| Of Good And Evil | |
| by Alcritas (alcritas@att.net) | |
| Simmic’s Review | |
Of Good And Evil is by Ian Klinkhamer (alcritas@att.net), and is certainly one of the best scenarios around. Also, be warned, this review contains major spoilers.
I’ll start with the problems I experienced. For one thing, the gems needed to get Kothas-Onar are waaaaay too difficult to find — to the point of absurdity even. Bugs were few and far between; those that I did find were minor enough to ignore (i.e., the Hill Fort terrain was actually “Hills w. Special”). Finally, the last problem, those evil Hobgoblins. I can’t even begin to express my hate for those little critters. I will point out that scenarios are meant to be fun, and designers too often overstep the borders of Fun and accidentally stumble into the Annoying zone. With the Hobgoblins, Of Good And Evil manages to annoy the player a lot, or at least they did to me. Ian should at least have provided a way to get rid of them, and if he has it’s too difficult to find.
Now on to the good points. The town-appearing-with-time trick was a good one; remember those brigands on the bridge? They weren’t triggered by anything but a timer. The renowned Karma Flag which I never actually managed to notice in my three or four times of playing through Of Good And Evil is a good idea, even if it does fly by unnoticed.
Possibly the thing I liked most about Of Good And Evil was the “The End Justifies The Means” part of the scenario. On the other hand from that is the Gods. In the Grand Temple, several priests say that you should do as your heart tells you, for that is the way of the gods, or words to that effect. I think this may have been a subtle nudging about your decision towards the sacrifice of Ithikotita by the priests. If you accept the orders, then the sacrifices continue, Genmar’s best are lost, and in addition many more men die fighting the faeries, but the Vale survives, and so do so many thousands of others. If you refuse the orders, then you save about thirty of Genmar’s best, but the Vale falls and thousands upon thousands die. A most definitely tough decision — and on your head be it. In addition to all that, of course, is the fact that if you refuse the orders, you know that what you are doing is right. And in the end of the scenario, if you accept the orders, you feel somewhat like a pawn in a game of chess — used, small and insignificant. Either that or you think, “The bastards!”
Beyond that, the scenario has many, many other things in its favour. The “2-in-1 scenario” is handled very well by Alcritas, although I can see it being one of the easier things to master in scenario designing, if you also know how to use variable town entry. Special nodes, also, are well-executed and used. Dialogue is well-written and clear; particularly the battle against Varnoth and the escape from his lair; that was very well done and a good tactical challenge (the escape from his lair, that is). The battle against Varnoth himself is just a very nasty tactical challenge, especially without antimagic cloud. Ouch!
Of Good And Evil’s plot, if somewhat... overused, is well-presented, and, of course, has a very good scenario to back it up! I have to say, I never thought that the plot in Of Good And Evil was a failing; everything else was so good that I never actually noticed. And of course! The plot twists — the torching of Genmar/Evergreen or Molidax being attacked by the Phoenix — were absolutely brilliant. If a scenario’s plot does what you expect it to do too often, then it suffers (from a somewhat under-the-weather review by me).
NPC dialogue is interesting in one way — Alcritas makes an effort in that regard. Every friendly NPC I met spoke, even if it was just a Townsperson saying “Do I know you?” and other comments to that effect. Other, more important, NPCs talk quite a bit, but not quite as much as you’d like. Another point in favour is the fact that I never once encountered the too-much-dialogue problem on my Mac. Joy!
Of Good And Evil didn’t have much of an atmosphere, except at key points, such as the battle against Varnoth and subsequent escape from his lair. The atmosphere in the escape from Varnoth’s lair, even if not intentional, was there, and it was a very good one. Especially the hydra place. I had a very clear image in my head of what was happening and what it was like; at points, my thoughts were along the lines of, “Oh hell, a hydra is about to find me! It’s coming, I’ve run out of spell points and I’ve only got 50 hit points...”
Finally, it was a very well-named scenario. It sure grabbed me. And so, all of the above points considered, I give Of Good And Evil a score of 9.8. Of Good And Evil is for High level parties and is rated PG-13.