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Eclipse Phase: Panopticon
Publisher: Posthuman Studios
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 08/26/2011 10:19:57

Panopticon is a must-have Eclipse Phase supplement.

I feel that Posthuman Studios could have given it another once-over check for errors, though the errors present are simple typos rather than major errors. That said, if you won't be totally nit-picking with the typos and you'll actually read the whole book, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The art and writing, as always, is top notch (sans typos). The book offers in-depth analysis of social issues through a science-fiction proxy, though that's to be expected from Posthuman Studios, they really hit home with Panopticon. Add in a ton of new rules for all sorts of awesome (surveillance and uplifts, as well as habitat stuff), and everyone will be happy.

The nice little intro story kicks off the rest of the book nicely by providing a quick glimpse at some of the deeper discussion of concepts later on, and also is plain awesome (to use an academic term). Then in true Eclipse Phase manner, the book launches in to well over a hundred pages of setting and background, combined with little fiction or explanatory blurbs. While I like setting more than the average guy, I feel that even fans of mechanics that normally disdain setting exposition would enjoy the more cerebral standard set by Posthuman Studios.

The book wraps up with mechanics for everything discussed throughout the book, including lots of new morphs and gear/services. As always, the mechanics are solid, and Panopticon delivers on providing a solid science-fiction experience without feeling cheesy.

I'd recommend Panopticon for any fan of Eclipse Phase. The high standard of quality set by Posthuman Studios really shows in this product, even if there are some lapses in grammar and spelling that are aggravating.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Eclipse Phase: Panopticon
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Creator Reply:
Erathoniel, Thanks for the review. We have a thread on our message boards where fans can point out mistakes they've caught or otherwise suggest corrections. Please jump in and let us know any specific problems you saw, the thread is here: http://www.eclipsephase.com/eclipse-phase-panopticon-errata cheers, Posthuman Studios (Rob, Brian, and Adam)
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Bulldogs! (Fate Classic Edition)
Publisher: Galileo Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 08/14/2011 11:17:43

I've never been much for the FATE system until now. Bulldogs provides a mix of great art and writing with an easy-to-understand handling of the FATE system.

Bulldogs! does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does it well. It provides science fiction adventure with lots of quirky aliens (though nothing too unusual, it's a decent selection, and rules are provided for custom species). The game does a good job of presenting the setting, and the system is far above average.

A lot of the setting is reminiscent of Schlock Mercenary, which is one of my favorite webcomics ever, so I have no complaints about it (it's a little on the softer edge of science-fiction, but not too incredibly soft).

For $10, Bulldogs! provides an affordable and awesome science fiction experience.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Bulldogs! (Fate Classic Edition)
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Remnants Role Playing Game
Publisher: Outrider Studios
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 08/02/2011 20:11:13

Remnants is one of those games that you start reading and just don't stop until you're done or you're pulled away from the document by a team of horses. It's that good. It shows love and care in its development process, and clear purpose.

It's quick, gritty, and fun. There's giant robots and medieval feudal civilizations. What's not to like?

My only gripe would come down to be the simplicity of the rules system, but that's also a positive. There's not a whole lotta room for variable outcomes, but that keeps the gameplay running smooth.

With good art, typesetting, and design, Remnants is a sure bet for a game with quick mechanics but a rather deep setting.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Remnants Role Playing Game
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The Age of Shadow: Role-playing Game
Publisher: Crooked Staff Publishing
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 08/01/2011 22:39:00

The Age of Shadow proves that simplicity is elegance.

Using a d100 based system, AoS has a nice mixture of balance with heroes in a dark fantasy setting fighting in a gritty and realistic style. There's a lot of ways to die quickly in combat, and there's a magic system that can be just as lethal as not.

Admittedly, The Age of Shadow as a core rulebook doesn't contain a ton of setting background, but it has enough to get the general feel of the game, and let you know if the $3 extension is right for you.

If I were to play a game of grittier, dark, quick and lethal fantasy, The Age of Shadow would be right up at the top of the list of options.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Age of Shadow: Role-playing Game
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Part-Time Gods
Publisher: Third Eye Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 07/07/2011 19:55:09

Part-Time Gods is awesome. It's well-written (with the occasional mistake- but that could be attributed to sleep deprivation (misspellings, homophone misusage, etc) or just plain not having enough editing), has lots of content, good art, and enough fluff to smooth things along but enough crunch to get things going.

Now, I liked Wu Xing, one of Third Eye Games' other games, so I wanted to see how this compares. Part-Time Gods focuses a lot less on martial arts, but comes out the better for it (mind you, not if you wanted martial arts), with a d20-based system with modifiers (normally I'd whine endlessly, but for gods I'll make an exception) powering a smooth narrative gameplay. It takes what I like about d6's advantage/disadvantage system, adds in a non-obtuse magic system, and ports it to d20, more or less, if you want a general feel of how the system works.

There's also a focus on nice, consistent styled art. It's good, but there are a couple times when I feel that the proportions are just too horrible to comprehend (almost every woman in the book has a midriff that would imply a 45 degree turn away from the viewer in relation to the rest of her body, without appropriate cues for this). All in all, though, it's well done and interesting without being intrusive.

Admittedly, it really depends on what group you could get in when roleplaying, but with the right group Part-Time Gods is wonderful and excellent, and a definite go for a group that doesn't like overly dark and oppressive settings, but does enjoy a nice grand conspiracy and checking under the bed once in a while.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Part-Time Gods
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Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/28/2011 13:05:24

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple is a storytelling game to the most literal extent. There's no rolling to attack goblins or orcs, no skills or statistics, just a brief characterization and a bag of rocks. And it's awesome.

Take lots of good art and a basic story premise, that the characters are all pilgrims trying to find their place in the universe, and you have a good looking and entertaining read, but the gameplay is also fun (maybe more for its target audience than for adults). It's dynamic storytelling in a simple moderated manner, which produces a fun lighthearted story with only the loosest of rules.

It's meant more for children than adults, but Do is one of the highest quality products I've seen in a long time.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
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Battlemap - Prison in the deep
Publisher: Lord Zsezse Works
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/26/2011 20:13:21

I haven't reviewed anything by Lord Zsezse Works in a while, partly courtesy of having reviewed stuff from them pretty regularly and always giving it good reviews. However, it's been a good while since I first reviewed their stuff, and to be honest, I wanted to see how they had progressed. Oh boy, have they ever! (Not that their earlier stuff was bad, but this is stellar!)

There's a lot of utility in this product. There are truly high-resolution maps that should be compatible with any digital tabletop software (8200x8400 pixels!). There's an isometric view that brings back memories of such games as Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. The art is top notch, and the PDF file for printing uses a layer system to allow toggling of grids, to allow printing with or without grids.

If you need a map for an ancient prison for use in a campaign, or you have a campaign that could possibly run into a prison or something along those lines, I'd recommend this map wholeheartedly.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Battlemap - Prison in the deep
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Arcane Heroes
Publisher: Stargazer Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/26/2011 18:39:57

Arcane Heroes is possibly one of my favorite examples of an ultralight game. It doesn't have a whole lot of frills, but it has substance where it matters (though I would recommend expanding it and adding examples, just for the sake of 100% clarity [does the bonus apply to dice rolled, or the wounds inflicted during combat?]).

It's also an exceptional example of how to do typesetting- simple text boxes in an interesting but not overpowering background with interesting fonts to add flavor and a clean font for reading. Also, the lines of text in each column match the other, so there's no obsessive urge to make them meet each other.

If you're looking for one of the best free games in a long time, look no further than Arcane Heroes.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Arcane Heroes
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d20/Pathfinder Battlemaps: 3 battle maps
Publisher: Conflict Games, LLC
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/25/2011 23:12:14

These maps are exactly what the title says (For those who failed to read it, "HI-RES BATTLEMAP PACK"). They do this job quite well, being at respectable dimensions (not quite what I'd call high-resolution for printing, but high-resolution for on-screen if you don't zoom in too far). They'd work with a virtual tabletop, probably, assuming it didn't fuss too much about resolution and scaling on their grid (if they have one), in which case you may have to mess around with it.

It's good, and I like it a lot. The one thing I do feel could hurt it is that it is an Unreal-Tournament map styled pack, so you can't get too much normal story-driven play, but you could have a ton of fun with it in a competitive session, or as an courtyard or whatnot.

That said, high-res screams that it's at a print-ready dpi, which it isn't really. I mean, you could, but I'd have gripes with doing so. It's better than a lot of stuff, but it still just feels like they were afraid to burn more than 3 megabytes on a map and were religiously trying to reduce file size at cost of quality. Speaking of which- file formats. I love jpeg as much as the next guy, so I try to burn it and throw it away as much as possible. Seriously bad format. But better than the gif one of the maps is inexplicably in. If it were in .png format, my gripes would be pointless, but I'm curious as to the choices for the format.

The quality is decent, but there are a few underlying issues that hurt this product when the time comes to rate it. It's just not high enough resolution to advertise as being such, and the formats used are questionable.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
d20/Pathfinder Battlemaps: 3 battle maps
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Triune Corebook (Gamemasters' Edition)
Publisher: Happy Bishop Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/03/2011 00:15:29

Triune is a wonderful science-fiction meets religion game not unlike another title I reviewed recently, only way more far along in technology. It's post Eclipse Phase era stuff, all the way to sort of a teleportation-enabled quantum-mechanics abusing society with lots and lots of fun stuff to go with it, as well as the forces of Heaven and Hell fighting and tangible prayers. It's not bad, and it's interesting both for its mechanics and as a game that addresses deep characterization.

I enjoyed the system as a breath of fresh air from the mundane "roll this die" systems that you normally see. Sure it's entirely simple dice roll based, but there's more interaction; players choose how far they wanna push themselves in their actions. The prayer system (though not particularly balanced in terms of firepower for each faith, that is, some have fewer drawbacks for violations of rules and better rewards for those who are faithful) is a unique and interesting way to add a touch of the supernatural in a science fiction method.

The art and writing are good as a general rule. Indeed, the art and typesetting, other than the over-cartoony filters on some of the images, avoid all my usual pet peeves. However, there's nothing super duper spectacular about the art, and the writing has a few errors that do not prevent the text from getting its meaning across. The setting, however, shines above most others in being well thought out, if a little bit unnatural and frightening (though I'm wimpy, so maybe others won't be as bothered, and it's strongly implied and stated that the reader is supposed to be bothered). Indeed, probably my biggest pet peeve the whole time was a reference to the fact that no DNA evidence could be found in an area due to cleaning with alcohol, which is actually used to preserve DNA in solution, and wouldn't destroy it for forensic purposes.

All in all, Triune is one of those exceptional products- it's not perfect, but it has a sense of greatness to it, it's designed with gameplay and setting in harmony and a cut above the rest, and it is just plain interesting. If you only buy one product this year, Triune would be a fine choice.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Triune Corebook (Gamemasters' Edition)
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Carmine: A Role Playing Game of Alchemical Fantasy
Publisher: Attention Span Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/26/2011 11:56:08

Ok, the first review I wrote got eaten courtesy of my taking forever to get around to reviewing it and having the site sign me out, so I'm gonna keep this way shorter.

Carmine is a d20 (not OGL) based steampunk with alchemy adventures. As a full game, Carmine is interesting, but not particularly outstanding, with the setting being far more interesting than the system. It's a lot reminiscent of The New Epoch, only not really too closely related (both use their own unique d20 based system, which get about as different as d20 based systems can get). It's got some borderline horror elements, and religion is a major theme, and the world feels well thought out though occasionally only lightly covered.

The art's good as a general concept, though I may have redone the front cover (it feels low resolution), which is ironic because it really lowered my expectations for a game that actually showed a good eye to typesetting and art (as in other than that nothing made me cringe).

Worth a shot for the setting, but the system's nothing stellar. If nothing else, it's priced decently, so it may be worth a shot.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Carmine: A Role Playing Game of Alchemical Fantasy
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The Modern Path - Heroes of the Modern World 2.0 [PFRPG]
Publisher: Game Room Creations
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/13/2011 22:41:09

Heroes of the Modern World is a mixed bag. On one hand, it's basically d20 modern for Pathfinder, on the other it has some rather grating issues.

For one, there are times when the typesetting fails (as evidenced in the armor section where the entry for heavy armor, heading and all, jumps into where the body paragraph for a piece of medium armor is, ignoring the correct column it should be in), and numerous typos plague the work, which always grates with me for much the same reasons that posters not hung up straight do (namely I'm somewhat obsessive). Also, it's basically d20 modern, so take all my d20 gripes and add in the fact that it's not terribly original (though if you do want to play in a modern real-world setting, it's not that easy to be original), and it's been done before. Also, having DC's of 25 on things players will probably be doing fairly early on is a bad idea; it's the same reason some modern systems only go to level 10 compared to the d20 system's standard 20, or even eschew levels for a point buy system. It's almost impossible to succeed some rolls until level 5 or so, and then a lot of stuff becomes very easy.

However, when the typing's done right, and the layout's good, I like the writing. The typesetting doesn't glare like some products, and it's pretty solid. The talent trait feat everything meshes together well, though sometimes there's an obvious break in balance in some of the things. The archetype system instead of classes just seems like an attempt to write everything in one table rather than just writing out a progression table for each class type. Admittedly, it's not different, but it just means another cross-reference every time I look at the "archetype", rather than just referring to a table for each.

Above average in some ways, below average in others, a dab of polish could make Heroes of the Modern World a must-get product, but as is it's interesting, but only for those who really show an interest and don't want to take the time to write down stats and rules for modern things themselves.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
The Modern Path - Heroes of the Modern World 2.0 [PFRPG]
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[PFRPG] Tome of Monsters
Publisher: Purple Duck Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/11/2011 21:23:29

Add loads and loads of monsters to your Pathfinder game with Tome of Monsters.

It's got a variety of things, and some of them have been done before and are in the Pathfinder SRD, but there's also a ton that are new and unique (even if based heavily on real-world myths). Add in a lot of good art, and Tome of Monsters is a good bet for a GM who wants to add some easy foes to a campaign that can be challenging and unique, as well as a break from the "yet another goblin" syndrome frequently encountered in fantasy games.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] Tome of Monsters
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for the review!
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Stellar Wind
Publisher: Higher Dimension Games
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/05/2011 18:37:40

Being a bad, bad man, I somehow let this slip behind in my review list.

Which is a shame, since I love it. It has a lot of what I like in a game. A nice concrete rule system is bolstered by an admission that play should be play. Add in lots of sci-fi in the style I grew up reading, and you've got something I can't really find anything against.

It even manages to avoid all of my pet peeves with typesetting and art (well, not entirely, but if I can write that before thinking about that one image that looks like a few photoshop filters on each other, it's probably good enough), and I love the writing style. A short story that has a little installment at the beginning of each chapter really helps hook the reader in and is useful for providing a break from the numbers. I guess I could gripe about the random character generation, but I've gotten kinda tired about that, and let's be honest, if it's really bad, you can fudge the numbers.

Stellar Wind is a really, really hard game to play (actually, this just applies to the space travel/spaceship part), unless you're willing to fudge the numbers (or guestimate, just pick your euphemism of choice). They fudged the numbers in the core rule, and even with a decent knowledge (well, mediocre, but yeah) of introductory calculus I still have not a clue what a lot of the numbers mean or do, even in the simplified form, though I could probably saw them down if I had time to do it. Still easier than taxes, though. And, if done right, it's rewarding, because it all makes the game a lot more immersive and deep.

Definitely worth a grab for experienced gamers who love Asimov or other similar science fiction, if they won't be too frightened by the math. And don't worry, most of the math could come up as few as two or three times a session, so if you're fine not designing your own spaceships (though there is an additional $5 spreadsheet to automate the process).



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Stellar Wind
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Polyverse Roleplaying System Core Rules
Publisher: Austin Game Studios
by Erathoniel W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/01/2011 20:31:06

Polyverse is a decent omni-genre system.

It's well written, and there's a definite focus on the mechanics of the system, which is more than I can say about a lot of these.

However, I'm not necessarily heads over heels for the art, and to be honest I could pass on most of it.

There's a lot of content, the page formatting doesn't make eyes bleed, though it doesn't necessarily do any awesome stuff, and it's pretty uninspiring. The tables are clean and concise, though I saw one place where I'm assuming they meant to put "damage" in after some of the rolls (i.e. for the effects of an radioactive environment).

It's good, and it's cross-genre, so if you need a quick system to do anything, you can use Polyverse, especially given that it has a deep focus on mechanics that leads to a high-quality game.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Polyverse Roleplaying System Core Rules
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