A Rather Critical Review of Morgansfort

[Urieal]

Ooo! Does that mean my existing print copy becomes a collector's item?

You should definitely change the colour of the front cover in true Palace of the Silver Princess style ...

+1

[Solomoriah]

I'd love to have a color cover graphic; the original artist stated that he didn't do color, and I'm not a good enough colorist to handle it. Otherwise, I'm not changing the cover.

And, I'm uploading R22 now. It's not ready to print yet... formatting issues. Gah.

[Joe the Rat]

I am well past the sell-by on the issue, but so it goes.

I'll be posting a new copy of BF1 tonight. Honestly, I think it's better this way... allowing for the possibility that Gwelayn might be saved makes the whole thing more interesting.

This was something I was considering for if/when I run it, but mostly because my target audience is a bunch of 10-11 year old girls. I was going to dial the horror back a notch, and make room for there not being a total downer ending. (If you want to link some of the issues together, the orc-women know an old herbal remedy for arsenic poisoning).

[LibraryLass]

I'll be posting a new copy of BF1 tonight. Honestly, I think it's better this way... allowing for the possibility that Gwelayn might be saved makes the whole thing more interesting.

EDIT: Here's the revised pregnant-orc text. I'm comfortable with it.

Orc women do not go around armed most of the time, but Badushna insisted on arming the women of her new tribe to allow them to better protect their young. This tribe is still new, so there are not actually any offspring to protect yet, but the five not-yet-pregnant females will fight to protect the thirteen pregnant ones. The pregnant females will surrender and beg for mercy if the females protecting them are slain.

Of course, you can’t trust an orc even when she surrenders... if the player characters do not drive them out of the dungeon, they may choose to attack the player characters when they are vulnerable (such as when they return from the lair of Zelinth). They will only do so if they are certain they will win.

Definitely kosher by my standards!

[Sir Bedivere]

The assembled crew here have covered about everything else, but one thing that hasn't really been mentioned is the reviewer's assumption that Morgansfort is oriented for Good / Lawful characters. BF doesn't have an alignment system, and so Good and Evil are hazier in BF than in other similar games. The motivation for the rescue could well be "It's the right thing to do," but it could equally be "Hey, there's a reward," or "I just like killing stuff, and the law doesn't come after me for killing orcs," or some combination of these.

As for the rest ...

Devil's Advocate here:
It is a bit odd that skin color is mentioned. I do question the use of skin color for these two characters specifically, because it is mentioned nowhere else in the module. None of the people from Morgansfort have skin color mentioned, so it strikes me as odd that the detail was added specifically for these two NPCs. ...

I've never particularly liked having pregnant anything in my game. It's a game, so I keep it "gamey"...not a "simulation" of fantasy world so I can get my players to question their specific PC's moral quandaries. ... I don't get my rocks off that way. I never have. Never will.

This is pretty much my take on it as well. I don't think it was misogynistic or racist in the least, but our society is so obsessed with these issues (sometimes for very good reasons, but sometimes not) that a lot of people would read them into the descriptions. I like the way Solomoriah decided to rewrite it.