I didn't really like Harlequin's Back [spoilers!], The plot wagon came from Mad Max: The Road Warrior Options

[Wounded Ronin]

[This post will be spoilericious!]

A while ago I bought a copy of Harlequin's Back from a used book store and I've read through it.

Basically, I don't think I like it very much, because it is basically a big plot wagon with spiked wheels resembling a vehicle out of Mad Max: The Road Warrior. It's like a 1960s surreal-moralistic episode of Star Trek (remember the one where Kirk et al. end up in a Western setting they can't leave and which doesn't obey the laws of physics because someone wants to test how they react to threats?) but with more obnoxious preaching. Guess what, the way YOU remember the King Arthur legends isn't good enough, you have to accept and work with the pseudo-celtic version or else your character will be teabagged by all-powerful feminist NPCs. And there's nothing you are allowed to do about that or you character will DIE.

Having NPCs with skill levels of 40 is bullshit. What kind of joke is that? That right there, in print, says, "if the characters don't go along with the writer's ideas for this setting, crush them like bugs."

There is too much, "fudge the rolls, make them sweat, but make sure everything happens according to plan", to the point where I can't imagine the players wouldn't see through it. In the first place Harlequin is supposed to be so powerful he doesn't need stats, but then when he gets attacked by tentacle monsters he is supposed to fall down frothing. But then he's invincible again till a specific point where the PCs find him all naked and tortured and upside down. I basically don't see how any player who thinks isn't going to realize that Harlequin amounts to a "cinema scene" and not a real NPC with stats.

Basically I thought Harlequin's Back was the most sanctimonious, railroady, judgemental campaign I'd ever read in a RPG. And to top it all off with a cherry at the end it says that FASA still hasn't decided what happens at the end, but that it's still in the works and planning if the horrors will be part of the metaplot later or not. So what the hell, all that railroading and Celtic feminist beatdown was literally for nothing, because the writers have no idea what actually happened in the end. Great.