Thread by @rdonoghue

I totally busted threading, so I'll reset a bit and note that I am reading Swords of the Serpentine by @multiplexer and @KevinKulp - it is not actually out yet, but if you pre-order through Pelgrane, there's a pre-layout version.

If by chance you are unfamiliar with this game (which has also been called "gumthews", despite that name not surviving the actual market) it's Sword and Sandal (think Conan) using the Gumshoe system.

Kevin was the brain behind the delightful Timewatch RPG (also Gumshoe) and if you don't know @multiplexer....well, ok, so you know how I sometimes do long threads on things like Food in Duskvol and what it means?

That is what Emily sounds like ALL THE TIME, and it's AWESOME.

All of which is to say, this game has all the pieces necessary to be fantastic.

Oh, and the map, which they include in the preview packet? Freaking gorgeous. Just a delight.

I'd meant to hold off on reading it until the layout version came, but I am weak. I've been excited about this game for ages, so I'm finally diving in.

Ok, so another cool thing? Tips and resources for streaming your game right up front. I think this may be the modern update of the instructions to kinkos that photocopying the character sheet is ok.

Also: designers notes that speak explicitly to intent are freaking gold.

Ooh, it explicitly supports build-on-the-fly chargen. @johnoghue will be pleased!

There's an interesting bit in the chargen section that suggests the four main domains of action are Politics, wealth, crime and justice. I suspect magic is a fifth. This is just an inference, but curious if it holds up.

There's a great section of potential group setups (Adventurers, Family business and so on). Very practical and good to call them out. Most fun bit is that many cite the books that are structures that way, and I kind of wish they'd leaned further into that!

Ok, the fact that "Infidels" is one of the proposed options (right above Inquisitors) delights me and leaves me VERY curious about religion in this city.

So this is fascinating. There are handful of core professions, and for most games there is a very predictable pattern to this: Fighter, Thief & Magic person - the holy troika. And that's present (magic person is Sorcerer) but the fourth pillar is the _Sentinel_

The Sentinel is more or less a cop (skill-wise, not necessarily occupation-wise) and I'm super intrigued by this. In another game, I'd suspect perception had been moved from the Thief, but this is Gumshoe, and it has a different relationship with these things.

This is purely from the summary, but I've put a mental pin in this. Very curious to find out more.

OH MY GOD YOU DID NOT MAKE "CONAN, WHAT IS GOOD IN LIFE?" AN ACTUAL MECHANIC HOLY CRAP YOU DID!!!

Erm, yes. One of the elements of chargen is to note down your Three Favorite Things in life.

This is a godddamned delight.

Ok, it is clear that it has been a long time since I've used a point buy to do anything, because I had a moment of blinking at the instructions. They're fine, and as point buys go, it seems pretty straightforward. Just haven't used those muscles in a while.

That said, I do like that iconic gear is part of chargen. Curious to see more on that.

Sample character right after the summary is a useful review. Jumps out that the "gear" is definitely on the abstract side, as it includes things like "A talent for delegation" and I am absolutely here for that.

Sidebar reveals that Sentinels were previously called Investigators, and while that probably communicates intent more clearly, I gotta agree it was a much worse name.

"Their Laws & Traditions ability gives them lots of fun narrative control to declare something legal or illegal"

Oh God.

@multiplexer you are NEVER ALLOWED TO PLAY ONE OF THESE

Sorcerers default to magic being powerful, dark and costly, which is on brand. There's a sidebar about a more chill option, so I'll be curious about that - I find myself wondering if Mako in the Conan movie is playable.

Also, they make it clear the professions are more guidelines than anything else. I suspect that they are a nice shortcut to use until you're all in on point buy.

it seems like a lot of character identity will be wrapped up in adjectives, Drives (the aforementioned what is good in life) and gear. Ok, I can get behind that.

Next part gets into investigative abilities. SUPER curious here. I have loosely followed the tech evolve since Esoterrorists, so I'm looking at this with fresh eyes, which I think is what it deserves.

Biggest thing seems to be that the key for any investigative skill is that for the gumshoe trick of getting clues, you just need to *have* it, so there's no weird blind bid or anything. Benefit of putting more points is extra effect and narrative weight. If true, that's cool.

Ok, so the actual investigation skills are cool and flavorful, but also the sort of thing I'd expect from investigation skill. But there are several other categories, and that's where it gets REALLY interesting.

Social skills (Charm, command, and such) are also investigative skills. Slightly worried that this is more what I'm worried about - they're fueled by spend from your pool rather than just working - but they also don't call for a roll. Interesting solution to a classic question.

I think I'm good with it. Pool systems can be perilous, but this seems straightforward and robust enough to be fun rather than feel restrictive. Willing to play to find out.

Ah ha, ok, here's the meat of professions. They have a handful of (powerful, flavorful) investigative (that is, pool spend, no dice) abilities for each profession. You get a small bump if you stick to abilities within your profession, but it's not so huge a bump as to lock in.

Ok, just encountered a reference to an alertness modifier and this makes me slightly nervous.

Spellcasting is kind of delightful. The pool is "Corruption" and when you spend from it, you get a powerful magic effect, but either your body or the world gets corrupted. Enjoy

But all this takes a turn for he delightful with the last category of investigative skills - Allegiances. They can be permanent (Allies or enemies) or temporary (Favors or grudges) and are used like any other investigation skill and I utterly love this.

I can clearly see how the positive versions play out. Not yet sure how enemies do (and you WILL start with an enemy) but I suspect that will be made clear in time.

Ah, ok, getting to the General skills is bringing back memories. THIS is the bit I'm most worried about. They are finite pools, and I have had bad experiences with that. Again, willing to extend some faith, but I'm doing so very gingerly.

The skills themselves are great. Preparedness is a delight, and the fact that Sway is explicitly a combat skill is super fun.

Ok, and yes, the iconic gear is every bit as delightful as it looked. It can explicitly be emotional, and despite being "minor", it seems pretty unbounded since it could even include something like a residence.

Oh, one other thing that comes up a bit - especially regarding very high skills - the game is very explicit that there is social currency to your skill buys. That is, characters can expect to be noticed and respected for what they excel at.

This is really excellent. It's something I take for granted as a *technique*, but many game books leave this out. It is something worth explicitly calling out.

Also, I still haven't gotten to how grudges work, but all the ways I'm *imagining* they might work are mechanics I need to remember to save for later.

Advancement is fairly straightforward, and buying up general skills seems pretty cheap, so that's a handy offset to my concerns.

Ok, this is fascinating: "The Lifestyle you choose and pay for at the beginning of an adventure affects your Repute for the entirety of the adventure."

I have no idea how money works yes, nor do I know exactly what Lifestyle & Repute are, but I LOVE THIS

Paying for lifestyles in RPGs has a bad habit of being theoretically interesting but practically dull. Making it something you buy at the start of an adventure for only that adventure makes it meaningful and dynamic, and wonderfully supports the genre!

Oh thank God, it's the actual rules section. I can stop trying to infer things!

Ok, I'm tired and my device is low on charge. I'll pick this up again another time.

So, for the next chapter, I decided to put it all in my head before writing, since a lot of bits and pieces of the rules depend on other bits and pieces of the rules.

Generally speaking, I have a concern with resource spend systems which are paired with hidden information. In the specific case of Gumshoe, this would manifest as not knowing the difficulty number (which might be 3-12) but still needing to guess the "right" number to spend.

This can result in either a lot of waste, or a great deal of frustration when failure results form misjudging the spend.

SotS has some useful checks against this, but the issue is still there, so let's walk through this.

The actual investigative skills are largely fine in my eyes. You have ranks in the skill, and a pool equal to your ranks, but the points are largely spent as bonuses. If you have spent all your points, you can still use the skill as intended, and that's great.

In fact, a thing which is implied, then later stated outright, is that a lot of PC mojo comes from using investigative point spends to supplement their General actions. It's a nice way to keep the investigation pools feeling important and relevant.

Investigative skills aren't rolled for, but General skills are. General skills include more traditional game stuff like stealing, sneaking and fighting. Your ranks in the skill are the number of points in your pool, though there are also bonuses for having a rank of 8+

The actual roll is d6 + X vs TN, where X= the # of points you spend and TN is a (by default) hidden number. There are, thankfully, some nice sidebars and guidance about not being a jerk about hidden info, including the possibility of discarding it entirely.

Also, gonna be honest - The combat rules do not benefit from the pre-layout writeup. I'm still not sure I could run a fight in the system because there are still a lot of specific terms, and there's no good way to look up the cross references yet.

I suspect the rules themselves are fine, it's just going to take a bit more work to get my head around them.

That said, there are some clearly interesting bits around combat, most critically that "morale" attacks (social, fear, and so on) are on par with regular attacks. This is not just lip service - it gets as detailed a writeup as physical combat.

Did encounter one REALLY INTERESTING thing which I will probably expand pretty drastically. Short form: cover rules apply to social combat as well.
By default "cover" is anything which impedes communication, like a great deal of noise. I love this idea, but I want to expand it

For example, this seems a great mechanic to reflect social position. If I am in my home, surrounded by my supporters, that feels like it should provide social "cover". I think the idea is pretty powerfully flexible.

Another interesting thing - the skill for inflicting morale damage is the same skill as used to heal it. This makes the economy of morale attacks interesting, since there's incentive to not run the well dry.

Speaking of running the well dry, the secret sauce of this whole system seems to be "refresh tokens". Each token refreshes one spent point from a general skill, and they get generated by most fun activities, though at a slower rate than points are spent.

Effectively, it's a rebate on spent points, because the activities that generate refresh are also the activities that correspond with high point spends.

That's powerful. Done right, it makes action more of an ebb & flow and less of a steady depletion, and I can get behind that.

That said, I suspect there is probably more art to the refresh flow than the rules so far have revealed. Putting a pin in that to recall as we go forward.

There's some FASCINATING suggestions about enemies in this. There's a bit more information about using allies & favors and it's pretty cool. Favors effectively get you some pool, but no actual ranks, so you can spend from the pool, but it eventually depletes, super clever.

Allies have a rank & a pool that refreshes.
So, if you have The City Watch as an alliance, you can use it as an investigation skill to know things about the guard and stuff, or to spend points to call in favors. If you just have favors, you get no knowledge and favors run out

*Enemies* also can be used for investigation (so, implicitly, you know your enemies, which is cool) but the interesting bit is the Enemy *pool*. It seems like you don't get to spend it, and rather, it's spent against you by the GM.

More details on this later, but I'm intrigued.

So, this is also the chapter where we get diseases, traps, poisons, environmental hazards and so on. I'll be honest, I tend to treat this a very skimmable material, but I was brought up short by - of all things - the disease section.

This book gets something that almost every RPG misses and that is this: A disease is a plot.

With maybe one exception, each one of these diseases has a strong story component and has stages of progression that map to story beats, and that's freaking brilliant.

The poison section honestly ends up feeling kind of lackluster after the diseases. I *suspect* that's because the actual poisons are elsewhere in the book, because the author's note on the topic of the use of poisons very clearly *gets* the balance of using them.

That balance is this: Poisons are fantastic plot devices in the hands of NPCs, and it's cool for PCs to be able to have access to utility poisons, but plot-scale poisons end up being boring gamebreakers if PCs can crank them out.

Section on traps is interesting, and the authors come right out and say that it's tricky to balance exciting traps with the gumshoe ethos of blowing past things with investigation, and that you need to recognize and route around this.

I'm definitely less worried about the core mechanic than I was, so that's my big concern put to rest. I'm uncomfortable that I don't yet fully grasp combat, but some time with pencil & paper should fix that. Still excited, but now I need to go take another SAFE practice test.

Also, I kind of feel like I want to read the skills lists again, now that I have mechanical context for the effects.

Oh, one mechanic I noted but forgot to remark upon: So, the way it does maneuvers in combat (Like knocking people down, disarming them or the like) is that upon success, the target can choose to either take the result, or instead just take damage based on how well you rolled.

I like this a lot. It's a very nice escape hatch for those situations where a single maneuver might be a cheese win, and doubly nice for when players are on the receiving end.

But perhaps more interestingly, the same is applied to *social* maneuvers.

So if you use an illusion to trick someone, they can either accept it and be tricked, or take some amount of Morale damage.

With the caveat that all social manipulation in games is fraught, this seems a clever hack. Always has an escape hatch.

This shows up again later with powerful spells which have a full effect, or a partial effect if the target opts to take damage.

Speaking of which, the next section is on Sorcery and it's a doozy.

I had questions going into this, and I'm not sure they're all answered. As with combat, difficulty in cross referencing complicates things a little.

So, the heart of Sorcery is the investigative skill: Corruption. It's explicitly an oddball skill, and spending points from that pool is explicitly more potent than pulling from other pools because it also comes with a cost.

The cost is either personal (you gain either a subtle or noticeable transfiguration) or local (In which case it harms your friends and scars the environment).

So, yeah, pricey.

Curiously, so far as i can tell, you could play a sorcerer and never actually spend your corruption. It's necessary to fuel some things, but you could absolutely do a range of magic without ever spending corruption.

And that's kind of brilliantly evil.

Because you can TOTALLY DO THAT, and the corruption will just SIT THERE AND WAIT.

Because the payoff for spending even a little corruption can be dramatic, and the cost of any single spend is relatively mild, sooner or later you're gonna do it.

Trying to play a Sorcerer sticking to the straight & narrow invites disaster, and that's as it should be. But It's not *impossible*, and that's important.

If it were *impossible*, then the choice to spend corruption would have so much less weight. Instead, it's merely grossly unfair, and that's incredibly apt.

Big emphasis on using sorcery as color. You have a number of "spheres", which are thematic areas of your magic like "Fire" or "Blades" or "Fear" which offer (very) loose constraints on what you do, but strongly shape how it looks.

If you have sorcery and are using another skill, you can freely reskin the color of the action into something sorcerous. This is just a nice touch.

There is a curious limitation that when you buy sorcery, you have to describe how you learned it (yay!) but also decide if it does physical or morale damage by default. This is locked in, though you can spend corruption to change damage type.

This seems weird at first glance, but my sense is that it's a check against sorcery becoming a super-skill in combat. It's already quite potent, but limits like this keep it from being *the* thing.

Chapter has some other great sorcerous trappings like Rituals and True Names, but also has nice little "Yeah, you probably don' t need to know this right out the gate" note. :)

Oh, and also, "Love" is a sphere, but it's accompanied by a pretty clear warning that here be dragons and an encouragement to discuss it.

Ok, next section is on money, and I'm psyched for this, because I really want to get into the guts of the Lifestyle mechanic.

The opening is promising - this is not a game where resources are built up and invested in. It is a game of fortunes won and lost.

It uses an abstract welath rating, with 1 being some amount of money and 5 being riches enough to live well for an adventure. But then has a full half page of various coin types and their conversion rates and the best advice ever:

It is intentional that the money conversion is "unworkably complicated" and I love that because it means the door is left open to all manner of monetary shenanigans but also doesn't demand you justify electrum coins with a straight face.

There is also a very straightforward application of wealth to solving problems - 1 point of wealth can be turned into 3 points of a general skill, so you can literally buy your way out of many situations.

But the bit I've been waiting for has appeared, and that is LIFESTYLE.

So, at the start of an adventure, spend 1-5 wealth for:

1 Low Repute 2
2 Low Repute 1
3 No Repute
4 High Repute 1
5 High Repute 2

Curiously, repute works like an investigation skill for hobnobbing with the group in question. High repute points can be spent on influence and bribes. They can also be spent against you when you speak to the poor, but that seems kind of like a dick move?

OH GOD, THERE ARE MOOCHING RULES.

You can have an Ally pay for your lifestyle, but doing so incurs a grudge with that ally. Looks like it's always 1 point of Grudge, so definitely milk them for all they're worth!

Actually, it makes sense that if you're mooching, it's GLORIOUS mooching. If you're doing something more stable and sedate, it might be something an alliance might actually back willingly.

Aside: This has been another reference to spending pool against players. Very curious to get to that mechanic.

Ok, so I get some wealth on an adventure. I can use it as a fungible benefit (Turn it into general skill points) or spend it on lifestyle and get a slightly better bang for my buck ( assuming investigation points are worth 3x general points) but is that it?

No. There is gear.

Gear is interesting, in part because the Preparedness skill is a reasonable way to get a lot of gear without spending money.

That said, the gear list does the thing it's supposed to do: Give us unexpected windows into the setting.

Also, the actual poisons are here, and they are as delightful as I'd hoped.

Also, this is where we get the "magic items". Functionally, they're interesting, but because they're all explicitly one offs, they are very personal and colorful. That many of these can be bought for non-standard costs makes them more interesting to me.

If anything, I wish more of the costs were weird. A lot of items can be acquired for 5 wealth, but that's just less fun than "5 Wealth and a grudge"

Yeah, i think I'll flag this as a grumble. Unique things don't have a cost, and that's a lost opportunity to put in some kind of pointer to how they might be gotten.

The magic items come in categories. Grimoires and Staves are cool - Grimoires have their own corruption repositories, and Staves grant sorcerous spheres. Runes are, I think, supposed to be like magic weapons but for social combat, to mixed result.

One of the magic items is prayer that obsesses but protects whoever carries it, and the only way to stop is to pass i ton to someone else. It's brilliant.

The magic weapons are fun and varied. One, the Falcon's Eye Crossbow, is definitely underpriced and explicitly illegal, so I suspect that's deliberate.

I am not clear how tokens are different than runes except they're cheaper and less interesting.

Next chapter is adversaries and i think I may need to read it carefully since I'm already seeing unfamiliar terms on page one, and honestly I think I need to nail down the combat system for context here, so I think I break for a while now.

Ok, picked up again after putting the combat system in my head. I think I still need to work on some edge cases and specific rules, but I at least kind of get it now.

As is appropriate, the Adversaries section is an absolute treasure trove of setting information, including this delight:

Some of these monsters are genuinely horrific, something that's pretty much right on point for the Howard kind of vibe. In many cases, the creatures are less bad than the implications of their existence.

Except winged apes. Those are just horrifying enough on their own.

But when Vampires feel like a footnote, it's a good sign that the monsters are suitably monstrous. Good reminder that this genre shares a lot more DNA with horror than we often remember.

Also, this is an area where the descriptors in the system shine, since the little notes that a monster is "Surprisingly Fungal" or "Just trying to get along in the world" give a little extra insight.

That said, I take is back. The winged apes are horrific, but not as horrific as the carnivorous seagull flocks.

GM advice is next. Very brief (maybe too brief) section on Safety and the X card. I say may too brief because, honestly, there is some DARK stuff in this game. Might merit an abundance of caution.

(To say nothing of the fact that while Howard was no Lovecraft, there are definitely risks with getting the tone right.)

Some bullets on setting tone. It's a good list, including proper respect to mighty thews. Nice expansion on the "When a player asks about a setting detail, ask them for their answer" technique, which is gold.

Even takes it up a notch by suggesting the GM frame the sessions with questions ("What time of year is it?" "What's the weather like?") rather than simply establishing those things.

Other advice is pretty tactical. Tips on dealing with analysis paralysis, character specializations, handling gear and so on. Practical.

There's some guidance on managing Investigative ability spends, but I honestly don't know how good it is or isn't. It makes sense as I read it, but at the same time this feels like there's a large gut check component to it. Dunno.

Nice sidebar on making failures into success with a cost. Glad it's there, and if anything I'm slightly sad it's not the default.

Lot of GM advice on running combat follows. Seems solid, but it definitely seems to suggest that the expectation is that PCs are gonna be pretty badass, so it's mostly about ways to challenge them.

Gonna be honest - I hope that's true. If it's not, this is some mean advice.

Repeating because I think I accidentally forked: This section also gives the guidelines for the various bad things that grudge and enemy pool can be spent on, and it's delightful.

I think the only thing it's missing is making it clear to the player that this is happening because of a spend, not just usually GM stuff. This is kind of an important addendum.

Guidance on clues follow, and this is not bad, but odd. Gumshoe excels at investigation, and mapping that across to sword and sandal requires a bit of mental reframing, but it works if you think about it in terms of pacing and inertia.

That is, the most critical purpose of clues is not to give information, but rather to clearly point in a direction of action. Well done clues are less about mystery and more about making sure there's always a clear path forward. And that's the focus.

A nice bit of guidance follows on "Wild Card" abilities - Luck and Prophecy. They are unlike any other investigation skill because they do not require any particular context to be invoked.

This might seem powerful, but as the text notes, it's a gift to the GM.

For most investigation spends, there's an implicit contract of clarity and expectation. Wild Cards violate this contract, so the "balance" is that the clues they provide still point forwards, but maybe not in the way you wished.

Which is awesome.

Interesting reframing of advice I would normally categorize as "begin in medias res" as "Start adventures as late as possible", which is a pretty decent framing, and easier to spell.

I am utterly in love with the scene type list, which includes such delights as "Antagonist Reaction". I think, if anything, they undersell this section.

If you're used to playing in more structurally cinematic games (the old WEG Star Wars were fun for this) then this list is more or less a declaration that narration (and information) does not strictly follow the PCs.

The problem is, this is one of those ideas which is either very "Yeah, of course" or is instead "Wait, WHAT?!?". I worry this list might be impenetrable to a reader who has not encountered these techniques before.

But if you have? You're off to the races.

Ok, look, Plot Map as Dungeon is a technique that I could write several thousand words on , but rather than do so I will note that it's used here, and it's delightful (though of course I wish it was longer).

Some more stuff about not being super pinned down by linear time. Again, great technique if you're comfortable. Maybe a little worrisome for a novice.

OH GOD YES! So, @KevinKulp had mentioned this before, and I had forgotten, but the game includes what is probably my favorite travel technique: The Challenge Montage!

You can have events happen during travel, but rather than FORCE events when inappropriate, follow these steps:
1. Ask a player what went wrong.
2. Ask another player to make it worse.
3. Ask another player to resolve it.

Simple as that.

If your instinct is that challenges need to deplete resources in some way, this is SUPER counter intuitive.

But if you can set that aside and look at this as a constant gift of meaningful future plot hooks, the true gold reveals itself.

After that, some guidance on creating one shots, plots and campaigns. It's all good, but short!

Next bit calls out some of the explicit dials you can turn to modify the game. A few small mechanical options, but the big knobs are allegiances (which really drive setting) and Sorcery (which really drives tone).

This includes the promised section on Sorcery without corruption - Thaumaturgy. This scales magic back to be on par with other investigative skills. It's an interesting fix, but there's also a sidebar which is "seriously, we think corruption is important"

It points to a fascinating question: If corruption is critical, why include thaumaturgy at all?

There's an artistic purity sort of argument here which bumps right into the reality that mechanics like Corruption are not everyone's bag. Enough people to be a real issue, I wager.

Seems a practical compromise.

Though, of course, it's also a profound opportunity for hacking. :)

Guidelines for solo hero play. Doesn't require a lot of tweaking, so it's definitely a welcome addition. Also some guidelines for starting with more or less capable heroes, solid stuff.

Plus rules for playing ghosts!

There's an alternate rule for making maneuvers more fiddly, and I am honestly just skimming right past it. :)

And I have FINALLY MADE IT TO THE SETTING.

Need to go check on the kid and do household stuff, but at last, I am at the promised land. I shall return.

Not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but the city setting of the game is named "Eversink" and it has a few interesting attributes.

First, every building sinks. At different speeds - couple inches a year, a floor every 50 years on average.

There is no good reason why this is so.

And to be clear: The *land* is not sinking. The land is fine. It's the buildings.

The lack of an explanation is, honestly, kind of a delight.

*Probably* unrelated to the sinking, the city is the body of Denari, goddess of civilization and commerce.

When I say "body" I mean it bother literally and also not literally.

Like, there is not a physical body which things are on top of or anything like that. But at the same time, the Goddess *is* the city, and everything exists within her.

Excepting those things which do not, which are a threat to her, which is kind of a thing.

Also, there's some pretty clear subtext that the act of living in the city tends to result into buying strongly into jingoistic, trickle down super capitalism.

BUT I AM CONFIDENT THERE IS NO SUBTEXT TO THIS.

The "Constantly Sinking" thin, combined with the fact that it's on a series of islands makes for a very vertical city. In both direction - after all, just because a room has sunk doesn't mean it's gone away. The city goes deep.

But since land's at a premium, and the urban planning came from the whims of a goddess, the roads are...haphazard at best. Bridges matter a lot because they're more constant.

Or, skip the hassle and stick to the canals.

There's some real architectural delight to be had in this situation. The city has plenty of money, but the necessity of building means it justifies much more of a mishmash of building styles, materials and so on (And desperate trickery to preserve precious buildings).

So, starting from all that, what might complicate it further?

Funerary rites.

Burial is not much of a thing in Eversink. Instead, so long as you have a memorial statue, you get to be in heaven. Yay!

Until something happens to the statue. Boo!

Upshot: There are a LOT of statues in Eversink.

I can kind of feel @multiplexer 's football fandom coming through in the combination of absurdity and dead seriousness of the city sports, including "Eelball" and "Competitive Profit Taking"

I mean, there's an arena and pit fights and stuff too, but c'mon - EELBALL

Sole complaint: Competitive Profit Taking needs a slang name. The sport more or less starts with two competitors each with some piece of junk seeing how much they've turned it into by the end of the day.

I am inclined to call it "Penny", after the traditional starting amount.

Languages in Eversink follow the rule of "There are lots but it doesn't matter except when it's fun" and I am all in on that.

Food (a topic near and dear to my heart) is varied and abundant. If anything, the topic is a little more dull in a place like Everskin because it's cosmopolitan nature means there really are very few limits on the options.

Thankfully, the variety is balanced by the people. Matters like Salt and Grain might be in abundance, but they also trace back to people and organizations, and so long as that's true, they can drive play.

Also, there is a wonderful setup in the food laws, which demand that "outlander" dishes can only be sold in the Foreign District.

Despite this, food carts find there way to the rest of the city, despite opposition.

Quoth the text "food cart Merchants are the most cunning merchants in all of Eversink."

Which is to say the stage is set for robust food cart adventures.

I am THERE.

Some good stuff about wildlife, including the reminder that Swans are
A) Sacred
B) Protected by Law
C) Noisy pains in the ass

Also, lots of rats, snakes, birds and pigs.

Small aside on the existence of small gods breezes by en route to a description of Law in the city. There are a lot of laws, they are poorly enforced, but by coincidence enforcement seems to align with existing lines of power. Shocking.

But for all that, law is *important*. The nature of the Goddess (and thus, the city) is rooted in contracts. So the law *can* be used as a weapon by the knowledgeable or creative.

I like this for a couple reasons. The mechanical ability to BS law is awesome, yes, but what I really like is that it embraces the paradox of laws and corruption.

A lot of settings take the easy way out and laws are either absolute, or practically meaningless. It takes work for them to be both, but it's worthwhile.

History is given a similarly delightful treatment. The meta-story with the history (and pre-history) of the city is that it's largely lost, contradictory or confusing. Even moreso than actual history.

This is handy for an RPG, since there's less to keep track of.

Also, critically, it is called out that the most important use of history is to justify gaudy festivals.

BUT AS I SAID, NO SUBTEXT TO BE FOUND HERE.

Oh, and shockingly, the nobility have a version of the city creation myth which makes it clear how essential the nobility are.

And the thing is, it might be true. But there's no real way to be sure.

Ok, going to kind of skim past the next section, which details the city districts. Not because it's bad or uninteresting, but rather because it's all kind of more *specific* than a tweet level overview.

They're good write ups, and at a level of granularity I appreciate. They're about neighborhoods and types of buildings, as well as the general cadence of life, rather than really drilling in.

The main exception to drilling in is restaurants (and occasionally other named establishments) and the presence of a writeup of restaurants of every district makes this feel more like a city than many, many things I have read.

And, obviously, the geography of the city is a pointer to the social dynamics. The interaction between old status and new money plays itself out across entire neighborhoods.

The Blessing of the Goddess equating to wealth equating to quality of infrastructure equating to the worst neighborhoods being "outside the goddesses blessing" is so freaking tidy and efficient a mechanism that ok, maybe there's a LITTLE subtext.

I mean, I'm not saying that @multiplexer thought . o O (Ok, how about a LITERAL prosperity gospel?) except that is totally what I'm saying.

From the book: "The best way to avoid invasion is to welcome Outlanders in, tax them, give them a neighborhood full of people they’ll understand, and before you know it the invader is just another tax-paying citizen with an odd accent and some weird food preferences."

Oh, and, of course, with old nobility, new money and s strong foreign presence, you know what else we have a lot of.

Gentrification and Real Estate fraud.

Like, literally, the New Money are tying to brute force build a new old district.

It has flyers and live music!

Ok, just a super nice small touch - if the goddess likes, you might get to pass through a sacred grove and get to any place in the city. But try to talk about it, and you will cough up coins instead of air. Try to hard, and you drown in them.

Oh, also, there is totally a spirit world and no one has any idea WTF is going on with that.

Also, the government is 13 secret citizens (the Triskadane) chosen by the goddess and the game just comes out says "Yes, OF COURSE your character could be one" so Imma just gonna stand here flipping Waterdeep the bird for a few minutes.

But why settle for being a ruler when the much more interesting opportunity for COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP is an option?

I am not joking, even a little.

Committees are basically gangs with pretension of legitimacy. But remember how the laws are a rats nest? That legitimacy is largely a function of how official you SEEM.

Sure, this COULD get organized, but that might interfere with COMMERCE, and that's just intolerable.

All of which is to say, almost any unsavory of illicit adventuring activity can be made to look legitimate if you can BS fast enough to come up with a COMMITTEE to explain it.

Is there *actually* a Citizens Right Honorable Committee of Lock Examination and Certification in the city?

I don't know, but neither does the watchman who just caught you lockpicking. But it sure SEEMS like it could exist!

Reasonable doubt, a fancy hat and a lanyard go a LONG way.

Also, wonderful sidebar on revolution, monarchy and all the other ways that the trappings of government can change while nothing actually changes.

The actual listed worst crimes in Eversink are, in order:
#1. Sorcerous Corruption - This is an existential threat to the city and taken quite seriously.

#2. Counterfeiting - Fake currency makes for (often unintentional) false contracts. Unacceptable.

#3. Long Con Scams - really anything which represents a deliberate intent to fail to honor a contract.

#4. Everything else.

I mean, yes, Murder is *illegal*, especially if you're tacky about it. But, priorities are pretty clear.

Gonna slide forward some more as the book gets into the factions in play. As with the neighborhoods, this is good stuff, but doesn't need point by point review.

Broadly, we get a lot of information about trade, banking, warfare via money and so on. It's all great stuff, but the heart of it is ultimately spoken to in a sidebar titled "Do I Need To Use This?"

And the most important answer is "No, of course not". If you just need colorful backdrop for your adventures, then a lot of this is overkill.

But it matters because it matters.

That sounds like a tautology, but it's not. To unpack, it matters to have a world that hangs together with enough detail, logic and life to FEEL authentic. That is, it matters to your game that there are things which matter in the setting.

Why does it matter to your game?

Because if the authenticity of the setting doesn't matter, then it also doesn't matter when player's CHANGE it through their play.

The value of that change depends on the value of the world.

And the expectation is that Eversink WILL be different after you have passed through it.

Honestly, I think that's the perfect closing note. There's more stuff on the world at large in the book, as well as some notes on external threats. All very cool, but I think we got the heart of it.

For anyone finding this disturbingly long thread at the end of it, that was me reading through the forthcoming _Sword of the Serpentine_ RPG by @KevinKulp and @multiplexer , a game I am looking forward to IMMENSELY.

Dammit, I make myself a liar: One REALLY INTERESTING implication to the legal code that merits examination. It's easy to notice that Murder is in the "everything else" bucket, but we can see why. More interesting is that THEFT is in that bucket.

That seems really weird in the face of the whole emphasis on wealth and commerce. After all, the rich are often quite invested in the sanctity of *property*, often at the expense of people, so how can that be?

The interesting thing this suggests is that (at least as far as the goddess is concerned), *contracts* are far more important than property. The Agreements (and, implicitly, relationships - even bad relationships) are where the real power is. Property is incidental.

I mean, don't get me wrong - rob someone rich and get caught? You are TOTALLY getting prosecuted. But that's an expression of *power*, not *justice*.

What that means to your game, I leave to you, but I found it kind of fascinating.