Ghost Archipelago: Gods of Fire

Look what just landed on my desk! It’s an advance copy of Ghost Archipelago: Gods of Fire, due for release next month.

The first thing that is noticeable about this supplement is its size. At 96 pages, it is significantly longer than the previous supplement, Lost Colossus. I suppose I should know, since I wrote nearly 50% more words for this one. This is actually going to be the size of all of the Frostgrave supplements going forward. Personally, I find it much more satisfying, not just because it is a thicker book, but because it gives me a lot more room to play around with things and include fun stuff.

For example, a large section of this book is devoted to creating different groups of Tribals. This centres around a long list of positive and negative attributes, that include everything form armour weavers and death worshipers to poor tool makers and herb addictions. Using this system of attributes, there are hundreds of distinct tribes that can be created, each with their own unique rules.

This is especially important because Tribals play a much greater role in the scenarios in this book than has previously been the case for any group. Some of the scenarios are played twice, with one side bringing their Heritor and the other bringing a Tribal warband. Other scenarios are a more traditional player vs. player, but with each player bringing some Tribal allies. In each case, players can create their own tribe when fielding these troops (or just use one of the sample tribes provided).

I also wrote a few new rules concerning small boats, including  capsizing, using canoes instead of small boats, and for mounting a ‘swivelbow’ in your small boat. Oh yeah, who doesn’t want a swivelbow!

The new scenarios are bunched into three campaigns, one with two scenarios, one with three, and one with five, and as mentioned previously, a couple of those should be played twice. So, plenty of adventure found in these pages.

Finally the book includes new treasures and new monsters, including rules for the Kraken! (Am I the only one who thinks ‘Kraken’ should always be capitalized, even if it is one of many and not a unique monster?).

As you may, or may not, have heard, Osprey Games and North Star will also be producing a set of plastic Tribals to accompany the book. I’m not sure of the exact release date on those, but I have seen a mock-up of the sprue and can confirm that it contains optional masks for all of the figures!