Iron Kingdoms RPG Review

It's been a while since I've had a new RPG to review since I've started becoming a lot more selective with my gaming purchases. That, and many of the lines I was buying have slowed down considerably! However, this one is well worth singing its praises.

I don't think it would shock anyone to say I'm a huge Iron Kingdoms fan. I bought the 2 of the original Warmachine battle boxes, despite not having anyone to play against at the time. With the exception of the Force Books for armies I don't play, I have all the rule books from Mk1 Prime. I even bought 2 of the original Hordes Battle Boxes when I still didn't have anyone to play against. (forever the optimist!)

The Iron Kingdoms though, didn't start off in the miniatures game. It originally existed as part of a adventure trilogy for 3rd Edition D&D published under the OGL. The Witchfire Trilogy was so popular that eventually a small RPG line was published alongside the emerging miniatures game. WHile the setting was good, unfortunatley the use of OGL D20 caused some issues meshing gameplay to player's expectations, especially once they saw what the equivilent unit in the miniatures game could do. While I did run the Witchfire Trilogy (its an awesome campaign BTW. Key moment in Iron Kingdoms history, great set peices and classic NPCs) the D20 rules held us back, and Gun Mages and anyone wanting to craft stuff was seriously disadvantaged.
When Privateer Press started work on Mark 2 Warmachine, they put a hold on the entire RPG line, promising to re-visit it with a new system once Mark 2 was up and running.

Roll on a couple of years, and we now have one of the best looking RPG books around.

With production values on par with the Warmachine/Hordes rule books (and light years beyond the original Iron Kingdoms Character Guide), the new Iron Kingdoms RPG is a full colour hardback book, weighing in at 340 pages.

Kicking off the book is an excellent section on the history of Western Immoren. Covering prehistory, all the way up to the "modern" day, this is a great introduction to the world. Much of this history has been covered in various of the miniature books, but it is well written and worth having in one place. Following swiftly afterwards is a section looking at aspects of Western Immoren as it stands, including magic, religion and Mechanika. These two sections total over 100 pages and gives even those completely new to the setting everything they need to know.

Character creation gives you the chance to get into the crunchy parts of the book. Building from a stat line that will look familiar to anyone who's played the miniature game, each character gets to pick a race, archetype and 2 careers to form the backbone of the character. The races feature all the options available in the original RPG, and cover just those living in Western Immoren, later books will open up options to play Skorne and some of the more exotic races. The careers are much like you would expect with classes key to the setting such as the Alchemist, Gunmage and Warcaster represented along with more generic, but equally important careers such as soldier and spy. With each character picking 2, it leads to much more variation and gives much more opportunities for creating interesting characters.
Each career seems balanced, with even the lowly Spy being able to bring something to the table when up against Warcasters and Gunmages.

The conflict resolution system is very similar to the miniatures game, with the combat and magic systems being a pretty straightforward port. While I don't find that a problem, some people may find the overly tactical combat system, which works better with miniatures, to be a problem. Certainly it would not take much to shift to a miniature-less combat, and there is a section in the back that covers this, but otherwise they expect models on the table.

One of the biggest flaws in the D20 version was always the crafting. In the setting, magical items are rare, with most "magical" items actually being Mechanika, a blend or magic and technology. However D20 could never handle this, and so you ended up with much of the fun classes (Alchemist and Arcane Mechanic) being hobbled and unable to be truly awesome. Thankfully the new book presents crafting in a manner that really fits with the setting, and allows crafting classes to be really useful.

My only real gripe is there is not enough in the book. Its a poor gripe, but a valid one, as there is so much crammed in, that some sections are much shorter than I'd have liked. The antagonists section feels especially small, but this is being supported via the No Quarter magazine (and excellent publication for Iron Kingdoms fans) and online. Given the scope of the setting, there is plenty of material and I look forward to an updated Monsternomicon.

Overall, the Iron Kingdoms RPG is an excellent successor to the D20 variant, and continues the tradition of excellent products that started all those years ago with the Witchfire Trilogy.