Classic Reviews by Crothian
It seems odd that in the world of role-playing games lore from the real world is not used that often. I always enjoy the more historic and lend based books. GURPS has had some success with their historical books and Ars Magica is a well known real world sort of historic role playing game. I am not sure if people are worried about the historical accuracy or what the myths are based from. Green Ronin has begun their historical inspired books and so far I have greatly enjoyed them. Avalanche press had some and despite the covers that people never seemed to like I got some good use out of them as well. Baba Yaga is a very well written PDF that covers the mythical witch. The material is not so much pure historical but it defiantly has a very good feel of the legends and brings it together nicely.
Folkloric: Baba Yaga is a new PDF put out by a new company Dog Soul Publisher. The book is written by Michael Fiegel. The PDF is sixty seven pages long and done in color. The art is well done with pictures very appropriate to the topic at hand. There are color borders and backgrounds though that makes this a book that eats a bit of ink when printed. The book though is well book marked making it ideally used at the gaming table on a lap top or computer.
I am not all that familiar with the folklore surrounding the mysterious Baba Yaga. As such it is not clear to me exactly how much here is right out of legends and what is the imagination and creation of the writing. While that might not seem like it is telling it actually shows the writing to be seamless. There is not much difference that can be noted between the difference passages and there are lots of different passages. In fact the book is a nice collection of writings with very little game mechanics in it. This product is for someone who wants information, lots of information. Allow me to amend that even farther. This is for someone that wants lots of well written, highly creative information. I can easily see someone using this material for other games that they want a Yaga Baba or someone similar in like HARP or even with some work into a more modern game like World of Darkness. This is made for the people that like story elements in their game and details and role playing.
The book starts with a general introduction on the legends and some of the people and then goes right into Baba Yaga. There is a good page and a half on her and no stat blocks or rules to muck it all up. That’s one of the nice things about the book, it reminds me a bit like what GURPS does having the good information in the front and most of the rules bits in the back. It then goes into detail on some of the other major and minor characters in the legends. The book then goes into monsters. The art is really neat and I like the feel the book gets from the art.
Next, the area and major town are nicely mapped out and described. While the map is nicely done I would have preferred a hand drawn map as I think it would have fit the feel of the book, but that’s a pretty small complaint. The map is good, easy to use, and easy to read. Just a little to clean looking. Great descriptions are to be found of the few places described in the town and the areas around it. It will be relatively easy to take this place of cold wilderness and drop it into a campaign setting like the Realms, Midnight, or even Oathbound. Obviously certain settings might require alterations to the back story and the legends but a creative DM has a lot to work with here and should easily be able to make the modifications to have this all fit. While it will take a bit more work, this can also make a great encounter for a modern game and I think it has great potential for games like World of Darkness.
The detail here is just great few books are this enjoyable to just read and let the imagination flow. As a first product this sets the bar nice and high as it shows they have imagination and can write. And on top of that tackling legends and bringing them to life is a great bonus for me. Another nice think is most people should in some way be familiar with Baba Yaga so they should have an idea ahead of time if this product would be of use or interest to them.
I should also note this is the second version of the book. They have fixed errors and while I am not exactly sure on what changes were made, it is good to see that some companies are not afraid to fix mistakes after publication. That kind of dedication to a work is very reassuring to me.
