RPGPundit Reviews: Titan: the Advanced Fighting Fantasy World

This is a review of the new printing of the "Titan" setting book, the primary setting where the vast majority of the old "Fighting Fantasy" gamebooks (as well as the "Sorcery!" gamebooks) were set, and the default setting for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd Edition RPGs.  It was originally written by Marc Gascoigne.

This book is, like the Out of the Pit monster compendium I reviewed a short while ago, a straight reprint of the original book that came out in the 1980s.  The main difference between the two (apart from printing date) is that the former was in a slightly larger-than-average "penguin book" format; while this one is in a typical RPG-handbook sized format. It has been reprinted by Arion Games and Cubicle 7. In this version, it clocks in at 128 pages.

I haven't looked at the Titan setting in literally decades, but I must admit that I still have a tremendous familiarity with it, because back in the day it was one of my favorite settings for gaming, alongside Mystara and the old Forgotten Realms.  I ran the old AFF with it as a setting; I ran RC D&D with it as a setting. I ran 2nd edition AD&D with it as a setting.  Relatively recently, I even ran a True20 campaign set not in titan but in the city of Port Blacksand taken directly out of a (sadly, yet to be reprinted) Sourcebook for that city in particular.  So its fair to say that I loved Titan.  But how much of that is nostalgia or the folly of youth?  Is Titan too imperfect to take seriously in our later years? Let's find out.

For starters, we get an overview of the setting.  The world of Titan has three major continents: Allansia (which I always guessed was named after someone called "Allan"), The Old World, and Khul.  Allansia is the setting of the majority of the FF gamebooks, Khul a minority of the same, and the Old World is the setting of the "Sorcery!" gamebooks.  These continents don't have much to do with each other, which makes it a good thing that they are each separated by monster-infested seas that makes regular contact very difficult between them.

Not that this really matters, because other than the Old World, which has some level of consistency, the individual places in each continent are setup like a total crazy-quilt.  Remember when you were 12 and decided to make up your own fantasy world? And you just jumbled everything in all over the place with no consideration of why there would be a frozen viking wasteland right next to the tropical island chain; or why the Robot Kingdom would be right next to the land of the intelligent humanoid Rust Monsters? Well, its kind of like that. In Allansia and Khul you have jungles next to deserts next to tundra, with the lushest riches valleys next to the frozen wastelands; no real consideration of geography or topography or climate patterns, and kingdoms of utterly different cultures very close to one another.  Its like the designers just threw darts to decide where to put everything.  The "Chinese" type culture? its right next door to the European Medieval fantasy culture... but the Japanese type culture? Its on a totally different continent, right next to the pirate pastiche and south of the ruins of the old egyptian pharaonic kingdom.

I mean, I know I'm a big Mystara fan, and that's the setting famous for having Vikings right next to Arabs, but somehow Titan manages to make Mystara seem well-ordered by comparison.

I think the point, however, is that you're not supposed to care.  This is "High" fantasy, in the fantasy sense of that carefree fantasy of your youth that doesn't really have to make a lot of sense as long as there's tons of adventure. Come to think of it, this might also be "high" fantasy in the sense of it being fantasy that makes a lot more sense if you're high.

The important thing is that the overall style is that of a fairly gritty kind of sword-and-sorcery most reminiscent (to me, at least) to the "young kingdoms" setting of the Elric stories.  Lots of city states and small nations, chaos that surrounds pockets of civilization all over the place, danger at every turn, instability, and the sense that powerful gods of conflicting alignments use the setting for their battleground.  The influence is very Moorcockian.

The first 25 pages of the book give you details on all three continents, complete with one big world-map and three more detailed maps for each of the three continents.  Allansia is set up to be the default setting, more or less; the Old World is the one area that you can tell was all designed coherently and at one time by a single guy (Steve Jackson), and it seems a little out of place, being a more "civilized" kind of region of more stable, larger kingdoms that are often in conflict with one another. Khul is the dark lost continent where chaos is perhaps strongest and where small pockets of civilization exist on the fringes of that savagery.  We're given details about some of the most interesting places in each continent, like the great city of Sardath, built majestically on giant stilts over a lake and between two mountains; or the theocracy of Arantis, ruled by the Overpriest.  We're told about the vile Port Blacksand, city of thieves (and to me, still the very best lawless fantasy pirate-city ever designed for an RPG); and the lizard-man swamplands of Silur-cha.  We're told about the Chaos Wastes of Khul; Shakuru, the city of beggars, and the Old World's Khare, city-port of traps. We get a lovely astrological map of the heavens over Titan.

Next we get told about the history and legends of Titan, beginning with the creation myth, and the conflict between the Gods of Good, the gods of Neutrality, and the Gods of Chaos and Evil.  We learn that once all the lands of Titan were in a single continent, but this was split asunder when Atlantis sank beneath the waves.  You get 17 pages of legends of the past of the setting, including stories of great wizards, warring city-states, great lost empires (like Carsepolis, the great city over who's ruins the foul Port Blacksand was built), and how a great sweeping wave of evil chaos armies ravaged all three continents some 250 years ago, explaining why civilization is still in such a very tenacious state in Allansia, and why most of Khul is still today infested by chaos (as well as explaining the political state of the kingdoms of the Old World).

A lot of the material in this section amounts to backstory, but much of it is backstory that a clever GM could use as the basis for running a great campaign or two on.

The next three sections, taking up a significant part of the book, detail not just the gods but the overall forces of Good, Neutrality, and Chaos/Evil in the world of Titan.  In each section you begin by getting details of the Gods, then races, heroes (or villains), artifacts, and other such things.  The races of good, for example, are the Dwarves and Elves (as well as lesser races like sprites or pixies).  Dwarves and Elves get great write-ups, including illustrations of dwarf weapons, a spectacular two-page map of Fangthane, the Dwarven capital in Allansia (a massive city-dungeon carved inside a huge mountain), the dwarven rune-alphabet, a nice one-page map of the Elven treetop-city of Eren Durdinath, and information on elven weapons and language. You get information on great heroes of good, like Colletus the Holy Man, the story of the three great wizards Nicodemus, Yaztromo, and Pen Ty Kora (as well as a great cut-away illustration of Yaztromo's wizard-tower in the Darkwood), and information on the Southern Mask magic and its healing powers.

The neutral gods are dominated by Logaan the Trickster, about whom you get quite a bit of information. Also, there's the court of the Animal Gods.  On the whole, however, Neutrality gets short shrift compared to good or evil/chaos.

The Dark Lords of Chaos are detailed in the next section, including the gods of Death and Disease, the sibling gods Slangg and Tanig (gods of malice and envy) and the Demon princes.  You get an abstract map-illustration of the Demonic Planes, and information on the Demonic Hierarchy of the Pit.  A significant number of pages are devoted to Orcs, which are very warhammer-esque in style (or maybe we should say Warhammer Orcs are very Titan-esque?).  There's info on famous Orc tribes, orc armies, and a full-page map of a sample Orc-dungeon, the Bonerat Caves. Goblins, Troglodytes, Trolls and Ogres get similar treatments, as well as the evil Snake-People who have sophisticated cultures in Allansia and Khul.  You get lots of info on the Snake People, including a map of their desert cities. A related race who also get much coverage are the Lizard Men who rule a dangerous and powerful empire in Allansia from the swamplands of Silur-cha; considerable information is given about their society, capital, and armies. Finally, several pages are dedicated to the Dark Elves, your typical drow-like evil elves who live in vast subterranean kingdoms.
We also get a description of a number of the major individual servants of chaos, including Razaak the Undying, Malbordus the Storm Child, Shareella the Snow Witch, the "demonic three" evil wizards who are Balthus (lord of the black tower), Zagor (the warlock of Firetop Mountain), and Zharradan; Sukumvit (who built Deathtrap Dungeon) and his hated brother Carnuss; the Archmage of Mampang, and the mighty pirate-king Lord Azzur, mysterious ruler of Port Blacksand. Here we also get a spectacularly detailed two-page street map of Port Blacksand.

Next we get information about the underwater kingdoms of titan, including details on the sunken kingdom of Atlantis.

From there, the book moves on to more mundane details of life on Titan, including a calendar system (with names for years vaguely similar to the Chinese zodiac; "year of the horse" etc.; plus names for months and days), details for major feast-days, and travel times from one place to another.  I'll note a major typo here; the header for this sections (which in the original book was "the Titan Calendar" and "The adventuring life") here accidentally reads "The Underwater Kingdoms" and "The Underwater Kingdoms", repeating the title of the earlier section on the same.  I don't think that's a very big deal, but it may be confusing to some as these are clearly not the calendars, feast days or travel times of the underwater kingdoms.

Finally, in the end of the book you get information on money, trade, typical coins, and a list of costs for typical items (divided into three cost columns; for cities, towns, and isolated regions).  You get a section on inns and taverns; with popular drinks and entertainments, and a map of a typical tavern (the "Black Lobster" tavern in Port Blacksand).

So, does Titan make sense? Only barely.  Is it playable? Yes.  There's probably more adventure per square mile on Titan than in most fantasy worlds; its absolutely packed with dangerous places, famous dungeons, and evil forces to fight. So I guess whether you'll like it or not, aside from the nostalgia factor, depends largely on whether you put more value on a coherently sensible world, or whether you're willing to just say "well, a trickster god made it that way" and just run with things as they are. If the latter is true, you certainly could do far worse than running a game on Titan.

I will note, finally, that there's is NO actual mechanical information from the AFF system in this book.  The book is all, one hundred percent, setting. That means that you can safely buy Titan without having or wanting to have anything to do with Advanced Fighting Fantasy itself, and use it as a game setting for D&D; WFRP, BRP, or any other fantasy game.

On the whole, coherence aside, Titan holds up surprisingly well as a setting-book for an RPG fantasy world.

RPGPundit

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