This is a review of the Dragon Empires Primer. I like it a lot, and I didn’t expect to. Please read on.
To understand the above, you need to know that overall I am not a huge fan of Asian-themed gaming. I grew up on Saturday afternoon poorly-dubbed martial arts movies that weren’t neat, just ridiculous. Oriental Adventures for AD&D was good, but it didn’t really inspire or convey any mood to me. Sacrilegious at it may seem I tried to like and read the old Kara-Tur boxed set and kept falling asleep.
On the other hand I have all of Miyazaki’s animated films on DVD, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and I adore them. Also, the way Xena introduced Asian elements throughout the series and in her background really struck a chord with me too. Maybe it’s the fact that these are not loaded with cheese (from what I recall of similar films of the 70’s and 80’s).
So, as a Paizo subscriber I let Jade Regent take its place on my shelf with a light reading of each volume. The Dragon Empires Gazetteer was glanced through and looked amazing, but I had other things to read. I also skipped over the Asian weapons section in Ultimate Combat.
That brings us to the Primer. It’s beautiful to behold, a high quality of presentation as always. The interior front cover has the area map in full color with area names, major locations and borders shown. The intro immediately set me at ease. In plain words it set up what I was about to read, and an overview of how they view the Dragon Empires land and its people. Without the extra info in the Gazetteer, It read quick and to the point. It is the player’s version of setting and so contains no spoiler info. There is a handful or errors in the book but I didn’t really feel they detracted from the overall usefulness.
It is laid out in familiar fashion to those who have the Inner Sea Guide and Gazetteer. In the very beginning is a section on new races complete with stats, and an overview on the human ethnicities found in the region. Each nation or territory is then covered in a half-page column with a symbol, basic stats, summary description of the area, and a couple of traits to take. I expected to find a couple areas of interest and found myself getting more interested the more I read. The entries kept getting better. I was excited to get to the next one to see what was in store and was not disappointed.
To be frank, it’s because the places are weird enough but easily grasped with strong themes you can immediately latch onto. As a GM it got my mind going multiple times. Many of the entries are fantastic without being wacky or bizarre, and there is also a sense there are plenty of common folk and situations too without every place being alien. More importantly they feel like places I’d like to adventure in, not treat as background info only. A gritty Hobgoblin land, dark and foreboding Naga territory, a spirit-haunted wood akin to Princess Mononoke and a celestial nation of aasimar are just a sampling of what you’ll find here. It’s fantastic enough and Golarion-centric so I didn’t feel any intimidation regarding my overall knowledge gap on ancient oriental culture!
The Combat section has 10 new feats themed to the area’s style that will make monk players quite happy. There’s also a new Samurai order. The Faith section gives a paragraph on each of the deities of the realm. A handful of favorites from the Inner Sea region make the port (like Lamashtu, Desna, Pharasma and Irori), as well as a host of original ones with appropriate names and themes. There are also four new archetypes to help round out characters that deserve praise.
The Magic Section has the Sorcerer Oni bloodline and the Void elemental school for Wizards, with a new spell. The Social section has a spread and easy rules for tracking honor points for your character and the benefits or consequences thereof.
I figured I’d like the crunch, but the nations section was easily my favorite, and I didn’t see it coming. What a surprise. Not only do I feel the book is just what I needed to finally really get into the setting but I can’t wait to read the Gazetteer and to run the Ruby Phoenix Tournament adventure! My hat is off to writers Tim Hitchcock and Colin McComb. If it made a believer of a skeptic like me I’m sure fans of the genre will embrace what Paizo’s done to the other side of Golarion.
A hard adventure to judge based on play styles and world considerations.
If you embrace Eberron and all it stands for the adventure is really good and take advantage of the world’s history and background. It’s not a good adventure for any other world, really.
Written by Stephen Schubert and Paizo favorites Tim Hitchcock and Nic Logue, the adventure makes frequent use of the Indiana Jones “Red Line Across the Globe” method of travel. As this suspends a little disbelief (and I knew my players would’nt fall for it) I had a ton of work researching the places along the way I just knew they could not pass up to visit. The adventure however assumes just this and rushes the PCs from spot to spot where they invariably meet things, kill them and take their stuff.
My work payed off in that the locations, for what they are worth, are beautifully woven into the story. So it took us a lot longer to finish than expected, but as I said it’s just waiting for that kind of fleshing-out.
As mentioned, it makes liberal use of Eberron staples and involves Lady Vol, an ancient MacGuffin, the Emerald Claw, the pirate isles there, the continent of dragons, and others. World-spanning by design it’s a whirlwind tour of the planet and campaign setting.
The adventure is full color and 128 pages. It utilizes the much debates WotC staple of the “easy encounter format” rounding up rooms meant to have combat and grouping all you need to run it on 1 page. I don’t mind this style, some vomit at the thought and others don’t care. It can be a space-eater, if you get my meaning.
A wide variety of locations and a load of creative monsters to hack are provided. The beasties are very Eberron-flavored and work well to provide good threat to smart players. Nice maps and mighty fine artwork round out the package.
This is a public service announcement regarding The Ruins of the Dragon Lord boxed set written by JC Alvarez by Mongoose Publishing. For the longest time I meant to write a more in-depth review of this, but it seemed to be so rare and difficult to find it never came up. I finally scored a copy from EBay for about $20 a couple of years back.
The bottom line: It’s not quite worth the cover price of $45.00. I’d say it’s worth a price about half that, and so the price here on Paizo is more than fair, a darn good bargain.
The basics: It’s written for 3.5 of the d20 system. It’s a ‘complete campaign’ taking characters from 1st to 20th level (saving space by providing plenty of encounters with standard monsters from the SRD which are not reprinted). It also assumes a very fast advancement rate, again how they managed to squeeze 20 character levels of adventure into this space. It contains 3 books: 1 64-page setting book and two 128-page adventure books. It has nine 8.5x11 full color double-sided pages of map locations. It has two double-sided oversized poster maps, one with the campaign area with the cover art on the other side, and another detailing two locations of the adventure with a 1-inch grid to be a battlemap for miniatures.
The best analogy I can try is to me it tries to capture the feel of the old Dragon Mountain boxed set by TSR for 2nd Edition. There’s a campaign valley, and a mountain (“Mount Moru”) that’s the focal point of the adventure. You can explore the surrounding lands and gather clues and info (and levels) before tackling the mega-dungeon at the mountain.
The maps are colorful but not my style. They’re more artistic in flavor than exacting, and they would not serve well, for example, to scan and enlarge to make battlemaps. Luckily most of them are of a fairly standard and uniform design, easily recreated with tiles or whatnot. The artwork throughout is serviceable but nothing special.
The adventure itself is flavorful but straightforward. There was an ancient civilization that worshiped demons and dragons. They vanished within the depths of the mountain with their ancient lore and treasure. Now you can go in and kill the things there and take their stuff! That hardly does it justice, of course. Plenty of the fun comes from exploring the setting and piecing together the lore and clues as to what happened. With that comes plenty of dungeon-crawling against some creatively designed foes. The ancient feeling of the lost civilization comes through always. Surprisingly there are plenty of good solid opportunities for roleplaying throughout.
As for the complete campaign taking characters from 1st to 20th level I think there are some assumptions involved regarding DM modification and expansion. The good news is its very modular. There are design notes on how the PCs can stumble into the adventure at pretty much any level. Each dungeon is also fairly independent, meaning you could run them all as separate adventurers if you wanted. Organization is overall quite good, obviously written to ease the job of the DM.
It's also a pretty good read, chock full of good ideas.
See, these map packs are all pretty great. Some I'll admit see very little use, but still they are good to have when the time comes (like the elf village map pack).
MAP PACK LAIRS is 5 stars because the art is still as good as ever, but the designs and versatility fo the sites chosen mean I'll be using these over and over on a regular basis.
But the best part is they don't necessarily have to be lairs for just foes. The cave could be the home of a hermit, the home could even belong to the heroes, the forest clearing could be a detailed campsite, and the circular pool some sort of bizarre ancient site or Pathfinder quest. The dungeon is a good mini dungeon to place a foe that deserves more than a pathetic hastily-scrawled room or two.
Awesome stuff, this one will get worn out around my game table.
Unlike Chris' Starship map, this one is geared to either sci-fi or fantasy play.
Adhering to WotC standards of colored borders for marking terrain features and using text callouts to name locales, it makes for great minis skirmish play and never gets in the way for an RPG setup.
The Desert Sanctum is a great loaction to run a sprawling combat. And the visuals are downright awesome.
The other side with the swamp caves I'll certainly be using for a caertin climactic encounter in Pathfinder AP#29 of Council of Theives fame. Can't wait!
When I was prepping for my Saga Edition mini campaign last year I scoured ebay for some of the more obscure mini poster maps WotC had produced. The tiles they made were OK for some things, but the poster maps really helped set a scene and let the players take advantage of the terrain.
Getting this was brilliant, not only because it already matched the colors and styles of the Saga maps (many also my Mr. West) but it had a full sized starship on it! The other side is just as loaded with detail and twists and turns. There's even a landing pad with a docked starship, that too has map squares instead of just being an overlay. A GM could use these deckplans for a hero's ship.
I dove into this and while reading had the same impression of dismal reads in the early 3.0 era. The book strives to raise few bars.
The font is gigantic. The classes are cobbled together from mechanics already in other classes in the PFRPG. 60 pages of the book are for chases and morale; I don't know who would use such overkill for their game. Lots of PFRPG text is simply cut and paste into this book.
There are references to rules that don't exist, very poorly worded powers and abilities and an overall feeling that little true care was used in putting it together.
Character Flaws and Occupations are good, so it's obvious there is some worth, but overall I was very disappointed.
I picked this up a while back from the Paizo store at the recommendation of a friend.
Keep on the Borderlands, Thunder Rift, Night Below, The Vaut of Larin Karr, Shattered Gates of Slaughterstone. Each of these had something in common. Apart from the themed adventures set there, the product itself gave no small attention to the setting where they were located, creating a mini-campaign area to explore and develop.
Well, Point of Light takes that idea and runs with it. It’s inspired by the Point of Light campaign ideal of D&D 4E (no large nations, just small outposts between monster-haunted wilderness). To that end, it maps out four lands, and gives basic, creative description of the geography, civilization, and political skullduggery between the inhabitants and denizens. There are no actual full "adventures" included.
Each section has a one-page overland map, text describing the different hexes where lairs, towns, keeps or ruins might appear with a description of each written to jump-start the imaginative juices. Each area also has a mini encounter table and a rumor table. Some towns and settlements are given mini-maps in the text.
It reads very old-school and has the appearance of the same. Maps are black and white, simply clear and functional line art with a number hex grid imposed over top. Writing obviously shows a D&D 3rd Edition mindset, with mention of specific spells, magic items, and the like that all appear in that edition of the game. Apart from these vague references, there is literally no crunch. A NPC might be described as (Ftr 5) and a great wolf as (2HD) and that’s it. Really it could be used in any fantasy game world with ease.
The first land is a wild land: Different groups of civilized races and humanoids are surviving in their little area following the destruction of a grand empire.
The second area borrows from the idea that characters of sufficiently high level will want to own land: clearing it of monsters, building the keep and holding the land. The place is littered with little details for characters of this mindset to take advantage (and be wary) of.
The third area is a rough, frontier borderland between two warring nations where the soldiers loyal to their sides, and not monsters, are the real threat.
The fourth location is set in the outer planes, the home of an evil god where his faithful go and take tests to rise in rank in his church.
The first three were super to read. The last section, the outer planar entry wasn’t as fulfilling as the first three and didn’t evoke a cool sense of exploration like the others. The writing isn’t heavy, and not so detailed that you feel constrained. Just the opposite, the entries get you thinking about how you’d like to drop the adventures in here, shake it up and watch how they explore and handle themselves.
It’s also a good aid for a GM who hasn’t completely mapped out his homebrew world yet, or has lots of undeveloped space.
The tree effects are a real table-brightener. Player's eyes light up with glee and it looks great with miniatures on it. I would have prefered if they left off specific items like the druid shrine and campsite. because now when I whip this out, they're always there. Otherwise an outstanding product.
I just received this and it's a real beauty. Nice and generic (no camps or specific rock formations). There's a proper wooden bridge on one side and on the other, the river curves and there's an impromptu crashed log and loose rock way to cross. Very nice.
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