I was excited to stumble across a book expanding the use of ritual magic for 5th Edition D&D. But, while this book makes the attempt to do this, the effort is really pretty middle of the road.

It lists new spells specifically intended to be used as rituals (rather than fast cast like most spells). These are generally fine. They are probably the best part of the book, and they didn't stand out as obviously bad to me. The book suggests using them as adventure seeds, and in fact the ritual to "Raise the Sky Citadel" seems specifically intended for this purpose.

But I also had hopes that this game would open ritual magic up to non-magicians. And it sort of does. It has a section on non-ritual casters (characters not trained to perform rituals). But the entire extent of those rules boil down to the idea that non-ritual casters will always screw things up in some way. There's a random roll table of consequences (with some potentially much worse than others), which are presumably intended for use with ritual spells from the standard D&D list. But also, each new ritual spell from this document comes with it's own specific consequence (I can only assume to be used instead of the random roll table) for non-ritual casters. These specific consequences are often so bad that there is really no point for a non-ritual caster to even attempt the spell. So, as an extension of the existing ritual rules this system seems not particularly useful to me.

Look, you can not argue with a price of $0.00. But there's really not much system to this "system". No mechanics to speak of. Not even clear what game it is intended for use with (D&D maybe?). The author is very admittedly cribbing ideas from the Diablo games, and apparently interested in creating characters with some particular kind of balance or middle way of magical character power creation. But these just come off as vague lists of powers with little indication of what they relate to within a game. You could not run a game with this supplement, and I can't say it really provides much that you couldn't get from just taking the standard D&D spell list and tailoring it yourself to fit your own needs.

As described in the book:

Most of these Talents are adapted from or inspired by the online d20 and Pathfinder SRDs. Others are inspired, and adapted to a 2D6 mechanic...

I was under the mistaken impression some of these might be like minor superpowers or similar "talents". But they are basically just minor D&Dfeattypebonuses

Naten Treme has produced a beautiful little city generating pamphlet for a quirky and ancient metropolis. Some GM work required, but you should easily be able to use it to run a game in conjunction with your lite RPG of choice.

I've not managed to make it through the whole book yet, just skipped among a few pages reading here and there. But I don't see a lot of deep reviews yet, so to give potential buyers an idea of what you're getting into:

Deadly Dungeons is a book of traps, odd rooms and situations somewhat akin to the old Grimtooth's Traps series, but with a difference: In my experience Grimtooth's traps tended to be convluted mechanical contrivances, engineered specifically to mess with overly cautious players who think they have all the threat vectors covered. By contrast Deadly Dungeons has more heart: It rooms and situations tend to start with some unique detail and build the dangers, clues or interesting points outward from that spark. Those I've read may be tricky to understand or interpret, but have a certain logic or fitting theme to them.

Other things I liked:

What drew me in the most was the cover art on this book. Really love that illustration. I reminds me of the old Moraff's World video game, or some more surreal version which never quite existed.

Also, I'm a big fan of certain types of "sketchy art" in general, and this book is full of it. This might not be a big draw for folks who prefer a more polished product, but the illustrations got the idea across and were perfectly fine in that regard.

Strongly recommended for dungeon designers and weird-scenario builders.

This is an evocative little scenario, and really intrigues me despite its ultimately deadly endpoint. I would certainly be enthusiastic to run or play in it, though I feel it only fair to advise players of the genre conventions involved.

That said, there were a few aspects that didn't satisfy my personal tastes:

• Wasted Space - This 56 page document uses the first score of pages to parse out the setting in spoon sized dallops. Most of the early pages have only a brief paragraph or an unaccompanied picture. It isn't until about p.25 that we start to get really denser text.

I suspect the intent was to hit readers with suscinct, self-contained bits of lore or chargen to reflect on. But in practice I just found myself annoyed at having to constantly click to page down.

• DCC Lineage - I have nothing against Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I don't see why this was specifically intended for use with that system. Rather than giving an exhaustive list of Voidant related skills, it suggests reinterpreting DCC skills.

Aside from use of the Luck stat, I'm really not sure why an existing OGL space system like X-plorers or Hulks & Horrors wasn't used (White Star might've been in infancy when the game was being conceived). Or, for a fraction more page space, it could have been made as a self contained game, borrowing a page from Microlite20 or its ilk.

• Stat generation - This is not particularly more complicated than normal, but the selection of dice being rolled for hit points, and the after-roll stat adjustment makes me wonder what was trying to be achieved.

• NeoTekuLR terminology - There's a fancy word for everything. This is of course supposed to be evocative and show you how weirdly alien the future is to our modern conventions. And it works in that regard, I'll admit. But I found myself having to reparse words repeatedly, as I read along in the text even after figuring out their meaning the first time.

Also, I found that the spelled-out numbers above ten (as names and identifiers, not stat descriptors) really made me stumble over them while reading.

• Keeping Track - In addition to constant hazards the scenario scenes specifically throw at players, there are also persistent problems:

  • Every 20 minutes check for resource consumption.
  • Every 30 minutes check for equipment issues. Also remember that this chance is increasing. I don't know if these worked fine in playtesting, but were I running, I think I'd find keeping track of all of them a bit frustrating.
• End Notes - Throughout the text there were numbered references mentioned. It wasn't until my second read-through that I realized that a numbered list at the back of the book labeled "Course History DataLog" was actually a table of related end notes. Again, more of a personal preference, but I favor the immediacy of footnotes, so I don't have to scroll to the end of the PDF to read. Or at least a clearer (if less cleverly tone-setting) title to indicate an end notes section.

Despite these complaints, I'd like to reiterate that really do find the scenario grimly inspiring and do not regret the money spent on it.

I purchased this product looking for something like a megadungeon set in space to borrow for non-Traveller games. In this I had mixed success.

Drak'ne is technically a very thorough and well thought out depiction of a massive, isolated research facility designed to assist an alien war which ended thousands of years ago.

The scenario has elements of a megadungeon and is certainly sandboxy. But the relative uniformity of the environment and its hazards means that, unless the scenario is significantly modified by the GM, the players might be some degree of monotony to exploration. Success seems pretty much a matter of patiently and methodically going through the whole station and prying loose everything you can in order to sell or reuse it.

There are certain potential hazards, treasures of a sort, and mysteries and intrigues which might be discovered. But, I'd say the general tone of the scenario is more toward realistic resource exploitation, rather than adventurous discovery and treasure hunting. Thematically it is about as far from "gonzo" dungeoncrawling as I can imagine.

To detail further:

• There are a few suggested "traps" but these are intended to be rare, and usually the result of system malfunctions.
• Security androids are the main opponents, but all are similar (c.f. imagine a huge dungeon populated only by identically skilled and armed orcs with no distinguishable factions or differences in motive).
• One conscious alien opponent might show up, but will have significant work to get things up and running again.
• The crew are almost entirely dead or in cold sleep. As written, encountering any conscious aliens other than the one opponent, will take some work.
• Multiple factions of aliens do exist, but all are xenophobic to one extent or another and may not even be uncountered, unless someone manages to revive a number of sleepers and the right sleepers are awoken, and might not be differentiated unless the language is decoded and certain linguistic clues are interpreted correctly or spelled out.
• There are valuable things to be uncovered. But the most valuable are simply along the lines of bulk (alien) supplies or notes that a corporation might pay a lot for to speed up their long term research slightly.

Variant scenarios for the Dra'k'ne station suggested at the end of the text include having competing groups trying to exploit the place at the same time, having the facility's equipment pose a hazard to an inhabited planet, or having pirates base their operations from this locale. These might spice up the risks a bit and make time more of a factor. But none are given more than a cursory mention, and all details of these alternate scenarios are left to the GM to spell out.

For what it is, Dark'ne station is well written. But for my liking it could have used more variety and depth to the opponents, risks, and immediately usable "cool" rewards.

Construct Mechanus provides details for using sentient golems for the d20 system. It also does a pretty nice job of outlining origins, physical concerns, and possible outlooks of Mechanus characters.

Two races are provided, two classes, and a whole bunch of feats. Also, some details for including fantasy firearms in your game (for Mechanus or others) are thrown in at the end to spice things up.

The two races are "Stilts" and "Abominus":

Stilts are limited constructs which can be heavily customized at first level using a point-buy system (and: no, they aren't necessarily required to have a spindly stilt-like appearance).

Abomin(-us? -uses? -i?) are tought, often enormous, constructs meant to take a pounding as frontline troops. They are significantly less customizable except through the use of feats.

The two classes are the "Tanker" and "Mystic Defender":

The Tanker class is somewhat like the Fighter, except that they get massive amounts of armor and other swank magical construct type benefits in place of the standard feats.

The Mystic Defender on the other hand has the spells of a gimped out Wizard, but with better BAB and some pretty sweet (and, in my humble opinion, generally fitting) spell-like abilities acquired in addition to the normal spell progression.

Both these classes are both intended only for Mechanus characters. But while it would be difficult to apply the Tanker to other types of characters, I see no reason that the Mystic defender could be used by most other races with little modification.

The feats are mainly additional physical (occasionally magical) features which can be used to further customize a mechanus beyond the Stilt point-buy system. Very few of them could reasonably be used on non-Mechanus characters unless you want to get silly (but sillyness is your thing then: Hey! Go for it.).<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: I'd just like to say: Wow!

That said: The idea is nicely laid out. The art was wonderfully evocative and really helped set the tone for the book.

The way Construct Mechanus was presented gave me some neat ideas for how these guys other stories and settings, D&D or otherwise. Frankly I have to say I'm inspired by it.

Rarely do I buy pre-made adventures and campaign modules, but I'm actually looking forward to purchasing "The Clockwork Heart" and "The Mechanical Woodsman and Other Stories".

Definitely worth the $4.95 I paid.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The complaints I had were few but included: 1) Slightly inconsistent treatment of the races motives. We're told early on that Mechanus characters may have many different motives and feelings. Later descriptions seem to paint a somewhat more shallow and stereotpyical picture of these constructs.

2) Feat purchasing limitations. Many of the Feats have the special limitation that they can only be acquired at first level. This after other text indicates that Mechanus change physically over the course of their advancement. Possibly this limitation was imposed for game balance reasons, but it's a little bit of a let-down for players who want to eventually build in some neat modifications to their character over time.

2) A little too fighty. From Stilts at least I expected a type of character dedicated primarily to activities other than fighting, but they're described as, "constructed as a warrior race" and many of the customizable abilities dealing with combat. I suppose this not unexpected in a game as focused on combat as the d20 system (especially fantasy variants), but I'd hoped for more examples of other character focuses. Although I'm no expert on "game balance", some of the modifications also strike me as a bit powerful compared to the existing PC classes.

3) Magically limited. Unless special GM fiat is applied the default is that Mechanus characters apparently can't use or learn magic except that inherent in their own special features or part of the special mechanus classes presented. This would be easy to fix (the GM simply says, "Mechanus can take standard core SRD classes."), but does not appear to be fully explained.

4) Origins and life sketchy. The ritual (probably a Feat) to create Mechanus characters is intentionally left out of this PDF. This might be interesting to have included as it suggests the possability of self-sustaining Mechanus communities. The inclusion of such a feat is not necessary to playing a character though, just my personal preference.

It is possible that some of these issues are dealt with later in the Mechanus series of books which I haven't read yet.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Theoretically the Arcane Dabbler is a heavy modification of the Adept NPC class. However, in execution it's much closer to the standard Wizard PC cpass.

The idea behind the Arcane Dabbler is that some magicians don't concentrate entirely on perfecting their knowledge of spell usage, but pursue other activities for a living or diversify their understanding in other areas. The main diffence between the Wizard and the Arcane Dabbler is that the Dabbler progresses somewhat more slowly in spell-casting power and variety, but has a better range of weapons as well as more opportunity to learn skills and better hit dice.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: I feel the Arcane Dabbler was a valiant effort to produce a sort of hedge-wizard class I've always wanted: a class which is not limited to spell-usage alone, but benefits from the ability to learn other lores and skills.

Also, the explainations of how Dabblers fit into fantasy society seemed well reasoned. I think that, even if this file is brief, the writers have done the gaming community a service by pointing out a possability for humbler, more human level magicians, rather than the eternally aspiring adventurer or archmage types.

Also, the product is relatively inexpensive, so if you don't like it, at least you're not out much.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: In some ways I think the Arcane Dabbler went too far beyond wizards (mainly with hit dice), in other ways not far enough (ability progression and BAB relatively too similar to Wizards for my tastes).

Also, the level progression vs. "caster level" progression issue complicates the class somewhat, but not to the point of making it incomprehensible.

Finally, the flavor text, overview, and idea behind the character were nice, but most aspects of this class could easily be replicated by having a character take the Wizard class and multi-class a little (especially with the Expert NPC class).<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

If you've gotten this far you've seen all there is to see about this dragon. Also comes with easy assembly instructions and convenient tips like "A Note about Using White Glue". You may think you know how to use white glue, but it's possible you are mistaken (as I once learned about rubber cement from one of my college teachers in a design course).

The tips and hints you learn from this convenient 3 page PDF could start you well on your way toward your own army of draconic might!<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: It's free! If you need a dragon it's hard to beat that price.

Also, one dragon is color, the other in black and white so you can create your own dragonish color scheme.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: It's not the most beautiful dragon in the world, but then are dragons really supposed to be pretty?<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I bought Libellus Magnus 2 mainly looking for some new and different spells. In that respect the product wasn't very exciting. The spells listed here-in are not bad, and don't exactly duplicate existing d20 Players Handbook Spells, but they aren't really that unusual either.

Also, a couple of the combat related spells seemed to be set a level or two higher than I'd have expected based on their damage.

The feats were kind of interesting, but there are only two of them. Probably if you want feats what Libellus Magnus 1 is for. Had I written the text I might have done one of the feats differently, but that's really a matter personal taste rather than problem with the mechanics.

The other feat has a skill rank pre-requisite which seemingly makes it impossible to obtain at the minimum caster-level pre-requisite unless there's some multi-classing taking place. Again, not a problem, but just not quite the way I'd have done things.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: As mentioned earlier, the feats gave me a couple new ideas.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: While nothing was very disappointing about this product, little of it was particularly innovative either. The spells were not exactly what you'd find in the PHB, but for the most part not very different in new and unusual ways.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>