Review: Trojan War

The Mythic Vistas series started really well, with Testament. The only problem with that book was that I would never actually use it, as I felt the material was just a bit too controversial. It continued well, with Skull & Bones, which was slightly less stunning, but was more useful. Since then, the books have been getting gradually worse.

Trojan War is a marvellous return to form. It is set during the war of the same name, of course, and is closer to Testament than any of the other books.

There are only three weaknesses I can see:

1) Out of a sense of completeness, I should point out that the editing here is less good than other Green Ronin books. This is a small complaint, and doesn't really detract from the book as a whole, but since I've complained about editting in Mongoose books, I should do the same here.

2) The book doesn't have stats for the deities. Normally, this would be a good thing, but in the Trojan War, the gods often took human form to fight. Without the stats, this becomes difficult to recreate, and is something of an oversight. It should also be noted that the 'official' stats for the gods (from Deities & Demigods) are of little use here - if Achillies is the most powerful warrior on the field, and is CR 22, there's no way he can stand against a deity with 40 class levels. What is needed is stats of about CR 25-30.

3) Military campaigns can be quite dry. This can make the book a bit limited in use, although there's no real reason you can't use it as a general Bronze Age game.

These flaws detract only slightly from the book as a whole. The high-points are many and powerful: the writing is very good, the mechanics are spot-on, and the expanded mass-battle and piety systems are very well done. These latter two systems are developed from the core in Testament, but have been improved here. The mass battle system, in particular, is perhaps the most useful rules of their type in the book.

This book is highly recommended for those DMs with a use for it. Naturally, it's less useful for DMs who aren't running this sort of a game, although several of the subsystems are useful on their own. Additionally, I should point out that the book is still not quite as good as Testament, but it's probably on a par with Skull & Bones, and is certainly more likely to be used (by me) than Testament.