The First Book of Cha'alt

It was actually because of a misplaced bookmark. If you're like me, you're usually reading four to six books at the same time. I keep mine on my bedside table and read through a work for a few minutes before shutting off the lights and going to sleep. Each evening tends to be a different book-- my "scholar's mistress" to use a term coined by Fritz Leiber, so to speak. That is until one clicks and I read for a couple of hours everyday until finally finishing it. Well, for the past week, I've been reading Venger Satanis's Cha'alt. I started re-reading a part which seemed familiar but much more interesting than my first read through. To be fair to Darrick Dishaw, he tells you in his introduction the game script can be Vietnam to the gamer/reader.

Not to be too in the weeds in this review, but, the physical book is well crafted. Fairly solid binding and thick glossy pages, I am reminded of the days when books were tying to look new for at least fifty years. But with paper production being what it is these days only time will tell. It will hold up as well as anybody's High School Yearbook at least.


So the world of Cha'alt is one of those D&D worlds where science fiction and fantasy blend together, to give the reader a trip into sphere fantasy without changing the D20 dynamics. I always get excited by these takes that hearken back to the days of weird fantasy. Anyway, the planet was held under sway by entities known as the Old Ones, easily translated in Lovecraftian creatures, but one step removed because of D&D, you know. Then standard D&D species were able to take over and there was some high magical times where everyone tried to be what Gygax fans consider to be Tolkien-based, but then an apocalypse happened. Maybe there was more than one, who knows? What is left is world that resembles Arrakis and  Australia, as seen in the Road Warrior movies, and the Arduin Adventure.

The material divides the world up into areas and goes into a few details about each before getting into scenarios. Inside the scenarios, the author gets into a collection of encounters that can be NPCs or monsters or traps or interesting locales. All the scenarios are leading towards the massive dungeon that is the Black Pyramid. I forget how many rooms the meat of the book is, it kind of becomes room after room as one reads it.

As this is like the fourth work that I have read by Dishaw, I am impressed with his sense of craftsmanship. As an Adventure Gamer, the man is something like an architect that is his own lumberjack and then the carpenter. His writing goes through some lengths not just be a group of charts and lists, but masterfully using charts and lists that the random GM can pick up and within a day or two run their own sessions using the book.

Much of this book is analogy of internet culture from ten years ago, veiled through the devices of the Chase and the Crawl of what most OGL fans love these days. The weak points are a collection of topical humor done a bit too superficially. This is not always the case, but when the creator-GM is wanting to lecture a bit of style doesn't hurt. The guy who can make an adventure with PC's trekking through the inwards of a warped sandworm, can do better than a single paragraph harping on about feminism with an NPC that is his feminist nightmare given a "I hate men" motif. The strong point is that there is so much material to work with. I was impressed with the bandit bands out in the wastes who after a second reading were funnier than I had thought earlier.

Overall, because of craft put into the work, I rate it a King Kong on the Godzilla to the Smurf scale of my ratings. The skill put into the book elevates the themes it puts together.