RPGPundit Reviews: Vornheim

This is a review of the "city-kit" sourcebook Vornheim, written by "Zak S.", published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  I'm reviewing the print edition, which is a nice relatively thin (65 page) hardcover, with a book-sleeve in nice full colour (with an impressive and evocative illustration), and the inner sleeve depicting the mazelike city. The proper cover features a set of numbers on the edge, one of the gimmicks of the gamebook, with the inner sleeve providing mechanics  to use the cover of the book to generate random characters, creatures, locations, and attacks.  The back cover proper also features a similar gimmick, with instructions on the back cover sleeve explaining how to use that table to generate hit rolls, damage, and hit locations.  The inside front cover repeats the instructions for  how to use the front and back cover gimmicks, and the inside back cover has a d100 table of random buildings (with applicable adventure hooks).

You may have noticed I used the word "gimmick" in there a few times.  Indeed, it seems that this product, nominally a book describing the specific city-setting of Vornheim (the campaign run in the author's "I hit it with my Axe" campaign, but in fact a book full of useful old-school style material with a strongly gonzo and "weird/dark fantasy" bent to it that could be used to spice up any fantasy city in any RPG setting), has a fair amount of gimmicks; unconventional ideas, weird die-rolling and map-making conventions, that seems to me to have been put there in an attempt to differentiate this book from other generic city-sourcebooks.  I'm sure it made sense to the author at the time, but I'm not sure the author should have bothered; all the non-gimmicky parts of Vornheim (that is, the good ones) more than stand up on their own merits, and I would rather the space dedicated to gimmicks had instead been dedicated to a few more of the truly awesome random tables presented in the book.

Vornheim itself is a city known as "the grey maze", a sprawling winding city of towers and apparently a lot of grunge; the sprawl strikes me as more authentically medieval than a lot of fantasy cities I've seen; medieval cities were not built with city-planning in mind.  The grunge is probably pretty authentic too, the "towers" are somewhat less so.  But for the most part, this isn't really a big deal, given that, as I explained before, the author does not set out with the intent of giving a detailed description of Vornheim the city, but, as he says: "its about RUNNING Vornheim - or any other city - in a fantastic medieval setting".

You do, however, get some tidbits about the Vornheim setting itself, information about the place, though in some ways its presented almost apologetically.  It reminds me of those history books written by ultra-Marxists, who are so concerned about saying "there are no Great Men of History" that they spend all their time writing about fishwives and bakers, and leave the reader knowing almost nothing about the actual structure of the era they're covering.  The urge to say these aren't "Important people, places things and ideas because few of them are indispensable to the character of the city" (an actual quote from the Vornheim book) leads to a city that really doesn't feel filled in.  Ultimately, I personally don't much care, because I know I WILL be using this book, and WON'T be using it for Vornheim-the-city; I imagine many of the readers of this book will be in the same boat, wanting the book for its awesome generic material, and not for the specific setting.  But I do think this needs to be noted here, because it means that if someone was getting it to have a specific setting book about the city of Vornheim itself, they would probably feel disappointed.

What we do get in terms of specific setting-material is two very abstract maps (really more like illustrations) of two of the central landmark buildings of the city: The "Palace Massive" and the "Eminent Cathedral". Both look so alike that for a second I thought they were cross-images of the same building; they're both sprawling towers built with measurements I'm pretty sure would be impossible in real life (as in, both would probably collapse).  Only certain features are pointed out in the maps, usually quirky-named details like the "Tower of Pudding and Wine" or the "Gate of Nine Corrosions", with no actual information beyond the name, leaving it to the reader's imagination what the "Tower of Pudding and Wine" actually is (is it a tower literally filled with pudding and wine? is the name symbolic of something? etc.). You also get a few pages (like, four in total) detailing the "basics" of the city (information like how the majority of the residents are human, the city is landlocked, magic is uncommon, etc), and the "oddities of the city" (things like how the upper classes like to make showy gardens of odd-coloured foliage filled with sometimes dangerous exotic animals, how "slow pets" like land-lobsters and alchemically-modified turtles are favored pets of the aristocracy, and how the skins of snakes can be read like books by those who know how).

You also get a long list of "superstitions of Vornheim", which, read in total would suggest that Vornheim is mostly populated by the utterly insane.  However, this list is actually quite useful, I think, if used in a generic sense; a GM could pick just one or two of the superstitions to give to the native population of a fantasy city.  Examples include things like how if a cat crosses your path and you don't feed it your food will taste bitter for days, hunters shouldn't kill stags with a bow, children shouldn't sleep in striped pyjamas or they'll be replaced by a doppleganger, etc.

I'll note that the art in this book is definitely not that old-school, not exactly new-school either. I don't know how to describe it, frankly, very linear and kind of euro-punk fantasy, I suppose.  One thing that is certainly old-school, though, is the organization of the book.  Do not take this as a put down, but the book goes all over the place.  The section I mentioned above is immediately followed, with no break of any kind, with a short adventure, "The House of the Medusa".  The book is short enough that it can get away with this; if it was hundreds of pages long it would be almost impossible to navigate (perhaps in homage to the cluttered and mazelike nature of Vornheim city itself), but in a book this size its pretty easy to remember where things are, so that's acceptable.

"House of the Medusa" is a fantastic adventure, by the way, which I'm almost certainly going to use in my own current D&D game. I love that its an adventure designed for a group of level 1-4 PCs with few or no magic items, and the opponent is a motherfucking Medusa.  Aside from that, since I'll be running this adventure in all likelihood, and some of my players read these reviews, I'll be providing no more details here; only to say that this is one of the various elements of this book that make it worth buying in spite of its foibles and quirks.

There are two other equally unusual adventures, both for pc levels 4-7; "The Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng" and "The Library of Zorlack".  The first seems extremely good, the second more moderately interesting (with less clear definition as far as what the PCs could be doing in the Library; it may not technically qualify as an "adventure" at all, though I suppose the premise is that the PCs would be going there to make mischief).   In all, the three adventures take up 22 pages, or nearly one-third, of the Vornheim book.  That seems acceptable to me, because the adventures are above-par, and the book as a whole really manages to cram in tons of information; you find almost no pages that have any real "empty space", or pure filler, and even most of the illustrations are directly practical.

Next, after another image/map detailing a "typical tower" complex of Vornheim city (which looks a lot like the previous two images), we get to the gimmicky section of the book. There are some rules for creating abstract streetplans by writing out the words for numbers and linking them together to make a streetplan, rules on navigating the same, a way to generate random floorplans by rolling d4s (but not by looking up the numbers of the die, just by using the angles created by the d4 itself); all of which are, like I said, gimmicky.  They are intended to be "shortcuts", but I think they're the kind of thing that is more of interest and value to the author than to the audience; I can't see myself using this, anyways.

There is a little essay on the Law in Vornheim, mostly consisting as a justification to have a random table (presented later on in the book) with all kinds of goofy methods of adjudicating criminal cases. The table is pretty amusing, granted.

There are also some short rules on contacts, the chief point of which is making it so that the chance of a contact knowing about something going on in the city is often randomly determined. There are some very short rules for resolving chases (which are of mediocre use), some short rules for determining quick costs (again, in a gimmicky fashion, by determining the number of syllables in the description of the item and multiplying that by a value level of the item's worth), and a somewhat more useful set of optional rules for libraries (complete with a flowchart to help work out the process of finding information). Then, after a "recommended reading list" for the book, you get another set of gimmicky rules for how to use a chessboard to simulate the political influences and machinations in a city (these rules actually require that a game of chess be played; which just seems silly to me).

After that, we get to the full-on awesome part of the book: Random Tables!  Glorious ones, at that:
 -A very good and detailed set of tables to generate random aristocrats
- a very good random books table
- an equally detailed and excellent set of tables for random NPCs
- a good table for random shopkeepers  (useful mainly for when you want to have a distinctive or quirky shopkeeper)
- a random contacts table connected to the optional rule for contacts provided earlier
- a random table to determine results when you ask someone for directions in the city (useful for vornheim-esque metropolises)
- a not-so-useful chart with random elements to determine NPC connections to one another
- an entertaining random city encounters table
- a table of 100 random fortunes
- an extremely useful "I search the body" table for random possessions a person could be carrying on him
- the random legal trial table connected to the rules mentioned previously (with such unusual trials as "trial by drama", where the two sides have to put on a stage play with their version of the events, and the winning side is the one most enjoyed by the audience; or "trial by pie", being a pie-baking-and-eating contest, rather than a pie-throwing contest)
- a random magic effects table
- a good set of random tavern tables, with notes on "unusual tavern games".

The book ends with brief conversion notes for some of the monsters detailed in the adventure, and the aforementioned random buildings table, along with a random building page for those who want to drop a die rather than roll a die (they had to get one last gimmick in there, after all).

Vornheim, then, is something of a mixed bag.  I would not go so far as to say that anything in it is bad, as such.  Instead, about half the book is awesome, and the other half is, at risk of repeating myself, gimmicky.  I wish it had just been 100% awesome and zero-gimmicks. Its saving grace, however, is that the material in here that is unadulterated non-gimmicky awesome is very awesome indeed.  I'm fairly sure that any fan of old-school fantasy gaming (particularly of the grimier urban variety) will be quite satisfied with a purchase of this book, even if its only for that half of the contents.  And if you're actually the type of person who actually likes "stupid GM tricks", you will be beyond satisfied.

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Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti oversize + Image Latakia

I like the inclusion of the gimmicks. Any tips & tricks to help move the game along are worth consideration, even if they are not all implemented and what doesn't work for one GM might work for another. GM support is one area I find lacking in most RPGs and supplements so any attempt in that area gets a thumbs up from me.

As a fan of Warhammer's Mordheim and Judges Guild's Modron, this sounds like a good purchase.

Hey Raggi, it seems that most of those who commented about my review on your blog didn't actually read the fucking thing, or they'd have noted the 8/10-style positive overall impression of this product.

Either that, or they're all just such pussies that calling a gimmick a gimmick, even in an otherwise very positive review, is enough to make them cry.

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