Customer Reviews

The Scarlet Brotherhood (AD&D Fantasy Roleplaying, Greyhawk Setting)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the first truly 'new' supplement released for the Greyhawk line (the others were mostly rehashes of old material). The title is somewhat misleading, as only some 30 pages are devoted to the Brotherhood. An equal amount is also devoted to Hepmonaland, and another dozen or so to the Amedio Jungle.

Overall, it is of very good quality, providing a good general overview of each area's history, internal structure, and long-term goals providing the needed structure for the Brotherhood, but without overwhelming detail. Quick stats and personalities for major NPCs are given, along with a gazetteer of all major areas. In addition, the SB's character is fleshed-out with details of culture, dress, and even a Suel-English dictionary.

Hepmonaland seems slightly under-detailed, as it is made up of 'city-states' that actually cover vast territories. A greater density (ie more locations) would seem more realistic. One area of interest that has often been neglected in Greyhawk supplements is culture. 'The Scarlet Brotherhood' does an excellent job of fleshing out the SB, the Olman, and the Touv (a new race) with customs, dress, deities, and even language.

The map provided has a nice style to it, and is clear to read (although swamps and deserts could be more clearly delineated). It is, however, somewhat delicate - the size of the maps would have been perfect for a cardstock insert such as found in the Player's Guide to Greyhawk.

The artwork is probably the weakest part - most illustrations (a good idea - illustrating the content of the text, rather than random decoration) is sketchy and rushed-looking. Overall, I think this supplement is well worth the cost and I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

From the stuff I've seen released this year, I would have to say, hands down, that the Scarlet Brotherhood is by far the best release TSR has put out this year. It details the sect itself, the surrounding area, and the different tribes and cultures in the south are of Oerth, thw world in which the Scarlet Brotherhood is set.

After the long wait, The Scarlet Brotherhood delivers with 96 pages of great stuff!

Maps of jungles you never knew existed. The character classes of Monk and Assassin are back, similar to the 1st edition folks, but these are all evil.

The Scarlet Brotherhood, Hepmonaland, and The Armedio Jungle are all detailed here with enough information for entire campaigns of sweaty, mosquito-infested fun!

This is a very negative review. I'm doing this because it's important a person not in the know on older Greyhawk (or even Living Greyhawk, really) products not get a false impression of what they might be getting from both Greyhawk and this setting in particular. (This is a AD&D set, not at all directly compatible with the current 3.5 rules.)

WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW...

First the bad, and there's a lot of bad. The product just doesn't make sense on so many levels. And to make things worse, there's serious sentence structure errors that make it somewhat hard to read in places.

For those "not in the know", the Scarlet Brotherhoood (tSB) are a basically a far-flung extremist Suel outpost that survived the pre-Greyhawk Baklunish-Suloise war. The problem is the Suel under any other name might as well be "Aryan Nation" because the Suel are described as fair-skinned with blond or red hair, racially intolerant, and more then willing to commit grievous crimes for things like "racial purity". In LG they are described as having "wiry, curly, or kinky hair", but in every picture I've seen (old, new, and in this set), Suel hair has been fair and straight. It was actually because of stuff like this TSR took some serious heat from various sources.

The box set itself also really only has 35-something pages dealing with tSB proper, with the balance of the rest dealing with nearby Hepmonaland (HL) and The Amedio Jungle (AJ), both of interest to tSB. (This may be either considered good or bad, depending on what the reader enjoys.) Both of these extras have a Aztec feel, and both are barely described to a point of causing more confusion then being helpful. This is because important, and sometimes conflicting , events are casually listed without any details of how, why, or their ultimate conclusion. For example, Yuan-Ti are listed in HL but there really isn't anything about any potential diplomatic situation with the various human tribes they are obviously intermixed with but causing massive problems to. And the Suel are here too, apparently in respectable numbers. I'm sorry, but I just don't see a bunch of random fair skinned blond and redhead exiles doing well in what might as well be Central America.

In summary it's really just not a very well thought-out setting on so many levels.

Rather then just be negative and leave it and since I'm in a lazy mood (I don't want to create another complete homebrew) and feeling stubborn since I paid for it, I'll some things that I'm working on as general idea fodder. First, I'm checking the Maztica set (which used to be [still is?] a free download on the WotC website) and grabbing what is usable there. I also am picking bits from the African-based Nyambe sourcebooks.

The Suel situation is a much harder egg to crack without doing some serious thrashing of source material everywhere, but I'm thinking of making the Suel of tSB a slightly insane psionic using race with the bigotry aimed along those lines. This also somewhat solves the problem of why tSB are able to pull off some of the bogus diplomatic stuff that they are credited with in canon.

Should you get this product? If you're "old-skool" you may have already made up your mind. If you're anyone else, just know it's a busted setting that will require a bit work to get rolling.

Four stars for old-skool sake, two for what's really in there... for an ultimately very kindly three.