Friday, December 27, 2013

Birthright Players Secrets guides

Most of the products that came out of the Birthright setting were in the "Players Secrets to" series that detailed various realms across the continent of Cirelia. 14 were produced (15 if you count the PDF only Player's Secrets of Müden) and released mostly between 1995 and 96.


The Players Secrets are interesting products, in a variety of ways. First off, they're clearly aimed at the players. This isn't typical of 2nd edition products, most of which were pretty clearly aimed at DMs from adventures, to boxed sets, to various campaign books. Secondly they don't have rules in them! No kits or prestige classes, no new monsters, no new spells. It's 32 pages plus a foldout cover crammed full of background fluff.

I'm going to go through my collection (I've got most of them) and do reviews of them here. These aren't going to be typical reviews, but rather looking at each of the realms detailed, and seeing how well the material could fit into a non-Birthright campaign. Now, the realms are explicitly tied into the setting, and not really designed to be pulled out, but it wouldn't take significant tweaking to make it work, especially given the complete lack of rules and mechanics in them. I'm going to start with Roesone, Ilien, and Medoere, since these three realms all fit in nicely together.

The complete list of Players Secrets guides is as follows. As I review them I will update this list with links to the individual posts.

Player's Secrets of Endier
Player's Secrets of Roesone
Player's Secrets of Medoere
Player's Secrets of Tuornen
Player's Secrets of Ilien
Player's Secrets of Talinie
Player's Secrets of Ariya
Player's Secrets of Binsada
Player's Secrets of Baruk-Azhik*
Player's Secrets of Halskapa
Player's Secrets of Khourane*
Player's Secrets of Tuarhievel*
Player's Secrets of Stjordvik
Player's Secrets of Müden (PDF only)
Player's Secrets of Hogunmark*

*Still need to add to my collection

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