RPGPundit Reviews: The Book of Jalan

This is a review of The Book of Jalan, by Clash Bowley, Albert Bailey and Klaxon Bowley. Published by flying mice games.

NOTICE: The Reviewer's own RPG, "Forward... to Adventure!" was recently published by Flying Mice games. This notice is to clarify any possible position of interest that I, as a reviewer, have with this company. I want to believe that Flying Mice publishing FtA! does not affect my ability to give fair and accurate reviews of their products, but I felt it important to note the possibility of bias in this review.

The Book of Jalan is listed, on the cover, as "a Starcluster 2 Game". However, the game contains everything you need to run as a complete game in and of itself, and does not require the Starcluster 2 book.

Jalan is a single world in the Starcluster game setting; and if I were to hazard a guess I'd have to say that its the location of a long-term campaign by the author. This is basically his homebrew setting.
Starcluster is a sci-fi setting, but Jalan as a world is a planet that is at a renaissance level of technology.  It was settled millions of years ago by homo erectus put there by aliens. These homo erectus evolved into their own breed of human, ones with more advanced psychic abilities than Earth humans, and their psychic powers were manifest as "Magic".

So Jalan is a science-fantasy setting. Its mostly renaissance-fantasy, but sci fi can feature as far as the GM wants; technically Jalan is a closed-off world, but the authorities in the Starcluster are observing it, so interaction is very possible.  Thus Jalan can be used either as a standalone setting ignoring all the Starcluster stuff; or it can be used as just one particularly interesting area sourcebook for your Starcluster campaign.

The game is about 235 pages long, and the print edition that I am reviewing is very well bound (as are all of Clash's books, printed on demand via Lulu), with a full-colour cover (front and back), and lots of black and white illustrations (in the form of photo-manipulation images that are often very clever) throughout the book.

In prior reviews of Flying Mice products I've criticized the layout of the product.  I have to note that in this produc the layout is fairly good, tables are mostly easy to understand, and the writing and spacing is well-ordered. However, some of the ordering of the book is badly done; why, for example, is the very first thing after the introduction the magic system, before even going into character creation?!

The system used in Jalan is the same as in Starcluster, and most of Clash Bowley's other RPGs, his "House system" if you will. Characters are created by distributing points or rolling randomly for attributes, then you will roll or choose on a series of tables to determine the skill ranks  or attribute bonuses you gain from your early childhood, education, and your eventual career (depending on your background and career options).  Characters gain more skills as they age, but will suffer physical deterioration past a certain age.

The background and career options are quite complete, and fitting to the Jalan setting. One thing is for sure, no two characters will turn out the same in this system.

As I've mentioned in prior reviews of this system, the skill list is very definitive, probably TOO definitive. Do you really need "goad", "endear", AND "entice" as three seperate skills?

The "Magic" system of Jalan is, as far as I recall, a new element added to the rules, though its not too different from the Psionics; in fact the metastory of the setting makes it clear that Jalans' "magic" is in fact just very high-level psionics, and the PSI rating is the attribute used to determine the power of "spellcasters" in Jalan.
The magic system works as a kind of skill system, where each kind of magical power has its own skill (there are 32 in all), and you "weave" spells by combining two or more of these magical skills to create special effects. Casting spells temporarily drains some of your attributes (which one depends on the type of magic you use).  The magic system is definitely on the "high-mana" end of the scale, with sample spells like "Resurrection" indicating what a Jalanian wizard is capable of doing.

As I mentioned, the section on character creation and the section on magic are actually in the reverse order I would expect in the book, so the first thing you read about is magic, then how to make a character, then all the other skills.  I'm sure this made sense in the author's mind for some reason, but why he would choose this order instead of the more logical and standard choice of putting character creation and skills first, then magic afterwards is beyond me.

After these sections comes a guide to the various human and then humanoid cultures of Jalan. In addition to the many human cultures, in Jalan you also have a number of unusual humanoid races:  the slightly-elflike Alari, who's culture is strongly based on the concept of "memory" (and can interbreed with humans to create half-alari), the brutish Khali (who are sort of like a cross between neanderthals and orcs, and can also interbreed with humans), and the vaguely halflingesque Bani.

After a brief section on equipment (which has listings of some of the basic stuff you find in Jalan, including wheellock muskets and pistols), you get to a section on Combat and then NPCs. These sections are not different from the other Flying Mice games, and as usual the NPC section includes a set of tables for quick-rolling NPCs.

Pages 148-173 are a guide to the continent of Karai, written up as a history of the region.  Karai is an area with a rich variety of cultures and empires,  that presents a lot of possibilities for political or military play. The cultures found on Karai have a rough equivalence to various real-world cultures, and there's an appendix at the end of the book explaining exactly which area corresponds to which culture.

You then get a small section on the Gods of the Purani (one of the default starting cultures of the setting, roughly equivalent to the renaissance/reformation era british), which also gives you the details of the metaphysical aspects of the gods of the setting. Humans can become gods, gods can be present on earth in certain ways, saints and demigods also exist.  In all, this section is only a few pages long, and feels as though it could have been developed more in depth, with more practical advice on how to use it in play.

After this there is a section on the potential enemies in the setting: Faye (faerie-folk, that are not always villainous but are unfathomable and often corrupting to humans), lycanthropes, undead.  These sections are acceptable, but not exactly thorough or complete.  They do provide some decent ideas, but the GM will be found having to fill in a lot of the particulars.
A much more practical section comes just after this, with a series of tables to create your own randomly-generated "creatures of Jalan". These tables are very complete, and let you create all kinds of monsters to fill the setting with.

The last important section of the book details the region of Barkash in the Green River Valley, a city and surrounding area in the Purani culture.  The maps in this section are particularly cool-looking and detailed.  The setting information gives you everything you need to make Barkash a central city in your campaign, including large sections on the politics and people of the city, and a very complete list of the names of all the taverns and inns in the city! Talk about having your priorities straight!
Barkash is a city of intrigue with a seedy underbelly, and lots of political conflicts.  This makes it fertile ground for a variety of different kinds of adventuring parties.

In conclusion:

The Good: The Book of Jalan is a complete RPG; the character generation system is as-always very cool, and the setting a very rich and complex world that is different from your standard-fantasy but quite recognizeable and not just weird for weird's sake.  As usual, lots of great random tables and cool generators!

The Bad:  The setting probably needs a whole other book to get more detail into it, as it stands the material for the setting gives you a few areas that are thoroughly detailed, others that are just passed over, and others that are just blanks.  The GM is left filling in with a lot of guesswork. So the game doesn't feel absolutely complete.  On the other hand, if you want a "startup" point for a setting that you get to fill in a lot of the details for, Jalan might just be ideal.

The Ugly: Nothing is really "ugly" about this book, though the organization of the chapters leaves a lot to be desired.

RPGPundit
 

Thanks, Pundit. A thorough and honest review, I like that! Jalan was a commercial failure for me - the reviewers all liked it better than the public - and was the first and only thing approaching traditional fantasy I ever designed. It let me know I have no business designing fantasy games as I haven't a clue what people want out of it. I made some stupid mistakes in ordering things - thinking the magic system should be explained before chargen was idiotic - but the main problem was conceptual. Very few people like science in their fantasy, though many people like fantasy in their science.

I lost a fair bit of money on this game, the only time that has yet happened, and my plans to support the setting dried up and blew away. The best part of the game, the flexible, powerful, but self-limiting magic system, was mostly designed by my son Klaxon, who was 16-17 at the time I was working on Jalan. He has the proper gamer love of fantasy, whereas I can only approach it obliquely.

-clash

Well, it struck me that it was a bit too incomplete on the Setting side of things, and what's worse a bit blotchy (in the sense that it gave you TONS of information in some areas and then nothing at all in others).

What strikes me now is that it actually makes a really awesome sourcebook for Starcluster, but not that good of a stand-alone product.

RPGPundit