Northern Crown: New World Adventures

I stumbled upon a copy of Franklyn's Almanack on Drivethru RPG and read some of the articles and was really interested in reading more about the Northern Crown Campaign. NC is set in an alternate earth history where Magic is real as well as Science. The setting takes place mainly in the eastern seaboard of the new world. The back story is great with lots of good illustrations and the game mechanics are good too. One thing you will need in the NC Atlas also. This has more details about monsters and place settings for the campaign. This has a little but of everything from Indians, Pilgrims, Witches, Pirates, to your standard 17th century explorers, scouts, and soldiers. NC uses cultures rather than races unlike most D20 campaign settings. Its real easy to modify some of your standard D20 Monsters to fit the campaign and the different cultures make for a lot of interesting adventure hooks. At our gaming club we ran our first NC game using an old D & D module modified to make it NC friendly. The blend of Fantasy, American Folklore and History, and Sophian Naturalist inventions make for a fun game. I would recommend picking up a copy to try out.

I was generally pleased with Northern Crown. The production values are top-notch, and the campaign seems to have more thought behind it than most. I don't think the 17 cultures (think races) was excessive, as it fits well with the setting. I liked the way each culture was given classes that were most appropriate to it, and the explanations for how that class fit into the culture. The classes looked generally well designed, at least by d20 standards. I thought the fencing rules were well thought out and easily implemented. But, really, its the attention to background detail that makes this book worth it. A great deal of time and effort went into the setting, and I think it will be a joy to play.