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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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After my review last month of the 1st edition Tribe 8 Rulebook, I thought it might be a good idea to follow up with a few more Tribe 8 products. This month we'll look at the Weaver's Screen and Assistant. Although long out of print, these are still available on Ebay or as a PDF.
Let's take a look inside and see what you get:
The Screen
The screen is a 3-panel, portrait-oriented screen printed on glossy card stock. Although it's fairly flimsy, it stands up on its own well and is durable enough to survive regular use. While the portrait-orientation is somewhat annoying, since it blocks eye-contact, it also means the screen doesn't take up a huge amount of table space.
The player-facing side of the screen includes full-color art although it's rather spartan in nature and consists largely of a texture image. I would have greatly preferred to see a map of Vimary (the primary setting for Tribe 8), along with art depicting some of the landmarks on the island, since it would have made the outside of the screen actually useful to players.
The GM-facing side of the screen is printed in grey-scale and contains all of the critical tables necessary to run Tribe 8. These are printed in a high contrast, easy-on-the-eyes font although some of the print is pretty small. In addition, the Skill, Eminence, and Aspect lists include page references which is a great idea; I only wish they had done the same with the other tables since it would have made the screen an even better “instant reference” at the game table. Overall, I find the screen a valuable addition for running the game, although in all fairness you could pretty easily make your own simply by recreating the various tables and printing them on some card stock.
The Assistant Guide
The Weaver's Assistant is a 48-page, saddle-stapled black & white booklet. It includes an opening chapter explaining how to design and run a Cycle. For those unfamiliar with Tribe 8's Cylces, it's a term for a campaign, but one which rather than being played in a linear time-frame, instead focuses on foreshadowing, jumps in time including flashbacks, and shifting perspectives. Thus the discussion on how to design and pace a cycle, especially in evoking a particular theme and atmosphere, is particularly useful.
The booklet also a summary of the various locations and factions (especially the tribes) outlined in the Tribe 8 rulebook, in plain language specifically designed for the GM. This is of particular use since as I mentioned in my review of the rulebook, much of the fluff is presented as stories or narratives from the perspective of specific characters making it difficult to quickly extract details.
Perhaps the most useful bit of information in the booklet is the overview of the Children of Prophecy cycle which was the first volume in Tribe 8's published storyline (essentially it works like an adventure path). This section finishes with a short quest, The Enemy of My Enemy, designed to act as a prologue to the Children of Lilth adventure which would be released shortly after the Weaver's Screen (and now is out of print as well, but also fairly easy to find on Ebay and available as a PDF).
The booklet also contains 14 NPC archetypes that are designed to speed up GM prep as well as provide an idea of what a typical NPC of each Tribe, along with various Z'Bri look like, both in terms of stats and appearance. These are a helpful addition although a bit of an odd item to add in since I can't imagine carrying around the assistant book as a regular reference.
The Verdict
The Weaver's Screen & Assistant was a decent value when it was in print, and now it's an even better value since it typically sells for below MSRP on Ebay. Even as a PDF it has a lot to offer since the screen can be easily recreated, or simply printed as a series of reference sheets (my preferred method these days anyways). I wouldn't call it an invaluable resource, but it's well worth the money.
IR Review #6
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