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It's April in May in the Land of Nod - took a little extra time to get this baby out. NOD is written with Swords and Wizardry (and, in this case, Ruins and Ronin) in mind, but players of more modern systems might find some useful ideas in the hex crawls, city crawls and dungeon adventures that appear. Issues 1 and 6 are available for free at my blog (see below).

NOD 8
Enter the land of the Dragon Chans! This issue presents a sandbox hex crawl inspired by the folklore and literature of Asia, as well as a new class, the wushen, options for warriors, many new monsters and a pantheon based on Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana. 104 pages.

Articles in this one ...

A Bevy of Bujin - options for customizing the bujin class

The Wushen - a sohei sub-class for Ruins and Ronin

Land of the Dragon Chans - the hex crawl, Asia-style

Monsters of Mu-Pan - 42 new monsters for your favorite old school game

Gods of Mu-Pan - a pantheon based on Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana

Print version is $10 (apparently Lulu failed its save vs. inflation)

E-Book is $3.50

Available at http://stores.lulu.com/jmstater

- and you can find more at http://matt-landofnod.blogspot.com/

So, I and seven players began playtesting the Alpha 1.1 rules as written using the Savage Tide adventure path.

For character creation I used the Alpha rules exclusively. We used a 28-point buy for ability scores and average gp for each class to purchase equipment. For hit points, I tried the Constitution score + max hp method. I allowed feats from the Player's Handbook, the Pathfinder Alpha and the Savage Tide Player's Guide.

In our first session we dealt with character generation and got through the first encounter. The party consists of two human fighters, a half-orc fighter, a human rogue, an elf rogue, an elf cleric and a half-elf wizard.

Here are my initial impressions:

Backwards Compatability: Seemed high to me. It was easy to calculate the monsters' CMB in my head, and there didn't seem to be a need to update the monsters' skills.

Combat Maneuvers: Many were tried in the first combat. One guy has a fighter who is focusing on the spiked chain; he made several trip attacks. Another player used a grapple. They were as quick to resolve as normal attacks, and we so far have not encountered a flaw in these rules.

Skills: No issue with the skills, but at 1st level that's not surprising.

Other than that, the only issues we had with the game were more related to d20 in general (we usually play C&C these days). The players seem to be pleased with their characters and the options provided.

When/if I get observations from the players, I will share them.