected sections. The first chapter deals with character develops. The seventeen player character races and sub-races of the Fifth Age, including the two additions, are described. Most of these reviews are brief reviews of how they have changed in the current age, although the two added races include the necessary game information to put them into play. The mariner class and the thirteen prestige classes are presented next. Most of these classes are simply affiliated classes, a standard core class that has become aligned to an active group of the setting like nomads, Legion of Steel, or Citadel of Light, while the kender nightstalker and spellfilch are more innovative classes. Concluding the chapter is a selection of sixteen feats. Most of these are typical skill bonus feats, offering a bonus to two skills, but there are three racial skills for dragons, minotaurs, and kender respectively. The nicest feat here is the spellcasting prodigy feat, which effectively raises a spell caster’s primary ability score for saves and bonus spell determination. Unfortunately, these are not the only feats in the book. There are another six feats scattered elsewhere in various sidebars, which are sadly not given reference in the section called ‘New Feats’. The second chapter describes magic, in general terms regarding the three changes to magic in Krynn and in game terms of domains, spells, and items. The first two periods of change require some rules supplements to handle them, which are presented in sidebars near the relevant main text. The new spells offer a selection of undead summoning spells, a few spirit related spells, some fog spells, and a pair of lower level parallels to holy word and blasphemy. Nine magic items, five of which are unique including an artifact, are also provided in this chapter. Evil variants of the long vaunted dragonlances for which the series is named are introduced in this volume, as well as a few other mystic weapons revealed in the quests of the Fifth Age and several magic items devised by the ogres.

The third chapter turns to setting information with a year-by-year timeline of the Fifth Age developed so far. This is only a period of thirty-nine years, but like all of the campaigns developed since the first novels, the period has been full of conflict. This chapter includes a summary of the current climate conditions across Ansalon, which have been significantly impacted by immense magically induced changes. Finally, a review of the flora, fauna, and the different cultures on the continent are also given. Some of the segments, such as the types of domesticated animals, the listing of preferred homelands, and current governments, are listed with cultural divisions. There are also two segments that describe key differences between rural and urban dwellers, paralleling the racial split applied to humans in this setting. The fourth chapter takes the discussion of setting from time to place, detailing eighteen towns, five strongholds, and five ruins. The city entries all include a numbered listing of important locations within them and short review of the regional history, while the strongholds and ruins use the same basic format with the exclusion of the regional history. The next chapter discusses the gods and religion of Krynn, both of which underwent a significant roller coaster ride of changes during this age. The chapter covers the three main phases, the same ones that impacted magic, separately, reviewing the specific gods active in each phase and the occupations of their clergy. The last chapter provides the new creatures mentioned in the introduction of this review. The bound spirit template and two dragon types are the best of the offerings here. The titan template is full of little glitches and the requirements needed to maintain the template seem prohibitively costly if not simply untenable. The new dragon categories are also little unclear, as it is not perfectly lucid how normal dragons can access this new power range. There is cursory mention of requiring a special magic device also described in this chapter, but then the device details fail to corroborate on how it empowers dragons in regards the new power range. The item also suffers the flaws of the titan template, in seeming to have a virtually untenable creation requirement and a number of confusing or lacking details. A last nice feature is the inclusion of a several specific dragons including some of their histories as relevant to the current age. These entries parallel the numerous character reviews laced throughout every chapter except for the third. These bring out many of the major heroes made famous both in the world setting by their actions and the real world by the various novels for ready inclusion into a campaign, although all of these characters are quite high powered and should be reserved for very specific roles to avoid overshadowing a playgroup.

Age of Mortals aims to meet an advertised claim that it “gives players everything they need to play in any Fifth Age campaign”, but falls a little short. The main shortcoming is that this supplement fails to provide the necessary core setting material needed for a Krynn campaign, while having a significant dependence on that material. This missing material on races, key main and prestige classes that developed in the Fifth Age, regional maps, and basic magic rules unique to the setting requires one to have the main Dragonlance Campaign Setting book. What this new volume does offer is a limited expansion of material for a game set in this time frame. The main change is a more detailed time line for the Fifth Age, which is nice, but hardly worth an entire volume. Added to that are the various editorial issues. Typos are rather common, sometimes completely derailing statements, such as the mistaken use of ‘expanded’ for ‘expended’ in a description of how Takhisis had used all her energies or ‘striping away the very memory’ for ‘stripping’. A few of the names are messed up, either through conflicting spellings or accidentally using the wrong name in multiple places for different entities. Grammar errors are even more common, from ‘a anything’ to having too many verbs in a sentence. Also, it appears the authors never heard of verb tenses, since they consistently fail to apply a uniform verb tense, flip-flopping within in a single sentence from a concurrent to recollective viewpoint by their word choices. The errors also extend into character descriptions with some missing alignments, inconsistent matching of class abilities to listed levels, some rules shifts from the prevalent 3.5 Revision set back to former 3.0 rules, and random magic item qualities or descriptions listed with characters instead of in the magic item area. One of the monster templates is also impaired, providing a reduced darkvision range under a heightened senses package and assigning an unclear cost to learning the special language of the race. Similarly, the maps are worthless. The lack of place names on the maps, as either titles or simply labels, makes connecting them to the next difficult at best. The lack of maps on the majority of locations in the extensive fourth chapter severely undermines the aim of the chapter to provide ready to use adventure settings. Finally, the lack of any sort of index is problematic, particularly given the way feats, rules, and magic items are scattered throughout the book. Granted, the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book by Wizards of the Coast also lacks an index, which at least keeps this supplement on par with its predecessor. The full color art is decent, but is rather limited to portrait images of characters, human and monstrous. Some more scenery based imagines or action images would have been nice. Over all, this is a fair supplement, but only for a Dragonlance campaign. It lacks versatility for easy extrapolation to other settings, but as popular as Krynn has been that is likely of little concern to most readers who would look at this anyway. So, if the old Dragonlance adventures elicited drool or just joining the Krynn fan club, take a look.

For more details on Sovereign Press and their new d20 Dragonlance campaign supplement, Age of Mortals, check them out at their website http://www.sovereignpress.com and at local game stores.

(Product Summary)

Age of Mortals
From: Sovereign Press
Type of Game: d20 campaign supplement
Design by: Margaret Weis, Jamie Chambers, and Christopher Coyle
Additional Design by: Cam Banks, Jeff Grubb, Matt Haag, Richard Knaak, André La Roche, Sean Macdonald, Jean Rabe, Sean K. Reynolds, and Trampas Whiteman
Editing and Proofreading by: Margaret Weis and Christy Everette
Project Management by: Jamie Chambers
Art Direction by: Christopher Coyle
Typesetting by: Jamie Chambers
Graphic Design by: Dawn Murin and Don Perrin
Cover Art by: Matt Stawicki
Additional Art by: Drew Baker, Jeff Easley, Larry Elmore, Jason Engle, Mark Evans, Dan Frazier, Alan Gutierrez, Martin McKenna, Jennifer Meyer, Stanley Morrison, Michael Phillipi, Alan Pollack, Dan Scott, and Hugh Vogt
Cartography by: Ed Bourelle, Eric Hotz, Rob Lee, and Craig Zipse
Number of Pages: 223
Game Components Included: Hard Cover Book
Retail Price: $27.99 (US)
Item Number: SVP4001
ISBN: 1931567107
Email: info@sovpress.com
Website: www.sovereignpress.com

Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes

Added: December 21st 2003
Reviewer: Wayne Tonjes
Score:
Related Link: Age of Mortals at official Fansite
Hits: 681
Language: eng