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ICONS: Hero Pack 3
Publisher: Ad Infinitum Adventures
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/13/2012 21:43:05

Hero Pack 3 presents 19 new super-beings for your ICONS game. This pack will activate the nostalgia factor for long-time comics fans, since the tone of the characters and their origin stories, as well as the artistic style, pay tribute to Jack “King” Kirby—himself a true icon of the comics industry. Setting sentimentality aside, the results are mixed.

The artwork clearly evokes Kirby, but Dan Houser doing Kirby isn’t as good as Houser doing Houser (which, if I can utter such blasphemy, I actually prefer over Kirby doing Kirby).

The Tomorrow Squad is a fun team, and holds together well, even if Astral Girl is a warmed-over Marvel Girl, and Astro-Man is a warmed-over Green Lantern.

The heroes who make up the Storm Agents should’ve hired a consultant to help them distinguish their superhero names better from their secret identities. Dr. Seifer is Cypher? Enrique Feeley, Jr. is Dr. Feelgood II? Dr. Shade by day, Dr. Tenebrous by night? How long will take the intrepid local media to figure those three out?

The remaining characters in Hero Pack 3 aren’t connected in a team, but only the Table of Contents and the team picture on p. 13 serve to indicate that the Storm Agents writeup ends with Warden. Another “divider page” would have been nice right before Bella Trix. Elder Brotha is an interesting character, though the spelling of his name smacks of “Blaxploitation” (perhaps that’s intentional, as another ’70s tribute, like Dr. Feelgood?). Illegal Alien and the Immigrant make a “cute couple” (of enemies), but the alphabetization in the third section puts several characters in between them. If Professor Q’s aspects hadn’t specified “evil boy genius,” I would have thought—based on the artwork—that Professor Q was female. For some reason, Professor Q doesn’t have a “secret origin” page like the other characters. Unstoppable Girl provides a great dose of comic relief, though she, too, is separated from her nemesis by several entries due to the alphabetical arrangement.

Unfortunately, Hero Pack 3 is marred by the same sorts of grammatical and stylistic errors and inconsistencies that seem to plague so many small-press products, and that should have been caught and fixed in the copy-editing phase. Sometimes true (“curly”) apostrophes (inverted commas) appear where they should; sometimes, (straight) foot marks appear instead. Often, when true apostrophes are used to indicate missing characters (as in “let’s light ’em up” or in references to the ’70s), they’re printed backwards—indicating reliance on software rather than a knowledgeable human editor. The document varies between British-style and American-style use of quotation marks (i.e., “single” vs. “double”). Poor capitalization crops up occasionally, especially in catchphrases. Where dashes should appear, we get double hyphens instead. Some entries lack the final punctuation mark. The biggest proofreading fail, though, is the document’s indecision about whether Warden’s secret identity is “John Warren” (p. 23) or “John Hill” (pp. 24–25). It’s really a bit heartbreaking to see such sloppiness in an otherwise enjoyable product.

Finally, the fact that only three of the characters (Bella Trix, Illegal Immigrant, and Professor Q) are straight-up super-villains raises the question of usefulness. Indeed, the very name Hero Pack implies that the product is essentially a roster book full of superheroes. While roster books of this kind make good sense for games based in the Marvel or DC universes, they’re less useful for ICONS, where most players will want to play their own heroes, not someone else’s heroes. Sure, the heroes presented in Hero Pack 3 could be interesting NPCs—especially Señor Misterioso, who has built-in alien-related plot hooks—but GMs will want to be careful not to create a “Mary Sue” situation or to make the PCs “bystanders” in a fight between longtime enemies (such as Professor Q vs. Unstoppable Girl or Illegal Alien vs. the Immigrant). If you’re an ICONS GM looking for villains you can drop into your home game, Hero Pack 3 won’t do much for you. If you’re looking for superheroes you can include in your world as NPCs, or just as examples to fire your own imagination, Hero Pack 3 gives you several interesting choices.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
ICONS: Hero Pack 3
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Designers & Dragons
Publisher: Mongoose
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 18:46:03

Take a trip—a very long trip—down memory lane with this impressive history of the role-playing game industry (with some forays into related game forms like customizable card games). Shannon Applecline has done gaming enthusiasts a remarkable service here. For players like me who grew up with this history (I was born in 1967, and got my first exposure to D&D in 1978–79), many of the “names and faces” will be familiar, and yet there’s still so much to learn! The book is organized by date and company, so it’s easy to follow the narrative flow.

On the production side, the layout is spare and uncluttered. The “grayness” of most pages gets interrupted by full-color product covers—some readers will enjoy this, and others will find it jarring. In a 442-page document, some typographic errors and outright misspellings are pretty much inevitable; witness, for example, the indecision about whether Adamant Entertainment’s superhero games is “Icons” (p. 77) or “ICONS” (p. 426). Occasionally, reliance on “auto-correct” features results in single quotation marks (inverted commas) facing the wrong way. But these little glitches are minor, as well as few and far between.

Such a large book may wear down readers who try to read cover to cover, and the RPG industry can appear as a tangled web with many interconnections. Thus, in a stroke of brilliance, either Applecline or editor Charlotte Law included wonderful bullet lists of “What to Read Next” at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately, Mongoose didn’t bother to hyperlink these lists in the PDF edition, nor even to provide bookmarks to the chapter headings (much less subheadings)—a glaring oversight in a digital product of this magnitude.

Unless Dungeons & Dragons is your favorite RPG, you’ll probably come away a little disappointed that your favorite game didn’t get more press in the book, especially if your favorite game is a more recent publication with a fairly short history. If you start to feel that such-and-such a game was unduly neglected, set that aside and remember the huge scope of this work.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Designers & Dragons
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The Daggers' Lair
Publisher: Wydraz
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 18:41:49

I’m always happy to see a new systemless adventure; DMs like me who don’t have a lot of time can easily combine the location and lightly developed story here with stats from the game of our choice. I think this one could have been pulled off a bit better, especially in terms of the aesthetics. I hope that Wydraz will continue to explore systemless adventures, but with more internal consistency in artwork and more attractive formatting/layout.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
The Daggers' Lair
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The Rite Npc Deck
Publisher: Rite Publishing
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 18:36:58

This “deck” offers you 49 different NPC and monster “head shots” that you can use as visual aids in your games. The images don’t seem to be intended for any one specific game or setting. The characters depicted run the gamut from sphinxes to robots, with weird-looking humanoids predominating. There’s a little bit for any GM here—which could be a strength (flexibility) or weakness (lack of focus), depending on how you look at it. I confess that I wasn’t too impressed with the artwork, and personally, I’ll be sticking mostly with my Paizo face cards—they cost more, but they have better artwork, they’re focused on the fantasy genre that I most often GM, and I don’t have to print them out. The big advantage of the Rite NPC Deck over preprinted decks is that you can selectively print exactly the cards you want, and nothing else. Ultimately, it’s sort of take-it-or-leave-it for me. About a dozen of the cards could serve for humans or halflings in a fantasy setting, or humanlike aliens in a sci-fi setting; another seven or eight seem to be elves (including drow or dark elves); two have on full helms and could be almost any species under there (though I get the impression of maleness). A couple of cards appear to be vampires, and two more appear to be demons of some description. Two of the illustrations look like robots to me; one has two heads. I perceive one each of orc, hobgoblin, tiefling (or efreet), dragon, sphinx, wolf, and winged lion (manticore?). There are a few more that I don’t quite know how to classify; one looks like an aquatic alien or a medusa with no nose, and another looks like an African human female, except that she’s full of stars.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
The Rite Npc Deck
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Design Elements: Stone
Publisher: Sade
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 18:18:09

I’ve tried to design my own decorative elements in the past, and they turned out poorly. Sade’s designs, on the other hand, are excellent. This pack offers several very nice elements with a stone and Celtic flair.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Design Elements: Stone
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Two Bit Tables: Portals of Every Shape and Size
Publisher: Healing Fireball
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 18:09:49

If you need to generate a quick description of a magic portal and you're running low on imagination (or you find yourself returning to the same tropes repeatedly), drop four bits (not two; two bits is 25¢) on this handy set of tables. A few quick die rolls will give you a nice description that you can use as-is or tweak to suit your taste.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Two Bit Tables: Portals of Every Shape and Size
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Ground set #13 - Winter forest
Publisher: Lord Zsezse Works
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:54:43

As you’d expect if you’re familiar with LZW’s early “ground sets,” the basic offering here consists of a series of snow-covered tiles with a dirt path through each tile. The path patterns are a bit more varied and interesting than in most of the LZW ground sets, but what really sets this pack apart are the layer options. Using PDF layers, you can add in extra trees (both deciduous and evergreen), stones, and so forth. The 1" square grid is off by default, but you can turn it on with a click. One note of warning: when you turn a layer on or off, that choice affects all pages, so you’ll probably want to print your pages one at a time, customizing them to taste in between. LZW still needs a better English-speaking editor to clean up their introductions and instructions; otherwise, this is an excellent tile pack.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Ground set #13 - Winter forest
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Gamescapes: Story Maps: Cursed Place 1 (PDF)
Publisher: Savage Mojo
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:54:21

This 24" x 32" map set presents a ruined temple or arcane campus of some sort, complete with a summoning circle and central courtyard (both shown in the cover art). It’s done in Alida Saxon’s signature impressionistic water-color style. There are almost two dozen distinct “rooms” on the map, giving you a small dungeon worthy of a night’s exploration.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Gamescapes: Story Maps: Cursed Place 1 (PDF)
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Gamescapes: Story Maps: Above the Clouds
Publisher: Savage Mojo
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:53:54

Some map products commend themselves as merely “useful.” Others—like this one—scream “Use me!” at the top of their lungs. Although I tend to prefer a more “realistic” style over Alida Saxon’s soft-edged watercolor-type style, I found my mind racing with story ideas and adventure hooks to get the players in my D&D campaign to visit this place. Small stone spires jut high above the clouds, and atop these are small lawns, dwellings, a statue, and mysterious standing stones. Just getting from one spire to another could pose a reasonable challenge for even mid-range PCs. “Above the Clouds” surely qualifies as my favorite Alida Saxon map to date (June 9, 2012). Like most Story Maps, the whole assembled map measures 24 x 32 inches, and features a square grid. My only concern is that the 8x8 tiles might get clipped on some printers, especially older printers requiring more than a quarter-inch margin.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Gamescapes: Story Maps: Above the Clouds
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Morbid Playthings [Horror Background Music]
Publisher: Fishwife Games
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:53:25

This track is creepy and aesthetically pleasing at the same time—an impressive combination. The melody line sounds just like it’s coming from an eerie music box, evoking all sorts of images of a haunted or otherwise corrupted nursery. This piece would make a great background score for a kids’ room in a haunted house, a creepy encounter in a toy store, or anything like that. The track loops well, though not quite seamlessly. The ID3 tags need to be cleaned up; I think this is one of Fishwife Games’s earlier releases, and they’re doing better with the ID3 tags in more recent pieces. Overall, I’d rate this as one of Woodrum’s stronger pieces.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Morbid Playthings [Horror Background Music]
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Money and Guns [Modern Crime Background Music]
Publisher: Fishwife Games
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:53:03

The jazzy saxophone riff that dominates this track is enjoyable enough, and pretty catchy, although quite simple and repetitive, almost minimalist. The crowd noise sound effects at the beginning and end of the track make the piece loop seamlessly, a major “pro” for background music. The crowd noise suggests to me a busy bar or diner, perhaps with live music sponsored by the establishment, or perhaps with the music provided by an independent musician playing outside for tips. I couldn’t really pick out the money or the guns (although the cops-and-jazz combo is a recognizable cliché of modern detective fiction). You could probably use this piece in a period game (think Call of Cthulhu) as well as a more modern setting, or even in an alien cantina. The ID3 tags need to be cleaned up; I think this is one of Fishwife Games’s earlier releases, and they’re doing better with the ID3 tags in more recent pieces.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Money and Guns [Modern Crime Background Music]
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Fantastic Maps: The Ice Bridge
Publisher: Rite Publishing
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:52:33

Wow, this map is huge—60" wide by 40" tall when fully assembled! A relatively thin, rather precarious ice bridge spans a cold (but not frozen-over) river flowing by what appears to be a keep entrance. Just about any fantasy RPG could easily lead to an encounter in such a place, whether you’re using the Illfrost setting (which I know nothing about, outside of the maps) or not. In fact, just a slight trimming of the map or slight redefinition of the player’s perceptions could adjust the map enough to be used for modern games as well as fantasy—think of an expedition to Antarctic mountains of madness and the like. This could even be an alien planetscape on a largely frozen world. The map has enormous flexibility and great story potential, as well as excellent replay value. It could easily serve as a set-piece for many encounters on the edge of a snowbound/icebound village or keep. The artwork does take up the entire page, though the pages are tiled with overlap, so you shouldn’t run into any difficulty unless you’re using an older inkjet printer that leaves a generous white margin on the edges of the printed page. I didn’t go all the way to five stars for this map for one reason only: the grid sits “below” the upper plateau on all sides of the map, which makes it hard to use those regions of the map for miniatures-scale combat that assumes a square grid (D&D, Pathfinder).



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantastic Maps: The Ice Bridge
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Fantastic Maps: Square Rigger
Publisher: Rite Publishing
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:52:02

This nice addition to the Fantastic Maps line features, as you surely know, a nice large sailing ship. When fully assembled, the map measures 40" square, although the ship itself only requires 18" or so at its widest point. The extra space to port and starboard gives you plenty of room to bring in ships from other products, perhaps mounted on posterboard, cardboard, or foam board, to stage naval combat at the 1" miniatures scale. Quite a few such ships can be had nowadays in the printable map market. Jonathan Roberts’s great innovation in this product is to include very light, nearly transparent renderings of the sails, which many similar products simply omit. The pages bleed all the way to the edge, but they’re tiled. Most modern inkjet printers will handle them fine, but you may run into problems if your printer leaves more than a 1/4" margin on each side.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantastic Maps: Square Rigger
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Fantastic Maps - Illfrost: Sentry Encampment
Publisher: Rite Publishing
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:51:18

A small semi-permanent sentry post sits by a cold (but not frozen) river in this substantial map. The post’s fire still burns, but two of the five buildings have been damaged. Is that normal for this post, or have they recently suffered some sort of attack? This map offers multiple story possibilities. The PCs might be confronted by the sentries as they ride or row into range, the PCs might be sent to the encampment to search for the missing sentries, or perhaps the PCs might even be employed as sentries at this post for a time. Jonathan Roberts’s signature hand-drawn style is on display here, executing a design by Don Pritchett for his Illfrost setting. You don’t need the Illfrost setting to use this map well, however; you just need a cold climate. Like all of the Illfrost map packs, the artwork fills the entire sheet of paper, and the pages are tiled with a small amount of overlap. You don’t need a full-bleed printer to use this product, though you may run into slight difficulties if you have an older inkjet printer that leaves a 1/4"–1/2" white margin on each side.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Fantastic Maps - Illfrost: Sentry Encampment
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Fantastic Maps - Illfrost: Ancient Temple
Publisher: Illusionary Press
by Christopher H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/12/2012 17:50:37

This large map done in Jonathan Robert’s signature hand-drawn style turns out to be one of those printable maps that would benefit a lot from a key or a page of explanatory text. The temple, designed by Don Pritchett for his Illfrost setting, has several features that I don’t quite understand. I know nothing about the Illfrost setting that I haven’t gathered from Roberts’s maps, but apparently real estate is pretty cheap there, for the architecture of this temple seems rather inefficient, with lots of unused space. I don’t really understand the furnishings of the entry hall. What are those crates, barrels, and bundles doing in that space? What are those long rectangular things? From the interior shadows, they appear to be troughs, but if so, why are they there? Is that a fire burning in the middle of the entry hall? And why are there nine small (wooden?) poles standing upright in one corner? A map product that suggests interesting story elements usually excites me; unfortunately, this one confuses. The spiral staircase leading to another level—not included in this product—annoys me a little. Still, this map pack is a worthwhile purchase if you’re adventuring in Illfrost, or any setting where you want a small dungeon complex with ritual overtones. Like all of the Illfrost map packs, the artwork fills the entire sheet of paper, and the pages are tiled with a small amount of overlap. You don’t need a full-bleed printer to use this product, though you may run into slight difficulties if you have an older inkjet printer that leaves a 1/4"–1/2" white margin on each side.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Fantastic Maps - Illfrost: Ancient Temple
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