Gailbraithe's page

I picked this up for a Kingmaker campaign I'm running. It collects all of the rules from Kingmaker for exploration, kingdom building and mass combat in one place. While I have not taken the time to do side by side comparisons, all of these rules systems seem to be expanded and the expanded material blends seamlessly with the original material.

The absolute best part of this book is it can be easily shared with players as a reference work while performing kingdom maintenance without making the adventure and gm-eyes only sections of the Kingmaker Adventure Path books easily accessible to players. For that reason alone I consider this book money well spent and an absolute essential for any GM running a Kingmaker campaign.

I have the full set of Alea Magnetic Markers, and use them in my game. They are quite cool, and really do make the game easier to run by making it easier to track conditions. The plain white markers are also of great use in keeping track of which orc is which.

But they do have their flaws. The biggest issue is the tendency of stacks of markers to attract or repel each other. So if you have a tightly clustered group of creatures each with a marker or two under it, they will shift position everytime you move one of them. Sometimes they will slide out of position, stick together, and otherwise cause problems.

When I saw this in the store, my first thought was "That makes sense." When I got it home and opened it up, I was stunned. What was inside wasn't just good, it was brilliant. Each campsite consists of two 5 x 8 tiles, for a total area of 10 x 8. The terrain variety covers almost every possible scenario, and the campsites are just about the perfect size for ambushes and pitched battles in the middle of the night. A near perfect product.

Not much to say that hasn't been said, though it's worth noting that fans of Howard will especially appreciate this book as it's one of his few novellas, and with the expanded length he delves deeper into the philosophy that motivates his characters and drives his stories. The plaintive ruminations of a man trapped in a time too civilized for his spirit can be heard rumbling throughout Howard's oeuvre, but here he lays out all his cards and makes explicit the thoughts that drive his writings. Fascinating stuff from the grandfather of modern fantasy.

It's like the author of the Book of Kells redesigned the Tarot after spending a few days in the company of Timothy Leary and Gary Gygax.

I've owned a lot of gimmicky gaming related card decks over the years. This is the only one that was actually cool.

This is a heavy, solid miniature, built to 28mm scale, with a lot of personality. I painted mine in browns and oranges to get an autumn camo look, and he's spectacular. This mini requires some easy assembly, and is pretty easy to paint.

This is a great figure for creating nobleman adventurers, dashing rakes, and the like. Very good details, strong dynamic pose, and easy to modify. I removed the dagger hand and replaced it with a spell-casting hand from a sorceress figure and use this figure for my beguiler Benoit. Quite excellent.

This figure has a really nice pose and excellent detail, but is noticeably out of scale with other Reaper minis. Reaper seems to be slowly but steadily increasing the size of their figures, transitioning from 25mm to 28mm, but this figure is too much. It's scaled to 30mm at least, and towers over other figures.

I got this figure as a part of one of the Complete Encounters sets, painted him up, and use him as thug, guard, slaver, big dumb slob in a barfight, whatever. He's multi-talented! And my players think he's hilarious. Definitely one of my favorites.