Stormwrack for D&D

Firstly, I want to quickly declare that there will be certain words you will never see in my reviews or comments on Gaming.

1. Crunch or Crunchy: What a crappy word to use! The appropriate words that should be used instead are useful or practical instead of the ignorant crunchy and game mechanics or rules in place of crunch. For example, “this sourcebook contains a helpful set of rules for handling magic-item creation.” Not, “this book contains a lot of crunch.”
2. Flavor: A roleplaying game is very intangible but it’s no different than a novel that hasn’t had a film version made of it. The better words are genre, look, mood, style or tone. Flavor is for food, not a pencil, paper and dice game. Novels and comic books don’t have flavor, why should RPGs be any different?
3. Munchkin: Call a spade a spade. This is someone who makes the game unenjoyable by ignoring the spirit of the storytelling element just because he has a serious inferiority complex. The better words would be cheater, killjoy or pain in the ass.

Now with that tirade off my chest, let’s get down to brass tacks on this book. Stormwrack is the third in a series of extreme environment books from Wizards of the Coast. The previous two dealt with the arctic and the desert respectively. The $35 price tag killed my interest pretty quickly and my campaign for the past five years hasn’t really delved into those environmental conditions anyway. Within the last couple years, my campaign (nicknamed Plan A) has dealt with sahuagin (shark people) through the awesome Saltmarsh trilogy original written by TSR UK in the early 80s. Upon the first glance, I did like what I saw, namely the adventure materials near the back and better details on ships. The book breaks down into the usual formulaic sections these types of sourcebooks have but that’s not a criticism, that’s a nice, re-assuring fact.

• Races: Here the book really disappoints. It should’ve fleshed out the sea-faring/-dwelling races from MM but the authors create new ones that aren’t really appealing. No wait, they do elaborate on sea elves, as if D&D doesn’t have enough subraces of elves. For Star Frontiers fans, you’ll recognize the recycling of the Yazirians. In WOTC’s past Race series, a strong selling point was the inclusion of other MM-based races such as gnolls, mongrelmen, etc. I don’t know about you, I’d like more details about sahuagin, locathah, merfolk, and the water-breathing versions of goblins (koalinth) and ogres (merrow) plus the amphibious races: bullywugs and lizardfolk.
• Prestige Classes: This is always a bone contention with my fellow DMs but I find them pretty hit or miss. Most hit pretty well in this book, especially when they pertain to pirates and sea captains.
• Monsters: The new, lame races are presented in their 1 HD forms. The rest are more useful beasties who can use their swimming and water breathing to kill the non-swimming players pretty quickly.
• Spells: How my players could’ve used these when they infiltrated the sahuagin stronghold. Water-dwelling creatures don’t have much use for fireball or lightning bolt so you need to give them offensive capability or else magic is as useful as fire.
• Deities: Oddly, there is no patron of the ocean or sea in the PHB, so a handful of varying aligned gods are presented here. The monster gods Eadro, Deep Sashelas and Sekolah are present but none from the Greyhawk pantheon or the established campaigns of Forgotten Realms and Eberron.
• Equipment: Not only ships, but magic items pertaining to the environment such as enhanced tridents or armor made from coral.
• Adventures: There are several plots for various levels at the end to help DMs run D&D with these additional rules; pirates, a sea monster and an underwater stronghold. They include maps and the major NPCs.

Again, the price tag really scares away most and it should because the races in this book are just padding. The wiser, more successful formula would’ve been to combine several extreme environments into one book of 170-200 pages instead of three thin, 120-page books filled with material which would’ve been better served in through Dragon magazine.

The Bottom Line: Unless you’re a big fan of pirates and sea-based campaigns via great adventures like the Saltmarsh trilogy or The Isle of Dread setting, this book is only worth buying if you find a used copy at Half Price Books.