Fantasy Craft Review
Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 3:40 am
Having been a fan of the Spycraft2.0 rules and realizing that the fantasy genre is home when I game, it only seemed natural that I would get Fantasy Craft when I heard that it was coming out. Now, I'd like to take a few moments and offer a review of that work. This review will not focus exclusively on the mechanical elements nor will it shy away from them. There will also be a certain amount of opinion as I am human.
For those that care, Fantasy Craft (hereafter referred to as FC) was written by the same crew (Crafty Games) that did Spycraft2.0. It is the first of the new MasterCraft line and was published by Mongoose.
The actual hardcover books weighs in a 400 pages with plain (i.e. not glossy) paper. (It reminds me of butcher block paper if you have ever been around meat processing.) The binding is a mix of stitching and glue. My copy has taken some mild abuse and seems to be holding up well.
The artwork is all black and white (with the exception of the cover) and most, if not all, was done in pen and ink. Frankly, the art is awesome - some of our gaming group want to play just because of the art. My proverbial hat is off to each and every one of the artists. The art director deserves major props here as well. Each artist has a unique style but the overall feel is very consistent. My favorite pictures are of a giant wading into a battle swinging an enormous spiked ball on the end of a long chain with bodies flying this way and that. The other is a pair of haughty humans about to duel with pistols. The almost missed detail about the duelists is that one is dropping a large amount of coin into his opponent's hand for reasons unknown. Truly, the art is remarkable.
Typos and errors? Yep. No first edition printing would be complete without them. The typos are the usual suspects: missing prepositions (of, and, etc.), mixing numbers/symbols, inserting numbers into words and using one word in place of another (is for in & an for and). The errors are mostly mathematical in nature and I believe I found 90% of them on my first reading.
The layout is very nice. It flows well, mixing text, tables and art in a constant whole with one glaring exception. The class progression table for the Mage is (and I kid you not) in the middle of the write up for the Priest. Other than this glaring screw-up the layout is one of the better I've seen in recent years.
A quick word of warning. This is NOT another OGL clone of DnD 3.X, nor is it DnD as seen through the lens of Spycraft. FC stands as it's own take on the fantasy genre with a unique set of rules that are just familiar enough to speed up the learning process. It should be noted that those who have played both OGL games AND Spycraft will have the advantage in learning the rules. However, you could come from either (or neither) camp and do fine.
Now on to the core of the review. Each chapter will get its own post in the following order:
Chapter 1: Hero
Chapter 2: Lore
Chapter 3: Grimoire
Chapter 4: Forge
Chapter 5: Combat
Chapter 6: Foes
Chapter 7: Worlds
For those that care, Fantasy Craft (hereafter referred to as FC) was written by the same crew (Crafty Games) that did Spycraft2.0. It is the first of the new MasterCraft line and was published by Mongoose.
The actual hardcover books weighs in a 400 pages with plain (i.e. not glossy) paper. (It reminds me of butcher block paper if you have ever been around meat processing.) The binding is a mix of stitching and glue. My copy has taken some mild abuse and seems to be holding up well.
The artwork is all black and white (with the exception of the cover) and most, if not all, was done in pen and ink. Frankly, the art is awesome - some of our gaming group want to play just because of the art. My proverbial hat is off to each and every one of the artists. The art director deserves major props here as well. Each artist has a unique style but the overall feel is very consistent. My favorite pictures are of a giant wading into a battle swinging an enormous spiked ball on the end of a long chain with bodies flying this way and that. The other is a pair of haughty humans about to duel with pistols. The almost missed detail about the duelists is that one is dropping a large amount of coin into his opponent's hand for reasons unknown. Truly, the art is remarkable.
Typos and errors? Yep. No first edition printing would be complete without them. The typos are the usual suspects: missing prepositions (of, and, etc.), mixing numbers/symbols, inserting numbers into words and using one word in place of another (is for in & an for and). The errors are mostly mathematical in nature and I believe I found 90% of them on my first reading.
The layout is very nice. It flows well, mixing text, tables and art in a constant whole with one glaring exception. The class progression table for the Mage is (and I kid you not) in the middle of the write up for the Priest. Other than this glaring screw-up the layout is one of the better I've seen in recent years.
A quick word of warning. This is NOT another OGL clone of DnD 3.X, nor is it DnD as seen through the lens of Spycraft. FC stands as it's own take on the fantasy genre with a unique set of rules that are just familiar enough to speed up the learning process. It should be noted that those who have played both OGL games AND Spycraft will have the advantage in learning the rules. However, you could come from either (or neither) camp and do fine.
Now on to the core of the review. Each chapter will get its own post in the following order:
Chapter 1: Hero
Chapter 2: Lore
Chapter 3: Grimoire
Chapter 4: Forge
Chapter 5: Combat
Chapter 6: Foes
Chapter 7: Worlds