Summit of Kings is what it says on the tin, a One-shot introduction to the world of the Swordsfall Universe and a basic intro how the RPG rules will work when they come out.
The Summit itself is an invitation only Rap Battle between the Jalens of the Swordsfall Universe, the word Sages of Tikor who have the Hekan Word of Power, as they battle to see who is the best of the best, the person who can thrill the crowds most, spit the best lines and become the Wordsmith. Only the best get an invite.
Now I can tell you, I can not sing, and my lyric writing, not great to say the least but I love the idea of this because it lets me introduce my group to a world that I really want to introduce them to, which I have been following for about a year, and I can’t wait to take a voyage to Tikor and see what we can see.
So why is this a great way to introduce a group to a new world, because Swordsfall is about more than just gaining experience from defeating enemies, it’s about experiencing a world and playing your character, and this isn’t the bog standard introductory adventure where you have to go kill a bad guy and loot his hideout,
This is pretty much at the heart of Swordsfall, it’s not a bog standard RPG world or even set of rules. What is good about the book as well is that it isn’t just a one shot or an introduction to the rules, it has side hustles that let you add to the length of the adventure that you can make it a mini campaign or for when the full rules come out give you ways of including the rest of your group of players in the adventure to the Summit of Kings, like Breakdancing and roller Skating, along with a number of other social gatherings.
One of the strongest things about the book is the theme that runs through it, all of the Elite Jalens are Tikor Stand ins for some of the Great Rappers and the artwork reflects that. You have the option of playing as these Elite Jalen or making your own rising star in the book, as the rules for making Jalen characters are in the book, with the skills, and the Hekan (the application of either the Ether or Etherforce that runs through Tikor) path of Divination that the Jalen Techniques run from, so you can experience the character building without getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of deciding which profession you are going to chose the first time you are building a character, which I like a lot.
Now at the moment I haven’t actually run a session of the Summit of Kings so I will be appending this review at a later date with a review of how it went and hopefully an audio session of that game will be available too.
I hope this review is helpful to you and when it is updated it is even more helpful.