This is a great product! A pleasure to read, the art and maps are excellent, and boy-oh-boy could a group have some FUN playing this one on a Friday night.
The two previous reviews are comprehensive, so I'll try to touch upon some of the more interesting and unique features of the product - above and beyond providing a very playable evil campaign - that caught my attention.
Fire Mountain Games has put a good amount of thought into building evil characters - providing a list of crimes with associated trait benefits to help players build out backgrounds. The author deftly avoided including more controversial crimes, which I took as just one of the many ways to keep the adventure from falling into the pitfalls of an evil campaign.
The adventure goals are focused and there would likely be negative reprecussions to acheiving those goals if the players engaged in random (i.e. chaotic) acts of evil. Again, this seems to be intentional to help keep the campaign from falling into pitfalls. Don't worry - you can still get your evil on.
The NPCs are interesting (both the Good and the Evil) and it would be fun to run as a GM and they provide for lots of great role-playing opportunities.
In fact, the role-playing opportunities this campaign provides are one of, if not the most attractive features from my perspective. Imagine not having to "fake your way" into a group of evil humanoids. Instead, you are welcomed with open arms! And maybe a dagger to the back, but well ummm, you're a part of the family now!
The story-line has lots of great plot hooks for the future adventures, and there are several opportunities to develop arch-enemies.
The gazetteer was a fun read and there are lots of opportunities to develop side adventures if you're so inclined. The campaign synopsis for the next 5(!) books is really compelling. So many good monsters, so little time to kill them!
A couple of requests:
1)It would be nice to see some type of reputation mechanic. The path goes to level 20 and that is some serious badness. As a player it would be fun to leverage that reputation to scare the begezzus out of people. Just saying.
2)More art. Specifically, maybe a few player character builds. Evil heavy-metal fighter with spikes, etc - you get the point. Necromancer. Let the players get in touch with their inner-evil. Ok - maybe their outer-evil.
Overall a great start for an evil campaign and for a new company. Well done.
