Phoenix: Dawn Command

by Keith Baker, Dan Garrison

This book, "Guidelines for the Newly Inducted Marshall", comes with the "Phoenix: Dawn Command" role playing game, by Keith Baker and Dan Garrison. It includes introductory chapters about the game world, game mechanics, and character creation, as well as complete information for the Game Marshal (game master), and an introductory set of seven linked adventures.

450 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2015

About the author

I've been interested in games since I first fell under the sinister influence of the Dungeons & Dragons boxed set, back in sixth grade. Over the last few decades I have managed to turn gaming from a hobby into a career. Here is a list of the highlights of my life as a game designer. If you have any questions, let me know!

From 1994-2002, I fell into the computer games industry. My first job was with Magnet Interactive Studios, in Washington DC. Sadly, Magnet never managed to hit the big time as a game developer. I worked on a number of projects during my stay at Magnet; for a time I was lead designer on a game called BLUESTAR, a position that was held at other times by such roleplaying luminaries as Ken Rolston and Zeb Cook. However, the only work that ever saw the light of day was some level design on the abstract arcade game Icebreaker.

Magnet began a slow implosion in 1996, and along with a number of other people I went to work for a Colorado company called VR1. I started as lead designer on VR-1 Crossroads, a text-based MUD centered on warring conspiracies – The X-Files meets Illuminati, with a world of dreams thrown in for good measure. When VR1 decided to move away from text games, I started work on a graphical MMORPG based on the pulp serials. After a few twists and turns, the project ended up being known as Lost Continents. But early in 2002 I decided that I'd had enough of the computer games industry and left VR1 to focus on writing. Then in June of 2002, Wizards of the Coast announced their Fantasy Setting Search, and I thought: What about pulp fantasy? And the rest is history. . .


Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review of the game book, not the game itself, since I haven't actually had a chance to play or run it yet. A very interesting and original game concept here, with I think a lot of opportunities for interesting roleplay: Player characters are are phoenixes, humans reborn with special abilities that vary depending on how/why they died, and who can be reborn again if they die, but only seven times. But each time they die, they come back stronger, and in dying, they can accomplish tasks that would otherwise be beyond them. The world setting, its history, the mechanics, and the introductory story arc provided in the book are all tightly woven together, so it's not clear to me at this point whether the game how well work with a different or variant setting.

As for the book itself, it is, like the rest of the game's components, beautiful and well made. It's generally clearly written, although I think the final readers must have already been familiar with the game, because as you read through the text, there are a number of references to things that haven't been mentioned yet, but without forward page or section numbers. Like most gaming books, it would have been improved by the employment of a reasonably skilled proofreader; typos are common enough that they're worth mentioning, although in most (all?) cases they don't obscure the meaning as long as one is thinking just a little bit.

I'm looking forward to running this game and finding out whether it actually plays as well as it reads.