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Simon Crowe
United Kingdom
Sheffield
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Review - Renegade Crowns
Do you like random charts and tables? The appropriately named David Chart, author of Renegade Crowns, does. His book gives you everything you need to roll up a landscape of competing principalities set in the Border Princes - that area south of the Empire that’s never fully been explained.
When Renegade Crowns was announced some were excited that the Border Princes would finally get described. Some were disappointed, seeing the area as a GM’s playground, where anything could happen. This book tries to accommodate the latter, but in doing that leaves the GM with an uneasy question - how exactly do I use this?
Looking at it chapter by chapter...
Chapter 1 - Landscape of the Borderlands
Look, a map! Ok, so it’s only half a page, but it names some of the roads and rivers around the Borderlands. Nice looking work from Andy Law as usual. From this point on though everything’s in the GMs hands. It’s time to roll up an area of the Border Princes.
The basic idea is that you begin with a sheet of squared graph paper and get rolling - you’ll be generating areas of different terrain, rivers and special features. And I must say that for a lover of maps and geography such as myself this is actually a lot of fun.
You’ll also be adding ancient ruins to the map. Who did they belong to? What dangers lurk inside? Why are they here and why are they now deserted? This is great for firing the imagination, though random tables such as these are not really anything new to RPGs.
Chapter 2 - Prince of the Borderlands
Areas of the Borderlands are ruled by Princes. Despite the title they are almost never actually related to royalty, instead they are just opportunistic rulers who rule through fear or force or wealth.
In this chapter you get to roll up the Princes who control your regions. Where are they from and why are they there? There is plenty to roll up here, and again it can provide good plot ideas and background trying to tie together the various random attributes you’ve got.
Chapter 3 - Inhabitants of the Borderlands
More tables, this time for villages and towns. You can roll to see amongst other things how they survive, what crafts they make and if there is anything strange going on.
Then - gasp! - there are some actual rules for use in any games. These are in the form of nine new careers. Whilst a few are fairly Borderland specific, some might find their way into games set elsewhere. Of course you can find all these in the Career Compendium.
Chapter 4 - Hazards of the Borderlands
Back to the charts, this time populating the region with chaos, orcs, undead and monsters. Nothing new here, and you’ll really need the Old World Bestiary to get the most out of it.
Interlude - Making Masserschloss
An example of how chapters 1 - 4 work by showing you an example. Ok, except the chapters haven’t been that difficult to follow. Not sure many people need a seven page example.
Chapter 5 - General Arms
The random tables are over. I miss them. This chapter is the start of helping the GM actually work out a Border Princes campaign. The suggestion is that the campaign will centre around players trying to create / seize a principality of their own, and then rule it.
Since this is a vague objective, it requires some co-operation from the players. It’s not really something you can just drop into an existing campaign, it requires a specific player and character mindset. But assuming you set this up, it’s a least entertainingly different from a standard WFRP adventure.
This chapter is short and gives some introductory rules for running these type of campaigns. Not much to see here.
Chapter 6 - Becoming a Prince
A Border Princes adventure is going to be player-driven. This chapter suggests ways they might try and become princes, through treason, assassination or simply seizing by force. It gives a short campaign framework for each of the three ways. Might give the GM some ideas, but I can’t really see this chapter being particularly useful.
There’s also a selection of three new poisons, should you have any players that way inclined.
Chapter 7 - Internal Problems
Once they are in power, here are a series of ideas for problems the GM can throw at them. Obviously this chapter gives internal problems...
Chapter 8 - External Problems
...and this chapter gives external problems. Monsters, neighbouring principalities etc.
Chapter 9 - Making Trouble
And finally, assuming the players deal with their problems they might decide to actually do something with their principality. Go on a conquest, find resources, negotiate alliances.
These last five chapters are all very specific to this type of adventure. If you just wanted to send your PC exploring tombs and fighting monsters in the Border Princes then half the book is rather wasted. But the type of campaign presented is so player-lead that it’s quite a jolt from the traditional WFRP play, enough to make some players uncomfortable and giving GMs a lot of work.
Appendix 1 - Names
Hooray, the tables are back! This time for random place names in various different languages.
Appendix 2 - Masserschloss
Taking the example Borderland area used throughout the book and fleshing out a history. An ok read, that might give a bit of inspiration.
Art
The art in Renegade Crowns is generally of a high quality. Not much made me go ‘whoa!’ but certainly nothing that made me want to turn the page. There are a lot of artists listed so it’s hard to pick many out, but there is some nice art by Christophe Swal.
Conclusion
This is an odd book, one that has no real comparison in the WFRP line. Half the book is packed with random tables with which to create, and whilst this is nothing new to RPGs it’s actually fairly enjoyable for a random generator fan such as myself. The use of these in WFRP however is fairly questionable.
The second half of the book gives vague ideas for an alternate campaign that is rather different from any WFRP campaign I’ve seen. It’s actually quite a nice idea, but is of limited use as I imagine most groups are not going to attempt it.
I find myself liking this book, but it has such limited scope that it’s hard to recommend to anyone.
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Lowell Francis
United States
South Bend
Indiana
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Nice review-- I think my favorite line here is:
Quote: The random tables are over. I miss them.
Well played sir.
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Vincent Waciuk
Canada
Ottawa
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I just picked up the last copy of this at my FLGS. I want to complete my WFRP collection before it's gone. Good review by the by. This is a good book.
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I love this book. It was exactly what I thought it would be.
It really gives you an alternate mode of play out side the standard WFRP scenarios, which is rare, and it gives the GM an opportunity to make their onw unique mark on the Warhammer World, which is even rarer, without having to send the PCs overseas to some previously unknown island.
Best of all, it provides an alternate 'end game' for PCs that have made it to 3rd career and beyond. Instead of having them save the world every adventure, which can get very over the top after a while, or sending them to Drachenfels Castle, which is a death sentence, you arrange for them to go into the Border Princes and carve out their own empire or die trying. In fact, this is something the authorities in the Empire might strongly 'encourage' them to do if they start gumming up the plans of the higher-ups with their incessant heroism and 'do-goodery...'
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