[RPG]: Tatters of the King, reviewed by talien (5/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13276.phtml

Mike \"Talien\" Tresca's Summary:

Tatters of the King is an excellent series of adventures, marred occasionally by the usual Cthulhu foils.

Go to the full review for more information.

[bluejay]

Very interesting review!

I just finished running this campaign last Friday (and must update my signature accordingly). It left me with mixed feelings. Firstly I'll not deny that our campaign stretched across 6 months and we had too many gaps for personal reasons within the group. Given the amount of information divulged (some of it being little more than flavour text) I think it was hard for the players to really hold together all of the important threads (despite lengthy recaps).

Tatters is (IMHO) an excellent campaign and a worthy addition to the Chaosium catalogue. Unfortunately I buy adventures so that I don't have to spend too long in preparation and I feel that this campaign requires a fair amount of prep for many of the sessions.

One thing I did up-front was to clearly state that the adventures were in Britain and that gun crime would be clamped down on hard. This was because I felt the opening encounters are really great and low-key but not if the group are hardened globetrotting adventurers skilled with knives and pistols who'll easily cut down such opponents.

Still, an excellent campaign overall! Thank you for the review, I liked your different take on the adventure.

[WaitingForAName]

Can you tell me what exactly is the point of a "playtest" which involves using an entirely different system, genre, and setting from the original? It does reveal some information, but it doesn't really give a good idea how the scenario will play "out of the box", which is the real concern.

[talien]

Originally Posted by WaitingForAName

Can you tell me what exactly is the point of a "playtest" which involves using an entirely different system, genre, and setting from the original? It does reveal some information, but it doesn't really give a good idea how the scenario will play "out of the box", which is the real concern.

I thought Ben Chapman already did an excellent job of reviewing Tatters of the King using the Call of Cthulhu rules. I wanted to contribute what I did with the book.

I like to think that quality content comes across in a book regardless of the numbers behind it -- in this case Tatters of the King most certainly achieved that. Conversely, it provides an interesting look at the book stripped of much of its conventions. This is pretty much the entire reason I have a large GURPS collection but don't play GURPS.

But by all means, read Ben's review. It will certainly address your "real concerns."

[talien]

Originally Posted by bluejay

Tatters is (IMHO) an excellent campaign and a worthy addition to the Chaosium catalogue. Unfortunately I buy adventures so that I don't have to spend too long in preparation and I feel that this campaign requires a fair amount of prep for many of the sessions.

I agree. Because I already had a campaign setting, TotK "got off the hook" in a lot of ways. And there are a few leaps of logic required between scenarios: the connection between Gresty and Hillary is tenuous and felt like a major sidebar.

In converting the book from Cthulhu to d20, it was interesting to see how so many details that aren't important in CoC are critical in d20. Like, just how many Tcho-Tchos fit in that cramped tunnel?

Fortunately, my PCs were smart enough to not do anything stupid like attack bad guys who obviously had the upper hand. Except when it came to Malcolm. They killed him in cold blood and without hesitation. Between Malcolm's death and the murder of Talbot Estus, the book provided plenty of role-playing opportunities with difficult moral choices, which you don't get a lot of in D&D these days. Great stuff.

Thanks for your comments!