Thursday, June 1, 2023

Review of 'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master' (Eternal Champion Series) By Steve Perrin, Sandy Petersen, & Charlie Krank For The classic Stormbringer Rpg & The Hawkmoon Box Set

 "The Shattered Isle is a supplement for the Eternal Champion series of Roleplaying games. This series, currently consisting of the games Stormbringer and Hawkmoon, is based on the fantasy novels written by noted author Michael Moorcock. This book contains two sections: Additions and Scenarios.


ADDITIONS: Contains new rules which are later used in the Scenarios. Included here are guidelines for vehicular and aerial combat and exotic and powerful weapons found in the New Fenian armory, more than 50 Beast Orders from the isle of Granbretan, and a glimpse into the daily routine of Oshol Nariva -- a typical member of the Order of the Boar.

SCENARIOS: Contains numerous adventures set on the Tragic Millennium Earth. An extensive section titled Getting Here presents to the gamemaster capsulized methods for getting the adventurers involved with the Shattered Isle scenarios, including a variety of options for both Young Kingdoms and Tragic Millenium Earth adventurers."




Sometimes we don't understand the sigificance of an adventure until much later on in life, such is the fate of 'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master'  By Kerie Campbell-Robson, Steve Perrin, and Sandy Petersen published in '87 by Chaosium. The first half of the book is new rules, fixes for the classic Hawkmoon box set, new  masked orders of the Granbretanian empire & a sprawling campaign. This is not a lower tier campaign adventure for either Hawkmoon or Stormbringer, the stakes are high, the adventure elements go from gritty to full on cosmic & the adventure campaign could be lethal. 
 



 'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master'  is a crossover adventure between the classic Chaosium Stormbringer rpg & Hawkmoon box set.  'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master' is the classic wizard messing around with a high level technological/occult relic to break the barriers of the planes. This isn't your run of the mill wizard instead this is the mutant master whose responsible for the entirety of the bio weapon system program of the Tragic Millennium Europe take over. Zhenader is a wizard scientist of the  Granbretanian empire who controls the entire country of Éire. Éire is Irish for "Ireland", the name of the island and  the sovereign state. Zhenader has gone completely rogue after finding a Fairy mound, other worldly artifact, & broken the planar barrier into the Million Spheres. 
He is not someone to trifle with at all because he's also found the armory of Eire & a host of pre Tragic Millennium weapons, artifacts, & more. 
The weapons are a weird mix of Eighties military technologies & Granbretanian empire weapon systems. This makes sense but its still gives a very strange impression. And its this impression of the weird where 
 'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master'   excels. 


We mentioned the word sprawling & 
 'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master'   has the PC's coming face to face with some of the more dangerous NPC's their going to be facing. We get warriors from across the 'Young Kingdoms' to the peoples of Corum these are all in the hands of Zhenader. Things go from bad to worse for the PC's. But their is light at the end of the tunnel & its not a train. The party is going to have to do some very fancy foot work but its a good adventure.  'The Shattered Isle: Rebels Against the Mutant Master'   is just weird enough to be engaging but actually playable. This is a campaign that is going to take months to work through. The possibilies of dimensional travel are high & even beyond. We have used this campaign as a pick up adventure with Rogue Mistress in the past so this is a strong possibility as well. This is a campaign that can go from 3 months to about a year or better to mop up every aspect of the machinations of the top teir villain. 

With a bit of work on the dungeon master's part I actually think that this could be a really good module for an extended game of both classic Stormbringer & Hawkmoon. 

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