Once again, It’s Alternate RPG month here at Geek Of All Trades and we’ve scribbled up an Iron Kingdoms review for you!
INITIAL THOUGHTS
Starting off well, the Core Rules book is an impressive 360 pages with excellent production values. The book’s first 100 pages or so provide an overview of the Iron Kingdoms. This includes everything you could possibly want to know about the world, from their history and religions to types of coinage. The next 100 pages, or so, cover character creation and advancement. Lastly, there are five sections of about 30 pages each that cover the core concepts of the game rules, magic rules, equipment rules, the ever important steamjack rules, and finally a section on game mastering.
At it’s heart, the game’s rules are clearly based on the rules for Warmachine and Hordes. If you’ve played either of those before you easily be able to pick them up very quickly. As per the miniatures game, most rolls use “2D6 + relevant modifier” for your rolls, with the goal being to defeat a target number in order to succeed. Characters have Speed, Strength, Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, Defense, and Armor stats that are used, once again, in exactly the same way as in the miniatures games, but the game also adds a range of other statistics to round out characters and provide for some of the more “un-wargamelike” actions one can perform in an RPG. Characters and steamjacks also use life spirals and damage grids like warbeasts and warjacks in the skirmish game. The combat system (surprise surprise) works best when you have Miniatures to represent everyone in the encounter and includes blast templates, base size assumptions, and facing rules. If you’re not a fan of the tactical grid, don’t distress however, as the rules make it possible to run without miniatures without too much trouble on the GM’s part.
Trench coats are in this year in the Iron Kingdoms
CHARACTER CREATION
The character creation, customisation and advancement rules are one of my favorite parts of the system. A player starts by picking their race, of which the book includes seven (human, dwarf, gobber, Iosan (High elves), Nyss (Wild elves), ogrun, and trollkin.). This race choice will effect your stats and future choices, all themed rather appropriately to their fluff and what you’d come to expect of the race in question when you pick them. The next step then has the character pick a single archetype. These archetypes are broad character roles: gifted (magic-user), intellectual, mighty, and skilled. Now I can here you saying “Well gee, this just sounds like every other RPG out there, whats so different?” This is the point where the true magic of the system begins to shine! My personal favorite part of character creation, the career system. Each character starts with two careers and it is possible to add new careers as a character advances through the game. The book includes 28 careers, so there are quite literally 756 potential combinations you can use to build your character and breath life into them! (And this isn’t even including the expansion books and offciail blog posts that add more careers too!) These careers include options that those familiar with the lore will quickly recognise (Warcaster, Gun Mage, Assualt Kommando and Stormsmith as some examples.) along with those more traditional to a fantasy setting like Aristocrat, Pirate and Soldier. Each career provides a set of starting benefits as well as providing options for new abilities and skills that can be purchased as a character advances. This simple requirement of picking two careers is an elegant way to allow for a much wider range of character concepts right from the start and also adds depth to characters right from the beginning of the game, since Pirate-Mechanic says more than either Pirate or Mechanic do alone.
The ironic thing is that Pirate-Mechanic is not an uncommon career choice in the Iron Kingdoms
THE SETTING
The Storyline of the setting is focused around a world where magic is commonplace and has in fact been industrialized. As a result, a massive industrial revolution is occurring and it isn’t uncommon to see a squad of gunmen fighting alongside a squad of mages (or in some cases a squad of mages wielding guns) four large nations and their constant fighting over territory. You have Cygnar, who are essentially 18th-century America with a fetish for guns, lightning, SCIENCE!, and tri-cornered hats. They have some of the most advanced steampunk tech. They also have the best overall relations with the non-humans due to their principles of freedom, although in a lot of cases the non-humans are seen as second-class citizens, just treated better then anywhere else in the Kingdoms. Then there is Khador, a spin on Tsarist Russia, full of HUGE MEN IN REALLY THICK ARMOR WITH GIANT AXES AND ENORMOUS WARJACKS. Their sparse natural resources and poor tech base means they have to exploit their large populations instead, often replacing smaller Warjacks with men in suits of steam powered armour. They’re at war with Cygnar, often playing the espionage game with them in the much smaller neutral cities throughout the continent, providing plenty of ammo for a Cold war style vibe in a campaign. Next up is Mennoth, Imagine if the Catholic Church could summon holy fire to purge heretics. And had giant robots. And paladins in gigantic armor. And thought EVERYONE ELSE were heretics. Then have them led into battle by a 15-year-old blind prophet who floated around possessed by THE POWER OF GOD. They only recently declared independence from Cygnar stealing a good chunk of their lands in the process. Lastly, we have Cryx, a nation comprised of Powerful liches with bodies crafted of the strongest metals, fleets of Undead Pirates, hoards of evil cultists and undead thralls, all ruled by an ancient all powerful Demon Dragon. As a neat technological perk to their mastery of death magic, Instead of coal, their warjacks run off the souls of the living.
This doesn’t even get me started on the rich back-story and lore the universe has been able to lay out thanks to the numerous War-game books that have been released so far. No to mention the hundreds of other smaller factions within the kingdom and the large hordes factions located elsewhere in the setting. In fact, whilst they’ve provided a wealth of information in the book, it’s almost as if I get the feeling they’ve spread it too thin, in that they try desperately to tell you about everything rather then focusing on some meatier portions of the fluff. It’s not too much of an issue if you are familiar with the setting and have been following it’s lore since it’s wargame youth, but for someone new to the world, it’s more surface level stuff. Of course, a good GM will easily be able to deal with that by “filling in the gaps”
And by filling in I mean just stick large scale wars and battles in between everything
COMBAT
Combat is a VERY big part of this game. As mentioned before, it has taken the Tabletop rules and very smoothly integrated them into a party experience. For those who know the miniature’s game though, they will be well familiar with how quick the combat tides can swing. A few quick unlucky rolls of the dice could mean that your head is going to get blown off, even at high levels, from a routine encounter. Now, this isn’t exactly bad, Savage Worlds (Another very good RPG) is also extremely dangerous yet remarkably endearing, it just seems like death was hard to mitigate, even if you have a set of magic field generating Warcaster armor, expect things to get bloody! Thanks to their wargame roots, they are also careful to cover any combat eventuality from cover to strange battle conditions. Unfortunately, the rules don’t cover nearly as much in the way of out of combat interactions, making the system a little lob sided. This isn’t too bad if you’re coming to the game looking for a fight of course. But “political intrigue in court” would be much harder to run.
In this scene, Nemo is negotiating sheep for wood
MAGIC
The magic system divides the “Gifted” (spellcasters) into two categories. Warcasters, who are considered focusers and get a set number of points to spend on magical effects each turn. All non-warcaster spellcasters are known as “Will weavers”. Will weavers gain fatigue when they use magic, but are able to recover a set amount of fatigue each turn. If they gain more fatigue than their Arcane stat, then they risk becoming exhausted and temporarily losing their spell casting ability. The spells included in the Core Rules are very combat orientated and are presented in a very rules-focused way without any description of what a spell’s effect is beyond its name and mechanics. This is a little restricting when it comes to a Roleplaying game, but from a fluff point of view, it can make sense. The Iron Kingdoms have been at war for so long, the concept of magic being used for anything other then war is a difficult one. If your child exhibits potential, he’s drafted or enslaved (depending on where you live) so very little development of magic “for the people” get’s done when all your magi are in the army. That being said, I’m lead to believe future supplements either do, or will contain more “utilitarian” “non combat” magic. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Iron Kingdoms also loves using Magic rune circles for everything. A choice I can’t disagree with
WARJACKS
The most obvious display of the blending of magic and technology are the steamjacks, large humanoid mechanisms powered by coal furnaces and given mock-sentience by magical energy “brains” called cortexes that essentially give them the same level of intelligence as a puppy. Heavily armored and often carrying over-sized weaponry, “jacks” are used by he Iron Kingdoms to fill a role similar to our universes traditional military armor. (such as tanks and artillery.)
Warjacks can be telepathically controlled by a Focuser (see above) directly bonding with their cortex, or in a more crude method similar to training a dog to perform tricks, “marshaled” by someone who has the right training to do so. These are obviously based off the character’s “profession” choices.
Players can purchase, customise and have jacks in the party, but at the end of the day keeping in mind, that the massive mechanical monstrosity will only be useful in so many situations. Not being able to fit inside most buildings and requiring a constant source of fuel, I can see these machines quickly becoming costly to maintain for certain styles of campaign, whilst indispensable in others. With the systems focus on combat rules however, a good ‘jack by your side can make all the difference in an engagement.
We call him Spot
GAME MASTER SECTION
This is probably the most disappointing section of the book you’re going to encounter. The game mastering chapter is pretty minimal and mostly just offers guidelines for building NPCs and an encounter balance system. For an experienced GM this is not an issue, as you most likely have your own methods and techniques already anyways, but for a GM new to Roleplaying games this may be a little tough. (Which I find somewhat strange, as I would have thought Privateer Press would be trying to hook their Miniature gaming crowd into the world of RPGs) The appendix with monsters also is rather short at only eight pages. Privateer Press, realising this, has released a couple of free downloads to add an intro adventure and more monsters. Plus they recently released their version of the monster manual known as the Monsternomicon which adds another forty monsters for you to fling at your players.
Iron Lich’s are actually pretty decent guys when you get to know them
FINAL THOUGHTS
A very well established setting fluff wise, with loads of products and material for Warmachine and Hordes, enough to keep an eager loremaster busy for days consuming the various sections of the worlds tales even if they aren’t in Roleplaying books to begin with. I look forward to seeing more books for the role-playing game specifically however, as each one released defines the world even further. Privateer Press has announced that they plan to release additional books with a focus on areas beyond the core nations of the Iron Kingdoms that will include even more careers, not to mention they’ve also released rules for warlocks and warbeasts if you Hordes players were feeling a little left out! This is a golden oppertunity for Privateer Press takes the opportunity to focus on other aspects of the setting that we haven’t seen covered as well . In particular, I’d love to see a book with more material on spies, assassins, criminals, and other character types that operate away from the battlefield, as there are several if the Iron Kingdoms novels written around this aspect of the wars.
If you are a fan or Warmachine and enjoy role-playing games, then I think Iron Kingdoms is a great product for you. On the other hand, if you aren’t familiar with the setting, I’d recommend taking a look at the quick start adventure to see if it seems like something you’d enjoy. I think the game system has some interesting mechanics, but it is also very closely tied to the Iron Kingdoms setting, so it would be hard to justify buying the game if you aren’t interested in a setting that mixes a steam-punk filled industrial revolution with fantasy elements.
Ok guys, Now let’s go slay those rats in the basement!