Masters of Luck and Death question

[rylen dreskin]

Hello,

I'm about to go hunting for MoLD reviews but I've got a specific question.  The table of contents says it has sections on running warrior, magic, healing, and other types of HQ campaigns.  How good are they?  How well do they do with the narrative approach?


Thanks,
Rylen

[lightcastle]

Well, since I got the thing a day ago, I'll tackle this.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the people who put this together are narrativists or at least know how narrativists think.

The sections on how to run each type of campaign are well written, commenting on how to get different types of character concepts to fit within any of the campaigns. (A fighter's band may need healers, or entertainers to lighten the load. A band of healers may have bodyguards, etc.) Small, helpful advice like that.

But where you can see the narrativist influence is in the "Scenario Seeds" scattered throughout.  They are almost all presented as questions for the players to resolve.

Example from the fighters campaign: You discover that a member of your band has a secret love affair with a member of the opposing camp. What do you do?

The vast majority of the book is dedicated to the hero bands. The advice section runs no more than 2 pages per campaign type. Because of that, it is very loose: what kinds of people go into a campaign like this, where might these people go, what might motivate them, and a bunch of scenario seeds. No plots, just dilemmas.

The bands themselves are presented in a short summary, including members of renown, and their guardians. None of these are given stats, just descriptions (The guardians blessings are stated, again without stats for the most part) so you know what to expect with them. Some have plot ideas explicitly mentioned, most do not. They make for good groups for PCs to interact with by joining, opposing, or just interacting with. (There's more than one I'm likely to use either as is or as inspiration)

I'd say it is worth picking up not so much for the advice section (although that's nice) but for some very fun ideas for hero bands and guardians.