Sometimes, the busy GM doesn't have much time to prepare a game, and wants something that can be run with minimal reading of background material. Often this can descend into another dungeon bash, as that's the easy option. But with Life and Death: A Saga of the Shattered Lands, Newt Newport has come up with a short adventure campaign which has everything needed (except the OpenQuest rules), which has a rich background, lots of cool characters and locations, and a plot that is definitely player-driven.

The book begins with an 11-page introduction to the Shattered Lands - a post-magical-disaster quasi-Babylonian civilisation where the balance between life and death has been upset and zombies stalk the land. There's enough atmosphere and detail to get you started, including character templates (though there are also six ready-to-run characters provided), but not so much that you get bogged down in trying to remember acres of invented history and culture that will never make it to the gaming table.

It's followed by two adventures: "Dead Pot Country", in which the PCs search for the son of a merchant who's gone missing in an ancient necropolis, and get embroiled in the politics of the local villagers; and "Life and Death", which sees them visiting the city of Miraz as they have to deal with a myriad characters and dangerous situations while trying to find the reason for the zombie plague that's sweeping the land.

Each adventure is broken down into a number of "scenes", which include descriptions of locations, people and their motivations, and a series of events which may or may not happen depending on how the players decide to interact with the places and people. Each scene is very open, allowing the players to choose their own course without railroading - but there's enough information that the GM has the tools to deal with most of the things the PCs might come up with. There's plenty of room for fighting zombie hordes, but the emphasis is firmly on character interactions and the players getting themselves into (and hopefully out of!) sticky situations.

There's enough material in the book for quite a few sessions of play, and some pointers for where the campaign could go next if the GM wants to take it further. As well as working as a stand-alone, it would be quite easy to slot into an existing game-world, and would require minimal work to convert to RuneQuest II or BRP. All in all, a very nice little fantasy campaign which I look forward to running.

Here's my review from my blog:

RPGs aren't a matter of life and death, to paraphrase Bill Shankly, they're more important than that.  And anyone who spends large amounts of time designing RPG campaigns will appreciate Life and Death (L&D) by Newt Newport.  Written for Newt's Openquest system, a slimmed-down version of Mongoose Runequest 1 designed under the Open Game License, L&D is an extremely imaginative campaign setting and adventures that resonates well with the distinctly non-medieval tradition of Runequest adventures.  I heartily recommend it.

L&D is set in the Shattered Lands, a setting of 5 city states that all fell under a magical curse 500 years ago and endured centuries of complete isolation.  During that time, their gods disappeared and magical has become extremely limited in its scope.  Some "replacement" cults have now arisen and the objects of devotion are attempting to achieve godhood.  This makes for a fun setting, especially as undeath is pretty common around the Lands.

Newt says in his introduction that the two adventures for the setting aim to embody several themes that he has found running through "d100" adventures through the years.  Those are:

Monsters are characters too
Treasure is often culturally significant
Cultural detail is important
Magic is an integral part of the world
Interaction with the world is not just based around combat

I have to say that this is a great list, and will use it as a checklist for my own future scenarios.  It's also safe to say that Newt has succeeded in his aims.

Of the two adventures I marginally prefer the first, Dead Pot Country, which takes the characters into a desert area populated by peasants and bandits, a whole bunch of walking dead and a lost civilization ripe for exploration.  Tomb robbers looking for loads of loot are going to be extremely disappointed (and that's probably why most adventurers will be lured to the area), but those looking for the unexpected will be delighted, assuming they survive.

The adventures are written in a particular style that makes them ideal for "sandbox" style gaming.  There is no railroad here.  The setting, characters (including "monsters") and certain encounters are described individually, for the DM to use as he/she feels fit.  This makes them adaptable to almost any DM-ing style.  The storyteller can write the story beforehand from the ingredients provided while the old school referee can let the players explore and drop in the encounters when it seems right.

The second adventure, the eponymous Life and Death, has more of a plot, but it is one that can unfold in a variety of ways.  It takes the characters through from being newcomers to a city, through involvement in political factions to a mythic encounter in the deserted realm of the gods.  All good Runequest-style stuff.

The downfall, however, of area-based settings like this is that they can often be difficult to insert into an ongoing campaign.  L&D, by contrast, could fit quite well into Glorantha almost as written.  The isolation of the Shattered Lands fits well into Gloranthan myth, with the Closing and the Syndics' Ban.  The removal of the gods also has all the hallmarks of a God Learner experiment.  I'm therefore tempted to insert the Shattered Lands into an area of Third Age Pamaltela without many changes. It could even fit into the Second Age, perhaps as an early God Learner experiment (with some appropriate contraction of time) or even, with some tweaks, as a relic of Nysalor's Bright Empire, shattered at the end of the First Age.  If I ever get my Questworld project off the ground (more of that later), I'll drop it in as written.

Nice review.