Have you ever discovered a game, but wish you found it earlier? Maybe your gaming group has changed and you miss a key player. Perhaps your group wished for a game about X, but no such game existed. Once the desire passed, out came game X. To a degree, that is how I feel about Suzerain. About five years ago, I started a campaign for two friends. They were excited about the premise; however, they were less than excited about the game engine–Savage Worlds in this case. Their problem (and mine too really) rested squarely on the advancement piece of the game. Characters in Savage Worlds feel pretty damn powerful after a few sessions.

Playing once a month for five years creates some incredibly potent characters with this system. I wrapped up that campaign last weekend, mere weeks after discovering this unique little game.

The Suzerain rulebook is a slim fifty pages of very pretty plate artwork and a lot of apparent coffee spillage. Rather than being tied to a particular setting or world this Suzerain seems to be trying to pass itself off as a generic system with specific world books, though there are hints of the New Age mysticism and multiversal aspects in the fiction snippets and illustration explanations throughout the book. The immediate first impression is one of over-engineering for such a small book(let). For your money you get a brief introduction, basic rules, advanced rules, character creation and ‘Feats’ which covers the ground of skills, innate abilities (merits), innate failings (flaws) and special powers such as magic, cybernetics or SCIENCE!

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Some big news over at the Talisman Studios website this week. They have signed on with Studio 2 Publishing for distribution of these great books. First up will be the Shaintar core book, which uses the Savage Worlds system from Pinnacle Entertainment. The Suzerain core book will be the second product to hit distribution and it sounds like supplements for each line will follow.

Customers will also be able to order directly from the Talisman Studios website as well.

New from Talisman Studios for the Suzerain Role Playing Game. The Best Little Hellhouse in Texas There’s a fortune to be dug up, out on the frontier? as long as you survive! Welcome to a gunslinging adventure set in the supernatural Old World, where tough-as-nails preachers hold back the horrors scuttling into town with the […]