World-building is something you can do endlessly. Dozens of books can be written about pretty much any given setting – and dozens of books were written. Descriptions of entire continents or individual cities, important locations that served as sites of grand battles or arcane rituals, various organizations ruling the world from shadows, important people and signature characters – all of these and more were crafted by creative people to enhance the illusion of a living world, to make a fantasy just a bit more real. History, politics, geography, culture, economics – all of these topics and more warrant some attention, for they can provide plot hooks for your games or serve as background flavor to enhance your game experience.

But, of course, there are practical limitations on the amount of world-building that’s actually done. There is only so much information players would be willing to absorb in preparation to a game and there is only so much information that’s actually needed for the game to function. In urban fantasy, for example, while you can spend your pages just describing a given city and its notorious landmarks, it’s not really necessary. The information is available for those who want to know it, so it’s more productive to focus on differences from our reality: supernatural elements lurking in the shadows. In regular fantasy, you do generally need to describe the world at large, but you generally don’t need to, say, describe every local holiday and associated traditions. That would just bloat the book and probably won’t be all that useful for most GMs.

Then, of course, there are physical limitations. If you’re publishing your book, you may afford only so many pages to print before the price would go too high to hope for profits. If you have only 50 pages to spend describing your world, you probably shouldn’t spend them on details of local trade routes.

Ultimately, what is and isn’t described about a setting should depend primary on the focus of the game. A game focusing on adventures in exotic places should, of course, include descriptions of said places, while PCs’ home towns may be left relatively abstract since they’re here only for the PCs to rest to buy supplies. A game focusing on court intrigue would need to focus on politics and economy, various factions and their agendas, while stuff like old dungeons with ancient evil inside would probably be just distracting, so they don’t need to be included. Some settings are left deliberately abstract for the players to add their own ideas to the world. In this case, it’s more important to focus and themes and tone of the setting as a whole rather than on specific details. And so on.

So, with all that said, let’s get to the next section of DragonRaid titled “The World of Talania,” which, naturally, describes the eponymous continent and serves as a foundation of knowledge about the setting for both players and AMs. How long is this section, you ask.

Seven pages.

Seriously, seven pages. One of this pages is taken over by the section title. Another three are just tables explaining monetary systems and prices in the Liberated Land. So, the actual description of the setting is only three pages long. The description of angels was longer than that, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t even important in the game. The Fantastic Invitation alone is of comparable length.

Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?

And, look, it’s not like I demand a doorstopper in my TRPGs. DRYH spends about as many pages describing Mad City, actually. The thing is, DRYH world-building is evocative: once you read the description of, say, Wax Kingdom, you can imagine it fairly well and you can easily imagine the conflicts that would naturally occur there. Each location is tied to specific Nightmares inhabiting it, each location has a well-defined theme.

Here?

Swamp Labyrinth On the mouth of the Snake River, this large swamp is the result of a curious phenomenon: Because the river flows north, its head waters thaw in springtime while the lower river is still frozen. Thus the area experiences devastating floods every year.

This is one of the meatier entries, most of them are actually more brief. These are standard fantasy locations. Swamp, gloomy forest, not gloomy forest, desert, etc. They don’t have a style, they don’t have a theme, which is especially weird in a supposedly allegorical game, they just are.

This section is amazing in its uselessness. There just isn’t anything that clicks with me, that makes me go “Yeah, that’s where I want my game to be set.” Each entry is totally bland.

You can probably just open one of those fantasy maps that can be found in many amateur work, look at the names there and get about as much as you would out of reading this book. It’s just that empty.

I mean, I get that the idea here is to flesh out various locations in specific adventures, and OK, that’s a fine approach, but it also leaves the section unusable for the AM. They might have as well just said “here be dragons” and be done with it.

As such, I don’t even have much to say about it. It’s basically your generic fantasy world, oh, and there are some Christians.

The only thing of note here is that there are five continents total in this world, making the whole thing about dark creatures being aliens even more pointless. They could have been from the other continents, you know, no need to involve spaceships.

Oh, and the prices for supplies and stuff are listed only for the Liberated Land, not for the Dragon Lands, which strikes me as odd. In the introductory adventure, the PCs are given everything they need for the journey (except rope) for free, which makes sense. They’re on a mission from God, of course they get sunglasses for free. It stands to reason that the bulk of PC shopping would be done in the Dragon Lands, during an adventure proper, so the lack of prices seems like an oversight.

That’s… it, pretty much.

Next section lists Word Runes and Team Runes. In a grand tradition of this game, Team Runes are not explained. From context, it seems they need to be recited by the whole party in order to work and offer effects that apply to the party as a whole, mostly.

Alright, most runes are actually fine, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to say how powerful they really are without playtesting this stuff, but they do feel like standard spells.

One thing of note here is that a lot of runes are redundant. There are several runes that give you a +2 bonus to one character strength or another. There are runes that deal damage to one type of dragons, there are runes that lower the difficulty level of specific sin enchantments. I’m rather ambivalent about it. It is actually thematically relevant since various dragons and dark creatures represent different… ah… temptations, for lack of a better word, so it makes sense to invoke different verses. And it’s not like other games don’t do similar stuff, with buffs working the same way but applied to different traits, for example, or attack spells with different damage type. Yet still it feels like bloating, especially in the context of the previous section. Seems to me like many runes could be combined into one with described variations instead of taking all this space. Especially since there are no runes ranked above 3.

As for individual runes, there is a few worth noting.

The LightRaider who can say from memory the Possibility WordRune will see a looking glass appear. When he grasps the mirror and looks through it at a dragon slave, he sees what that person could become if he would receive the OverLord into his life. If he looks at a fellow member of the TwiceBorn, he will see more clearly how the OverLord wishes to use him for good works.

That strikes me as remarkably useless. I mean, it can be good for some role-playing, but other than that? Eh, not worth the memorization.

If a LightRaider can say the Approved Workman WordRune it allows him to read a WordRune of any Difficulty Level.

Yep, that seems like such an obvious exploit. The whole point of difficulty levels (aside from structuring the study in memorization) is balance. Runes work as magic spells here, and the harder the rune, the more powerful effect it produces. In other words, this rune is like having a second-level spell in D&D allowing you to cast, I don’t know, Wish or whatever else floats your boat.

Now, a case can be made that memorization is still an issue, so someone who can use this rune would be unlikely to actually remember high-level runes, thus lowering their usefulness, but the game allows you to read up to three runes during an adventure, so it’s still a mighty exploit.

Sometimes LightRaiders may join forces with dragon slaves without a clear understanding of the consequences. Trouble usually results. The RaidTeam who can say the Break-Away TeamRune without error will find that their Once Born companion(s) will fall asleep for an hour of playing time, allowing time for evasive action.

That seems like a dick rune. Note that it’s not a general sleep spell, it’s specifically about putting people traveling with your group, your presumed allies to sleep. The verse for it drives the point home:

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

Yeah, kids, don’t talk to non-Christians, it can only lead to troubles. Troubles with people like the ones who wrote this book, I presume.

Honestly, it’s not like PCs need more reasons to only associate with other PCs, that’s how it works naturally unless the players are really good and the GM is really talented.

Other runes are, again, pretty standard spells: light, shield, shelter, food conjuring, etc., so I don’t have issues with them.

The book ends with the section titled “A Message from Earth.”

I expected it to be some note from devs providing additional information or breaking the pretense of in-universe artifact to talk about meta-issues or just talking some pleasantries.

It wasn’t.

The LightRaider Langley stumbled upon a small capsule while fleeing dark creatures in the Serpentine Hills. It was mysteriously marked “Earth,” presumably meaning that it came from that planet of the very distant star named Sol. Surprisingly, the capsule contained instructions for the Invitation to the Great Rescue, but in terms unfamiliar to the Talanians.

As a last fuck-you to immersion, the book then repeats the conversion instruction, changing Maker and Overlord back to God and Jesus, reminding us that imposing an ideology is the prime purpose of this game, not providing you with tools to play a fun game.

Well, that’s it for this book. By now, it’s clear to see that the devs did have some cool ideas for the game and did have enough creativity to be entertaining. In another world, this game could have been great. The Christianity theme is not really an issue, lots of cool stuff uses Christian imagery, and, while I’m not a fan of forcing the players to memorize huge amounts of text word for word, the idea of word runes is not an inherently bad one.

The problem here is that the devs were unwilling to separate their creation for their immediate ideology. The fundamentalism is showing through the cracks, and I find quite a few ideas expressed in this book repugnant. Instead of allegory they’ve got a propaganda tool. And a potentially cool game was lost to us.

Tune in next time to see me righteously mingling with math.