The following is a short list of highlights I would like to add to EndZeitGeist's review below. Please consider reading his review first.
This is a version 2.0 of the original products. Changes include, but are not limited to: layout issues, typos, a new section was added (Concluding the Adventure). Generally, the product looks much better and contains quite a few improvements. Therefore, if for some reason you were hesitant to give it a try, I would say this is something you really want to give a shot.
This is not an adventure, at least not in a conventional sense. The product is a list of five very challenging encounters, which require very creative thinking to get through them. By themselves, Challenge Ratings are beyond capability of your recommended party. However under Coliseum Morpheuon setting rules, everyone, including lowly fighters, can use powerful creation magic - all you need to do is to gamble with character's aspirations, dreams and hopes. The rules for Dream Burning are not included however (not in full, but sufficiently complete to extrapolate), so GMs are strongly recommended to either adapt the adventure a bit or brief the players (and train them in the use of) on how to escape seemingly impossible odds.
Statblocks are very elaborate, easily on the par with Faces... series. The product is heartily recommended to anyone who needs 18+ CRs in their game. That said, one really needs to read thoroughly to grasp creature's strong sides.
The adventure, thanks to encounters being separate, can be dissasembled and plugged into larger framework. It works best with Planescape, Coliseum Morpheuon or any Dream plane related setting. Personally, I would say that these encounters should be used as end-story devices. They are pretty hermetic, and most of them are going to cost lives.
My verdict: Initially I went with 2.5 stars for version 1.0.
Version 2.0 easily nets 4 stars. The fifth star should be awarded only if the tea-party sits well with you in otherwise conventional if twisted fantasy genre.
So, 4 stars (from me), 5 if you don't mind Mad Hatter paying a visit to your party.
(I have all but respect for Lewis Carrol and Jabberwocks, I do feel that lifting stuff from his books, especially the encounters, is a tad overused)
#10 This is CR 20 book. It's a small Chaotic Evil construct with ability to bring forth horrors from its pages. It can also swallow human-sized readers. See page 9 for more details.
#9 The lowest CR creature is a bookworm at 1/8, while the highest, at CR 39, is Lucifer. Oh, and in between you have 749 other creatures.
#8 The creatures, and their art, were drawn from Tomes of Horrors published over the years by Necromancer Games. That means that creature art was reused and some creatures do not follow Pathfinder guidelines as to their CR or abilities ("some" as in "found only two wonky specimens"). The former is a non-issue for me (I do not own previous editions), the latter is rare to the point of non-existent, and, as a GM, I tend to read statblocks so I can deal with any potential issues on the fly.
As an anecdote - what was the second monster book of d20, the third edition of our favorite game? According to Amazon, Monster Manual was released on 1st of October, 2000, and Creature Collection came out on the Oct 3rd, 2000.
The authors of CC: Clark Peterson and Bill Webb. Sounds familiar? Yep, founders of Necromancer Games and producers of Tome of Horror series.
For more on their current endeavors: Frog God Games (Bill Webb), Legendary Games (Clark Peterson).
Digression: Bill, and Clark, if I ever meet you in person, I'll make you sign this Creature Collection of mine. Or at least strongly entreat you to do so.
#7 The book has been built to last. Cover and binding appear to be extremely durable. The pages themselves are delicate.
#6 The majority of creatures presented are horrors. That is, they are quite impossible to reason with. Unfortunately, for the players, those capable of business interactions, are most likely to be demons, devils or fey. Exceptions are rare.
#5 The PDF you get along with the book allows for very user friendly experience. The bookmarks are organized as follows:
- Cover
- Credits
- Table of Contents
- Introduction by Greg A. Vaughan
- Forward by James Jacobs
- The Tome of Horrors Complete
- - (alphabetical listing of, well, letters)
- - - (noun, adjective noun)
- Appendix A: Animals
- Appendix B: Templates
- Appendix C: Hazards
- Appendix D: Variant Snake Venoms
- Appendix E: N'gathau
- Appendix F: Planes of Existence
- Appendix G: New Feats and Subtypes
- Appendix H: Monster by Type and CR
- Legal Appendix
- Back Cover
#4 N'gathau? Have you heard about Hellraiser? And since we're talking about movie inspirations - watch Ravenous, by Antonia Bird. The template is to be found in Appendix B, page 732.
#3 Free stuff to complement the book:
- Lairs: PDF, 127 pages of sample lairs and encounters. System independent.
- Monsters by terrain: PDF, pretty self-explanatory and very useful.
#2 Think that the Tome of Horrors is going to be the biggest book of the d20 market? Slumbering Tsar hardcover is likely to be even bigger. Also by Frog God Games:
- The Slumbering Tsar Saga, a sandbox adventure set in killing fields.
Since we're talking about Frog God Games essentials, you may want to preorder
- TOAD, The Tome of Adventure Design (PDF available now, the book later) - 308 pages of tables for random stuff, like these: Ship Reputations (d100), Ship Cargo (d100) and Unusual Pirates (d100). The selling point? My players hit 14th level. They like to travel a lot... this book is going to be my adventure-in-a-bottle answer to their Wind-Walk escapades.
#1 The limited version book came with an autograph of Bill Webb. Thank you for such a personal touch. For more personal touches:
- Tsathogga, The Frog God, CR 30, page 190
- Gargax the Mighty, Master of the Dungeon Dragons, Great Wyrm Dungeon Dragon (Draco Carcer Dominus), CR 17, page 228
From Gargax entry:
"Watching adventurers explore its catacomb is the only real treasure a dungeon dragon desires."
Verdict: It's over nine thousaaaaand... ahem, 5 stars.
This is 88-pages-long book containing 9 places to visit, 32 statblocks (a little more, if one were to count familiars) of NPCs and monsters living there, unique related magic items and feats, simple plot hooks, quite lengthy story-like accounts by nameless narrator, floor plans with obligatory grid and several tables for random effects.
Credits go to Rob Manning, Richard Biggs Jr, T. H. Gulliver, Miranda N. Russel, Jonathan McAnulty, Steven D. Russell, Mark Gedak, Shane O'Conner and Benjamin Bruck.
My bias: I needed a few good NPCs and weird places quickly to fill empty spaces in somewhat derailed campaign. The formula of the book fit it perfectly - bare data, skimpy outline and complete write-ups of colorful antagonists.
Overall score is 4/5, with a few brilliant ideas and a few problems to balance it out.
Game Masters are advised to exercise caution when dealing with creatures of Challenge Rating 12 or more, as most of them are prone to vagaries of chance and circumstance (or, to put it simply: their CR may not be properly reflecting their level of ability).
Warning! Spoilers below this line!
IMPRESSIONS
NPCs. Aside from a few problematic CRs, they are extremely portable and each one of them comes with a great background. They are far from being generic, and most of them pack a mean secret.
The particular highlights include Chaotic Evil civil and relatively safe to interact with antagonists. Sadly, to many designers CE alignment is tantamount to Jack the Ripper, while these guys (and gals) make for very good dicourse partners. The awards for most amiable personality go to elder fiend with aspiration to godhood and poisoner-bartender-artist of Rogue's Gallery.
The downsides include Mother Sharlene Murrel and Brother Broomore. While both likable and both with dark secrets, they fall to common disease known as "concept over crunch". In short, in the world where high magic rules supreme, and guys with detect evil can spot you from 60 feet, you do not dare to rise over 5th level without something to hide your nasty side in a civilized environment. And if you do, you make damn sure that random party of adventurers will not spoil your day.
Sadly, these NPCs are fine, very fine even, but they just don't fit in vanilla D20.
Introductions and maps. Their role is to provide is with a glimpse of location concept and layout. They are not sufficient to fully flesh the place, but they are great for building gossips or (for PDF versions) printing handouts for combat maps. I wasn't particularly impressed with lack of descriptions, yet the maps are usable. The introductions are a mixed case of good story and mood-killing problems. You don't get any explanations there - and with secrets being few and vague, you are to make up your own explanations as to, for example, how the enormous mimic is so cooperative or why chronological paradox hasn't attracted vultures, pardon, enterprising wizards to examine it.
Magic items, feats and miscellaneous items. For the most part ingenious (or decent), however recommended for GM use only. For example, implications of delayed super poisons would be severe in any game. Suffice to say it that nasty things can happens to PCs, and GMs should tread lightly here - the game is supposed to allow players to be heroes, and if the heroes are all too easy to kill, the main paradigm of the game breaks.
Random tables. In some places short narrative and bland maps are enhanced by random tables. Used properly this aid can provide for more interesting game. Of particular note is "Strange Flora", a nifty way to intimidate your players.
PLACES
Bedlam Asylum: great ideas marred by maps, heavy handed handling of secrets and susceptibility to divination spells and administrative action. 2/5 if used for d20, probably 4/5 if imported into low-magic system. There is also an NPC with abilty to increase save of a DC by 7 twice per day.
Burial Vaults of House Blackwood: disjointed. It's hard to get a grip on concept without reading it thorougly. At least one statblock is very controversial (underequipped fighters don't get to use high CR, much less full CR), and another one, a paladin, is completely out of place. However, there is also a great antagonist presented there, good enough to warrant 3/5 despite several weird errors in descriptions (where do these shadow demons are supposed to come from?).
Clockwork Tower: I'm biased against time-based magic in d20. It's all too easy to produce paradoxes or provide someone with ultimate weapon. Having said this, this location is likely to provide for entertaining exploration of its mysteries, as long as a GM is willing to add to rather skimpy content. Solid 4/5.
Intimate Shape Festhall: Beautiful concept with several critical items missing. The underlying themes, suffrage, equality and sex, sold the idea immediately to me. I would love to give it full 5/5 if some mysteries were revealed. The mimic thing especially. As it is, 4.5/5 seems appropriate.
Kavit M Tor's Emporium of Collectible Curiosities: Bad pun does not make for good first impression. Reputation and respectability are easy to lose, and finally, detect magic, identify and so on are at disposal of high level adventurers. Unless greedy merchants knows how to avoid detect thoughts, can bluff his way out of high sense motive checks, he is unlikely to stay in business. Nice items, though. 3.5/5.
Lorn's Entrepot (Abandoned Warehouse): chaotic in composition, with nice statblocks. Needs quite a lot of development to turn this game of lowly thugs into something more than a ruin with strong antagonist. 3/5.
The Next Inn: The only location cosisting of introduction and maps. Very short and mysterious, could have been made into the only 'good' location. Not enough to justify more than 3.5.
The Rogue's Gallery Tavern: The gem. It's something most of GMs is going to be able to use. Great NPCs are not the only strong points - the poisons, my <deity>, the poisons, and drinks, lovely, dangerous and providing wonderful alternative to overused geas spells. 5/5. Oh, and second highest CR creature in the book.
Voell's Garden: The other gem. It's not just any horror, it's lovecraftian horror. With highest CR and nasty surprise, the CR is entirely justified as long as the PCs are surprised. It's also going to be a TPK unless the players are very careful. The NPCs are nothing special, well, aside from certain unscrupulous entrepreneur, but the secret and the nastiness of the secret is something every GM is going to love. And the shadow grass side-effect is just an icing on the cake. 5/5.
CONCLUSIONS
Were I to use simply a page count, the overall rating would be a little below 4/5, but with three locations just begging to be used, I feel that 4/5 (or a little more) is justified.
Heartily recommended, as even the weaker parts contain usable bits.
Disclaimer: The review is based on my perceived production value for a GM not familiar with Oathbound setting. Otherwise, one is strongly encouraged consider the book to be a collector's item with rating of 4.5 to 5 stars.
The following review is intended to raise visibility of Oathbound campaign setting. It contains spoilers and should be read with care by prospective players.
(Spoilers! Final warning!)
THE PREMISE
Your character died and instead of going to afterlife, they got sent to inescapable prison with a chance get rich, get weird or, most likely, die again trying. However, before you die, you are going to see epic things, experience vast and wonderfully rich world and partake in one of ultimately futile attempt to change destiny through war, epic quest or millenia-spanning intrigue.
Oathbound is a vast setting. It spans millions of years of a world much bigger than Earth. It has superpowerful immortals (millions of years...), 1:1 scale diorama realms (i.e. artificially made models made millions of years ago) and civilizations living on a pile of ruins of previous civilizations (at least hundreds of thousands of years). Amidst other things it has a half-a-mile high city built on a pile of rubble (hundreds of thousands of years...) and perpetually dark cavity in the ground of the size of a large continent, into which oceans fall: the Eclipse.
THE BOOK
Oathbound is back with style. The full color book is an account of super-epic ex-power-turned-tourist revisiting domain of Eclipse. As per traditional presentation of Oathbound realm, you get an introduction, an overview of general realm layout followed by more specific entries on chief points of interest, followed by cast of characters, pieces of random stories of Eclipse denizens and selection of factual information (items, generic NPCs).
The word “traditional” is to be taken quite liberally – my experience with Oathbound is limited to 3.x days, with basic Oathbound book and the Wilds.
While entertaining, the book suffers from two major presentation issues. The first one is that of font choices. Some parts of the book written in character tend to use very small handwritten fonts against vividly colored backgrounds. While the pages look nice, the act of reading become quite a choir, and so I skipped the affected content.
The latter issue is that the book is very general. There is no adventure, no story seeds nor detailed specific NPCs – picking the book and running a story is not an option.
THE CRUNCH
A few monster stablocks and advanced NPCs, several spells and the end boss. New races (some already present in other Oathbound publications). New basic and prestige classes. And new evolutions/adaptations.
The evolutions and adaptations are still very problematic – while conceptually simple – trade level-up experience for a new ability – they break CR system. Your characters grow horizontally in terms of power while remaining at the same level. Additionally, since some powers are not combat oriented, adjudicating creature's CR is even harder. Just like under 3.x edition of Oathbound.
GAMEMASTERING IN OATHBOUND
Let me get the most important issue of my chest first – Oathbound does not play nice with d20 system. The evolutions and adaptations are the most obvious problem here, however it gets more profound once you dive deeper into the setting. For example, many important NPCs are millenia old. Correction: tens of thousands of years old. With immortals in charge running their business for millions of years. That's why I would find their levels to be higher, much, much higher.
Speaking of millenia, how come that the civilizations of Oathbound are so primitive? And if the gods cannot properly access the world of Oathbound, who grants spells to clerics?
Personally, as the book is light on mechanics I would recommend using any streamlined and pulpy system like: Savage Worlds, core World of Darkness/Exalted or FATE, or even Castle Falkenstein. We have used Arcana Evolved but, for the reasons listed above, had problems with maintaining our suspension of disbelief.
All these issues can be worked around with sufficient tweaking or using system allowing for greater amount of scaling.
The other problem for game masters – the book is too vague, too general to use straight away. Once you read it, you have a grasp of various cultures, entities and sources of large scale conflict. You, as a GM, need to provide NPCs, adventures, stories, maps... basically, you need to create PC level information from the scratch. It's not a great problem – we, game masters, are a creative bunch who enjoy coming up with things. It's just that for such a big book it is something of a let down.
Oathbound is epic at every level. The wars span continents, the cataclysms rend nations and history goes back hundreds of thousand of years. Always start big, and from there progress to bigger. Remember, that the ultimate goal of any PC in this setting will be tackling tricky issues of ascension to godhood... and then trying to gain freedom.
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS
I realize that my vision is unlikely to reflect that of setting authors. However, if I were to develop a book for Oathbound, I would made damn sure that adoption of the setting would be a lot easier. To achieve this, I would:
- rid of doom and gloom perspective. The PCs should be freely able to leave the world of Oathbound, however the loss of Oathbound powers and possible other persistent penalties (“Joe, your characters is no longer immortal evolved vampire.”) should be sufficient to entice them to come back.
- provide information at PC levels. Specific NPCs with statblocks, adventure seeds, maybe a few simple adventures, or, using an excellent idea from Savage Worlds – provide a plot point setting. Describe a single default city in details sufficient to run it. Add statblocks for a few villains and potential allies. Add map for a few locales worth adventuring (no data, just a map and short description).
no handwritten fonts. Adhere to minimum size of 8pts.
- either publish simplified rules for epic creature advancement or avoid statting epic creatures altogether. As published, the Feathered guys (or ancients, or vampires) are not appropriate.
- offer evolutions and adaptations at preset levels to everyone for free. Add guidelines on what kind of power should be right and when. My opinion here is that all combat abilities should require standard action to use (thus precluding combining them with spells and attacks), swift action to maintain. Noncombat abilities should follow Wizard utility spells with regard to their power.
- explain the deal with divine spells.
- do not offer new classes or prestige classes. Archetypes are more convenient and it is harder to break their balance.
VERDICT
My favorite 3.x settings are Scarred Lands, Ptolus and Oathbound. Of these three, I could not run the last one because it does not mesh well with the other two, but friendy GM ran it for us using Arcana Unearthed (and then Evolved) rules, and we had a blast.
It feels terrific to see it again after all these years, and there is a chance, I'll reacquaint myself again with the world.
Pathways #1 is a free e-zine by Rite Publishing's Steven D. Russel and David Paul. The mission statement for the publication is to (quoting David Paul) "bring [...] industry interviews, sneak peeks from the writers, designers and developers themselves, previews of material that's just around the corner from its release date, original articles from freelancers and more."
The e-zine numbers 56 pages, of which 12 are full page ads, 40 contain articles, leaving just 4 for cover, table of contents, obligatory license and short editorial. The PDF comes with 16 bookmarks for easier navigation.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Fine articles, great art and news make for good stuff.
The only bad thing is that the large amount of art results in page flipping. Fortunately, the bookmarks lessen the impact of this issue.
The ugly aspects... well, I'm not really sold on Black Chancery font used for headers, there are some small inconsistencies in layouts. Minor stuff, and general improvement trend in overall quality continues.
THE HIGHLIGHTS
Here is a list of items which really caught my attention:
1. The cover. The visuals hit like a hammer. And in a good way. The red guy gets reused for your viewing pleasure on page 11.
2. The ad for Wanted: Makesh. Stylish.
3. Pages 10 to 13: yet another complicated stablock NPC. Rite Publishing guys should be awarded renown points for tackling such creatures.
4. Pages 19 to 21: Eyes of Sin. Diminutive construct eye replacements which control their owners.
5. Pages 30 to 49: Twenty questions to 3rd party publishers. Lovely interview. Features the following folks:
- Bill Webb, Frog God Games
- Bret Boyd, Tricky Owlbear Publishing
- Creighton Broadhurst, Raging Swan Press
- Dale McCoy, Jon Brazer Enterprises
- Jeremy Smith, Dreamscarred Press
- Louis Porter Jr., Louis Porter Jr. Design
- Mario Barbati, 0one games
- Mark Gedak, Purple Duck Games
- Owen K.C. Stephens, Super Genius Games
- Robert Thomson, 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming
- Steve Russell, Rite Publishing
- Wolfgang Baur, Open Design (minor nitpick: Wolfgang was beheaded a bit)
6. Pages 51 to 54: Top 10 of 2010 by Thilo "Endzeitgeist" Graf and Dark Mistress. Two separate lists by most prolific reviewers of Pathfinder products. While it would inconceivable for me to agree with every choice (Tales of Old Margreve not within top ten? Harrrumph! Come on, Thilo, you can do better than this. And, why so many item catalogs in top ten? Adventuring is not about shopping, Dark Mistress), this made me browse Paizo's shop immediately.
The product contains a two-page character sheet with fillable fields. If you put your character information, you can save it under a new name to preserve data thus creating a record folio with all your characters.
The good things
There is no data verification. You can built crazy characters without worrying about some obscure rule not being supported.
The sheet is clean and concise.
The tabbing order (i.e. the order you go from field to field) is correct (TAB to go forward, SHIFT+TAB to go backward, SPACE to mark a checkbox).
It works under Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader.
To create permanent copies, you can print it (to PDF use PDFCreator or DoPDF).
The areas which could be improved
Support for characters with extensive list of special abilities or spells (i.e. a separate optional page with such information would be handy) - higher level characters will run out of space.
There is no data verification. Some less rules savvy GMs would probably appreciate autocalculation of bonuses. As a matter of fact, the autocalculation of bonuses could speed up character creation.
Large black backgrounds for certain headers make for waste of toner. Large bold print with no black box outline would entirely suffice.
Ideas for new products of similar type
Statblock form.
Party cheat sheet (i.e. short listing of all PCs with most important data: hitpoints, perception, stealth, saves, initiative score, space for GM notes).
Shared loot sheet (kept by players).
Chronicle sheet (for GMs to keep track of campaign events).
Overall, stellar product. I'm going to share it with my party in order to help them do the accounting.
This is editable PDF sheet many people have been asking for.
The book is 30 centimeters off to my right. The passion contained within its pages burns my fingers as I type these words... still, let the numbers come first:
111 pages total.
2 pages dedicated to introductory tale, 14.5 to the setting, 3.5 to magic, 12 to bestiary, 75 pages to adventures, 1 to license plus 3 at the very beginning of the book (detailed table of contents included).
(I should have mentioned that I still haven't digested the book fully)
This is not d20 book. This is not a book about a cool place full of ruins to explore, monsters to vanquish and quests to do.
It's more like a book of Grimm fairy tales (adult version) with stats and some combat conveniently stapled to add a little action.
(want to get a good feel of atmosphere? get web compilation of familiar creatures wearing Margreve masks)
The premise is that there is a self-contained ecosystem of fairy tale creatures (and nightmares). The elements of the system interact with each other according to lovely canon of fey beings straight from Grimm's Frog Prince. In other words, while it is pathfinderized d20, it does not look like it.
Here is a little bit (spoiler factor - almost nil):
The Spider Crone donned her ivy crown of prophecy, and her face paled. The crown never lied. Today, she would die.
The endearing part is that while protagonists of tales featured in adventures are quite likely to be antiheroic at best, PCs are quite likely to enjoy social interaction (instead of resorting to violence), and thus become a part of Margreve unique community.
(non-combat, or rather, interaction with the unknown instead of simple squish-this-deliver-that-loot, is one of key selling points for me)
There are certain things I would really like to be included in a sequel. Things like content for characters beyond 10th level. Or Margreve-like treatment of a kingdom. Here is a toast to the next book.
(note to Tim Connors: I don't really know where did you get her name, but "jedza" does not sound too well in Polish, as it literally means "old hag with a wicked tongue", or "offensive and quarrelsome woman", definitely not a name one would like to have)
The bottom line is that it is worth getting the book. It's a product full of refreshing inspiration, and while not immediately usable due to highly specific concepts [1], it can bring a lot of wonder into your campaign.
Regards,
Ruemere
[1] Just like Ravenloft and Dark Sun are not your typical fantasy worlds, Margreve presents a different genre. Mechanics are the same, but paradigm of the system is quite different. Oh, and it's very, very good.
This is a very loose framework into which a GM may insert quite a lot of additional adventuring.
Potential issues (heavy spoilers):
Spoiler:
- sphinx riddle (can make the sand really blind eyes see? why would you use this riddle in a middle of sandy terrain?)
- assumption on sentient beings keeping Kakishon together is only so-so (unless one rules all intelligent semi-natives to be non-sentient)
- breaking Kakishon may not sit well with Good characters (quite a lot of deaths will be involved)
- main antagonist ambition to just rule over several colleagues in prison is so-so
- nigh-epic guy unable to squash low level opposition for several centuries is so-so
GMs are strongly advised to work around these... especially if the players like to ask questions.
The issues are unlikely to affect the flow of adventure for most parties, so they do not impact the rating. However, if your players are wont to ask questions, do some work on your own before running this scenario.
Interesting concepts, several controversial assumptions.
Warning! Heavy spoilers ahead!
Spoiler:
For example: fire traps in a dungeon located on a plane of fire (why would an efreet assume potential thieves to be vulnerable to fire?), riddle which helps victims escape (do efreets have a sense of fair play? - in theory, since the description is bugged... or maybe the clue to the riddle is a meta-trap for meta-gaming players?), insta-kill trap (too bad, it does not work on creatures immune to fire) and so on.
In short, GMs should be ready to do some fast talking (or make some changes before running this scenario).
Just read the main adventure and, while some of the ideas are very promising, the adventure itself is full of problems. It would have been a good idea for adventure editor to read it, ask several questions and force adventure's author to ponder them.
If your players tend to ask questions, GMs should be ready to provide their own explanations, since those found in the adventure are seriously lacking.
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