Scarred Lands Gazetteer - Ghelspad

Scarred Lands Gazetteer
Ghelspad
Stephan and Steward Wieck
Published by White Wolf Publishing, 2001

Available at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Scarred Lands Gazetteer Ghelspad (hence Ghelspad) was part of the D&D 3e line produced by Sword & Sorcery Studios, an imprint of White Wolf Publishing.  The book is 48 pages of campaign setting yumminess.  Forget that overly detailed Forgettable Realms hardback that is selling for the price of a used kidney.  If you have fond memories of the World of Greyhawk (either boxed set or folio), you very well might like Ghelspad.  Everything you need to know about the continent is included in this manual.

The inside covers have black & white pictures of the coats of arms for both nations and city states.

The book begins with the History of the Scarred Lands.  The short version is that 125 or so years ago, the gods got into a scrap with the titans.  The gods, as well as one titan who joined them, won the war but the planet has been messed up pretty badly.  The "Scarred Lands" encompasses the entire world, but this book covers just the continent of Ghelspad.

I will note here that throughout the book, the person narrating the section changes, so you may have an uppity wizard narrating one part of the book, or a conniving sycophant of a tyrant narrating a part, etc.

A history of Ghelspad follows. This section gives a brief history of the Divine War, the rebuilding that followed, the Druid War, the Blood Monsoon, the rise of the fore-mentioned tyrant, and the "here you are" point.  The entire history covers only three pages!  Amazing!  The genius of a concise book is that the DM can fill in every minor detail and not have to worry about some obnoxious player who read in some 400 page campaign setting that Super Wizard #1 wears mismatched socks, who then berates the DM for not following canon.

Something that I enjoy is that the Blood Sea actually has blood in it, which causes the red color.  This is because a dead titan is chained at the bottom.  The titans are "dead" but it is more like Cthulhu dead; dead but not really.

A two-page spread map of Ghelspad follows the history.  It is quite nice but it seems obvious that the map was originally in color and they converted to grayscale for this book.  Some of the place names are very difficult to read but I imagine they are easy to spot on a color map.

Nations and City States follows.  Each nation has its common name listed in alphabetical order, the predominant or official worship, the complete name of the nation (as opposed to its common name), the capitol, other cities of note, the ruler, the form of government, population composition (what % is elf vs. human vs. half-orc, etc.), and allies and enemies.  Each nation and city state gets a few paragraphs detailing it.  The continent has two different city states controlled by necromancers.  Some of the details specify certain magical or physical effects.  For instance, the city of Mithril has a giant golem overlooking the city.  The golem has not moved since the Divine War.  Can it move?  Will it move?  Can doughty explorers break into it and look around?  None of this is detailed, leaving it to a crafty DM to determine what the golem actually is or does.  The nations section covers 14 pages.

Topography of Ghelspad comes next.  This section notes many neat, unnatural areas such as a floating island, a forest that seems to never run out of monsters to send into the world, and the Blood Sea that I mentioned earlier.  Reading this section reminds me of reading a Black Company novel, due to the simple but evocative names, "Plains of Lede", "Inferno Gulf", "the Sweltering Plains" are some examples.

The next section of the book encompasses organizations on the continent.  There is a cult of whore-spies who infiltrate the various governments, a group of magic using thieves who are in it for the laughs, a cult of assassins, some Mongol-like horse warriors led by an undead king, some mercenary companies (I wonder if the authors read the Black Company chronicles?), and others.  This section is 7 pages long.

Cosmos and Cosmology follows.  Here is listed the eight gods (at least one died during the Divine War), as well as their titan ally.  The gods do not have alignment listed but it's pretty easy to determine which gods fall where on the law vs. chaos and good vs. evil axes.  The known titans are also listed, along with what they were known for in the old days.  Most of them are dead but still have worshipers, and druids of the Witch Queen and Mother of Serpents, Mormo, still receive spells, so there is that...

The last two pages list calendar days, holidays, the heavens, and planes of existence.

⇒ GRIT: ★★★★★:  The book packs a whole passel of info into its short 48 pages.  Some gamers would want stats for characters, new spells, and all that jazz.  I don't.  This game setting is truly universal since it has no game stats at all in it.  It can be used for whichever version of D&D the referee wants, or Savage Worlds, or GURPS, or RISUS.  It doesn't matter.  

⇒ VIGOR: ★★★☆☆: As I stated, as this book is statless and is intentionally sparse with details, the campaign won't be limited as it would be with every nook and cranny detailed, as is common in some campaign settings.  I would have liked to have a better map in this book, as well as regional maps, and perhaps an army roster for gamers who do mass battles.  One thing that is definitely missing is scale on the map which is included.  I have no idea how big this continent actually is.  This is a huge blunder, in my opinion.

⇒ GRACE: ★★★☆☆:  The book includes some decent line drawings, it has a neat border on most pages, and has plenty of white space to rest the Mark 1's between pages.  The map being a b&w rendering of a color map was a big oops to me.  They should have included a color map or removed all of the labels when it was converted to b&w and retyped the labels, allowing white space around the words.