Endzeitgeist's page

Caedwyr, the SRD of Advanced Arcana II does not list Ink & Quill, but it does list the Book of experimental might. Not sure whether that helps, but I do hope it does! :) Cheers!

While it does in fact appear that you are doing a fair amount of research, design and development, I would point out that every step you mentioned, short of your companies open roll call for playtesters is all part of what every good 3pp does with their products.

The price range you are within is not that far off from the standard of pricing, although I can't help but think you would do yourselves a world of good by encouraging more folks to review your products, as at the time of this writing the only review of your work I could find was Endzeitgeist's 3 star review of Gypsy. In a market dominated by books averaging twice the size for less money, or the impulse books that are half the price but the same size, a handful of reviews would help folks make that decision to give you a try.

+1. It took me quite a bit to buy your offerings.

Your open playtests may be great and work, but other 3pps also test their classes. Take SGG and RiP, they just offer more content for the same price. When it comes to 3pps, we are almost always (with some notable exceptions) dependant on the class-support we get in the supplement. No archetypes, items etc. COMBINED with the price-point makes not for the best ratio.

I really like the boldness of your designs, but in direct comparison, the result of what I've seen so far is not above your competitors/fellow 3pps as to warrant the increased price. "The Investigator" for example, as a direct comparison in price and content.

Next week, I'll put my review of Grimoire Facilitas out and while I did like it, Advanced Arcana II offers almost thrice the content for the same price.

Premium products are fine and cool and I'm first to jump the chance, but so far, I'm not exactly sold on why it's justified when compared to other 3pps, who also do an excellent job.

Other examples would be Fire Mountain Games - I can either buy one 100+pdf of adventure path quality-adventure or about 20 pages of new classes by you guys for the same price. Heck, for 10 bucks, I could buy Northlands by OD or SoZ.

What I'm trying to say is: Try to find a way to offer more bang-for-buck - open playtests alone are not a valid selling point, at least for me - and I gather the same holds true for a variety of customers. Additional content, though...prolonged support...now that's something different.

Just my 2 cents, of course and I look forward to seeing more from you guys!

Endzeitgeist, reading your review has been the warm, holy light in an otherwise terrible, terrible day. I'm glad you loved the content - and intents - of the book !

You're welcome! After this many archetypes, I'm rather hard to impress and among those I recently read, this book by far takes the awesome cake. Kudos and respect for this being your first publication. And yeah, when I read the predecessor, I knew that Cheapy knows his stuff and does a great job!

I really hope to see more of your collaboration, perhaps even adventures featuring characters with these archetypes? Would be nice...

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. As soon as the glitches have been taken care of, I'll go through it again and hopefully be able to scale my review up to the 5 this one's content deserves.

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

You're welcome!

I know they were covered in book I, but, quite frankly... as much as liked book I, book II blew them out of the water. What about the Luckbringer? The Divine Channeler? The Taskshaper? SGG-classes? Just some ideas, of course! I really love these complex archetypes...

Idited far pur spellink.

The tactical Magus? The Gunslinger? The Samurai/Ninja (perhaps a Kaidan-crossover?) Generally even more options for the archetypes herein?

You're quite busy! I'm looking forward to reading your opinions! Any spoilers on what you picked up?

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine.

And once again, a well-written review, KTFish7! I agree, btw.: The monkey-typo in Parrot-Voice is annoying...

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Excellent work!

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Guess I'm spoiled from the Fantastic Maps-line and similar offerings.

Excellent review, KTFish7!

Thanks, KTFish7!

All right! As a backer of "It came from the Stars" and "Sailing the Starlit Sea" I have to say that I'm excited about the prospect of planar material. However, I'd suggest releasing small pdfs first before jumping in the deep end with Kickstarters or big products.

Since I'm currently reading "The Japanese Devilfish Girl" by Robert Rankin, I'd love an interplanar freak show. I'd also be interested in sourcebooks on the inner planes, provided they don't offer x archetypes/PrCs/feats etc. for elementalists - there's enough of that already out there and quite frankly, I'm sick of them. Fluff...now that's something completely different. Planar adventure anthology sounds nice, just be aware of OD's Planar sourcebook coming up - any synergy would be extremely cool - the same, of course, also goes for other supplements. The less competing systems there are and the more synergy we get, the better.

Caravans of the Mercane could rock - I fondly remember "March of the Modrons" and this could rock on a similar level...

Don't be discouraged and if you want to show that you're offering a product here, put the name of your company in brackets.

Cheers and all the best,
Endzeitgeist

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

And reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

Woaow. Let me just say: Thanks for all the support and kind words. I'll do my best to live up to the expectations and continue to provide (hopefully) informative reviews. Thanks again to everyone who voiced support, criticism etc.!

All the best,
EZG

If I finally get to the US this year, I'll be sure to attend Paizocon, but right now, I'm not sure whether that'll work out.

Any ways - Great work and thanks for the kind words!

Personally, I'd prefer the races to be balanced with the core-races. Take the Khymer, for example. I'd immediately allow them in a regular world as I LOVE the fluff. If the balance is specifically set for OT, some people won't be able to scavenge the parts and I know a lot persons who do exactly that. I'd suggest racial paragon classes for all the additional powers - that way, one could start an OT-game with the stronger races, but people in games with a less steep power-curve can still use/enjoy them and even build them up to be the badasses they're supposed to be.

Oh, and: Great news regarding the update - OT has potential galore!

Just my 2 cents!

This is awesome news! Purchasing the subscription when Frog god went live was a great investment, perhaps one of the best I've made in the last couple of years, and the player's maps will add even more value.

Can we have player-friendly maps in the back/seperate pdf and the keyed maps in the book?

Hmmm, I don't consider myself a "professional" reviewer, but I do a lot of them. I usually don't try to give complete lists/reproductions of abilities, but rather basic information on e.g. crunchy parts and some examples. I really hope that my work (although far from perfect) helps some people out there without going into too much detail.

However, if anyone out there thinks my reviews (or components of them) suck, feel free to tell me so - be it via post here or PM. I'd be happy to try to incorporate what I consider valid points. After all, feedback, whether positive or negative, is the only way to improve.

I'm e.g. currently thinking about dropping the ToC-style breakdown at the beginning. Personally, I want to know how much of the total page-count is truly content, but I'm kind of finicky.

Thanks for the attention,
EZG out.

Reviewed here, on DTRPG, on RPGaggression and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

(I hope I'll be able to read Book II this week...it's on my pile!)

C. And please make them layered so I can eliminate the numbers and letters and secret doors and don't have to photoshop them out myself. I HATE doing that.

YESSSSS!!!!!

Congrats, Adam! You truly deserve it! I'm looking forward to looking forward to seeing more from you!

Upped my pledge up to Navigator, can't afford more. :( Now at $4488 - 22 to go.

Necromancers of the Northwest have released Codex mechanica - their Fabricants are constructs.

Ironforged by RiP are well-balanced, and not truly constructs. You can have the fluff sans the problems....

Nie review, KTFish7!

Modified my review to reflect the new errata. I do like your approach to making strange and unusual classes and products and for a first offering, the Gypsy is bold indeed!

All the best,
EZG

Thanks Blackerose! If you're done making some tweaks to the class, I'd be interested in your expansion of it!

Reviewed here and sent to GMS magazine. Will surface on DTRPG via GMS magazine as well. All the best,
EZG

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

This pdf by John Wick Presents is 26 pages long, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC/prelude, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving 21 pages of content, so what exactly do we get with these Orks (yeah, with "k", just like in German!)?

You have probably read the Wicked Fantasy-series of articles in KQ, but just to be sure: Wicked Fantasy centers on a new takes on classic fantasy races, a reimagining so to speak. An example would be the Uvandir, genderless (but male-looking), eternal dwarves who can toil all day and night, never starve etc. In this pdf, we get an expansive take on the Orks in the vein of a widely-expanded ecology-article.

The reimagining of the race essentially makes the Orks what you've come to know: An evil race, created by evil gods. Orkish doctrine, for ages, had them consume their foes to take in their strength and worship pain - until they evolved. For which foe might offer more strength than one's god? In a feat of unheard-of racial uprising, the orks stormed their god's sacred hall, vanquished their pantheon and ate them, thus gaining their strength. (Though some sages speculate that some orkish gods may have escaped...)

Thus, via the divinely-infused bloodlines, Orks changed and diversified and had to deal with the lifting of the red haze of rage, for now, they encountered a state of mind as of yet unknown - free will.

The nomadic tribes have made tentative peace with the other races, as they seek to understand the powers their newfound freedom and the darkness of their ancestors blood offer them. Depending on the bloodline of one's ancestors, special abilities and dispositions are available to the green-skins. 6 of these divine bloodlines are included.

The Orks can also create so-called Feth'Ork-creatures by feeding animals and beasts their blood in order to mutate the critters into allies and negate the loathing regular animals exhibit when encountered by Orks.

I mentioned the worship of pain as well and it defines Orkish culture to this date - their sacred scars, the Va, all come with their stories and knowing these has to be earned. More importantly, 5 masochistic feats enable Orks to harness the power of pain and actually get stronger via hurt, pain and punishment. I really loved these feats and while they seem to be kind of powerful, the steep price they demand is worth the benefit. 3 feats are focused on the divine bloodlines and we get a new mystery for the oracles, the so-called blood mystery, which essentially provides the tribal shamans and makes for a neat piece of writing. We also get a new archetype for barbarians and one for bards, the latter being rather interesting, as it focuses on insulting foes and bolstering allies via epic story-telling, thus hearkening back to our own world's intricate webs of poetic allusions displayed in saga-literature and Heian romances like the Tale of Genji, to quote only two.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good, though not stellar: I did notice about 7 glitches on my first read-through and an additional pass at editing would have been nice, as some of the extensive bookmarks consist of only one letter. layout adheres to a 2-column standard and comes in full-color, with a parchment-like background and neat pieces of artwork. I really liked the writing, which makes this pdf rank among the most compelling ecology-articles I have ever read. On the other hand, though, I feel that some of the pieces of writing like the feats could be more concisely-written: I had to re-read some of the feats before I got how exactly how the crunch is supposed to work. Were I to rate only the quality of the writing, I'd settle for a higher rating, but as presented the glitches and minor hick-ups just accumulated and thus I'll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars.

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine.

Endzeitgeist out.

39 hours to go, we might yet make it! Thinking about upgrading my pledge...

And bought - review of Part I coming next week. ^^

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

Wise decision - for 5 bucks, this is a total steal!

Excellent, more backers! If you can, get the word out. I'd love to see this realized...

Just a piece of advice: Make something else before. Even reputable 3pps have problems getting their projects funded - Sailing the Starlit Sea for example looks like it's going to miss its mark. It came from the Stars was funded at the second run. LpJr Design and JBE have both track records and while they made their goals for free rpg-day, it was by no means assured.

And these are from publishers with a reputation for good/excellent products.

Seeing the lack of securities Kickstarter offers for pledgers, a reputation is not optional, but a must, at least from my perspective.

As some nitpicks by ShadowcatX show - there are a lot of potential problems and having a track-record of at least SOME excellent products will help.

Just because I want good 3pps succeed - please think about offering some other files for regular purchase before doing a kickstarter. If only so we can sample your quality and perhaps get hooked. As written, your synopsis does not pique my curiosity or confidence.

Just my 2 cents,
cheers and all the best,
EZG

Great review, Gozuja! This is also on my list!

Nice review, KTFish7 - I definitely have to get a review up as well. Oh, tempus fugit...

And reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!

And revewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!