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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

ASSH is Now Available for those interested. It is published by Jeff Talanian and North Wind, who was heavily involved in the Castle Zagyg line with Gary Gygax. The game is supposed to be old school D&D, but with a heavy dose of swords and sorcery.

I've only seen bits and pieces that have been released and discussed on blogs such as Akratic Wizardry. It looks interesting, though I suspect the game is going to fall into the trap of needing four or more player characters.

This is one area I think D&D fails at, and hard. Adventurers in sword and sorcery often went alone, or with maybe one companion, on their adventures. They were largely self-sufficient. The roles imposed by D&D run counter to this. Maybe Jeff has addressed this in the rules (I hope so). If he hasn't, then we get yet another clone that we really don't need.

The artwork looks great, though I suspect there's going to be a lot of Cthulhu in the game. I like that in bits, but not as the main monsters session after session. I hope this is also addressed.

In any case, I remain cautiously optimistic. If Jeff has actually reworked the rules enough that a lone fighter can easily complete adventures, I think this game will be awesome. If it's yet another clone with new artwork, I'm going to skip it.

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