PDF Review: On Wine Dark Sea

    This has been a neglected blog over the past decade I have had it, however, I can always take time to review gaming supplements. This is one of them, and one of the few I've felt passionate about reviewing.

    A fairly simple PDF, "On Wine Dark Sea" is 48 pages of text with a few public domain illustrations. At the great price of FREE, it's mostly written to players of various d20 based fantasy games, but it's fairly system agnostic. Even the 2d6 The Sword of Cepheus would work with these ideas.

    It starts with an origin for the idea, what it is, and what it isn't. It's not a full campaign. It is much closer to say, Adventure 0: The Imperial Fringe, than most roleplaying adventures. There's a starting idea, that the players are in a zero level death funnel at the Fall of Troy. Anyone who survives, ends up as a 1st level Adventurer. There's some ideas to start with, as for missions to take to get out of the city, or engage in looting for both Greek and Trojan parties. Perhaps the players join Odysseus in the Trojan horse! There's quick and dirty rules to organize the armies, and character levels as well. Some of them are tougher than others. In this case, a 1st level character is a tough adversary. Once the scenario is done, survivors advance to 1st level. Not your typical dungeon fantasy setting!

    From then, there's an entire Aegean world to explore, or fight. Instructions and an explanation of Patron Play are included. Patron play, to be honest, reminds me of how the Avalon Hill classic Diplomacy works. Everyone has a plan, and they all get interfered with. The party has to navigate a changing setting, and the best part, if you ask me, is the referee doesn't have to come up with the changes! He just lets the players duke it out. For what it's worth, I would advise having a day between patron turns and in person play, so players wouldn't be quite as familiar with their orders. That's a technique I used in college, to write a paper, and let it sit for a while to revise.

    I can give this little project two thumbs up for having great ideas to use and abuse no matter the setting.