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Axes and Anvils: Under the Mountain
 
$15.00
Average Rating:4.3 / 5
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Axes and Anvils: Under the Mountain
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Axes and Anvils: Under the Mountain
Publisher: Shields Up! Publishing
by Keith M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/01/2020 19:21:59

This RPG is magnificent, a very modern take on some very classic RPG concepts. For one thing: You get to run a party of dwarves going on missions for the glory of their clan, where travel is as important as intrugue. As archetypical adventures go, it's not a bad one!

The first half of the book - and the RPG itself - is literally, to the page, the contents of the Axes & Anvils core rulebook. I've shared my thoughts on that already - to be blunt, I love the thing, and it's fun to play. Classic RPG tropes but with an emphasis on teamwork, and a slightly lesser magical setting than many, making travel and injury meaningful without being a rules slog. The second half of the book does not add a huge number of new rules to manage (Although it does contain additional upgrades and rules for Runes, Alchemy, and Firearms to tweak to your setting - from everything from primitive handcannon to rules for handing your dwarves assault rifles), but instead a truly phenominal amount of extra information to help run a game better. References and generators for creating monsters, loot, rival clans and Archon generators; references for Dwarven timekeeping and traditions and society if you so choose to use the core setting. While it might be setting specific, I and my players have lept on almost all of it as being "Well yeah sure, that works great!" and have embraced most of it as Totally Dwarfy, regardless of strict setting, which is a testament to the writing.

There are rules for mass combat that, frankly, work better than most anything else I've seen; the fact that to take part as an individual hero vs simply leading a squad of your own starts to exponentially increase the risk to the dwarves in question is a really neat premise, and does this without slowing actual play down. The book also contains a lot of advice on GMing in general, which is well written and, while I've run games enough to not need it, even then it had a few salient points I was glad to have seen.

The layout is as solid as it is in the whole set of rulebooks to date - clean B&W, very nicely presented, if limited on art budget there's still enough in the right spots to be pleasing to the eye as you work your way through - and literally everything you could ask for to run the game is in this book.

I've ordered a hardcopy to add to my collection; I'll update this review when it arrives.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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