never send a halfling to do a man’s job

Heroes of the Fallen Lands

Heroes of the Fallen Lands

Heroes of the Fallen Lands‘s cover illustration, by Ralph Horsley, is of a fairly typical scenario – two adventurers fighting undead while their muttonchopped halfling sidekick freaks out and fails to help. The adventurers are in a dungeon.

Somehow, the image’s irregular border fools my eye into thinking it’s a more interesting setting. My brain reads the dungeon wall as a Great Wall of China-style outside wall, with a white sky above it. The two adventurers are standing before a gate, holding off undead. I imagine the walls continuing for thousands of miles in either direction, protecting – the Fallen Lands? – from a continent’s worth of undead. Now that’s a setting!

Oh, so here’s a difference between the PHB and HotFL. The PHB subtitle is “Arcane, Divine and Martial Heroes”. The HotFL’s is “Create and Play Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Wizards!” The HotFL subtitle has a certain something that the PHB subtitle lacks. And that certain something is an exclamation point!

More Essentials thoughts…

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