MisterSlanky's page

In case it's not clear from the description, this is not a subset of the critters present in the Pathfinder Bestiary, it is a book of other critters that are not found anywhere else (though they may as time goes on).

For the grand total of $5, you get a bunch of fun creatures that have received the Pathfinder treatment and could find a spot in any dungeon. If you liked the Bestiary and want a little more, I highly suggest this product. Personally it's a great price-point for a great product.

I'll be honest, I don't like the map packs. The flip mats work well enough, but the map packs wind up getting scattered around the gaming table and lost in the interim between games. I understand the product in concept, but I've never found them terribly useful in practice.

This map pack though got my hearty thumb's up! What I like about it is that it's modular and not necessarily defined by its ability to form a complete map by itself. I've always felt that the downfall of the map packs was how static they were, and with the possible exception of the "campsites" pack, an appropriate time to use them never seemed to come up. This pack though has found uses during exciting wagon chases when one does not want to redraw moving wagon and its horses as they gain ground, lose ground, and move past important landmarks or terrain.

If Paizo puts out more packs like this, I might just become more interested in the product.

I can see where some people might enjoy the map packs. The art is good and the concept is solid, but (with a couple of exceptions) they just aren't for me.

The tile pack comes with a number of tiles that line up via arrows. The tiles do not interlock, which means one table bump or cat adventure means your map will get separated and look like garbage. With some tile sets this can work, but with others (especially those that form large rooms or builds) it doesn't seem to work.

Personally I'd rather use my gaming paper or flip mats to draw out my tavern, but that's just me.

I saw Gaming Paper for the first time at Gen Con this year and I scoffed at the idea. Why bother buying something designed to be thrown out when I have my awesome battlemats? A few nights ago I sat down for the first time ready to pre-draw some maps for an up and coming campaign I'm running and I'm willing to admit, my initial impressions were flat out wrong.

Gaming paper works exactly as advertised. First of all, it lies completely flat on the table after being rolled out (from what their website claims, this is due to the clay coating on the paper). Secondly, the paper took colored Sharpie markers with absolutely no bleed-through or smudging. My maps looked better than anything I've ever done to date simply because I could really take my time, make it look good, and know it's not going to wipe away the first time a player tries to move his mini. A couple of cuts later I rolled the maps back up, stuck them in a poster tube and they were ready to go for the gaming session.

I have to admit, like the creators of Gaming Paper claim, it's not that it's designed to replace the battlemat, but it's intended to be used as another tool in the gaming toolbox. I can pre-draw maps I plan on using a few times over in greater detail than I can on a battlemat, it seems to be durable enough to be used over and over, and it's really not that expensive all things considered. I'll still use the battlemat for quick and dirty encounters, and I like my Paizo flip-mats when appropriate, but this stuff has a place at my gaming table anyday.

(Oh, and I can wrap up presents for gaming friends in it for fun).

I've always been a sucker for books covering the deities of gaming worlds, and Paizo hasn't disappointed (yet again).

This book is very well illustrated and contains a lot of solid information to help both GMs and players alike in understanding the Gods of the Pathfinder world. If you're planning on using the core rules and aren't planning on developing your own pantheon, I'd strongly suggest picking this one up. The only sicking point I had for the book was that the less popular deities (specifically racial deities and Besmara) didn't get nearly as many words as they deserved.

The content of this book really is five-star material, but I dropped it to four simply because if you're running homebrew or any of the other major pre-developed worlds out there, the materials contained within won't be a whole lot of extra use to your campaign.

I bought Classic Monsters Revisited on the high recommendations it had been getting here. I wasn't disappointed.

Anybody looking for a game book which details rules, feats, powers, equipment, and "crunch" regarding classics such as Bugbears, Orcs, Gnolls, Goblins, and others turn away, because this book contains little to none. What the book does have is flavor dripping from its pages in what can only be described as one of the best "fluff" books on monster ecologies ever written.

I can't say much beyond what's already been said other than this:

If you're looking for a unique way to present older creatures which may have worn out some of their appeal other than that of canon fodder, look no further. You'll look at everything in slightly new light (and will never look at Goblins the same way again) and I can guarantee you'll WANT your group to meet up with your goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins just for the role-playing opportunities.

A friend of mine got this at GenCon 2007 and it has become an important fixture for our D&D gaming table. The pad is well made, and the magnets are strong enough (but not too strong) to easily manage initiative without any issues.

Our only complaint is that the tags too easily wipe clean while in use (with wet erase certainly, dry erase absolutely).

After only 3 years of selling D&D 3.5, Wizards of the Coast has delivered the new edition of 4E with much fanfare, rejoicing, and for some, sorrow. Unfortunately, in their effort to deliver an "upgrade" to the system, they have turned D&D into an action movie; all special effects but no soul. Much like a Michael Bay movie, the bright flash of the system rules the show, not the creative power of the players. Gone are the nearly limitless possibilities of character creation, instead replaced with a collection of "powers" for all classes, designed with the specific intent to make everybody "special" and "powerful" from the get-go. Characters lose a lot of their uniqueness, and the system rewards a very cut-and-dry boardgame style of play, instead of the free-form design of the previous editions. In playing the game I felt like all the fun had been sucked out of the room to be replaced with something foreign and frankly not enjoyable.

Sure, the game looks great, but behind that glossy cover and bright pictures is a product of over engineering and unneeded changes to a system that may have had its flaws, but did not deserve this kind of treatment. The very nature of how the game was released, and the extent of the changes made only leaves a further sour taste in my mouth and a response of "what's the point, why not just continue to play what I enjoy and save my money to spend on Paizo products!"

While my complains of the game are extraordinary negative, they all revolve around the fact that this is not D&D - it is a fancy board game with $100 of manuals that (according to WotC) will be upgraded regularly with further expansion packs...I mean splatbooks for everything from the missing races, the further "powers". I really wanted to like 4E, I went to my first 4E experience with a level of excitement I'd not had while gaming in years. I left feeling like somebody kicked my dog. If the future of gaming is really here with 4E, I'd rather find a time-machine.