This article originally appeared in d20 Weekly
Wonders Out Of Time
Published by Eden Studios
Written by Kevin Wilson
Illustrated by Paul Harmon & Kieran Yanner
48 pgs; $9.95
Eden Studios follows up its first fiendishly clever d20 release under their Odyssey imprint, Akrasia: Thief of Time, with Wonders Out Of Time. This book, like Akrasia: Thief of Time, is another vignette sourcebook, this time written by the co-designer of the 7th Sea RPG, Kevin Wilson.
This sourcebook provides information and background, before using this information in a series of mini-modules that can be used between other sessions of an ongoing campaign; the six vignettes in Wonders Out Of Time make up an additional mini-campaign played out during the careers of the characters as they advance from 1st to 12th level. The book itself has a good layout, although the color cover is too muddy and the internal cartography is slightly too small in places for the amount of detail depicted.
The background given in Wonders Out Of Time is what the party can find about the Merithian Empire, a civilization destroyed by barbarians a thousand years ago. This information is presented in the form of game mechanics, as lists of skill checks made against either a character's or a sage's knowledge about the subject and what is learned if the roll is made. What is generally known about the Merithians is that they were knowledgeable about magic, science, and literature, but much of this knowledge was lost when their society fell.
[BEGIN SPOILER ALERT!]
The first vignette is "Perinocles' . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 31, 2002
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