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Into the Wyrd and Wild Revised Edition
Publisher: Wet Ink Games
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/09/2022 16:51:52

This is one of the single best RPG products I have ever seen in my life, and I have been gaming for over 20 years.

Obviously having a single artist do almost all of the artwork lends the work a fantastic feel of consistency, and this is a very visually-striking product, but the quality of the written content is the real source of value here. Into the Wyrd and Wild gives you everything you need to run hostile woods. And I do mean everything. Monster, sure, but survival rules, interesting plants, factions, magic items, pre-made location descriptions for a hex crawl, diseases, hazards — everything.

This isn't to say that it can't be combines with other resources. It absolutely can be, and you will need a full-fledged system of some sort, though basically any d20-based fantasy system will do. Any edition of D&D, and OSR game, Pathfinder, Level Up, probably even 13th age would work. The material in here is system-neutral and presented in such a manner that it's relatively easy to adjust for other systems. It's also extremely readable, and just opening this up and reading chunks of it will give you tons of campaign ideas.

Cannot recommend it enough.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Into the Wyrd and Wild Revised Edition
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{OAP} Shaman Class
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/15/2021 12:58:00

I've made no secret out of my love for Ross Leiser's work in previous reviews and, spoiler, this is going to be more of the same.

The Shaman class manages to feel very different and distinct in play style from anything else I've seen out there, while still remaining compatible with core 5e design ethos. The class focuses around ritual casting of spells, and comes with an additional 16 ritual spells in the document, which can help flesh out the ritual spell lists for other subclasses that lean havily on rituals that you may be using (such as the Ritualist subclass for Benjamin Huffman's Scholar class, for example). This focus on ritual spellcasting means that a shaman character can stretch their resources much further than a more "standard" spellcaster because the majority of their magic usage doesn't eat up their spell slots. Some of it does; one of the core class features of the Shaman class is spirit guides and they come with a small list of spells that are cast in a "traditional" way.

But on the whole, even with an early class feature that speeds up ritual casting, a Shaman is going to be spending minutes, not actions or bonus actions on their magic, which means they have to be much more deliberate than, say, a bard or cleric. This makes a Shaman the absolute monarch of strategic preparation and the exploration and social pillars of the game; they need some time for their magic, but they can really tip the scales in their party's favor if they have it. I suspect that this will cause some groups to slow down their approach as a whole so their shaman can do their thing, which may be desirable all on its own.

If the shaman class reminds me of anything that's already in the game, it's the Warlock class. Not only do the two classes share a deviation from the standard way of spellcasting (albeit in very different ways), the Shaman is also comparable to the Warlock in just how extensively customizeable it is. Shamans get five subclasses right out of the gates in this product, and they all feel pretty different from each other. They also need to choose from a list of thirteen different types of spirit guide, and even at 20th level, they will only ever have access to six of them. This means that any given Shaman is likely to feel pretty different from any other one, though there are some flavor/mechanics synergies that I would expect to see pretty often (Benevolent spirits with the Exorcist or Warrior ones with the Warchanter, for example.) There's a lot of variety in the capabilities these different spirits grant to a shaman character, and at most a PC will only be able to get the benefits from two at once (and even then, only at level 18!) so once again, a Shaman will have to think ahead and be deliberate in their play.

For those who would like a magical character but are also looking for something unique and different, or for those who want to play a character that thinks and prepares before acting, this is a very solid choice. If I have any complaint at all, it's that the flavor of this class seems more tied to Wisdom than Charisma to me; not only does the class have a deep connection to the spirit realm, but they are also very deliberate and measured in their approach to adventuring. Still, that's not enough of a gripe to even knock a star off, much less give me reservations about allowing this class in future games I run. Ross has done it again.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
{OAP} Shaman Class
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Creator Reply:
My goodness, Peter! Thank you so much for this thorough and incredibly kind review!
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Skullport: Shadow of Waterdeep
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/08/2020 14:30:44

This is a really solid, useful piece of content.

The obvious use is for portraying Skullport, and it is quite excellent at that. The writing really makes it feel like an interesting (if not pleasant) place to visit and set adventures in. There are tons of fascinating details and dangling adventure hooks peppered throughout the book, and taken as a whole, they provide enough material where I feel like I could run a mini-campaign in just Skullport itself and its surrounding environs. As one would expect to find in such a place, Skullport is littered with ongoing injustices and cruelties, and a sufficiently-motivated (and smart!) good or empathetic party could find a lot to keep them busy. The author mentions in the foreward that she could easily write a novel set in Skullport, and reading over the various NPC and location entries, you can get a sense as to what such a novel might look like. There is very little wasted text in the book, and almost everything points to something fun you could throw at a PC group.

The content warnings definitely belong there - the book goes to some heavy and dark places, but it is handles with taste and care. The author also explicitly advises the use of safety tools, which is something I wish I saw more often in general. Also, despite the fact that the material is clearly for a very specific part of the Forgotten Realms, I could (and likely will) adapt a lot of this material to a homebrew setting. Many of the shops and even some of the factions can be lifted neatly out of skullport and dropped into any pirate haven, fantasy slum or similarly-rough-and-desperate type of area. Even fairly minor locations have interesting bits of lore (the way the butcher/corpse trader refrigerates his wares was an especially clever example).

There's also a significant amount of quality design work in here. It's nice to have some capture weapons for 5e, and the author has brought back a number of interesting mechanical bits from previous editions such as the delightfully creepy bonefiddle spell and the Elven Courtblade weapon. The five new subclasses and the new background in here will all have lots to do in Skullport, but they're also highly-portable to other worlds with minor (or no) tweaks and well-realized from a mechanical point of view.

There are a number of useful new rules for drugs and psychological trauma in here too - the new Haunted condition in particular is an elegant and flavorful piece of design, and the drugs are designed in such a way that they'll be tempting enough to players that they might be willing to risk addiction for the edge they give. There's also a section at the front about interesting new resources and a couple of fun surprises of mechanical goodness sprinkled into the locatation entries. And that doesn't even get into the new magic items, which are also excellent. (I need to remember that Bracer of Flying Daggers for my next rogue PC!)

All in all, this is a really solid, well-written, interesting and useful piece of content that I am very happy to have in my library.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Skullport: Shadow of Waterdeep
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Grazilaxx's Guide to Ancestry
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/03/2019 23:24:27

I've been seeing a lot of talk on social media lately about "decolonizing" D&D - how things such as drow and orcs are offensive to real life people of color in their current iterations.

At the same time, I've also found it frustrating that certain logical mixed-heritage options (human + dwarf, gnome + halfling, and so on) just don't have game stats.

And LOTS of people have lamented that static ASIs tend to pigeonhole certain races into certain roles. Dragonborn make good paladins, but not nearly as good of wizards. Half-orcs are solid barbarians, but a suboptimal pick for a druid.

This product goes a long way to solving all three problems. By making racial traits modular and tying ASIs to other options, you get less-racist, more-versatile, and more creatively-flexible, but still fantastical characters. Well done.

My only gripe so far is that it renders pages slowly - and that's a very solvable technical problem.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Grazilaxx's Guide to Ancestry
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Book of True Evil (5E)
Publisher: Legendary Games
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/21/2018 19:27:33

I don't think it'd be wise to use any of the material in here for player resources even if you were running an evil campaign due to balance issues. However, as a resource for making boss villains, this is fantastic - and for the same reason.

A significant amount of the material in here is at least slightly overpowered compared to the core classes and feats of 5e, which is probably keeping with the product's intent: do a bunch of horrible, nasty things and get rewarded with lots of power by the Powers of Darkness, but it's been jacked up a little further than it should be. As an example: A standard feat in 5e is supposed to be about as good as an ASI (raise one ability score by +2 or raise two ability scores by +1 each). There is one in particular that gives +2 to both Strength AND Constitution and also allows you to throw as many 4d6+Strength modifier fire attacks as you have melee attacks (range of 150 ft). There's a drawback of having disadvantage on non-intimidate charisma checks against non-evil creatures, but that's a comparatively small tradeoff for something that's essentially two ASIs AND a ranged attack that's comparable to Eldritch Blast.

That said, if you're building boss villains as a GM, stuff like that is appropriate - those foes SHOULD be scary and powerful. There's also a bunch of useful stuff about mundane medicine in a fantasy setting that potentially could be adapted into things like non-magical combat medics, some really interesting monsters (the demonic train is particularly cool) and some fun and different magical items (drinkable tentacles is my favorite because it can be ingested to grow some extra tentacles of thrown on the ground as an area denial attack). I also liked that it implied a more technological setting than standard D&D, but I will fully admit that that's my own bias - I'm running a more technological setting and so resources of that nature are extra-useful to me.

All in all not a bad resource to have, just maybe not to use as intended.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Book of True Evil (5E)
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Book of Purifying Flames
Publisher: Necromancers of the Northwest
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/25/2011 23:14:38

I really liked this one; the little opening vignette does a nice job of setting up the theme of the book. As subsystems go, this one is pretty simple, and it will incorporate nicely into an existing game with a minimum of fuss. Unlike the other reviewer, I have no particular problem with the alignment system as it exists, though I do use a numerical sub-system from the Book of Hallowed Might for descriptive purposes. Anyway, the system described herein isn't any more unbalanced than the paladin class - purifying flames are great at destroying evil things (unless those evil things are resistant to fire) but leave good (and usually neutral) things untouched by the flames. Very cool. I will be using this book's material HEAVILY in my campaign for followers of my Sun/Justice god.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Book of Purifying Flames
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Character Theme: Crusader (3.5)
Publisher: Alea Publishing Group
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/03/2011 22:36:47

This product line went out of print a while ago, but the fine folks at Alea Publishing Group have been kind enough to reintroduce them. (Thanks for that, by the way!)

Anyway, the character theme (formerly subclass) is a fascinating extra piece of character development based off of multiclassing XP penalties. In this case, it gives some paladin-like abilities to a faithful character to use to represent their religion in battle. It's a neat idea, and it's executed well. In fact, as Alea finished re-releasing the line, I'm planning to base a PC group around the use of subclasses.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Character Theme: Crusader (3.5)
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Book of Experimental Might II: Bloody, Bold, and Resolute
Publisher: Malhavoc Press
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/09/2008 20:59:47

This is nothing short of brilliant. It pretty much completely obviates the need for things like the Tome of Battle. The original BoXM may or may not have worked for the average game, but this belongs on every d20 fantasy table.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Book of Experimental Might II: Bloody, Bold, and Resolute
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Emerging Forms - KaNgrej
Publisher: Primal Urge Games
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/19/2008 20:19:25

This is NOT an ECL+0 race. A race that can breathe underwater, with a burrow speed, a swim speed, and a +2 to natural armor is at least +1 ECL, regardless of the lack of any ability adjustments and the water-dependant drawback. Still, cool idea.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Emerging Forms - KaNgrej
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Untapped Classes: Society Mind
Publisher: Dreamscarred Press
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/04/2007 23:24:38

I found this to be an exceedingly well-written, well-thought-out, and flavorful class. It's also excellently balanced, does something that no other base class can do, and is clearly laid-out. This is the closest thing I have seen to a perfect product in some time. Get this while it's still free if you like psionics at all.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Untapped Classes: Society Mind
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Book of Hallowed Might
Publisher: Malhavoc Press
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/24/2007 00:00:00

I've had this product for a while, but didn't truly appreciate it until I picked up Ptolus recently. That's when the beauty of it started to shine through. Monte Cook wrote this after he wrote the BoVD for WotC, and usd it to "cleanse his palette" a bit. This is a flavorful, useful, and interesting work, particularly if one is planning on using it with Ptolus. There's not a huge amount of material here, but everything is top notch. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Book of Hallowed Might
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Year of the Zombie
Publisher: UKG Publishing
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/29/2005 00:00:00

There are some good products on RPGNow. There atre a lot of good companies out there that do excellent work. And then, every once in a while, something utterly scale-breaking gets introduced. Year of the zombie is such a product. I don't know what I can say that won't be redundant with the huge number of other positive reviews that this has gotten, so I'm just going to leave it at this:

If you are playing or running a zombie game, a post-apocalyptic game, or something that even slightly resembles one of those, buy this. Now. The advice and rules material herein are outstanding, and I don't think I have EVER seen such nicely-implemented rules for the myraid of ways people go slightly nuts when subjected to severe psychological trauma as the ones in the back of this book. The "flavor text", often used by other products as a way of filling space, contributes much dramatic weight to the product and provides concrete examples of how various rules and ideas play out in an actual game session.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The staggering number of extras to come with this product. The core book is in full-color, print-friendly, and HTML formats, there is a mini-adventure with grayscale and full-color maps, a collection of all the flavor text in two different versions for easier reading (and believe me, you'll want to!) and a nice little program that gives you a browser-based menu to access it all from. There is a LOT of value in here for twelve bucks.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Year of the Zombie
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Hold at all Costs: Zero
Publisher: UKG Publishing
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/29/2005 00:00:00

A very good, if VERY difficult adventure for a bunch of elite-soldier/operative PCs. If a GM has a bunch of mix/maxed military types that have been in sore need of a real challenge, this is the adventure to put them through to test their abilities! The base mission itself is pretty intense without throwing zombies into the picture, and once you add the rising, it gets downright unnerving. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: As is typical for a UKG publishing product, layout & design are of good quality and the PDF comes with full-color maps for those who use them.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Hold at all Costs: Zero
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Creator Reply:
thanks for the comments Peter, you may enjoy taking part in the YOtZ forums try http://www.yearofthezombie.co.uk, its always good to max your players out occasionally, it gets them on edge.
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Intermediary Classes (D20 Modern)
Publisher: LPJ Design
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/29/2005 00:00:00

An innovative approach to entering about half of the advanced classes in the SRD. Instead of taking 3 levels of the appropriate base class(es), you take 3 levels of an intermediary class keyed to the flavor and style of the advanced class, giving up 3 (or 5) levels of potential multiclass in return for a much more unified character concept. For instance, if you're looking to go into the soldier class, instead of taking 3 levels of strong hero, you can take 3 levels of boot (professional western-type soldier training), irregular (terrorist), or 5 levels of junior officer (western style commissioned officer school). The soldier is, thus far, the only advanced class to have multiple intermediary classes to go with it, but there's an intermediary class presented for the Investigator, Bodyguard, Field Medic, Field Scientist, Martial Artist, and Negotiator classes as well. That this leaves the Gunslinger, Infiltrator, Daredevil, Techie, and Personality classes open for a sequel is not lost on me, and I hope that sequel follows this in the near future. I'd also like to see one for the FX classes. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The preservation of the flavor of a concept down to the initial level of play is a pretty cool idea.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Intermediary Classes (D20 Modern)
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Future Player's Companion: Tomorrows' Evolution
Publisher: The Game Mechanics
by Peter M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/28/2005 00:00:00

The third and final release in teh Future Player's companion series build nicely on its predecessors and introduces some great new material as well. Details follow.

The book kicks off with a standard introduction, discussing the general use and design philosophy of the book, then dives straight into the crunch of chapter 1, which collects 6 new advanced classes and 3 new prestige classes.

The chapter leads off with the corporate agent, a sort of sanctioned corporate PR man and high-powered negotiator. Those wishing to make more lethal and sinister corporate types would do well to stir in levels of enforcer, tracer, or infiltrator with this class.

The cyborg adept is a sort of hyper-adapted cyborg, intimately familiar and comfortable with his implants. The class manages to be unique despite something like 8 other cyborg classes out there from WotC (Bioic Agent, Cyberwarrior, Implant Hack, Cyber Raver) and Ronin Arts (Cybersoldier, Assault Borg, Psionic Cybersoldier, CyberOp) alone, and doesn't render any of them obsolete in the process.

The evolved mutant is one of the more interesting classes in the book, allowing ample implementation of the new mutations in Tomorrow's hero. With constantly developing and changing mutant abilities, the player of this will never get bored nor will they ever feel useless. This also allows some of the pricier mutations like Wormhole Jumper to actually see the light of day on something other than NPCs.

The geneshifter makes use of the various short-term genetic templates in d20 future and this book, and does so in a really neat way that allows for a sort of hyper-adaptable jack-of-all-trades sort of character. This is very much what you'd picture a sci-fi James Bond being like.

The pharmer focuses on chemical (drug) augmentation, and gets more benefits for fewer side effects than other characters who use drugs. Those wishing to make characters resembling a certain well-known chemical warrior archetype from another famous RPG would do well to mix this with a few levels of strong hero, fast hero, and enforcer. The result would be just about right.

The robot avatar makes robot heroes and villains much more versatile than they'd otherwise be, allowing a robot character to transfer their consciousness around from body-to-body and even to dominate other robots. This is a perfect class for a malevolent AI or a robotic puppetmaster.

The robot hunter's class name says it all really. Whether you want to destroy them or just disable and fix them, if you intend to be fighting a lot of robots, this is a must-have class. Great for making resistance fighters against Terminator-style killer AIs and the like.

The shockmonk is a cool psionic luddite-type with some impressive technology-disrupting abilities. By the last level of this 5-level prestige class, the character who takes it may well be more dangerous to technologically-dependent foes than an EMP device.

The tech knight is a fun and interesting mix of gadgetteer, knight-errant, and robot-rights activist, and allows for some upgraded use of the robot familiar rules from Tomorrow's Hero.

Chapter two focuses on cybernetics, adding more gadgets, new upgrades, and some other variant rules to the system. Unfortunately, given the recent proliferation of d20-future related cybernetics material some of this is already redundant, but most of it is not, and what is unique is flavorful and interesting. Also in this chapter are a selection of primitive cybernetics, which will be useful in games that are influenced by video games like Metal Gear or Splinter Cell, and a cyborg template for those human-brain-in-a-robot-body types of characters.

Chapter three covers equipment, adding archetypal weapons like the antimatter cannon, sonic disruptor, and wrist-blade launcher to the available arsenal of Future heroes. This chapter also includes some nifty weapon gadgets including the dual-targetting and overheat gadgets, which will be instantly recognizable to first-person shooter fans. As with other releases in this line, many of the gadgets actually make the device LESS effective in some way, and correspondingly reduce its cost. This allows for the design of shoddy devices like those used by terrorists, third-world guerillas, criminals, and backworlds colonists who have to make due.

Chapter four is probably the most ambitious of the chapter in the book, covering futuristic drugs of all types in a staggering, but still manageable, level of detail. If you want to use drugs in your game, this will be an absolute godsend. If you don't want to use drugs in your game, either don't read this chapter, or be ready to change your mind!

As I have come to expect from the Game Mechanics, this book is a superb value for the money, just make sure you've got the previous two volumes, or much of this won't be much use to you. It builds heavily on the excellent foundation set by Tomorrow's Foundation and Tomorrow's Hero, and references back to both extensively.

<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: As always with Game Mechanics' products, layout & design are excellent. The material is well-designed and professional, and the writing is readable and flows nicely.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some unanswered questions raised by two of the prestige classes: How, exactly does the Tech Knight's sword work, and why does the shockmonk have a nonstandard BAB? <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Future Player's Companion: Tomorrows' Evolution
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