Meine Mini-Rezension des Buches. Auf Englisch. Ich hoffe, es bewahrt den einen oder anderen vor einem Fehlkauf. In Kürze:
1. Kein Kartenmaterial. Bin ICH froh, dass ich das 4E FRCG habe.
2. Die SL-Tipps sind für die Tonne. Alles, was die Underdark interessant und gefährlich macht, soll man seinen Spielern keinesfalls zumuten.
3. Zuviele Querverweise auf das DMG 2. Es fehlt konkretes Material, wie man etwa Underdark-spezifisches Terrain in Begegungen einbaut. Hier erfährt der Leser "Bitte kaufen Sie sich das DMG 2." Aha.
4. Wieder mal ein Fünftel des Buches (32 Seiten) an mittelmäßige Delves verschenkt. Sie wurden aber nicht hintereinander sondern über das Buch verstreut abgedruckt. Lasst Euch keinen Scheiß von Leuten einreden, die meinen, "Endlich mal ein Buch, dass fast ohne Delves auskommt!". Diese Leute können keine Seiten zählen.
Gerade hinsichtlich 4. - das Buch wurde als "endlich mal Fluff-betont!" ge-hyped, ist aber in jeder Hinsicht bestenfalls Durchschnitt.
Plane Below ist um
Welten besser, also wenn schon ein
neues 4E-SL-Buch kaufen muss dann eher dieses.
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Pros:+ Good prose and inspiring texts especially in chapter 1 (on the deity of Torog e.g.). Can't recall the last time I saw this in a 4E book. As a DM I mostly buy toolkit books for 4E these days (e.g. Plane Below - really awesome) because I've given up on inspiring texts in 4E books mostly. Turns out that conclusion was premature. Always glad to stand corrected. Let's hope this sets a trend in future publications for 4E DMs and isn't the shortlived exception that it currently is (in my book, at least).
Cons:-
No money for cartography. While the art budget delivers big time, there are no maps. I'm personally fine with using dungeon tiles to show encounter maps (it's superconvenient when building the encounters on the table), but when we get to city sections like the one on Erelhei-Cinlu and there's no map, let alone a keyed map which shows the districts, I'm missing something. Same for the other cities e.g. Glimmer and Forgehome. Can't help but get the vibe WotC didn't want to comission a cartographer for this book. NB Not that big a minus if you run your game in the Realms and own the FRCG, which comes with very good cartography on general Underdark regions. But city write-ups without maps are just lame. And the example I cited really hurt, because WotC did a beautiful map of Erelhei-Cinlu in a 3.5 supplement (see below). Reminded me of how WotC gave us a beautiful map of the Demonweb plane in a 3.5 book, and then the 4E book (MotP) skipped to provide one with the excuse that "attempting to map this plane is vain". Rrrrrright.
(Eine von vielen Karten, die man im neuen Buch vergebens suchen wird. Es gibt keine!)- Tie-ins to DMG 2. Never wanted the book, didn't like the portions I read. Too many references to it in this book - terrain features, DM narrative devices, etc. Seems to be a recurring thing in this book. Instead of referencing a mechanic briefly they reference the book.
((E.g. there's one player power players pick up on becoming a drow - but instead of providing it, they apparently assume the full entry in the Faerun PG. I'm fine with that as I own the book, but really, it's not like they would have needed to copy-paste the full drow entry but only 4 lines of text.
)) I don't have anything against obvious (and thus, obviously appropriate) tie-ins - I was fine with Plane Below referencing Manual of the Planes so often. However, Underdark and DMG 2 aren't really related purchases for me, and I wonder why the contrary seemed obvious to WotC. Perhaps DMG 2 didn't sell enough copies for them. But then, who knows. - Again, not a minus if you own the DMG 2 and if you generally prefer WotC to not reprint stuff from other books even if that stuff is quite small (e.g. the drow power entry).
- All the side-bars in chapter 1 on DM advice. Very well intended, as they cover the basic issues of "so how does a game session/campaign set in the Underdark differ for your PCs from running them through a campaign on the surface world?". And that's a huge PRO in my book. However, when you actually bother to read which advice exactly is given here, it all starts to rub me the wrong way. Maybe it's because I'm currently prepping an ultra-lethal sandbox for my 4e game, but this books basically tells me again and again in a condescending and uncompromising tone to skip all the things that make life difficult for the PCs. The immense difficulty (compared to surface world adventuring life) when wanting to: trade items, find places to rest, getting food; the psychological difficulties and their onset after prolonged journeys in the sunless world below (v.nice comparison to "cabin fever"!! another pro) - all the book's advice on these subjects is to effectively remove them from the actual game. To be precise, the advice on these aspects boils down to one of two things:
1. "Don't let this [insert random difficulty when traveling in the Underdark] have an impact on the PCs at all, rather show off NPCs who suffer from this to remind the players of the difficulty's existence - and that they are heroes, after all, who are above this". Aright, so it's Skippy the dog and Marly his goblin master who suffer from psychosis, but not Mr Dragonborn Paladin. Sorry, that sort of rehearsed "positive re-inforcement" by inserting side-kick NPCs which highlight just how awesome the PCs are... is a bit too immmature for my players' tastes. And I double-tag dare you to implement it at your table without it being obvious and coming off as cheap.
2. "Don't you dare let these things have a mechanical impact on the PCs - just roleplay them." Again, how come that the game is fine with me depleting the guys' hitpoints when there is a drow there to hit them, but gets all touchy when it's about the environment and its factors? Why is a gloomy atmosphere which has a mechanical impact on the PCs a no-go?
((I'm reminded of Manual of the Planes which virtually juxtaposed the extreme depression of the Shadowfell which raps "like a cancerous claw around the characters' heart" (incidentally, type of the bs prose you're spared in the Underdark book) with the bold face line: DOES NOT HAVE A MECHANICAL IMPACT ON PCs. Ahm, what? So here's this massive negative impact the environment has on those who visit it, but it's a DM no-go if the PCs visiting have a harder time to regain their encounter powers and spend healing surges?
))In related vein, why am I constantly lectured to skip all sorts of resource management (finding resting places + food) and get on with the next high-action scene?
It's like the book highlights what makes the Underdark such a special adventuring site, and in the next breath admonishes you to winge it so the players won't have to deal with it. I'm sort of reminded here of the infamous "Don't have the PCs talk with the town guards! Wheel them on to the next fight! Onto Fun! Fun!" paragraph in the DMG 1, which I found hilarious back then. (Apparently,
so did others.) Today, the joke has worn off and I'm rather curious if WotC designers really skip over all those portions in their home games and these "sidebars" are simply comissioned to appease an influential segment of their fanbase.
Finally, the side-bar by Matt Sernett about how you should characters always let escape a combat that's overwhelming them... well, that's just plain bad and is bound to draw as many howlers as the infamous "That's right, I cheated … in the players' favor" editorial by Chris Youngs
back in 2009. It's like I'm asked to present my players the illusion of choice and does the opposite of getting across the vibe that Matt wants the players to have here: to not feel that they're always going to come out alive regardless of what they do. Seriously, that side bar alone... I could post it on any non-WotC forum, without a comment, and all the 4E haters would be coming with "I told you so". It's the thing I dislike most about 4E. I love the system but being continuously told that I'm there to make my players feel heroic all the time and don't touch their character sheets with negative impacts... even when they journey for weeks without end in the underground realms of a lunatic god... reminds me of the severe disconnect I have with the design ethos at WotC.
All in all, that's more con than pro (though I referenced smaller pros in the con), but not to say that I didn't like what I read. Just wanted to get the above sentiment off my chest. So I'm not saying Underdark is a bad book (would be a premature conclusion without having read all of it). My sentiment so far is simply that a book like Plane Below sits better with me, as it offers me tons of material but doesn't lecture me on what I'm expected to do with it - and on what, specifically, I'm NOT to do with it. Providing DM advice is terrific, and an emphasis that's terrific in 4E books. But it just all happens to be ... wrong.
