Game: Plot and Poison
Publisher: Green Ronin
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 30th, January 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 8
Average Score: 8.00
What slander. “People play to have fun, engage their minds, and socialize; moral arguments can ruin this and destroy the suspension of disbelief necessary for a good game.” That’s from the “What Is Evil?” subsection in Plot & Poison‘s introduction. People do RPG for all of those reasons but moral arguments, intellectual decisions and ethical debates are often the bread and butter of mature gamers. Fortunately for those of us who do not enjoy the “smite the genetically evil!” side to D&D the book doesn’t linger on the shallow side of this debate and gets quickly going. The subject matter of Plot and Poison is the Drow. The companion book is Paradigm Concept’s Unveiled Masters: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers and if you want to get the best from the sexy if deadly front cover artwork then you need to buy both and place them side-by-side.
In previous Races of Renown from Green Ronin I’ve greatly enjoyed alternatives to the racial stereotypes suggested in the book. There’s here only in token form in Plot and Poison and that’s a shame. In fact, Plot and Poison sets about trying to re-create the image of the Drow made famous by Forgotten Realms as closely as possible and perhaps improve on what’s for offer when the lack of OGL material locks them out.
That’s two slight grumbles to begin with. In just a few pages the book pretty much explains that it’s most interested vanilla D&D and vanilla Drow. Having made that call, as unadventurous as it is, Plot & Poison does very little wrong. You could say that it aims low and scores high. The book really is tightly packed with page after page of safe Drow stuff – and that’s probably what most people want.
“Tightly packed” is right. The book is 160-pages in length, the text size is tiny and the word count per page is impressive. The illustrations work hard for their money too. Author Matthew Serrett must have been on the same wavelength as many of the book’s artists and we’re given peeks into the duality of the dark elf’s erotic and lethal sides. The picture of the female drow in the skimpy costume sitting on the back of an orc-slave is just perfect for the Dominant prestige class. Drow prostitutes, we discover, are bodyguards as well – responsible for protecting the clients while their defences are down. You will find some of the pictures used twice in the book through and that’s unusual from the normally well-stocked Green Ronin.
The first chapter is a general look at the Drow and the Underdark. We’re given a Drow mythology that you can poke holes in – but just not while there are any Drow around. That probably makes it quite suitable for game play. There are quick looks at various key Drow psyche elements, duties and classes. The UnderDark is given a similar quick but useful tour; lingering briefly on interesting locations there and chance encounters.
The chapter on deities is a short one but one of the best. The relationships and the psyche of the gods hit just the right balance. Here you’ll find neither boring black and white gods nor too complex ones. Each one of these deities is a real winner; really something you can imagine a Drow bending their knee to. Take Bronzozer with dominion over abjuration, protection, healing, caution, paranoia and survival, for example, as a god who rarely appears to his followers because it would be an unnecessary risk. Swirling shields almost always surround when he does appear then he’s. Then there’s Arrachnovoleth and his expansive dominion over vermin, caverns, bats, earth, burrowing creatures, umber hulks and more. At the head of the pantheon there is the Spider Queen. There was bound to be the Spider Queen even though they can’t touch the official 3e Queen.
“Creatures of the Underdark” include intelligent Drow sub-races as well as monsters. The chapter makes use of a few templates too – the Broken Soul, for example, or better still the Half-Drow. Plot and Poison holds true to form here, giving you the usual suspects and giving them all high quality sheens. You have spider creatures, leeches, and other underground typical choices.
The prestige class chapter is a bit of surprise. There was bound to be a prestige class chapter but a few of the suggested classes are just a little outside the tried and tested Drow stable that Plot and Poison is working from. Just a little. The wild mages known as the Blessed of Xarcon might follow a god under the Spider Queen but it’s still all flames and fire rather than, well, plot and poison. Deepsingers actually work as a prestigious bard class. Wow. The Fate Weaver is a nice spin (argh, pun) on the Spider Goddess weaving destinies out on her threads. Whereas not all the prestige classes are the nice meaty 10-level style that I prefer they’re all solid enough. They’re powerful, but the drow sub-races are more powerful and generations of gamers have been bred to expect power from the drow.
The chapter of skills and feats scores a hit by having a nice big summary table. There’s no shortage of these two. In the quest to continue to find interesting ways to use feats and skills we’re treated to Drow martial art styles and magical art styles too. It’s another way to give the Drow their all to familiar guise of being different and better than you.
The equipment section manages to come up with something a little different and better too. Verminous items are not magical; they’re a mix of alchemy (but not magical, right?), engineering and surgery. Some of these *things* can scuttle around by themselves. Take the Jump Shield for example; it’s a bug with a hard shell that’s used as a shield. You can also put it down on a flat surface, stand on its back and use its jump to boost yours. Handy. Icky but handy. You can get weapons and armour made in the verminous method too. GMs will have to watch this; I suspect it won’t take long before the players try to design better verminous crossbows that reload themselves or whips that spit acid at people after the strike. There’s also a whole bunch of poisons here. As we might expect, Plot and Poison doesn’t try and move away from the curve, it simply presents some top range poisons and it succeeds.
The book comes with an entire Underdark of new cleric domains; there are loads here. They fill out the magic section nicely and the new spells that accompany them aren’t to be sniffed at. Some of the domains share the same name as previously created ones but it’s pointed out that these are the Drow’s take on the same domains – and that’s entirely fair. Simply prefixing the domain with “Drow” solves any character sheet confusion. There’s a similar amount of new magic items in a chapter on their own too.
The appendix area is genuinely useful. There are a lot of top quality summary tables in Plot and Poison and the appendix provides easy access to them. The book as a detailed index and that’s always a huge bonus.
Plot and Poison scores very highly in everything that it tries to do. If you’re looking for a good book to wrap up your tried and tested Drow then this is it for you. The verminous items are a great addition, the touch of spice that brings the book to life. The supplement is good enough to make me regret that it didn’t try to push the boundaries a little.
