Review: Arcadia #27 - Sharkadia

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Xaosseed

Guest
tl:dr; a jam packed 40 pages of seafaring fun, monsters, mechanics and an campaign to showcase them all, all topped off with nice art.

Arcadia Magazine #27 - Sharkadia (April 2023) - is one of the last of the excellent Arcadia magazines from MCDM before they go on hiatus for a bit. I have been meaning to look at Arcadia for a while and this being a deep-sea issue while I've been on a bit of an aquatic theme of posts recently makes the time right to just get it done. Arcadia has been MCDM's test of 'can we turn out three quality articles every month?' - answer yes. I have gotten great mileage out of their Ace's High flying combat system from Arcadia #4. I get my Arcadia's through the MCDM patreon - you can get these pdf's through their webstore in bundles too.



Cover art by Veronica O'Neill

As ever, the visuals with Arcadia are a treat,

So what is all this stuff you get in this zine?
1 page Letter from The Editor - Hannah Rose
13 pages Captain Ralazar’s Guide to Sea Monsters - James Introcaso
9 pages Perils of the Deeps - Gwendolyn Marshall
15 pages The Ballad of Captain Shivershank - Willy Abeel
1 page Glossary
1 page Resources

Going through it chunk by chunk we start with the 'magazine business' of the Letter from the Editor on how the 'Sharkadia' issue was dreamt up and how while the origin might have been light hearted, the whole became a complete aquatic toolkit.

We get eight monsters in Captain Ralazar’s Guide to Sea Monsters ranging from CR 1 to 16, each with something more than just 'bag of hitpoints that swims' to offer a challenge in a fight. While some are likely just to be great beasts, others have some interesting hooks and reasons to seek them out despite the danger. We also get four thematic treasures.

In Perils of the Deeps we get three pages of environmental rules and five more monsters from CR 1 to 8. The conditions and hazards rules expand on what is in the 5e DMG by going underwater - give us some more mechanics for light and pressure with depth. We get effects of Current and Disorientation for open water and Kelp Forests and Shipwrecks for sites of interest, closing out with a nice d12 random shipwreck encounters. I like the flourishes like what magic can be adapted to provide pressure-protection - helpful!

The Ballad of Captain Shivershank is a guide to setting up pirate adventures and a proposed campaign centered around the notorious Captain Silvershanks. You get hooks to get the campaign rolling, the Captain and their fleet then a jigsaw puzzle of pieces - main campaign element encounters and a whole lot of mix and match hooks to be dropped in wherever in-between. Given the wide open possibilities as soon as you've got a boat on the ocean, I like this snap-together approach and there are some great ideas in here. We also get a couple of rival crews to throw a party up against, another 2 pages of sea encounters, some ship rules including ship combat zones, how to make scarier Sea Terrors by up-grading your average sea monster and swashbuckling stunts.

We close with the Glossary and Resources. The Glossary contains some terminology - developed for Flee, Mortals! - that are new rules for combat encounters in the MCDM house style of 'action oriented monsters'. Resources points to safety tools and image files from this issue magazine.

All told you get a whole toolkit to do sea-faring campaigns; quick ship rules, mechanics for the inevitable individual fights in the water, lots of interesting monsters and a build-your-own pirate campaign with hooks, rivals and allies. The mechanics we get collect and expand somewhat on what is in the 5e DMG (depth, visibility) and Ghosts of Saltmarsh (current, light at depth) which gives you everything you need in one handy place. The shiprules are considerably streamlined from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, inline with the streamlined air-combat of Ace's High and MCDM's house approach of 'more kinetic!' - a nice addition to the palette. All in all this is a meaty issue, crammed with stuff, I will miss these when(/if) the run ends.

You can see another review on Tribality.

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