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go goffy on you and you end up in The Second World
where things just keep bending your mind. The Second
World is closer to a modern Dungeons and Dragons
game or a way high fantasy D20 Modern setting. Either
way you look at it, Elvis has left the building. Or maybe
he just strode back through the front door, but now he’s
a Hobgoblin.
You’ll also notice that a large portion of the text is
written from a 1 st -person (the author’s) perspective.
This took just a little getting used to, but really made
the whole book feel like the author was talking directly
to you and explaining things as he went along. Kind of
like you sitting down with him as he describes this new
game setting.
The chapter on Characters presents a handful of new
races, that I really wish there had been pictures of but
the text descriptions are passable, and a host of
background options of who your character was before
making the jump to The Second World.
BASICS
The Second World Sourcebook (TSWS) is the newest
d20 supplement from Second World Simulations and is
quite interesting indeed, but more on that later. TSWS
is a hefty 288-page softcover book with a color cover
and a very sparse amount of black and white interior
artwork. It provides players with an alternate, but more
than slightly skewed, version of Earth to play in. It has
a retail price of $29.95 USD and the back cover indicates
that it requires the use of both d20 Modern and
Dungeons and Dragons.
BETWEEN THE COVERS
The first section of TSWS sets up the campaign setting
of this ‘alternate’ Earth and does so in a really fun to
read ‘in-your-face’ kind of way. I found this section,
which takes up about a fifth of the book, to be just plain
great. What is ‘The Second World’? How did it come
into being? Well, that’s not 100% clear except that it’s a
less than exact high-fantasy with a modern twist version
of Earth, but not totally. It’s hard to explain what it is.
What it isn’t is boring and predictable. Ok, the First
World, our world, would be akin to a d20 Modern world
where things are mostly right, but sometimes things just
Wardens, the third chapter, are kind of like Prestige
Classes that are a new type of spellcaster of which there
are multiple (Dream, Feral, Flesh, Lightning, Metal,
Motion, Shadow, and Vector) varieties and a new system
for using magic with lots of Bindings (sort of like spells).
The Equipment and Opponents section are the smallest
in the book, but they give you a good enough sense of
how things work in The Second World. Here’s where
you’ll notice The Second World having a greater
influence from D&D, but I really think you could get by
with either set of rules.
VALUE
While billed as a supplement for both Dungeons and
Dragons and d20 Modern I found that you could
probably get by with either set of rules and my greatest
use of this book would be in the d20 Modern system.
This is not to say that it would not be useful in a
Dungeons and Dragons game, because it certainly could
be, but I just found the concept of an alternate world
more practical to a d20 Modern setting.
For about thirty buck this is an excellent supplement for
DM’s that are looking for a campaign universe that’s just
a bit more than a little different.
WWW.SECOND-WORLD-SIMULATIONS.COM