Review: Soldiers of Fortune by Matt James

Soldiers of Fortune* is a new book by Matt James, written for the Midgard campaign setting, for Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition. The book is published by Open Design LLC, also known as the publisher of Kobold Quarterly. The topic of the book is warfare, a topic the author, a decorated Army veteran, is intricately familiar with. The book provides you with anything you need to play military characters or to run military games.



Campaign setting
The book provides a wealth of background information on warfare in the Midgard setting. The book explores the 7 stratagems of war. These stratagems, are the cental lore on warfare in Midgard. These maxims present timeless truisms about war and how war is to be fought. Naturally, these cannot be described without a reference to Sun Tzu's Art of War. On a smaller scale, it presents legendary generals, magic items, templates and even siege engines.

The book takes an interesting stance on mercenaries. Mercenaries are not considered as morally challenged, as they are in a lot of other settings. Instead, a mercenary is seen as neutral with respect to the conflict he is fighting for. There are mercenaries who fight for a good cause, and honor is an important aspect of the profession, but in the end a neutral alignment, rather than a good or evil alignment is what marks the true mercenary. The book also describes the mercenary culture of a number of Midgard cultures. This ranges from the efficient, and utterly ruthless mercenaries of the Grand Dutchy of Dornig, to the mercenaries of the city of Remulus (the remains of the once great remulan empire).

Military characters and campaigns
The book has plenty of rules materials for playing military characters or running military campaigns. This ranges from new feats, e.g., siege engine operation or layman's speech (the ability to be able to talk to the common foot soldiers in a manner they can understand) to paragon paths (e.g., soldier of fortune, veteran of war) and a new theme (not surprisingly: mercenary). The book also describes magic items, such as the legendary army banners of Midgard and their effect on the troops around them. The final chapter presents a collection of monsters, minions and templates. Again, this chapter has a strong connection of crunch with the overall setting. The templates in the chapter include that of Bold Commander, Devoted Body Guard, and Necrolord. The book finishes with a collection of siege engines, the ballista, cannon and trebuchet, complete with stats and requirements to use them.

Skill challenges
A particularly nice aspect is that of skill challenges as an abstract mechanism for actions on a multi-day timescale. The general mechanism of a skill challenge is to get a number of subsequent successes in skill rolls before the party fails at a number of challenges. I like that a party can succeed on a skill challange in different ways. For instance, in making a deal with a general of a competing army, the party must make a diplomacy check. If this diplomacy check would fail, however, the party can fight it's way to success on the session. Take for instance the skill challenge Command the Legion. In this challange you start out in an army and work your way up through a series of tasks and challenges to join the commanding ranks of that army. This skill challange takes the middle road between a potentially long and political campaign to play out the process of a career in the army, and simply stating the fact that the party has joined commanding ranks. Although the former would make an interesting adventure in it's own right, it gets in the way if you want your campaign to focuss on the military operation. The skill challenges that are described in the book can be as large as defending the kingdom against invading forces, by breaking the entire challenge into a series of phases. I especially like the phasing that the author makes, as it gives the feel of a large scale operation.

Integration of world building and game mechanics
The author describes that he is no fan of munchkinism. This is clearly visible in the book. The majority of game mechanics are accompanied by background and world knowledge, for instance as information that can be learned by a streetwise roll. Also, knowledge of history, and more important heraldry is used to get the upper hand in a battle. On a battle field, a skilled commander can read the enemy and adjust his tactics based on his knowledge of heraldry alone. An nice twist to this is the suggestion that an enemy can make smart use of the knowledge of heraldry if they can make their troops wear different colors. The integration of game mechanics with setting content really makes the mechanics come alive.

Adventure
In Chapter 6 the mechanics of the preceding chapters are taken for a ride in an adventure. The author gives the necessary ingredients for a campaign that can be run in a limited amount of time, or can be fleshed out to a long and intricate campaign. Depending on time pressure and tactics, players can choose to fight their way through cetrain passages or sneak their way around them, although choices are not without consquence. In the adventure takes a group of adventurers through all aspects of an unavoidable war, beginning at the initial events and preparations for war to the conclusion events following the grand finale. I really liked the endless minions challenge. In this challenge, minions remain to be added to the field until certain goals are met.

Conclusion
The book is a well-balanced book, offering crunch and fluff on several levels of abstraction. In addition, I like the integration of chrunch and fluff. Most technical parts have suggestions and knowledge associated with them to integrate them in the setting. The book is written originally to fit in in the Midgard setting, using 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons. However, a large part of the book is usable for other systems, sometimes immediately, sometimes after a little tweaking. The overall looks of the book are good. I read the PDF on my iPad. I never had any issues with the typography, the artwork, or the stylish embelishment on the pages.

Long story short, I had a good time reading the book and look forward to using some apects of in for my own campaigns. I can reccomend it, regardless of the setting or system you are playing, if you are looking for a way to include warfare into your campaign.

Shop till you drop
The book can be bought at the following links:
Print
PDF
And will also be made available on DriveThruRPG, Paizo, and e23.

*) A review copy has kindly been provided by the author