I picked these up because I have had combats grind to a halt while a player flips back and forth between the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary. Now I can just hand him a short packet and tell him to pick one.
Product is 54 pages long. 1 cover, 1 Title page w/ credits, 1 page Introduction, 3 pages listing the Summon Monster I-IX spells and Summon Monster Table, and 1 page OGL. That leaves 47 pages of Summonable Monsters with the Celestial and Fiendish Templates applied.
-This product lists all the monsters available under the spell with both the fiendish and celestial template applied.
-They are listed alphabetically within each spell level (all the Summon Monster I creatures are listed alphabetically followed by the Summon Monster II creatures listed alphabetically and so on).
-Text goes right to the edge of the page, so you can't 3-hole punch them to put them in a binder. However, this layout makes sense as the intent is for players to cut them out and use them as "cards."
-This product is all black and white with no artwork. It is a purely utilitarian product with no frills, which (I assume) allows for the VERY affordable price point.
I plan to print these out and put them in protective plastic sheets in a binder to be available as a resource at my gaming table.
Why 5 Stars?
-The product is exactly as advertised for a very small price. This is a useful aide for players and GMs.
Meet Norret Gantier, a wounded veteran grenadier from the Galtan military. He has returned home from the war to find that everything in his hometown has changed.
Kevin Andrew Murphy brings Galt to life. Yes, there is constant revolution. People live in fear of being accused of being an enemy of liberty. But they are still people just trying to get by in life. Kevin Andrew Murphy's tale gives alchemy an underlying order such that it is almost believable that, with the right reagents, you can augment your strength, improve your senses, or even heal old war wounds.
Not only does Kevin Andrew Murphy bring some measure of sense to alchemy, he weaves his story over a detailed backstory (some of which only he still knows) which allows him to combine art, theatre and science into an allegorical alchemical quest.
If you ever plan to play an alchemist, I strongly recommend that you read this tale. If you are setting an adventure in Galt, read this one. It will help to bring your world to life. I have stated elsewhere that I have yet to read a Kevin Andrew Murphy story that I have not thoroughly enjoyed. The story oozes research and reading that the author puts into all of his stories.
This is one of the best pieces that has appeared in the Web Fiction.
I pre-ordered this book on the merit of the one Shadowsfall Legends tale that was out and the previews posted on the Jon Brazer Enterprises blog. I am still new at reviewing books, I would counsel you to look to KTFish7, Dark Mistress, and Endzeitgeist's excellent reviews for a blow by blow of the book.
The monsters are a lot of fun. Some of them are VERY challenging, some are a very low challenge rating. My favorite in the book is the Cave Fisher Shadow in Appendix 1. It attaches an incorporeal filament to a creature's shadow and drags them away by its shadow. Awesome!
The flavor text for each monster is phenomenal providing some words of advice on facing the creature (usually they say to run away), or providing a hint at what inspired the monster. Artwork is black and white and ranges from good to excellent. Some of the artwork is reminiscent of 2nd edition monster books and on par with the artwork in The Tome of Horrors Complete. Editing was good with very few errors or glitches given the size of the book. Format is two columns with text flowing around the art. One monster per page, until you get to the appendices where they are lists of statblocks in challenge rating order.
If you are a GM or you ever plan to be a GM, you will not regret purchasing this book. The monsters are fresh and imaginative. The descriptive and flavor text is well written and grabs your attention. I will definitely be picking up the rest of this line as it comes out.
4 stars taking the one down because of the spelling errors that I did find.
Kurdag is a male umbral kobold alchemist with a penchant for explosions. He owns an alchemy shop called The Exploding Herb in the town of Blackbat. When a human adventurer comes to his shop with questions about a gem that caught fire, he ends up in a struggle for his life. That's fine with him, though; it means he gets to throw his beloved bombs.
The pdf is 14 pages long:
1 cover
1 title page
10.5 pages of story,
1 page talking about Shadowsfall and the author
This story deals with a main character who is not especially well liked by the people around him. They tolerate him because of his prowess at making (and throwing) bombs and other alchemical creations. Like all kobolds, life is a struggle, but Kurdag has done better than most. Despite that, he is still discriminated against by a human adventurer (though not for too long).
There is a fast paced, exciting battle between the kobold and some enemies. It will certainly keep you turning the pages (or scrolling down) to find out what happens next. The story gives you a good feel for what towns and cities in Shadowfall are like. Although the citizens band together for safety from the undead that stalk the wilds of Shadowsfall, the citizens are also their own worst enemy, quarreling amongst themselves when not combating hosts of undead.
I enjoyed the story enough to read it through more than once. I will be sure to come back to it as the other Shadowsfall Legends come out. The Shadowsfall Legends are shaping up to be high quality short stories. These compete with Paizo's Web Fiction for quality of author, story and characters. If you enjoy the web fiction, I highly recommend picking this story up.
Editing was top notch. I did not see any spelling, grammar or punctuation errors in the entire piece. Priced at $0.99, this is a perfect impulse buy, especially if you are planning to pick up the Shadowsfall campaign setting. I was very pleased to note that it came as an ePub, PDF and mobi (Kindle format) file.
The Black Monastery is an old style sandbox dungeon from Frog God Games, but you already knew that, right? What does it have to offer you?
First, there is not much story here. There is a lot of background at the beginning of the book explaining the history of Black Monastery. This is all fluff that you can use, take it or leave it. There is no plot to this adventure. There is no railroad. PC's are free to explore the dungeon at their own risk. As they explore they may or may not discover some of the history outlined at the beginning, that's up to the GM. They can get lots of satisfaction from this adventure without knowing any of the background.
Second, this adventure is highly modifiable. The author states at the outset that if you don't like the way something works, if it is too dangerous for the party, if it takes away from the fun; the GM should change it. They offer different ways to do this. Every monster is listed with average hit points and max hit points. For the (sort of) BBEG battles, they offer different ways to scale the encounter for the PC's.
Third, even if you don't want to/ have time to run the full adventure, there are TONS of ideas in this book. Every room is mostly self-contained. What happens in one room doesn't really effect what happens in the room next door. There are some awesomely creative traps in this dungeon. Some rooms do not help or harm the PC's but set a creepy tone beautifully.
One example is a room where the PC's open a door and see a person standing in the middle of the room. He turns around, cries out and dies. Upon examination, he has the body of a young man, but the head of an old man. He set off a trap that aged his head 50 years, thus killing him.
I'm planning to lift rooms like this out of this adventure and insert them into the module I am currently running.
Fourth, the artwork in the book is beautiful. It is all black and white, so you can print out or photocopy pages and mark them up with your own notes.
Why 4 stars instead of 5? There are some places where ranges are given instead of dice rolls (ex: 4-24 gp instead of 4d6 gp). I have noticed some minor spelling errors.
Overall, this is a useful module/adventure for any GM. You can drop it into any campaign and modify it to suit your needs. Send the party in to rescue a missing noblewoman. Send them in then have the Monastery move to a new plane. Send them in to kill them off and start new adventure. The possibilities are too numerous to count!
This was a great issue. I would pay for a magazine this good, and here it is given away for the enjoyment of all!
Here is my review primarily of the stories in the e-zine.
Ice and Darkness: A story of temptation and fall. I loved how this story tied into the next weal/woe segment and then tied into the following adventure segment!
The Three Rimes: As soon as I finished this story last night, I turned to my wife (who was reading World War Z) and told her that she should read this story. It is a bit of a classic fairy story with deals and suchlike, especially a clever hero. I especially enjoyed the extensive use of alliteration since that was in important part of Scandinavian folklore.
The Great Hunt: I want to play this game. It looks like fun. I will be looking at options to download and print the full size board and tokens. (Thanks JonathanRoberts!)
Tallak: Portrait of a Warrior: Good story. Simple. As stated, it is a character portrait of a warrior with a strong moral code. This story is a good counterpart to the next one in line, which brings me to:
The Linnorm's Curse: Well written! Sad! A beautiful story of heroism and loss. Not every campaign should end this way, but some definitely should. It certainly portrays that great things cannot be done without losing something along the way. This story also fits the archetype of the Scandinavian mythology where the hero loses much, if not all, to win. I think that this was the best fiction in the issue. It grabbed and held me at an emotional level.
In Hells Embrace: Part IV: I’ll be honest. I did not read this one, because I want to go back through my back issues of Wayfinder and read them in order. If I can find the time to do that this weekend, I will post a review... here, I guess. I am not sure where else to put it.
Words from Many Roads: I enjoyed the poetry. I need to let this stew a bit more before I comment on it. Poetry is not as east to talk about as fiction is.
Moot: A Folktale: I’ll admit, I read this one out of order last night because it was written by Kevin Andrew Murphy and I have enjoyed everything of his that I have read so far. This was a fun, one page story about the inner workings of gremlin culture as related by the hero from The Three Rimes. It was fun, anyone can be a gremlin.
Ostog’s Song: An entrancing story of an Ulfen hunter entranced by the song of a Nymph. I enjoyed the inevitability in the story. The way that he knew what he SHOULD do, but couldn’t seem to do it. Even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, I still wanted to read to find out HOW it happened. Bravo! The fey are so mischievous! Racy art!!
Champion of the People: The lengths that we will go to in order to protect those we love and those under our protection are tremendous.
This short story is about Valdia, a half-vampire trying to protect the village of Sheol. Sheol is located on the Plane of Shadow, an opposite of the normal world inhabited by undead and other creatures that shun the darkness. She has been hired to rescue an infant kidnapped by ghouls. Unfortunately, she has fallen victim to a plot to separate her from her chosen wards (thus the Pawn and Deception).
Here we have a heroine who is conflicted about her heritage who is trying to fit in with the human population of the town that she has chosen to defend. The townspeople don't trust her because of her heritage. She does not get along with her vampire father, who takes an interest in her activities for undisclosed reasons of his own. There is some fighting and mild horror violence. The words themselves are strictly PG on the MPAA rating scale. However, on film there are scenes that would push it firmly into the realm of PG-13. The story is dark, but not inappropriate for anyone 13 or up. Would definitely be enjoyed by any adult who is a fan of dark fiction (Valdia's father offers to take the infant off her hands, presumably as foodstuffs. No sparkly vampires here).
I rate this a 4 stars story. A bargain at the price.
The sequel to Prince of Wolves takes place in Tian-Xa (think a fantasy China/Japan setting). This book is heavily influenced by Chinese cinema, so you have monks that fly (like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and weapons that act impossibly (at one point cloth is used as a weapon). Fights (lots of these) are described very cinematically. This is a very fun book with some very strange characters in it. If I knew more asian mythology, I might understand them better, but that did not detract from my enjoyment or understanding of the book in any way. Under the MPAA rating system, I would call this book PG. It is appropriate and enjoyable for anyone from teens to adults.
This is the most mature of the Pathfinder Tales thus far (written December 2011). It has been described as Ocean's Eleven in the Abyss (Hell), and this is an accurate description. I would add that there are distinct moments that are reminiscent of the film “Aliens.” It does have the most sexually explicit scene of the Pathfinder Tales so far, but nothing that you wouldn't see in a PG-13 film (that was trying to skirt just shy of R). The biggest complaint from reviewers on this book is that it is written in the present tense. I felt that this enhanced the story, but some found it distracting. Under the MPAA system, I rate the book a PG-13 almost R.
This is my favorite book of the Pathfinder Tales so far. It earns a solid PG under the MPAA rating system. This book was a fun quest. As I read it, I felt like I was running through an adventure. There are some mature themes in it (racism, love/loss, violence, death, quest for power), but nothing that you wouldn't find in any novel read in a Jr High/High School English class. This book has a very strong female lead. I would rate this as a Teen+ book, highly enjoyable to all ages above 13.
A classic tale of the hero setting out to rescue the fair maiden in distress. This book earns a PG MPAA rating from me. I would not think twice about giving it to a Jr. High reader. This book has a very strong female lead and a clueless male lead. There is definitely a "Coming of Age" theme to the book. I was impressed with how magic was described in the book. It holds true to the RPG ruleset of Pathfinder without requiring that you know the rules or how they work. It was a fun read. I would rate this as a Teen+ book, highly enjoyable to all ages above 13.
Written by "fan favorite" Dave Gross, you are introduced to a half elf Pathfinder and his Teifling bodyguard. The book takes place in Ustalav, a Gothic Horror setting. As you might guess from the title, werewolves feature fairly prominently in the story. I would rate this as a Teen+ book, highly enjoyable to all ages above 13. It's a PG-13 under the MPAA.
I ran this adventure as a one off on our normal gaming night. Two of my players couldn't make it, so the rest of us had Goblin hilarity for the evening.
One of the players is brand new to Pathfinder. This is the first RPG he has ever played. This was a hilarious, rip-roaring fun introduction for him! Most of the damage the players took was from each other Three Stooges style.
Loved the module. My players now want more Goblin goodness!
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