Issue Nr.16 was an issue looked forward to more than any other else. This is not so much because of the issue itself, but because it starts the Talabheim series. But more on that later.

Timothy Eccles opens the issue, after the usual titbits of news and short reviews, with his column "The Correspondent". His approach is, as almost always, excellent, but alas too little space. He writes about cultural differences between the various regions of the empire. He mentions the most relevant points to play on regionalisms (currency, language). This could easily fill more than a dozen pages, unfortunately Tim’s column is as always restricted to two pages. Of these two pages more than one page is filled with what Tim calls "nuggets". These are certain term, words or ideas that have specific meaning for people in the old word. This is nice too read, but appears to be a little uninspired. I wish if more room would have been given to general information on cultural differences and less space for these "nuggets". The various terms appear too much torn apart and out of their context. A great approach and a nice article, but with considerable flaws.

The next article comes from Toby Pilling. It is an four page lamentation about the often negative view of the Doomstones campaign. Some things are intersting, but the article cannot really decide if it wants to be a guideline for running the campaign or an extended review. It fails in both cases. For a review it is much too long and contains too little information of the campaign. For the former the ideas are too vague and general. The only thing you really can learn from the article is that the author likes the Doomstones campaign. Not very much for four pages.

An interesting article by Eccles, Foody, Huntington and Keane follows. It is one of the most unusual articles I have read so far in a role-playing magazine. The article discusses if murder is justifable. From a jurists point of view I can say it is never justifiable, but manslaughter may be. The reason for the article was a situation in this group where a halfling killed a watchman. The story is the told out of the eyes of the different people and what they think about it. Looking at it from a legal point of view I say that the halfling committed murder, not manslaughter, and that there were no mitigating circumstances apparent. Nevertheless it is interesting to read, especially how Tim, who played the halfling, desperately tries to justify what his character has done. Although the article is only concerned with this particular incident, it may provoke players to think a little bit about their character’s actions.

Then comes the centre-piece of this issue. The first part of the description of Talabheim. All I can say about it, is that it is excellent. The whole project will cover between four and five issues, so at the end you will have a full-size supplement of Talabheim. The article discusses in the first part the surrounding land of Talabheim, basically the crater, history, politics, law and order and religion. Each section was written by different authors and therefore the quality differs somewhat. Nevertheless all sections are far above average. There is however no light without shadow. One odd aspect of Talabheim is that it is in the middle of a crater. Sure this is GW-fault, but it does affect the plausibility of Talabheim a little bit. It reminds me
a lot of Dien Bien Phu. The authors clearly have no reason why the city is not wiped away easily, they just say a few times that the rim of the crater cannot be scaled. This situation is the heritage of GW and should not be blamed on the article. Another minor flaw of the description is that the legal system presented is too much rooted in the common law, in fact is a more or less direct take-over of the common law system of Great Britain into Talabheim. This idea, which I have critised often on the past, fits little to the general "germanic" nature of the old world. Despite these minor flaws, and there are many other that would exceed the space of this review, the article and the whole project is ambitious and so far has fulfilled the
expectations.

A rather odd feature is a play by Mark Bell. It is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, certainly it is not mine. Nevertheless it is well written and may be interesting for others.

An adventure by John Foody is the next article. The adventure is set in Talabheim and can be used to introduce the players to Talabheim. The adventure plays very much on the specific political situation of Talabheim, that is dominated by the nobility and the guilds have little influence. The adventure has a number of interesting NPCs and gives a great example of the
political situation. The biggest disadvantage is that the players have very much freedom and an inexperienced GM may have problems to control them. The adventure is worth reading even if only for its illustration of the political situation.

This issue of Warpstone is certainly worth buying. The Talabheim project is impressive and I hope that it will continue on its high standard in the future. (ls)