D3 is an excellent module. From a holy ceremony gone wrong, our PCs will explore the buildings surrounding Clydwell Keep to then plunge within its depths to stop a catastrophic event of unbelievable proportions.
I particularly like the "siege" aspect of the module, in the sense that PCs are racing against time, trying to reach a location of extreme importance by fighting their way "behind enemy lines", exploring the Demon-occupied areas in the process and dealing with the aftermath of their invasion.
It's really effective when run straight out of the book, and can also act as a spark, a foundation for a mini-campaign (by adding encounter areas and other things to do while the PCs make their way to the adventure's gullet to its end point), or a huge epic (with possible long term ramifications of the module's ending).
All around, the ambiance is there, the pace is sustained, the flavor ideas are great, and it's all a springboard from which many great game sessions could come alive. Recommended product. 5 stars.
The Collected BOXM certainly will remain as one of the greatest game variants to D&D itself, in my opinion, along with Arcana Unearthed, Pathfinder, True20 and others.
The changes are selective but dramatically change the game play. Healing becomes target-based instead of cleric-based, characters get feats every level, spell levels now match character levels (from 1 to 20th level spells), wizards don't run out of magical things to do while still retaining the Vancian magic system as a base for increasing power and abilities.
I think it would have been premature to take Pathfinder as a base since the final rules are not even published. It is, furthermore, totally possible to get a Pathfinder sorcerer concept going with BOXM as a pure Wizard, with the inventive use of some Bloodline feats.
A word of caution, however: this clearly is a game variant destined towards people who are already familiar with the 3.5 rules. The multiplication of feats, spells and other game components makes the game significantly more complex to approach (though easier to play in the end for the initiated). This is not a good product to bring people to gaming, in my opinion.
Now, that said, this is totally awesome. If you were the kind of player or DM interested in thoughtful variants to the base D&D game with Unearthed Arcana, Arcana Unearthed and others, this book is for you.
I really like this Pathfinder Chronicles resource. It is a small enough area to get a party of 1st level characters going without having to go through the intricacies of Golarion, the campaign setting itself, while providing enough details for a whole lot of adventuring if the DM chooses so.
I agree that the maps have some issues, like the lack of a scale, but was less bothered by the discrepancies between the general map and the details in the book itself, since I tend to treat those maps as "medieval" in nature, that is, imperfect, drawn by people observing the landscape rather than using satellite imaging, which leads to various interpretations and representations of the landmass.
Along with Crown of the Kobold King and its follow-up, Carnival of Tears, the Last Baron's module series, it really makes for an interesting, contained (and thus old school in nature) setting.
The organization and ideas behind the Harrow Deck (using the alignments as "colors" of the deck) are great, the production value very high.
I wasn't a fan of this artist before owning this deck. I was a little anxious while waiting for it in the mail. Now that I got it, I can honestly say that he did an amazing job on this product.
Hauntings that remind us of the Skinsaw Murders. A harsh search for a city lost to tales and legends of the height of Thassilon. A feel of wonder and otherworldliness at the edge of the world, with giants, lamias, magic, politics... and all sorts of ruins to explore. Riches beyond belief, and the looming, quasi-Cthulhian threat of a Runelord trapped between two worlds overhead.
This is total, complete awesomeness.
The articles complement the plot well (stats of the Runelord -I love the Classic Evil archmage feel to him- and managing harsh cold environments).
The monster roster is outstanding. I particularly appreciate the several samples of "lamia-kin" included. The Denizens of Leng are great too.
Overall, a great finale for Rise of the Runelords. I wouldn't have had it any other way!
This adventure basically presents a seven-in-one mid/high level dungeon for the PCs to explore and ultimately defeat.
The politics of the place and events that precede the PCs' arrival are well detailed and compelling - it gives a real feeling of "life" to a place that would otherwise have felt dull and static.
The villains are all original in their own right. The challenges interesting and very "typical" for that kind of arcane dungeon for higher level characters. This is classic with a bunch of twists, which makes for great game play.
The Magic of Thassilon article is excellent.
The Cult of Lamashtu article is one of the best cult descriptions I've ever read in a D&D product. This makes the issue worth it on its own, to me. Absolute BLISS for a fan of ancient religions like me. Kudos for Sean Reynolds on this one. I'm very, very impressed.
The roster of monster is alright. Some very good, others less. But overall good.
Globally, this is one of the best issues of Pathfinder to date. Some of the material included here is a must-have for any Golarion fan.
I found the plot weak at the beginning. After attacks of Goblins and Ogres, the whole "siege" theme starts to get repetitive. I didn't enjoy that part very much, even if the scale was much broader.
This is just the beginning though. The rest of the adventure is particularly good, with some memorable encounters and creatures.
Lots of highs, some lows, overall it is still a great adventure.
The articles on Stone Giants and Dragons of Golarion are absolutely outstanding. The roster of creatures is great. I'm not a big fan of fiction, but that's okay to me.
Strangely enough, the inbred, wonderfully disgusting "logueness" of this issue didn't repulse me as much as I thought it would. That makes me curious as to what type of content was excluded from the final text!
The best part of the adventure, I think, is the relative free-form management of a fort the PCs can take care of after liberating it from its monstrous occupiers. This goes along with some advice on how to run the upkeep of a fort in the game.
The whole plot is extremely detailed and vibrant. It's alive.
The roster of creatures included with this issue is extremely useful. Great value there as well.
I give it a "4", probably because I was somehow expecting more in the ways of horror and disturbing creepiness, as well as a more original plot (this adventure is all in all very classic for D&D), after the Skinsaw Murders.
I find the idea of selling previews $20 US totally preposterous.
The layout and art may be nice, but nothing can justify that kind of marketing approach. This is just a cheap shot destined to sell half-baked products between 3.5 and 4E.
Fellow gamers, please don't buy into that strategy.
It's simple, straightforward, and very flavorful. The encounters, the villain, it's all classic and yet stuffed with twists which will make the whole experience worthwhile at the game table.
I found the investigation part too linear, personally, which can bring a risk of railroading, but nothing a vigilant DM can't avoid: there is enough room between the different encounters to customize the investigation and make it feel like it fits the players' style.
Yes, this is mainly a dungeon, and it started as a delve. It's the "D" series, as in "Dungeons", after all!
The flavor is excellent, the dungeon deadly with an old-school feel on several levels, among which the sci-fi undertones and the rooms with each specific traps/problematics to be solved.
This is a good dungeon crawl. You might not appreciate if you want to purchase a "story". If you are an old-schooler, you can invest with confidence: you'll find the module well designed.
The adventure in itself is outstanding. Creepy, entertaining, well balanced between investigations, fights and exploration... that's all good.
There is one minor flaw: the very pretty Magnimar map with keys and locations that do not match, as well as problems of orientation (one text mentions a migration of an NPC south, and the map shows the district thus created in the West of the river).
There's also a small question of thematic: I really appreciated the description of Desna and her cult. This is a great job, really. I would have appreciated something more fitting the creepy/horror genre of the adventure though. Lamashtu, or Ghaur (or Ghauth? Spelling may be off - it's described as some sort of horrific mosquito half-god of bloodsuckers and sickenesses) would have been a better fit. Something more relevant to the rest of the volume.
These are both minor issues to me, but it's enough for me to award 4 instead of 5 stars for this volume. Got to start getting tough on the marking for further improvements, here! :)
It's THE Classic mega-module of AD&D. You can either play it as a pure dungeon crawl or role-playing-laden campaign.
Your choice. Ultimately, the feel of T1-4 will hugely depend on the way the module is used by the DM. Run it as-it-stands, without creativity, and it can become dry very quickly. Use it as a spring-board for your imagination, whether as a suite of devious challenges and combat or as a saga of the destiny of Hommlet, the village from where the adventure starts, and the lands surrounding it, and you've got years and years of gaming ahead of you.
I know a group of players who has been using it for literally decades. I'm talking 25 years here. And they're still running it with children, grand-children, friends of the original player-characters. Amazing.
Cool issue. Love the Assassin (great replacement for D&D's PrC or Thieves' World base class), the alternate abilities for Paladins. The ecology was a nice read, as the interview of WAR.
This magazine does exactly what it's set out to do: provide a magazine for gamers, by gamers, in a familiar, small-scale but high quality fashion.
The style of the magazine certainly will remind some of the first issues of Dragon. The feel is there, the good writing is present, there's nothing wrong that could be said about this issue, besides a few very minor things here and there (nothing out of the ordinary for a first issue, though).
If you want an alternative to the mammoth DI, something that's close to your interests as a DnD gamer, something that talks to you with a direct, friendly voice, this is what you are looking for right here.
Call of Cthulhu is one of the Great Old Ones, these classics of RPG history. It hasn't lost any of its appeal down the years. The mechanics are simple, the ambiance is definitely there, and Lovecraft's Mythos provides this "little something" that makes it different from countless other horror RPGs.
If you want to be able to say you know anything about RPGs, just like D&D, Vampire and a few other classics, you have to get and play this game.
Layout, quality of production, art, maps, every single physical aspect of the product is outstanding. I understand some people with bad eyesight might be bothered by the small font. I'm not, personally.
The contents are solid, and provide what you need to run the first part of Rise of the Runelords. I find everything well done. There are two types of vanilla ice creams: the bland ones you can get everywhere, and the superior ones you know, with real bits of vanilla here and there, really complex flavor and so on.
Burnt offerings is "Vanilla D&D" in nature. It's great, superior Vanilla D&D. Outstanding.
Promethean: The Created is to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein what Vampire: The Requiem is to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It takes the base concept and expands it tremendously to change it into a complete role-playing game.
What I love about Promethean is this opportunity to play a creature who’s nature is so intertwined with Alchemy, all this time trying to perform the ultimate Chrysopeia, to transmute themselves from Lead to Gold, to become fully Human.
The game does a great job, like Vampire did before it, to grab some myths and legends out there and re-interpret them using the game’s background. Caryatids, Golems, Frankenstein monsters, Dismembered Shamans, mummies... they're all there with a twist that heightens the integrity and variety of the whole.
You are a composite artificial creature of Alchemy trying to become human. Your "Azoth", or Inner Flame, is unnatural. You shouldn’t be alive, pal, and Mother Nature takes care to remind you of that. That’s called the Disquiet. That means that if you stay anywhere for too long the land, plants, life start to die around you, and people, animals, other supernatural beings feel like they want to shun you, push you away and finally, hurt you. Remember Victor Frankenstein’s monster pursued by the angry mob, the windmill burning? Well, that’s Disquiet at work right there.
All in all, Promethean is a great game, very different from other NWoD titles (since it relies a lot on character cooperation), genuinely new and well worth a try.
Werewolf The Forsaken is sort of different from Werewolf The Apocalypse, but yet it feels sort of the same.
Exit all the ecological theme of the Apocalypse. Exit the defenders of Gaia. Welcome Father Wolf. Welcome Pure Tribes.
Werewolves here are creatures that are both flesh and spirit, who exist between the worlds and act as the guardians on the border separating mortals from spirits, making sure one doesn't "bleed" onto the other, so to speak. It's a much simpler theme than the Apocalypse's was, and yet, it's sort of the same.
The rules are good, balanced. The whole is good. It surely can generate some very good entertainment. So it's all worthwhile, even if the game itself isn't really innovative.
Mage The Awakening is a weird beast, because it sort of is an improvement over its predecessor, Mage The Ascension, and yet, it isn't.
On the mechanics side of things, there are more explanations, more pre-made spells (or rotes), less room for wacky interpretations, so for people who like logic and structure, it's all good. For people who particularly liked the intuitive and creative magic of the Ascension, chances are you'll probably be left with a bitter taste in the mouth, at least at first, before you adapt to the new paradigm (seems appropriate for a Mage game, doesn't it?).
On the background side of things, the introduction of Atlantis is kind of cool, but many of the great things about the Ascension were taken out: Technocracy, War for the control of Reality, cool Traditions of Mages, and so on. The background of the Awakening is ... bland in comparison. Nice, but not "wow great". The Orders are the worst part of it, in my opinion: really bland, with no correlations in the occultism of the real world, simple adaptations of "vampire clans" with really sketchy political aims... I was waiting for much, MUCH more imaginative than that.
If you're into the NWoD to adapt its components to your own vision of things and change backgrounds, rules to suit what you envision for the WoD, you're going to be fine. It's an okay game. If however you're a huge fan of the Ascension and aren't prepare to modify stuff to suit your needs, you're in for a great disappointment, possibly at least.
World of Darkness introduces all the base principles to the system you'll need to know to be able to play all the other NWoD games, and allows players to create mortals characters right off the bat.
It's a good game as it stands. The rules are simple, intuitive in most cases. The background is minimalist yet inspiring. It's the base book. The corner stone of the whole NWoD building, if you will.
I think it is good on its own. It becomes great when Vampire, Mage, Werewolf etc. are added to it. It's an improvement over the rules of the Old WoD, certainly.
First thing first: to be able to play VtR you will need a copy of the World of Darkness rulebook which contains all the base mechanics of the Storyteller system.
Once you've got both books, you can appreciate the quality of the work that has been done: cleaned-up rules (faster in play, simpler in principles), background getting rid of a bogged-down metaplot, inspiring twists on well-known tropes of The Masquerade... The Requiem is a new game, a better game, a great game.
It's a classic of tabletop role-playing like Call of Cthulhu, D&D are. You ought to try this game at least once. If you like the concept of modern vampires in a world of darkness, like movies like Interview with a Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula and so on, you'll be greatly pleased.
D1 - Crown of the Kobold King is a great adventure which involves some investigation, wilderness (temperate) adventuring, some dungeon crawling and plenty of occasions to role-play.
I think any type of D&D group can find something to love about D1. Tactical encounters? Check. Opportunities of role-play with denizens of the dungeon and beyond? Aplenty. Variety in sceneries and types of actions undertaken by the group of PCs? Sure. Some cool crunch to add to your games? The Slurk and Forge Spurned are great creatures with plenty of flavour and cool abilities.
The layout is great, clean and yet with a nice touch of color. The art is outstanding, vivid, colorful and dynamic. The cartography is great. The glossy paper is an awesome touch.
What's to dislike in D1, really? To put it in a single word: nothing. Some campaign seeds are even included with the adventure, in case you want to go on with adventures in and around Falcon's Hollow.
D0 is a great module that takes a simple, straightforward scenario for 1st level characters (a sickness in the village! Let's search for the ingredients to the cure) and turns it into an entertaining game for everyone around the table. There are opportunities for role-playing, tactical encounters and still a lot of room to customize the adventure to your liking, including using it as an introduction to D1 - Crown of the Kobold King.
I'd like to especially rave about the Layout and quality of production of the module: thick, glossy paper, clean and colored layout, gorgeous art... this is outstanding.
Ars Magica really is a classic of role-playing games. You play mages and their aids developing a covenant, a sort of magical fief. You face issues of diplomacy, magical mysteries, direct threats to your well-being in a mythological medieval Europe a bit different from the one we know through History.
It's a good game, but it suffers in my opinion from an inherent flaw: the players' characters are not balanced. A mage is radically different from a support, non-magic casting role that would be played by another person at the game table.
This makes the whole issue of balancing the game very tricky, because it's based under the assumption that the game master knows what he's doing and can balance things for the players through the circumstances, challenges the characters face and sheer role-playing.
Let's just say that in the right hands, Ars Magica is a gem of a RPG. Under the wrong hands, the backlash can be huge.
The magic system itself is based on phrases the mage utters, like "Creo Ignem" (Creo verb + Ignem seed) for "Creating Fire" (fireball, blasts, making things burn etc). It's a very free-form type of magic that will not appeal to rules lawyers but will trigger the imaginations of the most creative players and game masters.
All in all, Ars Magica's great, really great, but not for everyone, hence my 4 stars.
This adventure takes the classic "stop the cultists from summoning the end of the world" to take it to a new level by introducing some great locales like the haunted "Pythoness House", a place your players will learn to fear, some amount of information gathering and role-playing, and some dungeon delving in a shaft with a huge Chaos machine, some underground part of an old forgotten city (the "old" Ptolus) and the final Temple of Chaos where the final showdown occurs.
This is a GREAT adventure we have here, but be warned: what it does is provide you with the tools to run a great adventure. It doesn't tell you how to run it. Sure, it provides all the connections between NPCs and locales you need, but the way they come into play is up to you, the DM. That's a part I like about Ptolus: it doesn't take you for a beginner. It clearly believes you are a good DM and you already know what you're doing.
More power to us!
PS: this adventure is perfectly adaptable to any urban fantasy setting you choose to use, by the way. It IS Ptolus-specific, but if you just choose to replace the different "Chaos factions" by groups of your own, you should be perfectly fine with it.
This miniature is perfect for any female ranger appearing in your fantasy game. The sculpt's nice, the details excellent (she even has vines running down her arms and equipment!). It's a pleasure to paint.
If you (or your DM) allow(s) guns in the game, this miniature is SO awesome! Look at the pose. Look at the freakin' size of the gun! And the goggles are just the detail the character needed to be the embodiment of dwarf-coolness in a setting like Ptolus.
After receiving this miniature, I can tell you this guy's sturdy as hell. The miniature will support a lot of shock and manipulation. That's a good thing when you're like me, always touching your miniature and moving it around the battle mat like crazy!
I don't know for you, but that's not that often that you can find a good figure to represent a Monk at the game table. This guy has it all: nice sculpt, good volume, enticing pose... so there, you have it: it's a great miniature!
If you have any sort of technology/guns in your fantasy setting, this miniature is for you! The sculpt of the gun itself is worthwhile, looking like a dragon spitting the bullet!
An excellent miniature again for Paizo on both details and volume. A pleasure to paint.
I was waiting for the Sisters of Silence. This miniature is rather Ptolus-specific, but I can see some specific monk or rogue PCs and NPCs of any fantasy campaigns could be adequately represented by this miniature.
Again, nice volume of the sculpt, good details, good physical realization. An excellent miniature.
The Player's Guide to Ptolus is everything a good introduction to a new setting from the players' point of view should be: it gives you key information about the setting itself, the particular focus being on Praemal (the world) first, then Ptolus in particular (the city itself), provides you with all the mechanical information you need to create a flavorful character (races, specificities of core classes in the setting, some cultural traits, etc) and basically makes you, as a player, hungry for more by playing the game itself.
All around, a great player's guide that would be a great read for any DM running Ptolus or not, since it could provide anyone with a good model to follow for creating your own handouts when starting a new campaign.
I have a bunch of Ironwind Metals Arcana Unearthed miniatures, including a group of Litorians, or lion men, and I can tell you for sure: THIS Litorian here is the one that has the best head sculpt of all the ones I have.
It will make a great encounter for your PCs, or a great miniature for a PC playing a litorian.
Another excellent miniature that can be used in any fantasy game, whether it be set in Ptolus or elsewhere. This miniature shows an individual carrying a quarterstaff, about to cast some spell, dressed with a cloak and wearing a mask concealing his/her appearance.
This miniature can easily be used for PCs or NPCs alike. I like it's pose a lot. Almost makes me want to play a sorcerer myself. :)
The detail on this Chaositech Adept is amazing. It is a great pleasure to paint and use in our games. It embodies all that is nasty about Chaositech, and can be used in any fantasy game which would involve some nasty technological devices or cybernetics.
Sure, it's not for everyone, but when your players will see the Witch villain of the game has some unnatural grafts and prosthesis all over her body, the look on their faces will be priceless, believe me!
The Vai Assassin is a great miniature. Once again, we have lots of volume to work with, we have a great sculpt, and we have a miniature which, in the end, can be used in any fantasy game featuring outlaws and assassins of all sorts. Great product!
These cards are absolutely awesome. We are using them at the game table all the time, since it reinforces the "fun" aspect of the game.
We already had many magical items to play with through the other sets, but this one, featuring the most common "mundane" items the PCs may own, was obviously missing. Now we have it!
A great plus to this card set is that it comes complete, and thus isn't random at all. That's awesome.
I mean: look at the armor of the guy. Look at his weapon. Look at the sheer weirdness and mystery surrounding his identity. Who's inside that armor? An ally or an enemy of the PCs? Maybe even a PC? What race is he? Is he even a "he", or a "she"? What's his purpose?
The mysterious Urthon Aedar have a precise role to play in a Ptolus campaign, and it's better if this role remains secret (so I won't spoil things for you), but it's really usable in a variety of way on any gaming table. Great stuff exciting our imaginations. Perfect.
Navanna Vladaam is a tiefling, as you can see by the color of her skin and horns on her head. She could be used as a fiendish PC, rogue, or any sort of NPC in your own campaign. This makes it a great miniature. There aren't that many GOOD tiefling minis around, surely.
Sheva Callister is the main protagonist of the Ptolus Comic books published in six issues by Dabel Brothers (now Marvel). She is one of iconic adventurers of the City by the Spire, and she deserved a mini for herself! Now, the look of the mini, the greatsword in her back... everything makes her very usable as a female PC or NPC in any fantasy campaign. Good mini all around!
I love this mini. For me, it represents all the original goodness of Ptolus in a single look (well, would be even more so if he was carrying a dragon pistol or some piece of Chaositech, but that would make the guy less versatile at the game table, wouldn't it?). A minotaur cleric. That's the kind of character I would really like to play. What about you?
Lilith is a great Ptolus character. Evil, scheming, with this "lady" look and this demonic charm about her. Great NPC all around. Now, the greatness about this mini is that she can easily represent any scheming noble-woman in any type of fantasy adventuring, really. That makes it a very useful mini in my book.
Female miniatures always have this tendency to be sculpted for male users. Read: with big boobs, half-naked and, frankly, cliched to death. That's not the case here. It is a nice character that really doesn't fall into all these "female mini" traps. That in itself is worth it for a fantasy miniatures collector. The back (not visible here) features a REALLY nice sculpted-face design on the shield she's wearing. Cool!
Can be used for the reknown Ptolus Iron Mage of course, but for armored wizard PCs as well! The pose is great, and if you don't fall into the trap of easy painting, it can be an outstanding show piece to add to your collection ! Just paint different pieces of the armor with different metallic (or plain) colors, and try to give it a unique look to your liking. It's worth it!
As you can see, this is a great miniature with nice details. I find the pose a bit weird though (it's taken straight from the Ptolus Big Book). Sure, you can (and I will) use it for a dramatic apparition of a levitating Inverted Pyramid wizard in a Ptolus campaign (or any arcanist in other campaigns), but that's not the kind of mini I would use all the time for a particular NPC. Still, a great miniature obviously. :)
Great villain for any sort of campaign featuring undead or necromancers/necrophiliac baddies of all kinds, this miniature can make a great BBEG for low-level parties or a good second-role bad guy for higher-level adventures. Really nice, usable, and a pleasure to paint.
Great detail to work with, sturdy as hell, a pose that is really "adventure-like". I love the metal base that is part of the mini itself, like for all other Game Mastery and Ptolus miniatures. Great stuff.
This miniature seems a bit "stocky" at first, but there is actually a lot of volume/relief to work with when painting it. I appreciate the pose, and already used it in my Ptolus campaign. It can be used as ANY kind of evil cultist in your campaign(s), Ptolus or not, which is great in and by itself.
This is a good product. I like these cards and use them in my game. However, the repeats of cards previously published in the Pack 1, if not numerous (I had only a couple of them with four boosters), is a bit disappointing. This should have been pointed out in the announcements before the product's actual release.
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