Champions of the Mist

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition has to be the game I played the most in my life. It wasn’t the first game I played, but it was the game we went back to time and again. Every evolution of that game over its long, long existence showed up at our table at some point.

I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that of all the versions of D&D, AD&D 2E is the closest they came to trying to create a universal roleplaying game. The Skills and Powers releases at the end, in particular, screams pick me, pick me!

Champions of the Mists came out in the post Skills and Powers world, but only two years before the release of Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. It is a curious product bursting with ideas that don’t have anywhere to go. A lot of it could have easily have been in the Heroes of Horror 3E book that came out years later if adapted for that edition.

The core of the book are class kits for Ravenloft. Most are pretty domain specific and has some nice descriptions for how they might fit into a game. They also continue the trend at the time for moving Ravenloft from the monster of the week mode of play towards natives living in a horror theme park.

I’m gonna say it right now, class kits have always sucked.

They are like half of an idea. Instead of creating something worth playing, like a differentiated class with a unique space in the game, they are just a lame half measure. They get a shitty benefit that is barely worth reading. On top of that, you also get a ridiculous downside. Because we can’t have nice things without paying some awful libertarian price.

All so you can be a pirate or some shit. It might be thirty years since I have played the game at this point and I still hate class kits.

The second half of the book is the sort of weird masturbatory exercise that have been showing up in game books since forever. It is a list of heroes, their stats, details about their backgrounds, and how you could use them in your campaign as a game master.

I mean, why?

Sure, we’ve all done it at one time or another. Foisted our GM created character on the players at the table. It’s this weird desire to play both roles in a traditional RPG. I was 14 once too.

People should just go play games designed for that type of play.

So, the back half of the book is kind of a waste. There are nuggets of lore type stuff if that is your bag, but this is some late TSR material. It is kind of all over the place.

Likely the book was probably already in the pipeline before Wizards of the Coast made the purchase the year before it hit the market. It would explain why it even exists at all. I remember it hitting the shelves without any fan fair.

That does make this book an interesting piece of history though. A transition piece before a major change hit the industry. You also get to see a weird moment in gaming technology with what you might call proto-prestige classes. That’s pretty cool.

Kits still suck though...