REVIEW OF
CASTLE ZAGYG I: Yggsburgh Campaign Setting
My copy of Castle
Zagyg I: Yggsburgh has arrived by mail straight from Troll Lords Games. The shipping was prompt and the item arrived safely despite a slightly flimsy envelope.
Reading through the book, I give it the following scores (1-5 with five being highest):
PHYSICAL PRESENCE: 5
This book is firmly bound and its printing quality is very high. The hardback cover is four-color gloss with white endpapers. The interior is printed entirely in black and white, with grayscale maps and art. There is a four-color, two-sided detachable map inside the back cover, printed on high quality stock. The layout is professional and the type size is a readable eight point. There are 255 densely packed pages.
ARTWORK: 3
The cover and interior art pieces are professional and support the medieval fantasy setting very well. The artists are Peter Bradley and Davis Chenault, although most of the individual pieces are not credited to either artist. A few of the better black and white drawings are specifically credited to Peter Bradley. The publication could have used more artwork from more artists. What is there is good, but has a "slick" feel that is not particularly "old school." Individual tastes may vary. The cover art, by Jeffry Jones, is entirely adequate and conveys a sense of the scope of the entire Castle Zagyg project as it is currently planned.
CONTENT: 5
If nothing else, Yggsburgh succeeds by sheer bulk. There are detailed descriptions for many of the locations, people and points of interest in Yggsburgh, as well as details like laws, local customs and other city notes. There is also a large section of encounters and details about the surrounding countryside, along with very sketchy descriptions of the nearby villages. There are enough story hooks, scenarios and other useful details to make the book a good source for a game master. Writer and game legend Gary Gygax has done some of his better work here.
MAPS: 2
The title character of this publication is the town of Yggsburgh. Consequently, one might expect the town map to be of suitable quality and detail. The nicest thing that can be said about the Yggsburgh town map is "inexplicable." Many other (not as nice) words spring to mind.
The town map is a disaster. Instead of at least outlining the individual buildings, an unfortunate editorial decision leaves us with a color-coded mess that is of little use to gamers. The town map is about as detailed as a free tourist walking map of Wampum, Mississippi. The straight streets and colored blocks look about as medieval as a map of modern Kenosha, Wisconsin's industrial park.
For some reason, one section just outside of the town walls is mapped in a useful manner. "The Outs" is detailed building by building, showing what the city map
could have been.
The Yggsburgh map is reproduced inside the book in black and white. We are asked to distinguish between various areas of the city based upon whether they are gray, light gray, slate gray, blurry gray or indistinguishably gray. The whole effect is unintentionally funny.
It costs exactly the same to print a grand map as it does to print a four color mess. Why not put just a bit more effort into it?
*pulls hair in frustration* Publishers are encouraged to go look at the Necromancer Games version of
City State of the Invincible Overlord. Imagine that map in four colors and you have the standard of how a fantasy city map should look. As it is, the single most important element of this publication is, at best, careless work.
The maps get a score of 2 because of a number of maps embedded in the text, including various buildings, underground steadings and thieves tunnels. The large-scale campaign map is also very good. It closely resembles the
World of Greyhawk continent maps. The usefulness of this map is limited slightly by the decision to locate the encounters with numbers...spoiling some of the mystery for the players. Why couldn't the numbers have been included on the interior copy of the map but not on the large map?
PRICE: 5 or 3
If you buy this publication directly from Troll Lords Games, for $10 plus shipping, you will have a really great gaming value. Get on it right away while the offer lasts.
If you buy this publication for the cover price of $39.95, you got a moderate deal for the work of a classic game designer.
It is unfortunate that Troll Lords introduced this important series with a $40 publication that automatically puts it into the "collector's interest" category. With up to seven volumes planned for the whole series, the total copies sold for each successive installment can be expected to shrink. With a $40 price tag sinking the sales of volume one, the following volumes can be expected to show even more diminished returns. It is possible that the $10 online price is an acknowledgement of this problem.
Troll Lords might consider revising this installment in the series by omitting many of the encounters and story hooks that fill the second half of the book. In the $20+ range,
Castle Zagyg I would be an excellent value and many more customers would be likely to buy in on the whole series.
INTANGIBLES AND OTHER BULLHEADED OPINIONS: 4
The appearance of this material in print, after four decades of build-up, is a gaming event. Long-time fans of the Greyhawk setting will want to get in on this series for nostalgic value, if nothing else. Even without the gaming "event" status, this series also promises to brim full of good ideas and enjoyable gaming experiences. If Yggsburgh is only the front door to the Castle Zagyg experience, then the coming products ought to be very good. Troll Lords appears to be one of the strongest of the successor companies to TSR, and their other work bodes well for the Castle Zagyg series. Only the chancey scope of the project (will it all actually happen?) keeps it from getting a 5 in this category.
COMBINED SCORE: 24 or 22 out of 30
1-5 Demand your money back. (
Ironhoof Highlands)
6-10 Sucks...a lot, but someone might want it. (Mayfair
City State)
11-15 Fixable, useful to gamers with certain interests. (
Dragonlance)
16-20 Interesting to a general audience. (
Arduin Grimoire)
21-25 Worth picking up and potentially great. (D1-3,
Verbosh)
26-29 Really good stuff. Very valuable. (
G1-3,
Dark Tower)
30 Buy it now while you still can. (?)