Charles Evans 25's page

So after some searching (and a half hour train trip to Burton on Trent after the shops in Birmingham (UK) proved to be having supply difficulties) I tracked down an elusive first edition dead tree copy of the PFRPG Core Rulebook… And my initial impression is a mixture of excitement and frustration.
So many more ‘core rules’ options for many of the basic classes (EG feat trees for fighters, rage powers for barbarians, ki pools for monks) as compared to the game’s third edition D&D forerunners and further areas of rules cleaned up (EG combat maneuvers), but so much more which could have been done but which was not. The goal of ‘backwards compatability’ may have been responsible for the reining in of some of the changes which were aired during the public Beta playtest that I had personally found to be exciting.
However an improvement in my opinion in many areas of 3.5 D&D and the author and his design team show promise I believe – well worth watching for the future.
Four stars.

In terms of components (board, pieces, tokens, etc) this is the usual quality FFG production. The rulebook is a little rough around the edges, but does include a flowchart to help deal with what happens when you land on a new location.
The playing time listed on the box of 90 minutes is likely hopelessly off if you have anywhere approaching the given maximum of six players, and some characters seem so much better than others that it's worth dogpiling anyone using them early on to prevent them from otherwise dominating the game. (Arguably such dogpiling is part of the fun of the game.)

I don't know if my judgement is influenced by unfair comparison with my warm fuzzy memories of playing the original game with school friends, but only three stars for this version. Still this could be worth getting for your gaming group, as it is the latest incarnation of a little piece of fantasy game history.

This hardcover collects all the rules of the simple yet elegant system of the 1980's British paperbacks, and covers the part of Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson's world based on medieval Europe and its neighbours. Although GMs should invest in the Bestiary, too, all other information needed to play is in this one book.
This is a game you can pick up and master the basics of in probably less than an hour, and I can strongly recommend it.

Gods and Magic:
(initial impression- review may be edited upon in-depth acquaintance)
First and most importantly, 40 of the 64 pages are committed to the twenty ‘major’ deities- that’s a double page spread for each, which conveys more information than the campaign setting, but much less than the deity by deity articles in the Pathfinder Adventure Paths (also written by Sean K Reynolds).
Of the remaining pages, they are mostly split between giving dozens of minor ‘regional’ and ‘racial’ deities a paragraph each, and ten pages worth of interesting magical items (which have additional benefits to those who worship the deity a particular item is associated with).
There are also a couple of general pages, by way of an introduction, about Golarion’s deities, and a useful chart on the front inside cover summarising alignment, concerns, portfolio, and favourite weapon information for Golarion’s various deities.
The book is probably most useful as a source of information to those running homebrew campaigns set in Golarion, and whose other sources of information are restricted to the gazetteer and/or campaign setting.
I hesitate to recommend this book to those not running such homebrew campaigns, unless money is not a concern or a favourable exchange rate against the dollar (or other discount) is available.

Only 4 stars.

The Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting is in the region of 250 pages long, has chapters headed ‘Characters’, ‘The Inner sea’, ‘Religion’, ‘Organizations’, and ‘The World’- plus a brief forward, appendices, and an index besides. It features a colour map of a sizeable portion of one continent, colour illustrations on many of the pages (some illustrations such as the human racial subtypes ‘iconics’ are recognisable as being shared with its partner product, the Gazetteer), and is printed on high quality paper. Whilst being easy on the eye it contains a good deal of general information, leaving specifics (and dozens of ideas which invite development) for DMs to fill in to suit their own purposes/campaigns. True, the (first) edition available at the time of this review (August 2008) features occasional typing errors and some rather humorous 'map lines moved' mistakes, but the overall standard of the work is otherwise very high.
The price is steep, but the quality of the work is good; this is a luxury item for DMs, with a price-tag to match…
Five stars.

The Arkham Horror is a game that plays on several levels; for the Cthulhu mythos fans, there are eight different ‘Ancient One’ threats from outside and minions that include the hounds of Tindalos, the mi-go, the ubiquitous cultists of the Cthulhu mythos (whose combat abilities vary, according to precisely which ancient one threatens Arkham in any particular game) and one of the terrifying dholes; for those who like to try to plan their games, there are resource options to manage and decisions to make which threats to go after- and how soon; and for those who just like weird things happening there are a selection of random encounters for each of the locations in Arkham, or for other worlds.
Confrontations with the ancient ones, their minions, or other challenges are usually resolved through a system of rolling six sided dice, in an effort to score sufficient successes to better the opposition. Various items, spells, allies, or skill training can raise the number of dice that an investigator rolls for a check, as can the expenditure of valuable clue tokens. And for those investigators for whom the horrors prove too much, there remain options such as the local hospital or asylum to recuperate.
With other worlds to explore, monsters to fight, gates to shut, and (if everything goes badly wrong) a final confrontation with an Ancient One in a last ditch effort to try to 'save the day', The Arkham Horror represents a 4-star slice of Mythos flavoured fun in this reviewer’s opinion; there are several excellent expansions also currently available, which increase the variety of options open and the threats faced, making a good board game great.

Humorous, but rather too brief; whole categories of lava (with names and/or properties which I think the designers could have had a field day with) appear to have been omitted from the download.