Red Tide: Adventure in a Crimson World
by Matt Staggs
Red Tide: Adventure in a Crimson World, Sine Nomine Publishing, Role-Playing Game, ISBN 978-1-9366-7307-0, hardcover $24.99, softcover $19.99, PDF $7.99, www.sinenomine-pub.com.
Red Tide [Campaign Sourcebook and Sandbox Toolkit] is a fantasy campaign setting from Sine Nomine, a small publishing house undoubtedly already familiar to some gamers for its outstanding science fiction role-playing system Stars Without Number. While Stars Without Number was constructed around a more or less original homebrewed rules system, Red Tide is written for use with Labyrinth Lord or any other “basic edition” Dungeons & Dragons retro-clone.
The world of Red Tide is on the brink of annihilation. Over three hundred years ago a mysterious red mist appeared at the world’s edges, destroying everything it contacted. A small group of refugees from the world’s nations fled to the Sunset Isles, an ancient chain of jungle islands inhabited by a vicious race of humanoids called the Shou. There, just a hundred miles away from the edge of the mist, humanity prepared to make a final stand. While most of their descendants now search for a way to stop the advancing red mist, some madmen and cultists actually worship it with the hope of hastening its arrival. Meanwhile, despite the threat of the mist and the ferocious Shou, the political intrigues of the old world continue in the new, with war a constant threat among the nations of the Sunset Isles.
This admittedly dark setting is well detailed, with numerous maps and notes devoted to the nations, people, magic, and monsters of the Sunset Isles. Especially notable is the inclusion of a unique new system for random ruin creation that enables a gamemaster to create a fully stocked dungeon with minimal preparation. Gamemasters who are comfortable with winging things a bit will probably find that Red Tide offers just the right amount of structure. It’s a great example of sandbox campaign design: all of the elements needed for an adventure are included, but it’s up to the gamemaster and players to put them together.
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