As in all worlds, including the real world where we live today, jungles are primordial and savage places. They are populated with dangerous animals, filled with strange plants and often even the people who dwell there are savage and hostile to outsiders. The Yin-Sloth Jungles are no exception to this rule.

For well over a decade, Palladium Books has hinted at the dangers of characters venturing into the large southern area of the single major landmass that is the Fantasy world. Tales of dragons, evil cults, vile Gods and vicious animals have always drifted out from any of the creators of this Role Playing Game when they would bother to mention the area at all. Now the proof is laid out before the gamers in an expansive volume about this section of the world that is part swamp, part thick jungle and all danger!

The volume opens up by telling us a little of the history of these jungles. Thousands of years earlier, the first humans created vast empires and cities under the canopy of this jungle. The Old Ones had been overthrown and the world was at peace once more. This was the Golden Age of human history. It was interrupted by a huge group of dragons moving into the area. The dragons were fleeing from the attacks of the elves, dwarves and other races but they were at odds with each other about what to do once they reached the jungles.

The humans saw these mystical creatures as beautiful and special entities. They opened their arms in welcome to the dragons and an alliance was formed. A great dragon sized city was built for these creatures, in return the dragons taught them the secret of magic and introduced them to the concept of "gods."

When at last the two major factions of dragons clashed, a great civil war rocked the jungle as the good dragons fought with the evil ones. Massive energies were released, causing many terrible changes to take place in the jungles and forever changing the shape of human history. That time period is called the Battle of the Gods, when many of the true Gods took sides and several of the more powerful dragons were elevated to the status of Gods.

All that happened long in the past of the Fantasy World, but the effects are still here. This book tells of the various types of terrain one could expect to find, some normal but many of a magical nature. The jungle people who live there now have been changed into creatures that are no longer quite human, although many settlements of humans remain in the edges of the jungles.

The very nature of this magical place has created new races (that the players can use for characters) and new occupations. This book has eight or nine new OCCs to choose from and a host of new skills to reflect the abilities needed to survive in the wilds of a jungle. Of course, just as the magic energies released from the long war between the Gods caused changes in the humans, it affected the animals as well. This volume includes 13 full descriptions of monsters that are native to the jungles, all but two of them being all new.

Of course, civilization didn't stop trying to develop merely because of a war between dragons (although the area around Dragon's Gate where the war took place is avoided to this day because the area is still over run with the beasts). It is in the jungle that one of the few monster nations exists, the Orcish Empire. The book details the major cities of this relatively small empire as well as another small nation called the Commonwealth.

The last half of this volume is devoted to adventures for your players to take on. As with most of the previous volumes that contain adventures, these also double as valuable sources of background information. Even if they are never used for the players of your game, there is so much important stuff listed here that it makes the book worth getting.

All in all, this is one of the better of the 1st Edition books to be released. Although the company has not gotten around to updating it to the 2nd Edition rules, I understand that such work is forthcoming. Still, almost all of this book can be used in the 2nd Edition settings. It will take a little bit of work to convert the adventures to 2nd Edition format, but not that much because most of them are thinking adventures rather than combat oriented.

The only real problem would be with the new skills and OCCs. Almost none of these have been (or even CAN be) converted to 2nd Edition by a player. Those skills that could be changed easily have already been released in the base rules book for the updated version of the game. The rest are possible to convert, but I wouldn't advise trying it because there just isn't a point of reference to base the attempt on. I'm just patiently waiting for Palladium to release an upgrade themselves.


Recommended: Yes