I gladly sponsored the Kickstarter camapign for Planar Compass, then known as Dreamhaven, on the strength of it's premise, not to mention that it was written to support Old-School Essentials, the fantastic clone of B/X D&D. Issue #1 lays the foundations for what promises to be a fun setting with elements of older settings such as Planescape or Spelljammer, offering a "home base" island in the midst of the Astral Sea, a set of psionics rules and interesting new classes (appropriately, for both humans and new Race-as-Class demihumans).
I find it to be a strong first effort and very much look forward to seeing the setting grow over the course of future issues. I do have some minor complaints, but those can be attributed to the author's over-reaching to a small degree given the limitations of the shorter zine format. First, the island of Dreamhaven itself is quite small as detailed. While this does leave room for DMs to expand and customize to their own campaigns, it does leave the reader with the sense that it might be a bit too small for some of the hooks and included short adventures to realistically take place. In a place as small as it is, you'd expect the inhabitants to know each other fairly well and there not to be much room for mystery.
Secondly, the psionics rules leave me a bit conflicted, truth be told. They are quite well written and read as if they would play well at the table. They do a wonderful job of capturing the feel of AD&D psionics without nearly as much "crunch" and fussiness as the originals, and are simpler than other similar rules written for BX coughNew Big Dragoncough which while also very well done are even more complex. If anything, my personal feeling is that they are still more complicated than most of the mechanics found in BX. I shall however reserve a final judgement until I've had a chance to see them in play. It may well be that my fears are unfounded. I just have the sense that they could have been further trimmed, which would have left more room to further detail the island and it's inhabitants.
Regardless of these minor complaints, I've recommended this wonderful zine to a number of people looking to add psionics to thier BX games and will certainly be purchasing future issues.
|