Customer Reviews

Celtic Age: Role-Playing the Myths, Heroes & Monsters of the Celts (d20 Fantasy Roleplaying)

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This book has a great deal of detail on roleplaying in the Celtic age. Most of the game specific stuff is relegated to the later half of the book. The modifications made to standard D20 look well balanced, with several new core classes and prestige classes to give your games a Celtic feel. There is also details on Celtic gods (although it's suggested that Cleric not be used as a class) and Celtic monsters (although not enough for my taste).

The first half (or so) of the book gives a good background on Celtic history and society, such that no one should have trouble getting into character.

All-in-all a good introduction to Celtic roleplaying, although I could have used more Celtic specific monsters.

The book is basically divided into two sections, the first half is an historical introduction to Celtic life and the history of the Celts between 100 BC and 100 AD. This was one of the best written and most informative overviews of Celtic life that I have ever read. Using sources ranging from Greek and Roman records and memoires, Irish legends, and the archeological record, the book covers everthing from warfare, daily life, diet, and the role of women, to religion, class structure, and technology (pointing out for example that the Celts invented or brought to Europe soap, chainmail, horse shoes, wooden barrels, steel swords and etc.)
My only complaint about this first section is that a bibiography would have been nice. The author also celtic swords as being four feet long and nearly impossible to wield one handed. Every celtic sword I've seen from archeological finds were three feet or less and usually had small grips only suitible for one hand use. All in all though I learned several facts and fascinating anecdotes I hadn't known about, which I later verified from other sources. Anyone intersted in the celts should love this book.
The second half with the D20 material is equally fascinating, and introduces several new combat rules and rules on social aspects such as prestige which could be applicable to many other genres.

Admittedly I have not read or purchased this book, but as an avid reader of Celtic history and archaeology in general, I feel obligated to point out the glaring misrepresentation of Celtic history from this books above "Overview," to wit: that Celtic culture never had a Golden Age because it was wiped out by the Roman Empire. To the contrary, Rome never occupied all of Scotland nor any of Ireland, the latter which certainly had a golden age (eg "Tain Bo Cuailgne"). The British Government has done more to wipe out Celtic culture than the Romans ever did. It is not surprising that no Bibliography was included. These facts should be rudimentary points of Celtic history.

Granted this is a source book for fantasy role playing games as opposed to anything scholarly, is it really so difficult to draw conclusions from academic sources instead of Hollywood movies? And while this book may yet be a valuable source for Celtic flavoured RP games, it is most irksome that Celtic history is yet again being so badly misconstrued. For a very accurate overview of Celtic culture, I highly recommend the Osprey Military Series which cover very well Celtic culture from the Iron Age through Arthurian Britain and beyond.