A Look at Cha'alt

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

This thread will be a look at the first book of the Cha'alt campaign books written by Venger As'Nas Satanis.  This first post will be updated after I make each new post in this thread; after revising and answering any questions.  At the end of this thread, I will turn this into a post on my blog.

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Cha'alt 
Written by Venger As'Nas Satanis
Published in 2019 by Kort'thalis Publishing
213 page hardcover book
Author's blog: Venger's Old School Gaming Blog

I was impressed with the quality of the Cha'alt books when I received them as my kicstarter rewards; I opted for the all-in option and received all 3 of the Cha'alt hardbacks. The book has a stitch binding and also has a full color sleeve as well as illustrated entirely in full color on heavy paper.  Now, let's take a look at the contents of the book.

The Foreword opens up the book with two pages offering a little insight into how Venger approaches his gaming stuff and life in general, the Black Pyramid (the megadungeon of this book), and a little bit of advice.  Venger describes his approach as "quick and dirty, we'll do it live!" so that should be a relief to old school gamers that are more interested in the game than referencing a ton of statistics and tables to do anything. Venger notes that the encounters in The Black Pyramid "have meaning besides finding the monsters and whatever loot they have.".  The focus should be on exploration and discovery rather than just killing the next enemy so that's great to hear that it's not focused on the murderhobo style of play.  Venger closes this section with 3 simple tips for running Cha'alt: "1. Find the fun, 2. Make it awesome, and 3. Go with the flow.".  Again, this sounds right at home for old school D&D fans.  I'm looking forward to digging in to the chapters ahead to see what Cha'alt has to offer.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Hey, thanks for doing this, I think we should do more game reviews. I like your start to this and the way you organized your first post. So all buckled in for the whole thing.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Mar 30, 2024 13:54:28 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Hey, thanks for doing this, I think we should do more game reviews. I like your start to this and the way you organized your first post. So all buckled in for the whole thing.

Thanks for the recognition!  I will be proceeding shortly.  I have to do a bit of reading and browsing first...

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Mar 30, 2024 13:57:45 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

Mar 30, 2024 13:54:28 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Hey, thanks for doing this, I think we should do more game reviews. I like your start to this and the way you organized your first post. So all buckled in for the whole thing.

Thanks for the recognition!  I will be proceeding shortly.  I have to do a bit of reading and browsing first...

Cool, I am really looking forward to reading this.

[hengest]

Exalt for this. Following and looking forward to the rest.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Mar 30, 2024 14:07:34 GMT -5 hengest said:

Exalt for this. Following and looking forward to the rest.

Thank you!  More to come...

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Part 2 as promised...

The first chapter of the book is a 32-page Overview containing general information of interest about the Cha’alt setting. The History section gives information on the three ages of Cha’alt beginning with The Age of Legend up to the current Obsidian Age. Over this time, Cha’alt has transformed from a traditional fantasy setting to a post-apocalyptic mix of fantasy and technology elements. A Land of Travelers contains some basic survival and travel concerns in the desert along with water requirements, wearing armor in the desert, radiation and mutations.

Places to Visit contains information on 10 locations that may be of interest such as cities, an outpost, library and other locales. Each of these locations has a unique or evocative names. One such example is the Great Sunken Library that houses over 10,000 books with knowledge from the previous ages of history. Venger lets his sense of humor shine though with the name Ja’alette; reading the description will let you in on the pun. The first stat blocks for encounters show up in this section and they are short and to the point so the GM can do combat on the fly rather than worry about assorted minutia and unnecessary bloat.

Factions contains information and stat blocks on various groups that may be encountered such as Cultists, Spice Frackers, Death-Stalkers, and more. Each of these groups is unique rather than the generic groups in most fantasy games like pirates, bandits, etc. The next section, Adversarial Creatures, has stat blocks and information on 7 monsters of Cha’alt. Rather than traditional fantasy monsters the entries included in this tome feel much more like the movie Heavy Metal with Gigantic Spider-Droids, Sand Worms, and the others included. Diamonds in the Rough includes information on treasure and magic items that can be found by the player characters.

The final section of this chapter, Particulars, contains information on the races of Cha’alt, names, saving throws, advantage and disadvantage, and critical success or failure. The six races in this section are all some sort of variation of an Elf such as Infernal-Elf, Sky-Elf, etc. Each entry is unique with a short description and a list of three or four special abilities such as half damage from heat and fire, disadvantage in social encounters, etc. No worries, the system used in Cha’alt is basically a super light version of 5E so it may share some similar terms but there is not an endless array or numbers to track. Names encourages players not to choose mundane names for their characters because it would not be appropriate and there is a table with example names that are appropriate. Saving Throws are handled in a unified system rather than multiple categories. Advantage and Disadvantage is the 5E standard with the option to use +4/-4 instead. Critical Success and Failure treats a basic 20 as automatic hit and 1as an automatic miss with some suggestions for critical effects in both cases; very little details are given but that fits right in with the old school approach in this book.

Feel free to ask any questions so I can make my blog post about this book even better.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Any more of this? It is looking good.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Apr 21, 2024 18:48:23 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Any more of this? It is looking good.

Definitely.  I suspect it will be 2 more parts for this book.  Then, I'll go on to the other 2 books.