Banestorm for GURPS 4e, by Phil Masters and Jonathan Woodward

How do you milk a fish? A milkfish, of course, the semi-aquatic Yrth mammal that offers meat, oil, and milk to its medieval domesticators. The brief description in GURPS Banestorm suggests a cross between a seal and a manatee. Plausible enough... but how do you get the milk out?

I get ahead of myself. Let's dip into the Banestorm book itself first. (I've got the PDF version from e23; sorry, I can't comment on the build of the hardback book. No pages have come loose in my digital version. : )

Involuntary relocation

Banestorm is the "default" fantasy setting for GURPS, centered on the continent of Ytarria on the world Yrth. The setting is nearly as old as GURPS itself, long available in older books titled GURPS Fantasy. Banestorm, written for GURPS 4e, greatly updates and expands earlier information on Yrth.

I've always liked the Yrth setting. Not everyone does, I know from online comments, but what's not to like? It's a fantasy world that combines humans, Elves, Dwarves, and other fantasy favorites against the ever-popular mix of medieval lands and mighty magics. You've got your scheming empires, marauding dragons, crusading knights, and wandering wizards, all atop the setting's trademark innovation: a backstory that grounds humanity in our real Earth's history and religions, yet gives them reason to be hanging with Centaurs and sorcerers, too. (Short story: Yrth doesn't bring magical elements to our familiar world; it scoops up humanity – along with other worlds' creatures – and drops them into a magical world, via a dimensional rift called the Banestorm.)

To me, this grounding in historical human societies and faiths is richer than a purely invented re-imagining of humanity, and the inter-dimensional twist adds more fun. The stage is set for classic fantasy mace-and-magic adventure – or, if you prefer, world-jumping, time-traveling, mixed-technology, parallel-reality epics. Yrth will take any and all.

Still packing my bags...

Yet for all this praise, I haven't played a Yrth game – not exactly, that is.

Some years ago I embarked upon a big-scale world design for a GURPS campaign, combining long-rattling ideas of my own with new inspirations from the Yrth background. I had a corrupt Empire like Yrth's Megalos (with the Roman flavor turned up a bit), an Yrth-like (and, sadly, Earth-like) oppressive Church, a Caithess-like frontier land... to which I added a Slavic-flavored enemy Empire of my own invention, a Mongol horde-themed danger waiting on the steppes, some other Earth-tinted nations... All Yrth-like, but different.

The world-building was engrossing, and the resulting game sessions fun, but I had chance to regret the considerable time that world-building took away from story-building. More than once I asked myself, "Why didn't I just use Yrth? It would have served as well, with a few tweaks..."

So having aired that dispersion on my validity as a reviewer, let's get back to the book:

A wealth of nations

Banestorm's key "characters" are the nations that make up Ytarria. Each has a distinct personality that will flavor adventure within its borders: decadent empire, swashbuckling islands, stern theocracy, and so on. Their paths over centuries hold appropriate twists and turns, without so much real-world convolution as to make Banestorm a setting of history lessons. Each nation offers a wealth of key personages, cities, and plot hooks upon which to hang stories.

So sorry, Sahud

The cast of nations includes my only real disappoint with the book: the pseudo-Asia land of Sahud. Make that the "cheesy, bad-Hollywood-mish-mash of goofy Asian stereotypes" land of Sahud. Primarily a pastiche of Japan tropes and Japanese-ish names (with an odd-fitting overlay of other Asian names), Sahud is presented as the "up is down, down is up" topsy-turvy land where nothing will make sense to visitors; it's "exotic Asia" with an extra zero on the end.

(Sahud? The name won't work in Japanese, and I'm suspicious about its viability in Chinese as well. Korean is a possibility. Hmm, I think I'd let "Sahud" be the name given the land by outsiders, and add some more linguistically-fitting name for use by the natives themselves. Such a multiplicity of names for Yrth's lands and peoples would be realistic, though Banestorm doesn't venture there.)

Among the Earth-offshoot nations, Sahud seems to benefit the least from research. A case in point is the sample list of "Japanese in character" personal names. Ignoring the out-of-place Kaoshuang, the names in the list do fit the description... sort of. Futsukiman? Sounds like a tasty variant of manjuu bun. Shizuoka? Maybe this fellow could meet his Caithness counterpart, Mr South Carolina. Okishaido? It's not wrong... it's just not right, either.

I know, I know, we're not on Earth anymore. Sahud is a parallel-world development, where Mssrs Futsukiman and Okishaido certainly could be your neighbors. No one can say that any aspect of fictional Sahud is "wrong". I understand that completely. I only note that, with a little research, suggested names could offer all the right flavor without being inadvertently comical. Similarly, some research legwork could provide Sahud with nifty legacy ties to historical Earth cities, clans, sects, and so on – something we see in the "European" nations with their New Jerusalem, Templars, Jesuits, and so on, but which is curiously absent in Sahud.

Writing from my base in Japan, I'm likely to be more critical of the setting than many gamers would. A cast of Asians carrying on about "honor" and "face" is Hollywood goofiness to me, but I know that many players will expect and welcome that background. Also, I put no blame on Banestorm's authors; Sahud has been around in the same form since the 1980s, so the authors are only working with what they were handed.

I think Sahud is a good target for a re-imagining: a future supplement outlining an alternate Sahud, projecting more realistically how fragments of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and other Asian societies and languages might have imperfectly blended over a thousand years. It'd be lower on the exoticism, higher on the plausibility. (And it'd sell a whole handful of copies, too, I'm sure. : )

A hook to hang your story on

Plot hooks are what we really want from a world book, and Banestorm's authors know it. They deliver plenty of local, character-driven storyline hints involving diplomacy and trade, ambitions and grudges, borders and bloodlines. For bigger, darker story arcs, there's an evil secret at the heart of the largest empire, and a creeping threat within its largest forest. World-spanning issues like the suppression or spread of technology and science, or the re-emergence of the Banestorm itself, can fuel a campaign. In fact, Banestorm offers many more plot ties to Earth than I remember from past Yrth books: possibilities for contact with Earth, for new characters from Earth, and so on. The book firmly establishes Yrth as part of theGURPS Infinite Worlds meta-setting.

(To the book's credit, there isn't an Yrth story arc involving the long-foretold reappearance of a once-defeated Dark Lord. The fantasy genre has had enough of that, thank you.)

And to set stories within a rich background, Banestorm does a great job in not overlooking things that get short shrift in RPGs but are actually huge parts of real people's lives. Domestic animals, not just monsters. Sects and heresies, not just whole-cloth religions. Guilds and orders. Arts and entertainment. Jobs and trade. Lots of goodies to bring the world to life.

Gurps Banestorm (Gurps) author: Phil Masters rating: asin: 1556347448 binding: Hardcover list price: $34.95 USD amazon price: $25.51 USD