Customer Reviews:
 It's good, but contradicts itself. August 1, 2008
Mark Barford
Right, First off, I bought this book hoping for everything I'd want to know about the Border princes. I was dissapointed yet satisfied. I realise, you cannot map out and have a history of the Border princes since, this area is pretty much a sandbox area in the Old World. You want a power crazed, wierdroot addicted noble, you make it, you want him or ehr ruling a kingdom with the peasents about to revolt, make that as well.
But the book explains all this within the first few paragraphs.
We then have a rather useful (to me at least) chapter on the landscape of the border princes, here you have your chart and you can roll percentile dice to determine what the landscape is and where, it cna get really varied, volcanoes and mountains may dominate one corner while plains and bogs take up the others. However, as the book says, these are random tables which you may choose to use or not, assuming you don't want to sue them, that's four wasted chapters. Chapter one, the landscapea s I said.
Chapter 2: Random tables for making barons and princes, some nice ideas there, but I find it more fun to make my own.
Chapter three: Inhabitants of the border princes, basically tables for creating towns, some nice careers. Not much else.
Chapter 4: Hazards of teh borderlands. How to place lairs on your map you may or may not have made in chapter two, making hordes, determining sizes etc. Not much else.
Chapter 5: General aims. How to include princes in your groups and stuff, not very sueful.
Chapter 6: Becoming a prince. Not really that useful, it has some ideas for becoming a prince, but with each idea, it hss some campaign seeds. Useful in a small way, but sometiems obvious.
Chapter 7: Internal problems: This chapter starts with an awful joke, and that joke really stretches across the chapter, teh peasents are revolting!
Chapter 8: External problems. This is basically a big how-to guide to defeating raids adn sucha dn raiding your neighbours.
Chapter 10: Making trouble: Countinuing the previous chapter basically.
Bearing all this in mind, adn seeing as I've said little that's good about the book, I myself am confsued as to why I give it 4/5. I think it gets there simply because this book is good because....it is. It does what it says at the start, it's not going to give you information and maps and stuff. It really gives you teh bones for yout Border princes campaign and it's up to you to flesh it out.
To conclude, it's a good book but make no mistake, this is not a source book.
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