Honor Bound by Elaine Cunningham

Book Two in the Tales of Sevrin series by Elaine Cunningham provides more action and revelations in the setting of Sevrin. For those who don't know, this is a novella sized book in a new setting that has some of the traditional elements of fantasy through dwarves, elves and magic, but puts the authors own spin on them through the use of different racial abilities for the dwarves, a deeper link for the elves to nature, and the mastery of magic on the downside but not gone, more like substituted for clock work and alchemy.

Book two is faster paced than the first one. I finished it rather quickly and it has a heavy feel of being 'the middle' part of the story. I suspect that when its all said and done it'll make a nice full sized novel but might not be for those who enjoy the massive super epics of Robert Jordan or others so keep that in mind. At the cost though, I was willing to make the reading for an author whose work I enjoy.

In terms of gaming though... let's take a look.

One of the things I failed to mention last time around about Elaine's previous book in the series, is the Thorn. This is an artifact level item in the shape of a dagger. Its power would be hard to put into game statistics and this is what makes it an interesting item. I've mentioned before that I think in its efforts to achieve 'game balance', that Dungeons and Dragons has wandered so far from the cool that magic items have been reduced to merely shopping components set about to min-max characters or worse yet, to keep characters only equal to the appropriate challenges they'll face for their level.

When running your own games, when possible and opportunity strikes, think about throwing in your own artifacts. These don't necessary have to be world breakers and their nature should be mutable to allow them to leave the players care and control when necessary, but as things to shake up a campaign, they can be quite useful. At some point, the players might even be afraid of the power these items wield. For example, Elric hangs Stormbringer up several times not because he doesn't like the power and freedom the black blade grants him, but because he knows that the blade has its own agenda and isn't afraid to kill any and everyone in order to achieve it. In the Wheel of Time series, Rand even puts away his own crystal sword because he's afraid of the vast power that it contains. These are good role playing elements and should be treated as such when you have players who can appreciate them.

Another thing in terms of world building, is the elves and their communion with nature. Here, their hair and eyes change color with the seasons. It's a minor thing and certainly not worth any 'disadvantage' points in most games, but in some like Hero or GURPS, it might be ranked into with say Distinctive Features. When you can tie the characters into the game in ways that don't necessarily result in higher bonuses to hit and damage or spells of attack and destruction, you have more opportunities to immerse characters and more importantly, the players, into the setting.

Elaine Cunningham sets up the story for a great finished in the next volume and I'll be curious to see where it goes.

Honor Among Thieves (Tales of Servin) by Elaine Cunningham

Honor Among Thieves is book one in a new series set in Servin by Elaine Cunningham. Elaine may be familiar to fans either of the Forgotten Realms setting where she's written numerous novels, or even fans of the more recent setting and novels, Pathfinder, where she's got one down and hopefully more to come.

At her website, http://www.elainecunningham.com/ she has numerous bits of lore on the setting. Some of that comes through the story, which is a novella. These isn't quite a steam punk setting, but there are clockwork elements including mechanical men along with magic and other bits.

I'll be delving into the book so there will be spoilers below.

So why am I mentioning it? There were a few bits I enjoyed.

For one, she takes the familiar, in this case the dwarfs, and provides her own touch, in this case, a sub-race, one of the "stone races", a Carmot. First, their blood is believed to amplified alchemical transmutations. Something useful in this setting because alchemy is on the rise and magic on the downfall. More interesting though is that the natural state of this type of dwarf, pale silvery gray hair, kin and teeth can be changed, like a chamelon. With a few reflavoring bits, you could take feats and PrCs designed for a Changelling and apply them to a Carmot.

New monsters are also good. How about a swarm of giant half moth, half mosquito creatures known as death moths that guard dwarf tombs? Good stuff. Some brute clock work guards done up in old style knight armor also show up.

Another thing I enjoyed was how the author makes it like an ongoing situation as opposed to some books where all the loose ends are done in one. There are things that are introduced here that don't come to a tidy end, even though they may in the future as the second book is now out.

Lastly, I enjoyed the twist. I admit that I did not see the big switch at the end coming. I suspected something was going to be different or special, but didn't know what it was. This would make for an interesting switch around in a role playing game where one of the players was using class and race X but perhaps even without them knowing it, they were perhaps monster Y. It's always good to be able to surprise the readers and yet leave enough slack that you can go back and reunite the heroes at a later date.