Customer Reviews

The Second World Sourcebook (d20 3.0 Roleplaying)

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Please ignore the "Star Rating" above; it's the only way I could submit a review...

The author of this book has an interesting website:

www.second-world-simulations.com

...but didn't ensure that Amazon got a copy of the book's description. So, from the Author's website:

"The Second World Sourcebook is a complete guide to multi-genre roleplaying in the d20 universe. Drop a team of Special Forces Ops into any fantasy world, trap your wizard, thief and cleric in a near future cyberbased metropolis run by greedy corporations. The possibilities are endless for how you can cross or jump genres adding hundreds of new and exciting options to your game.

The Sourcebook supports both the d20 Modern Rules and the standard d20 rules and provides a complete set of genre and technology rules for customizing the way reality works in the two worlds, in alternate planes, or even in your own game world. Over 200 powers spread across 8 prestige classes (with an alternate, feat-based system)are detailed. Each class gets to pick one ability per level from a list of at least 25 special powers; this provides maximum customizability in character development. It also includes a complete set of influence rules with over 30 organizations and 100 favors to request; this system provides a nifty method for adding crunch to the political aspect of a game. The Second World Sourcebook also provides a basic campaign setting designed to show off the full potential of genre jumping.

Occasionally a person steps around the corner of an alley, finds a hole in the back of their closet, takes a shortcut down a wooded road at night, or simply turns their head at just the right moment to watch a falling leaf and then finds himself elsewhere. These people are called Exiles; they step or turn out of our world, the world of crowded freeways and glittering convenience stores and into the Second World, a place of magic, mystery, danger, and more than a little bit of terror. There are two worlds you see, separated by a roiling gulf of chaos called the Forge.

The Second World Sourcebook bridges the gap between modern day adventuring and traditional fantasy roleplaying. It provides a "campaign template" for running a dual-world game. By combining the sourcebook with your own favorite setting you can take your fantasy characters and run them through a modern day scenario, or take your modern characters and run them through one of the many fantasy modules currently available. Most modern settings already describe the impact of fantasy elements on them and include rules for handling magic. But what would happen if people from the modern world regularly trafficked with those in a more traditional fantasy world? What impact would it have if powerful wizards originally studied computer science at UCLA? What would the social institutions look like if the progress of ideas and politics we've seen in our world carried over to a place where electricity and gunpowder simply didn't work, but magic and divine power did?

One thing I think we lose sight of with high definition televisions, computers that double in power every 18 months or so, and medical technology that has progressed so rapidly that it outstripped the imaginations of science fiction writers from just 30 years ago, is that a more subtle kind of technology has progressed alongside the hardware and wetware we normally associate with scientific advance. Economic theory, the advantages and limitations of free market economies, the growth of corporate powers, the art of conventional and covert war, espionage, intelligence gathering, forensic science, the dangers of republics and the individual empowerment they provide, all these are no less technological advances than new ways to hurl lead and these sorts of technologies would spread no matter what your physics.

To answer these sorts of questions I include a rich system for dealing with social influence and 30-some organizations that use that system. I also include a cosmology of the world that explains why you'd have two parallel worlds of this sort and how to resolve interactions between them. I also include guidelines for how to handle characters from a modern setting when they translate to the fantasy setting, and vice versa. This should make it easier to run an occasional modern adventure with your regular fantasy characters or a fantasy adventure with your regular modern characters. Finally, I include a set of special prestige classes called Wardens; I make these as customizable as possible by including a menu of at least 25 abilities each that they choose from as they advance. In some ways they'll feel like the player-ready templates from my first product, "Bodies and Souls: Twenty Templates".


Other 3rd party Reviews of The Second World Sourcebook:

"The prestige classes in the Second World Sourcebook are uniquely original and compellingly interesting." - John Grigsby, d20 Magazine Rack Review (A)

"The book is well written, and I like the setting tremendously." - Lars Sukka, RPG United Review (4/5)

"Steven Palmer Peterson's writing is brilliant. If you have to read this much (which you do), this is the way to do it." - Kithmaker, Mortality.net Review (9.6/10)

"...this is an excellent supplement for DM's that are looking for a campaign universe that's just a bit more than a little different." - Mark Theurer, March issue of Fictional Reality magazine.

"It's big, complete, and packed with information..." - Jeff Ibach, Role-Play News Review (13/20)

"The writing style is fairly unique - at times it has the ambience of a Charles De Lint novel, before switching through an academic-style discourse on metaphysics to an informal chat about game mechanics and occasionally into raw creative flow. At times its annoying, sometimes confusing; mostly its damn impressive." - Simon Collins, ENWorld Staff Review (4/5)

"2WS approaches the idea of parallel worlds in a unique, interesting fashion, and provides you with the rules to back it up." Butch Curry, Gaming Report Review (8/10)

"I think with wardens and warden powers, Steven Palmer Peterson has again shown his unique talent to twist the d20 System rules in unique and compelling ways." - Alan "Psion" Kohler, ENWorld Staff Review (4/5)

"It's really quite easy to see The Second World Sourcebook becoming the seminal advanced d20 product." - Gamewyrd (9/10)

"It's certainly a unique product, in a good way. Part of the reason I like the d20 license and OGL so much is that we see things like this." - Review by Trancejeremy (4/5)"