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rpgKids is a fantasic product for getting young children into gaming. It uses very simple mechanics that make it easy for children to learn and play the game, but also helps strengthen their math skills. For $3 there is no reason not to try it out if you small children around 5 or so.
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My daughter Sophia just turned 4. She's learning her numbers and the concept of "math" in general. She loves my DnD minis and plays with them on my office floor right along side her dolls, ponies, and farm animals. We talk a lot about which minis are good guys and bad guys. So, the need for an RPG system for kids is there. I want to be able to play with my daughter.
In steps RPGKids, a wonderful, simple, very easy to scale system. I was literally playing RPGkids with my daughter within 20 minutes of buying it. The system uses a d12 & d6, has a few simple rules, and makes it easy to scale (1 monster per player).
For my daughter, who is 4 remember, I did away with everything except for the d12. That gave me just enough to provide a real structure she could understand and she picked up on the dice "higher number is better" concept right away. She played two characters (Lightening & Sarah), my wife played two characters (Ratface & Stanley), and off we went to defeat the evil wizard who was turning the townsfolk into frogs.
I can't really relate how much joy we had as a family playing this together. Lightening, Sarah, Ratface, and Stanley defeated the wizard, saved the town, and celebrated by having ice cream at the local tavern.
Until Brutus, the ugly but friendly troll showed up. But that's for the next adventure.
Sure, there are things I could nitpick, but why bother? Its $2.99 for crying out loud. In terms of learning, fun, and pure enjoyment with your kids, its the best $3 you'll spend.
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If you want to add a comprehensive and robust yet elegant rules subsystem to deal with poisons in your D&D 4e campaign, you can't do better (as far as I know at the time of writing this review), than the 4e version of One Bad Egg's "Poisoncraft." From cover to cover, this supplement scores on every key feature. The author has succeeded in capturing what he calls the "Fourth Edition aesthetic," and the rules in "Poisoncraft" exhibit good 4e design sensibility. It's clear that the author understands both poisons and 4e D&D well enough to blend the two into a workable, harmonious concotion.
The supplement begins with a brief glossary, a very important feature of the book. Don't skip it; read the entries carefully, to save yourself headaches later on. The book then introduces "posion protocols," which are much like rituals, but for crafting potions. The heroic tier Poisoncrafter feat (p. 4) gives PCs access to poison protocols. After this follows a long discussion of how to create a poison protocol, along with tables for component costs and for completed protocols. After a brief set of optional rules (yes, optional rules for an option subsystem, depending on how complex you wish to get) follows the "Codex Venenorum" itself. The "Codex" lists dozens of poisons (I think I actually counted 89), including real-world toxins such as arsenic and hydrogen selenide as well as fictional, fantasy poisons like hopemelter (derived from aged ochre jelly scum) and gentle dust (made from polarized wraith residue).
In every way, this product is a winner. The writing is crisp, the editing was thorough, and the artwork fits the theme perfectly. I've examined several posion supplements for 4e, and One Bad Egg's "Poisoncraft" is the one I've chosen to use in my own 4e campaigns.
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So I got this product as part of the Haiti relief bundle. I wouldn't have looked at it twice due to the d20 logo on the cover, but I vowed that I would at least browse every product in the bundle. Wow...there is some nice stuff in here. First off, more detail than I will ever need for running an adventure in a cold, icy setting. Some tremendous cold-themed monsters, magic items and spells as well. This book is just LOADED with stuff. For my purposes, I'll be taking chunks and converting it to Savage Worlds, but I found a LOT to convert. I give it a 4 out of 5, if only because my system of choice means I won't be using it "as written", and thus it'll take a bit of extra work. Nice surprise.
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I'm glad you browsed through it and found it cool (no pun intended). :-) |
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Healing in a fantasy role-playing game has always had some issues. If the cleric can dish out magical healing, that’s great for everyone except the cleric, who’s now pigeonholed as the “healing guy,” and moreover that means that the adventuring stops when the cure spells do – both create game-play problems. On the other hand, if everyone can just heal themselves via an ill-defined ability to rally themselves past their injuries, that creates verisimilitude problems. But what never gets talked about is the idea that healing can mean more than closing lacerations and overcoming physical damage – sometimes healing can be a spiritual process of overcoming personal trauma; something not easily handled in a mechanics-laden RPG. But that’s what Liber Sodalitas: The Dream Healers sets out to do.
The book is a fairly short one – ten pages long, with a cover and a page for the OGL – but deftly presents the dream healer organization, going over their history, tenets, organization, and how to join, before showcasing a few NPCs followed by two new magic items and a prestige class. The product has full bookmarks, something laudable since most companies wouldn’t do that for a PDF this short, and has very little artwork (the character from the cover is shown again once in the interior, and there are two sidebars set on a parchment background, but that’s it), making printing easy.
The thing that captivated me most about this product was how it seemed to focus the new crunch towards a purely fluff-oriented goal. The dream healer prestige class works well from a mechanical standpoint in that it increases clerical spellcasting and has powers to enter and manipulate dreams, for example, but none of that directly translated into healing (or harming, since there’s an NPC who shows how you can have evil dream healers). There’s a sidebar at the end of the book that addresses this directly, saying how the major theme of the class is one that is best addressed from a story perspective; it’s an intriguing way to address the concept of personally facing down old fears and emotional scars without getting bogged down in mechanics.
Of course, the book isn’t entirely without a few rough spots. For example, the last paragraph of the section detailing the organization’s history is frustratingly replaced with the introductory paragraph halfway through. There was also a mechanical glitch or two, such as the dream healer prestige class having a d6 Hit Die, despite having a BAB that increases by ¾ at each level – the Pathfinder design philosophy would give it a d8.
Ultimately, I was impressed by what this book put together. It’s not often that a product is able to make the crunch viable while serving a story idea, and this PDF is impressive for how well it pulls it off. If you’d like healing to be more of a personal story of triumph over tragedy than how often a cure spell is needed, this book is what you’re in search of.
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Ronin, a new OGL product by Jeremy Puckett and released by Highmoon Media Productions, is exactly what you’ve been looking for if you’re interested in running a 3e game set in Feudal Japan, specifically during the Tokugawa Era.
The first large portion of the book doesn’t even contain rules. It goes over the history of Japan (including the mythical beliefs of the origin of the island nation), life in Tokugawa Japan (including food, religion, languages and locations) and the way of the Samurai. In this respect, the book is very much like the Usagi Yojimbo RPG, which spends a lot of time on giving background information of feudal Japan.
It isn’t until page 42 when mechanics are even mentioned. This isn’t a bad thing, just very unusual in most RPGs. There are rules for Tea Ceremonies (of all things) which I think is very cool, giving you a bonus to fear and other emotion-dependent effects, but you must pass a skill check to avoid losing Honor.
Speaking of…
Honor mechanics are presented here, something argued about as often as rules for Sanity and Firearms in RPGs. The rules here look fairly well balanced, leaving a lot of room for the DM and players to interpret the code of honor as they see fit.
The PHB classes are mentioned, talking about the changes that need to be made to them to play as samurai in a historical setting. A new class is presented (the courtier), and looks interesting, though I despise courtiers after the one I dealt with in an L5R game years ago, who was sneaky and conniving as all getout. This courtier is nothing like that, being much more like the Noble from Star Wars.
Two new prestige classes are introduced, before moving into more fluff about peasants, presenting more about the PHB classes as members of the peasant class. The Shudoshi is introduced as Zen Buddhist-type characters.
There is a chapter of information on Social Class and Culture, suggesting using social class as a substitution for race, a great idea if you’re playing in historical Japan.
The book wraps up with information on skills and feats, equipment, and a bestiary, all things you’d find in any other campaign setting book. Nothing is bad, but nothing there stands out to me, either.
Overall, the Ronin supplement is a great addition to your collection if you’re looking at either playing in Feudal Japan or the fantasy equivalent. I give it 4 out of 5 dice.
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“Gods of the Shroud” is an excellent attempt for a third-party publishing company to realign religious pantheons. Recently, One Bad Egg (OBE) extended its rights of use to use its names deities in other material. I believe that OBE has the gamers’ interests at heart, and that most recent move exemplifies my opinion. The .pdf includes full color images of at least the deity and their associated holy symbol. Additional 4E abilities are reproduced following Wizards of the Coast’s coloring scheme. While this coloring makes printing more expensive, having the references available on the .pdf became very helpful.
The file showcases more than a dozen unique deities, and each god offers at least one new power for their follower. Two personal favorites include The Silent Sister background and mission, and the double-crossing machinations of the Shadow Above and its worshippers. For the price, I was well pleased with the artwork, deity descriptions (without needing an organization hierarchy chart explaining who-is-who), and short adventure tips involving each deity and their believers. This work ties in well with other releases by OBE, including the Half-Dead player race. Although none of my players are at Paragon levels, I think I can envision rich story arc use of this product with the Unbroken, also by OBE.
If you want some darker gods in your campaign, want to separate from over-used and underpowered 4E gods, or enjoy an interesting and well-written mythology, try this product!
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In almost every RPG created, gamers can’t get enough of two things: classes (or class-like options) and races. For my first staff review, I took a look at a new race supplement by a small indie publisher, so this week I thought it’d be fitting to explore a class that’s been integrated into the 4e products. I found that class in One Bad Egg’s witch doctor.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the classes are separated into four different types: Controller, Striker, Defender and Leader. Unfortunately the original D&D Player’s Handbook only included one of the Controller type (the wizard) and so larger gaming groups had to either settle for two wizards in their campaign or players had to look elsewhere to find another Controller to add to their party.
One Bad Egg’s witch doctor fits perfectly into that Controller type, but stands apart from WotC’s Wizard in a number of unique ways. First off, the Witch Doctor uses two implements that “eat” other magical items, meaning that players can infuse these two artifacts with the properties of magical items that they find. So rather than forcing players to wear a gilded crown to get that +4 charisma bonus, the DM can have the player “feed” the crown to his witch doctor’s mask. While it’s not a novel idea, integrating this functionality into two item’s in a witch doctor’s possession was right on the money.
The Witch Doctor supplement itself is very well done, with above average artwork that looks stylish if not exquisite (although not quite as good as Alluria publishing’s Anumus art) and a thorough selection of powers and paragon choices for those players that explore the witch doctor into the later levels. In fact, the depth of information included with the witch doctor should make any tabletop gamer happy with the purchase. The 43 page supplement includes 93 powers, three paragon paths, 24 new feats, 13 new magic items, three new rituals, and three new pre-made witch doctor enemies. Although the feats aren’t particularly creative, they’re still affective at bolstering to the value of this product.
According to One Bad Egg’s RPGnow.com reputation, the company has put out a plethora of quality products for their fans. The Witch Doctor is another one of those products, and if you have a few dollars to spend, this supplement is definitely worth it.
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This product was one of the first 4E .pdfs I purchased. I liked the primal feel of the race from other reviews, and believe that One Bad Egg creatively infused this interesting, intelligent race with crunch to compliment the fluff. My gaming group added the apelord as a possible race during our first foray into 4E, and we weren't disappointed. In particular, the race offered our group some interesting options: * rich background and options of role-playing the beast-men; * great bonuses to two key combat traits; * interesting feats that encouraged one player to want to climb trees and ambush/attack; and a great resource for me as a GM to make some interesting challenges. Overall, the quality of this product was outstanding for the price an ease of use. Original artwork kept pace nicely with the character options and stories, too. I highly recommend this resource as a player option or a DM reference to change gears on players!
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Although we can remember playing Assassins, Cavaliers and Thief-Acrobats, our gaming group is new to the 4E movement. As such, you may understand our hesitancy on adding a new player class. However, we have used the HARD BOILED CULTURES by One Bad Eggs Ideas with success in other games (Although the product was designed for 4E, this cultural article had great utility in other gaming systems, too.), and felt that a FREE preview would be worthwhile. We have recently downloaded the .pdf and found it to be very inspiring!
Witch Doctors (WD) fill the niche as 4E controllers, and it appears to be somewhat of an “anti-leader,” too. The WD has many interesting powers, many of which focus on ill effects of Saving Throws. When aimed at an enemy leader, our group believes WDs to be more powerful than wizards of (at least) lower levels. Wizards cannot deal significant damage to a powerful enemy leader, but WDs can provide unsettling curses and similar effects to distract or otherwise render the bad guy less powerful. Also, the “Resolute Witch Doctor” relies heavily on his Constitution score, making this class an attractive difference beyond being a healthy caster.
In addition to the unique powers, our group liked the flavorful background of the WD, especially in light of the newest 4E Players Handbook II that includes more primitive classes and options. An Eladrin Wizard differs greatly from a Dwarf Witch Doctor while filling similar roles! We noticed some overlap with a WD and a Staff Wizard, but the powers are different, especially regarding the wall-powers of WDs. Our group's controller chose to build a Tiefling WD, because the dark and spooky race seemed like a natural fit as WDs, too, and their Charisma bonus helps. Finally, we will look to add the Apelord as a Witch Doctor to our next game, and see how successful One Bad Egg can be marrying two of its products.
Our only regret was not learning about the play-testing sooner…
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This product helped me take the plunge into 4E. The quality of this .pdf far exceeds its low price. I enjoyed the colorful art and liked clean tables laid-out through the article. My gaming group feared very constrictive guidelines and racial rules in 4E, but HARD BOILED CULTURES outlines creative solutions and avoids stereotypes. In fact, One Bad Egg Ideas shatters many racial preconceptions by focusing on cultures more than race. I particularly like the common-sense idea of how simple geography may change a race. Furthermore, some racial traits need not change at all- these rules as written by Wizards of the Coast become the cultural “Norm” under which some races may change. HARD BOILED CULTURES need not be restricted to 4E D&D, either! I easily used its suggestions to help make fresh, new encounters in other independent games I played before 4E. Considering the price, its utility in any game system, and easy-to-understand charts and guidelines, I highly recommend this .pdf to two different groups: hard working DMs facing stale NPC encounters, or a plucky group of players wanting to play a party consisting of all the same race…with subtle yet distinct differences within the group. Enjoy…
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Whether you choose to play a half-dead as one of the most bizarre characters I can imagine, or feel that they will make horrific opposition for your game, this work details a terrifying fate, that of being neither dead, undead or alive... but trapped somewhere in between, a living mind in an undead body. Will madness ensue?
This fate can befall a member of any race, provided it is sentient. As it's caused by dying while under the influence of dark and necrotic magics, it is a fate which can be held over characters when they encounter a foe capable of casting such magics. Most are driven by the need to complete whatever task they were engaged in when they fell. The victim looks like a recently-deceased member of their original race, however all undergo a similar transformation in terms of stat changes and powers while the outward manifestation of their state is a gradual sink into decay - it is difficult to conceal your true nature as time passes.
For those intending to play a half-dead character, there is plenty of detail both in terms of ideas and in rule mechanics to draw upon, including the standard new feats and powers specifically tailored to the half-dead state. Naturally, you need to determine who the character was BEFORE he became a half-dead, as he will still have access to the skills and knowledge he had in life.
While half-dead who are going to play a major role in your plot may be created using the full character rules, a half-dead template is also provided for those DMs who want to use them as monsters. A half-dead minotaur is provided as an example of the template in use... and if that doesn't give you enough ideas, some adventure seeds are given to set you thinking about ways in which the half-dead might feature in your campaign.
Overall, this is a well-designed character race or monster option with the potential to add a truely horrific slant to any campaign.
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It is an intriguing thought: what happens if a paladin, of all people, loses faith in his chosen deity? This paragon path suggests how such a dramatic turn of events can be used to advantage - and may even encourage the more adventurous role-player to make such a move.
In keeping with One Bad Egg's stated ideals of just giving you ideas to get your own creative juices flowing, the reasons why a paladin might turn away from his god are left open - it could be something the god has done (if your deities are interventionist this is quite possible!) or growing cynicism about the whole religion thing might have led him to believe that his power comes from within rather than above. Be that as it may, once the paladin character has lost his faith, this work suggests a way in which he can continue as a paladin, but with different powers stemming from within (or perhaps from his deity who may not have abandoned him!). Various path features and prayers are given, along with a useful magic item and an excellent feat that is of general application.
This feat, Personal Code, is worthy of special mention. It can be taken by anyone who wants to have a firm moral code by which to live, a code which may be derived from the tenets of a religion or from a particular ethical stance either derived by the character himself or taught by a secular group or teacher. The fun thing is, it should be written in such a way that it provides in-game challenges to the character and these, provided the DM agrees, can be used to create milestones and minor quests with the concomitant rewards.
You also get a couple of monster templates, not only player-characters desert their gods after all! So there's a template for humanoids and another for fallen angels. Very useful for any campaign in which individual relationships with the gods are important.
Worth it for the Personal Code feat alone, this is an intriguing concept well-presented.
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The company's name may be One Bad Egg, but The Apelord is one good product, a good model for what creative third parties can do to extend D&D 4e. The first quarter of the PDF provides D&D players with a new PC race, the apelord, fully supported with appropriate racial powers and feats. The remainder of the product gives DMs Monster Manual-style writeups of various types of apelords, including undead versions. All are interesting and well done.
There's plenty of storyline (fluff) in this product to go along with the crunch; a second, two-page PDF gives buyers a little bit of the context for the story elements. However, if you don't want to use those story elements, you can easily rewrite them for your own campaign, with no more difficulty than adding genasi (Forgotten Realms) or warforged (Eberron) to your homebrew setting. For example, One Bad Egg locates the apelords in "the north," but I'll be finding a place for them in my tropical islands campaign.
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October has finally arrived, and as the 4e GSL goes live the first of the 3rd party support products for the new 4e GSL have started to appear on the market. As can be expected both old and new publishers are signing up to the 4e GSL, and one such new publisher is One Bad Egg. Their first product is called Races of the Shroud: The Apelord, and presents a new PC race, several racial feats for said race, new monsters based on this race, and several adventure and campaign ideas related to the race and the Shroud, a mysterious mutating fog that covers the land.
The product comes as two pdf files - one detailing the Shroud and giving a brief campaign idea involving it, and the second presenting the apelord race, racial feats and monsters. I have to admit that things have come a long way in the industry since the OGL was released years back, and the quality of presentation and material on offer from new publishers is on another level compared to the early OGL offerings. This product is very well presented and formatted, with a clear layout, good and imaginative writing, and some wonderful pieces of full color art. The product looks good and professional, and I hope that this style of presentation continues despite the natural rush to get products on the market. One Bad Egg have delivered on a good presentation.
This product presents a new PC race, the apelord, a race of intelligent apes that have been changed by the mysterious power of the Shroud. Much like one would expect, this race is good at climbing, good a falling down from trees and other heights, and good at using its fist to batter things into submission. Basically, if you want a very playable PC race that's, well, an intelligent gorilla, then this is exactly what you need. The product provides plenty of information on the apelord race, from descriptions to habits to community and other social aspects. In addition, some useful details on a few apelord adventurers are provided (without statistics) and applicable names and general naming conventions. I thought this was a well done race which catches the flavor of the race well in the mechanics and implements a sound and playable race that can make for an interesting change. It's not the most novel or even interesting race I've ever seen, but it's been well implemented and detailed.
For me at least, and most likely for the DMs and not the players, this product doesn't shine so much with the race but more with the new monsters based on the apelord race. There are some really useful and interesting new monsters, particularly the bunch of corrupted undead apelords and the apelord speaker. The minor apelords are mostly standard fare, but for the higher level creatures (creatures range from levels 4 to 9) the product does an impressive job of coming up with unique and interesting abilities for the monsters to use. The apelord speaker, for example, has an ability to call a spirit to assist it, and this is clever and versatile at the same time as flavorful. The monsters are generally creative and well done, and worth challenging your players with.
For those interested in reskinning monsters, these monster abilities can be used for a variety of other concepts and creatures. I have to wonder how long it's going to take for the first generic monster book to come out, that only contains flavor and descriptions along with special abilities and no actual normal combat statistics to create a paradise for those interested in modifying monsters. The product concludes with some creative adventure ideas and hooks which tie all the material in the pdf together nicely.
Overall I thought this was a very good product. It contains some very useful new material, good flavor and good implementation of mechanics and concepts. Players and DMs who don't like animal/human hybrids can still find plenty of use in this product through the monsters provided and the details of the Shroud along with its associated campaign ideas and adventure hooks. The monsters in particular are enjoyable with some innovative new ideas and attacks developed for these creatures. While this material is applicable to any campaign setting, something African would likely fit very well with the concepts and the ideas presented. A good little pdf.
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