This article originally appeared in d20 Weekly
The Divine and the Defeated
Sword & Sorcery Studios
Written by Clarke Peterson and Bill Webb
224 Pages; $26.95
In the past, whenever I heard about gods in fantasy roleplaying games, they seemed to be one of two things: 1) a case of PCs killing whatever deity they could reach (using Legends and Lore as a shopping list), or; 2) they were just vague concepts with massive bureaucracies. The Primal Order presented a nice set of rules, including how to include the divine in the game itself, although no game group I ever played with used them.
The Scarred Lands, on the other hand, has the gods as an integral part of the setting. Part post-apocalyptic feudal society, part classical epic, in the Scarred Lands, the gods are a part of everyday life. Everyone invokes the patron deity of whatever act they're about to perform, and the deities listen.
The deities of the Scarred Lands are the offspring of the Titans. There are eight of them, plus a neutral "earth goddess," the titan Denev; thus, there is a god for each alignment. The gods attacked and defeated their forebears years ago to avenge the titans' abuse of the land and their children (the gods), burying them beneath land and sea. This sourcebook is more a comprehensive guidebook to the gods and titans of Scarn -- as the world of the Scarred Lands is called -- than a standard sourcebook.
My favorite part of the book is the divine-invocation rules. A god's worshiper prays for assistance; the deity responds by giving them a bonus . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 3, 2002
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