Star Anvil Studios has released the first major content folio for The Secret World TTRPG, both 5E and SWADE, The Secret World – North America. I have received my Kickstarter items, but Star Anvil Studio is still waiting to deliver codes for my discounted print-on-demand hardcopy (which also affects non-discounted POD availability).

The book is broken out into five chapters:

1. “The Illuminati”, additional history of the organization and some of their current organizational structure.
2. “The Secret World of North America” which provides a dossier of 10 key locations within North America, points of interest, important NPCs, and what’s so “Secret World” about them.
3. “Heroes of North America” introduces three new non-Bee archetypes, new Edges for these archetypes, and some new gear primarily intended for Illuminati players and NPCs.
4. “Adventures in North America” gives a rundown of “why” North America and provides some insight into running a “quintessential North American road trip”-style campaign. It also gives some information on how to run the Illuminati, and a few adventure seeds centered within each of the 10 locations from chapter two.
5. “Threats of North America” adds 19 creatures for the GM to deploy, most of which seem to be new to the setting, and several of which are tied specifically to North America.

When I put my GM hat on, one of the things that I have the hardest time with is the “living world” aspect. Many GM’s apparently love the act of worldbuilding, evidenced by the number of apps dedicated to helping creative types with the process, and anecdotally because nerds seems to really like making stuff up about places that aren’t real. The Secret World is tough in that regard because while there are some very non-familiar locations to visit, the bulk of the game is focused on the mystical colliding with the mundane, and how our real, every-day experiences in a very non-magical society might be a thin, peeling veneer hiding a terrifying and dangerous structure underneath. While I’ve been to A Few Places in my life, the only places I really know are those in and around where I live — which, lucky for me, is New England, original hot-bed of supernatural-meets-natural action in North America. It’s very easy for me to spin a yarn about a typical New England town in the grip of otherworldly influence, but it’s less intuitive for me to set an adventure in a well-known place that I’ve never been to, so I appreciate the bulk of the book being given over to laying out rundowns of locations that aren’t here in New England.

I was expecting more data on the Illuminati, though I don’t know why; the book is about North America, and nothing specifically says it’s about the Illuminati. The fact that the Illuminati are more or less in control of North America means that there is a constant mention of the faction in practically every section which is good; I learn a good deal through inference and assumption rather than overt statements as a result and I’m OK with that.

I believe that this is a key piece of material for The Secret World GMs specifically for settings, and how the Illuminati behave on their own turf. It’s not going to be a one-stop-shop for a larger picture though, and that’s my only, strange complaint. While this book is focused only on North America, the fact that The Secret World TTRPG is still relatively new to the TTRPG family means that we’re missing a lot of published content in this series. Star Anvil Studios is a small outfit from what I can tell, but I found myself wanting more information overall when reading through the North America sourcebook. For example, I think we absolutely must have a book dedicated solely to Orochi, it’s subsidiaries, and its projects because this book mentions them a lot and they seem to be everywhere the Illuminati are. Before that, though, we’ll need to get books on the Templars and the Dragon since it’s only fair. We’ll also need materials for lesser-explained organizations like the Phoenicians and the Council of Venice. When I started thinking about all of the materials we do not yet have I kind of wished that Star Anvil Studios was larger, and had more resources dedicated to TSW so they could be working on multiple books at once. I’m not normally this impatient, but considering that this is likely the only new content we’ll ever get for The Secret World, I’ll have to beg your pardon.

Since I backed this on Kickstarter, I have also acquired the following items, published alongside the core sourcebook:

• “Illuminati Action Deck”, a series of TSW-branded playing cards to print and use with the generative tables found in the Core Sourcebook.
• “The Secret World North America Mission Pack” which includes 12 adventure outlines set in various North American locations.
• “The Secret World Map Pack 2” which contains battlemaps for a mansion, a subway platform, and an office building. This pack has both PDF and VTT items.
• “The Secret World Expanded” includes several new talismans for players to obtain, as well as rules for creating custom talismans. There is also a section covering how to create a “headquarters” for your player’s sub-faction, should they desire to do so.
• “The Secret Worlds Figure Flats” are printable cardstock tents featuring the three new archetype models and all of the creature images featured in the North American sourcebook. Unfortunately, this does not include VTT tokens, which would have been nice, but I’m sure these can be used to create some form of tokens if that’s a need.
• “The Secret World – Following the Trail” contains three longer-form adventures set in North America, including a follow-up or side-mission to the original “Stoneward Bound”.
• “The Secret World Monster Cards 2” is a series of printable “index card” formatted stats and hero art for the creatures featured in the North America sourcebook.

All of these are also available for purchase through Drive Thru RPG.