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Slumbering Tsar - The Desolation - The Edge of Oblivion is the first part in a 14 chapter mega-adventure from the creative minds of Necromancer Games and Frog God Games. This 14 chapter mega-adventure is divided into three main adventures: The Desolation (consisting of three chapters), the Temple-City of Orcus (consisting of five chapters) and lastly the Hidden Citadel (consisting of six chapters). It is generally not recommended that any of the individual chapterss are run on their own, though those chapters that form a particular adventure can be run as a single adventure product with some modification.
The Edge of Oblivion is the first part of the Desolation and sees the adventurers arrive at a rather dilapidated settlement called the Camp, where they get the chance to explore, learn about the various northern lands of the Desolation and encounter some of the numerous threats that pervade the area. The Ghosts of Victory, the second chapter in the Desolation, continues the exploration of the Desolation with the magically created Chaos Rift and the deadly storms of the Ashen Waste, while chapter three, the Western Front concludes the details of the Desolation with the Boiling Lands and the Dead Fields. In essence, this first adventure acts as a spring board to further exploration of the Desolation, which in turn, at the end, brings the characters to the gates of the Temple-City of Orcus where the adventure continues.
The Edge of Oblivion is a professionally and excellently presented product, with high production quality, excellent writing and very good art. It ticks all the boxes as far as presentation and writing go, providing vivid and frankly quite compelling details on the adventure background which features the battle between the Army of Light and the hordes of Orcus. The background details are rich and ripe with opportunity, allowing plenty of room to incorporate your own ideas and thoughts. The adventure hooks are enough to get you started on exploring the Desolation and the Camp, though I have my doubts about whether they're compelling enough to provide incentive and motivation to continue the exploration beyond that. With less than a handful of parts in the mega-adventure released so far, it's hard to estimate the purpose and motivation of the rest of the adventure, and how easy it will be to keep the characters hooked on the plot hooks provided. The lack of a complete adventure overview in some form is quite bothersome, as it doesn't give you enough information to make the most of the material provided, or to incorporate overarching plots across the three adventures.
This chapter of the adventure is focused solely on the Camp, a small, but wretched settlement. The aim is to give characters both a base of operations as well as an introduction to the adventure and the Desolation itself. Here the characters will deal with all sorts of interesting characters and creatures, and find themselves embroidered in a variety of schemes and conflicts. I though the Camp was very well done, with great roleplaying opportunity, very interesting encounters with all manner of creatures, and the opportunity to learn a lot about what lies ahead. There are several fixed encounters in the adventure, but also other encounters that are triggered by various events as the characters explore the Desolation. I thought this was an excellent touch, though at the same time I was disappointed that the adventure couldn't have provided more details or integrated further. For example, there's no integration with the other two adventures in the series (Temple-City of Orcus) and (The Hidden Citadel), and it would've been really nice to give a well-fleshed out base with colorful characters a more lasting role in the overall adventure.
Having read all three parts of the Desolation adventure, I have to admit that I like this one the best. It's got the most opportunity for roleplaying, the most opportunity for DMs to stretch the creative minds, and the author has provided a compelling area to act as a springboard to the rest of the Desolation. Within the scope of the broader adventure the Edge of Oblivion has a few faults, but as a stand-alone area it's a lovely settlement with diversity of characters and interesting subplots. For those not interested in running through this mega-adventure, the Camp is an unique location that can easily be used in other campaigns. Overall. a great start to the mega-adventure, but lacking in details as to what this mega-adventure actually entails, and a more lasting connection to its material for the Camp itself.
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The Inn of Lost Heroes is one of the best adventures for Labyrinth Lord I've read in a while. It features all the classic elements of a great adventure - loads of atmosphere, plenty of action, roleplaying galore, the unexplained and unknown, and a perfect balance between all the aforementioned elements. In this adventure the heroes become involved in the dark, horror and unexplained events surrounding a well-known inn. As they get drawn deeper into the inn's twisted world, where rules are meant to be broken, they must look for a sliver of light that will release them from their nightmare. The Inn of Lost Heroes is suitable for 3 to 6 characters of levels 3 to 5, of which it is recommended that one of each class be present in the party. The presentation of this product is very good, although the maps are fairly average, and I wished the organisation had been a little bit better. There's an awful lot of referring to different sections backwards and forwards across the product, and things could've been improved by simply breaking various sections down a lot better. As is, it's sometimes hard to tell if you're in a new section or still busy with the old one. Artwork is fairly sparse, though good when present. I though the cover was fairly decent, and reminiscent of old-school adventure gaming.
I really enjoyed this adventure product. From the moment I started reading it I was hooked. This product oozes flavor and atmosphere, and will make a great horror or dark adventure for any GMs party and characters. On top of that it's ingenious in its handling of the various elements of the background and the plot, as well as the fabulous location that's presented in the product. The author and team create a really vivid and alive inn with some impressive flavor. I really appreciated the roleplaying opportunities involved in this adventure, although in places I thought it could be quite frantic for GMs to run as a result of the sheer number of NPCs. It might have been better, particularly in latter parts of the adventure, to keep some of the NPC numbers down, but even so their large numbers are handled very well mechanically. Novice GMs might struggle to effectively portray chaotic and frantic scenes with so many NPCs. Even reading it made it difficult to discern all the actions.
The adventure is full of action and activity, and can be quite breathless by the end of the adventure. There's a lot happening, and the adventure provides for more action than any GM really needs to include. I thought the concept and plot were very good, and the execution even better. I wasn't really a big fan of the parts of the adventure that were aimed at solo characters, but even so the reasoning behind this was clear and the outcome of these encounters will just add to the atmosphere and horror of what the characters are living through. Plenty of details are provided on all the NPCs (and GMs will really have to be on their toes when running this adventure), and each NPC has a clear purpose in the adventure. I thought some of the NPCs were very well handled, and the conclusion of the adventure, if run all the way to its natural end, is very satisfying, and indeed emotional. I can't recommend this adventure enough. It's a fantastic blend of breathless action, horror-flavored atmosphere and innovative opportunity. Great product.
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Fantastic Maps - Arena of Fire is Rite Publishing's latest offering of 2D terrain tiles. This set features a magical and mystical temple through which a dangerous river of fire and lava flows. This map set, like all in the Fantastic Maps series, features a single location in one inch scale to each map square. The entire map has a size of 34 by 44 inches, with each individual tile being 8 by 8 squares. Tiles overlap a small amount to allow for easy assembly. As this is not a generic tile set, it's likely quite difficult to combine it with other sets in the same series, and is best used as a single encounter, single location product. The product includes additional features such as MapTool files, a global image of the whole map for easy GM reference and assembly guide, and both color and black-and-white versions of the terrain tiles for printing.
The Arena of Fire is a striking map that offers lots of tactical opportunities. With loads of mystical, magical glyphs and symbols dotted around the map and a river of fire bisecting the map, creative GMs can make good use of the possibilities. Various areas offer different chances and opportunities at crossing to the other side, and with multiple entry points into the chamber it can be a fun scramble with good strategic and tactical nuances. The artwork is very good - I particularly liked the vibrant fire of the river, and the magical symbols themselves. The rest of the map is very clean in the sense that it doesn't offer any typical dungeon or temple features. A little bit of background featuring, for example, marks on the surface stones, bones and other small items would've made the map a little more realistic. The glyphs or symbols are useful to designate various magical zone in a radius around the glyph or to trigger various effects. The possibilities of these glyphs are left the GMs imagination. Overall, I thought this was another very good product in the Fantastic Maps series. If you're looking for an exciting and tactical map for a final adventure encounter featuring magical effects and a river of fire, this is a very good option. Good product.
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Publisher Reply: |
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I wanted to thank peter for taking the time to do a review of our product. Steve Russell Rite Publishing |
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Castles and Crusades - Where Cool Water Runs is a short stand-along encounter from Troll Lord Games for the Castles and Crusades gaming system. This encounter is suitable for 3 to 5 characters of levels 4 to 7, and sees the characters being hunted by several cunning and deadly creatures as the PCs inadvertently approach their nest. As one would expect, the encounter takes place in a single setting - in this instance a refreshing glade through which a gentle stream runs. The presentation of this product is top notch, sticking to the format maintained throughout all Troll Lord Games' products. My only quibble here is the lack of a scale on the map provided. This encounter can be used in any campaign setting, and very useful and interesting adaptations are included in the 6 page product for Troll Lord Games' own world of Aihrde.
The encounter is a fairly simple one but very well detailed to make sure that CKs will know exactly what to do with which creature and when. I thought the tactics of the creatures involved, a new creature called the charon fiend, were very good, suiting both the nature of the encounter and the details of the creatures themselves. Often the best encounters are those that use the terrain well, and some elements of that are present here. The tactics will give the PCs some thought, and make for an entertaining encounter where the PCs won't know where the threats are coming from. The charon fiends themselves are probably the best part of the product as a whole - I liked their flavor, their description and their mechanical details. I think these creatures can be both terrifying and dangerous at the same time, particularly if used with the tactics described in the encounter. One weakness of the encounter, and really with a lot of products of this nature, is that the encounter is by and large telegraphed. If the CK starts reading blocked text in a seemingly innocuous clearing, there's little doubt the PCs and the players will expect something. It would've been useful if the encounter had been scripted to not be so obvious, or at least given the characters a non-mundane reason for stopping in the clearing and hence triggering the encounter. Overall, though, a very clean and neat product with some uniqueness in the new creature involved and some decent encounter design.
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Advanced Adventures 15 - Stonesky Delve is an OSRIC adventure of exploration, deep cave delving and unlocking ancient dwarven secrets. The adventure was run as a tournament adventure at GenCon Indy 2010, as presented in this format, although it can easily be run as a standard adventure without the need for tournament time-keeping or scoring. In this adventure the PCs are asked to explore a recently opened and uncovered region of the dwarven lands on the slopes of Stonesky Mountain, where they will need to spelunk down into dark, watery and dangerous caves to explore, navigate and map these parts of the dwarven religious lands. In the process, they naturally stumble on things not bargained for, as dwarven history comes to life in the deepest caverns. Stonesky Delve is suitable for 4th to 7th level characters.
The one thing that immediately impressed me with in this adventure was the level of detail and realism. The cavern exploration is done wonderfully well, with full three-dimensional details and realism in the sense that there are critters and monsters where they should be. The exploration is very detailed, and characters will get a real sense of wonder as they pass through the caves. The adventure structure and layout is very logical, with a lot of thought going into design and placement of each encounter area or cavern room. As the exploration continues, they characters uncover ancient and sacred locations within their exploration, and here I felt the exposition was a little weak despite the creative design and verisimilitude of the exploration remaining top notch throughout. While I can expect that an exploration of some caverns is just that, if some additional story elements are added, it would've been nice to seem them become tantamount to the exploration itself rather than just another part of it. In the same vein, while the exploration is required to take place over a few days, why not add a sense of haste to the overall adventure rather than the somewhat artificial adventure background requirement? Perhaps this is all an artifact of the tournament nature of the adventure - who can explore the furthest in the least amount of time. Nevertheless, this is a thoroughly enjoyable adventure that can be real fun, with good and exciting combat encounters, lots of atmosphere, and an adventure that can have equal amount of terror and excitement for the players and characters passing through it. Good product.
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Everybody likes a good treasure map, and particularly the player characters in a GMs campaign. There can be a lot of excitement if they find one hidden in a secret compartment or as part of some long lost creature's treasure hoard. The Monkey's Key is the first adventure in a new series of 'Treasured Maps' adventures from Tabletop Armory, each adventure designed around a particular map and aimed at being a secondary or supplemental adventure to the main campaign, a side-trek if you will. This adventure sees the player characters navigate treacherous jungle terrain to find a sacred relic, the Green Monkey, in a lost tomb. The adventure is for the Pathfinder RPG and suitable for 5th level players characters.
The Monkey's Key is a fairly straightforward adventure, really. Characters discover the map (the means of this is left to the DM), prepare for the expedition (and meet some useful NPCs related to the map in the process, if they so choose), and set out to conquer the Monkey Totem and recover the blessed artefact. Over the course of the adventure they encounter fiendish creatures and cunning traps, with the odd roleplaying encounter strewn in. I wish there had been more opportunity for roleplaying - having a local jungle tribe and then not using them for something really interesting is a bit of a shame. The adventure caters well mechanically to the rules of getting lost in the jungle, and guidelines in following the map and the locations marked there-on. The maps and handouts provided are fairly rudimentary, as is the overall presentation, but everything required to run the adventure is in the product. I think this is a fair adventure - I think it could've been made more interesting than just a straightforward trek through the jungle and exploring the Monkey's totem. A few conundrums for the players, opposition, roleplaying opportunities and the like would've filled it out nicely. As is, it's fair, with some challenging encounters and a little bit of thinking to avoid some traps and cunning guardians, but average overall.
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Mythic Menagerie - Kingdom of Graves is the second Mythic Menagerie monster book from Super Genius Games and OtherWorld Creations for the Pathfinder RPG. This product presents a small number of new creatures around the theme of undead, or more specifically undead that are in a position of power or influence. These creatures can be central to a campaign or if not used as undead creatures conspiring for domination, as new and interesting creatures to spring on unsuspecting player characters. The presentation standard is top quality, with some fabulous art - in fact, each creature is superbly illustrated, giving a vivid visual impression of the creatures to go with the written text. The creatures in this product (eight in total) range from CR 3 to CR 15, so are suitable to use in a variety of levels of play.
I really liked this product. While all the creature's aren't all that original in their bare statistics (e.g. a mummy aristocrat or vampire Fighter) the flavor text more than makes up for the lack mechanical ingenuity. The rot giant that can swallow a creature and then regurgitate it as a skeleton under its command is both creepy and clever, while the Masque Ghul is a formidable foe with flavors of Pirates of the Caribbean. The other creatures are equally useful and interesting - the flavor text strongly reinforces the theme of these being creatures that are meant to govern and conquer. I found that each creature description gave you plenty to work with as a GM, and the range of CRs means that this can appeal to all levels of play. This second instalment of Mythic Menagerie is a lovely product, with strong themes that are very well supported by good flavor and mostly strong and original mechanics. Coupled with top quality presentation, make this a worthy product to take a look at.
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The Lazy GM: Undead and Other Fell Foes is one of those products that makes a GMs life a lot easier. The product presents a bucket load of statistics blocks for numerous undead and other creatures, using class levels and monster advancement to generate an assortment of powerful foes of different abilities and challenge ratings (ranging from CR 1 to CR 24). Of the two dozen odd base creatures that are included in this product, hundreds of additional creatures are created in a variety of forms, shapes and sizes. The choice of class levels and advancement HD is well balanced against the creature's native CR, and make sense within the culture of the base creature. The majority of creatures in the product are undead, but numerous other foes are presented such as Howlers and Yeth Hounds.
This is an extremely useful product overall, crafting accurate statistics blocks that can add a huge amount of variety to any GMs game. With the product designed with the 3.5e OGL in mind, it might not be that compatible with the Pathfinder RPG without some modification, but players of the 3.5e OGL can do a lot with this product. Combined with all their other Lazy GM offerings, one never really has to create another stat block from scratch again. Creative Conclave have done it all for you, true to their product slogan of 'We Work, You Play!'. I have to admit though, that I wasn't as enthusiastic about this offering as I have been in the past about some of the other Lazy GM products. It's not that the work isn't spectacular, but rather that I felt it lacked the spark when churning out the statistics blocks. It looked more like an exercise rather than an attempt to also create unique and interesting creature combinations. I really liked the categorization of the creatures according to 'roles', another aspect of the product that makes it easy to use and pick the creature you want based on CR and purpose. Nice product, perhaps not the strongest offering in the Lazy GM series, but still superb value and usability.
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Inked Adventures: Modular Dungeon Cut-Up Sections Basic Pack presents three dozen pages of good quality artwork for creating richly detailed 2D and pseudo-3D dungeons. The product includes all the basic tiles needed to construct elaborate dungeons, including stairs, doors, corridors, and rooms. The artwork consists of very good hand illustrated images, though the style may not be to everybody's liking as it can appear quite 'cartoony' with rich vibrant colours. The product includes ample advice on how to use and construct the various structures, as it blends 3D standing doors with more conventional 2D terrain tiles.
One of the great things about this set of terrain tiles is that it includes objects. I've longed for a decent set of terrain objects for quite some time, and here is finally a product that delivers. Now you can populate your dungeons with all manner of interesting features that don't have to be part of the tile itself. The objects include all the usual culprits of tables, chairs, barrels, bodies, chests and then some more. That's the feature of this product that makes it stand out from being just another 2D terrain tile set. On the slightly negative side, some of the larger room maps require you to cut other tiles to generate the required tile that you want. While this is not a major issue (since you're going to cut it out in any case), in a pdf I would've hoped to have seen that tile just reproduced rather than having to cut it from another tile. There aren't really issues with space in pdf. Overall, I think this is a splendid little find. I think the hand illustrated artwork is very good, the variety and versatility is excellent, and you can mix and match the objects to your heart's desire. Very useful product.
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101 3rd Level Spells does exactly what it says on the tin, presenting 101 3rd level spells for the Pathfinder RPG. The spells cover all the available classes, with a rounded distribution of number amongst the core RPG classes and, for wizards and sorcerers, the schools of magic. Layered in between the many spells are a few scattered art pieces, although the cover artwork is by far the better piece, being a vivid image of a spellcaster using the Weapon of Nightmares spell. Rite Publishing have impressed me with their professional outlook on publishing, and this presentation is a serious document from a top notch publisher.
The spells, as one would really expect from a product with some many spells of the same level, are a bit of a mixed bag, but that's not something you can hold against the product. You're inevitably, amongst 101 spells, going to find some you don't like, whether for flavor or power or other reasons. Rest assured that the majority are very neatly crafted and designed, and there are a lot that combine good descriptions with good mechanics to create an enticing spell that even players spoilt for choice with spells will still think of selecting. It was good to see some of the spells break the traditional mould, and by that I mean going beyond being a 'clone' of an existing spell with just a subtle difference in damage, energy type, or spell data. It's too easy when creating such a vast library of spells to create 'filler' material in this way, and I'm pleased that the authors (both the Sorcerer Supreme and the Meddling Archmage are they're called in the product credits) have largely managed to avoid this.
I particularly liked the enchantment and illusion spells for wizards and sorcerers, Glossolalia being one of my favorites where you curse a person with random speech. The evocation spells are largely standard fare, although here spells like Object Grenade with no save or spell resistance bring visions to mind of parties hurling these damaging grenades all over their place as a result of the overly long duration of the spell. I also liked the additions to the paladin spell list, such as Disarmament, for disarming a group of enemies with the wave of a hand, and Intercession, for protecting allies and innocents. I though the flavor and mechanics there supported the compassionate side of the paladin class, rather than the holy warrior aspects. Overall, a solid product with plenty of creativity, the odd rotten tomato, but by and large nifty additions to any class' spell list.
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Publisher Reply: |
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I wanted to than Peter Ingram for taking the time to do a review of our product. "Rite Publishing have impressed me with their professional outlook on publishing, and this presentation is a serious document from a top notch publisher." Those are some very kind words, and I truly appreciate them. Steve Russell Rite Publishing |
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The Goblins of Summerkeep is a 4e GSL adventure that sees the characters attempt to liberate a noble's keep from the clutches of a small goblin tribe. The adventure is suitable for character levels 1 through to 10, and the author has gone through considerable and welcome effort to provide stat blocks for a variety of different character levels. Unfortunately the remainder of the adventure doesn't scale that well, although, to be fair, there aren't really any skill checks, puzzles or traps that would need to be scaled. As one would expect, the adventure holds a far more sinister secret, and the players are left to uncover the truth and save more than the keep from the powers of evil.
I guess there are two main things to say about this adventure - first, it's very well organized. The author has put a lot of effort into making it easy to run, easy to work through, and easy to play. From that perspective the adventure is in a way more suitable to beginner party's and DMs. I expect that 10th level characters will expect more of a challenge than the combat encounters this provides. That level adventure should play differently - it should challenge more than just the brute force of the party, but also their ingenuity and their available resource. Which leads me to the second point - the adventure is awfully linear. There's almost no scope for playing the adventure differently than scripted and no dynamism in the script that would challenge the players to think about their strategy for invading the keep. If the goblins had a better prepared battle plan, making use of their cunning to avoid such incursions (which they must assume will be coming) the adventure would've played out a whole lot better.
It's a decent adventure, very well organized and presented, with useful maps and even battlemaps for miniatures. I wouldn't be tempted to challenge higher level parties with something this simple, or at least not without modification. I did like the tension created once the characters discover the true purpose behind the keep, although again I wish there had been more opportunity to reflect, and more of a threat. Stumbling from one major encounter to another without the possibility of the characters getting it wrong or being able to control their own actions is unfortunate. Good effort, more for beginner players and DMs, and well designed with true ease in running and playing.
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Tower of the Stargazer is an adventure for OSRIC/Labyrinth Lord style systems and is suitable for beginner players and referees. The adventure takes place in a mystical mage's tower, where the characters must deal with all sorts of obstacles and traps en route to finding the answers to their questions or merely the treasure foretold to be there. The adventure is well written and presented, and I particularly appreciated the design notes and explanations offered by the author on various scenarios, justifying encounter and design decisions (even if I didn't agree with all of them). In essence it's a rather simple adventure, completely location based, with little follow-up or opportunity for much further beyond this. However, the background information and adventure detail are enough to make this a fun romp.
The adventure is focused more on navigating the tower's defenses and locations rather than infiltrating a well-guarded area. While there are combat encounters to be had, these are actually quite few given the number of tower locations. Here I wish proper details on statistics had been included, rather than the vague references contained in the product. The traps and puzzles in the adventure are quite clever (particularly the elaborate ones related to the telescope and the treasure levers), and the majority of them make sense even without the author's complete design notes. However, I'm not really in agreement with the deadly nature of the adventure, even if it does make sense. Beginner players don't want to have their characters die ten minutes into the game. And while it can be justified, I think it can turn players away. It felt in places like the adventure was more for a sadistic referee to have fun with rather than the players characters to learn the ropes of a new system or roleplaying in general.
Be that as it may, I think the adventure has some merit. There's good atmosphere around the tower and its confines, and the wonderful art will make for good handouts to inspire and creep players out. I wish in a way the adventure had been a little more dynamic - as is, there's nothing stopping the characters taking their time through the adventure. One other point of note is that this adventure can end rather quickly. While well designed to be rather non-linear in how it can be played, a few lucky choices can see the main encounter done pretty soon. Overall, perhaps not so much geared to teaching new players as new referees, but an adventure with lots of opportunity for cleverness, good puzzles and good atmosphere.
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Bleached Skull Gnolls is a Pathfinder RPG supplement that details the culture and society of a new kind of savage and brutal gnoll. The product is well organized and well designed, and includes useful features such as a table of creatures by CR, a feat table, and a table of spells by level. It even goes as far as including reference rules from the Pathfinder RPG to assist in understanding the material. I though the attention to detail was good, and some of the artwork, particularly the image of a brutal gnoll, was excellent. Sometimes it's the little things that sway you towards a product, and Bleached Skull Gnolls has enough fine details to do just that. It includes several welcome sample encounter builds and a tribal encampment layout, complete with a map.
The material itself is well written. These gnolls largely differ from standard gnolls in their selection of feats, and the product includes just over a handful of new feats that make these gnolls unique. The feats cater well to the culture and background details, and while the concept of feral gnolls is not new, the shamanistic influences of ritual sacrifice make these creatures enticing and interesting to play. One of the best concepts in the product is that of the sacred tree, fed of the blood of sacrifices to create the dreadful bloodspawn treants. I though that was an excellent touch to make the background culture and society more than just feral gnolls. A good variety of creatures is included, such as scouts, snipers, warriors, shamans, champions and others. The combination of new feats and new adept spells, along with the bloodthirsty culture, make these gnolls feel different to standard gnolls, and that's a plus in my book. The collection of new adept spells and new magical items, all pervasive through the statistics blocks of the gnolls, round out an overall good product.
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Albion Armitage’s Astounding Arsenal is a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 8th to 10th level characters. The adventure sees the player characters stumble upon a magical map that leads to an extraordinary and astounding merchant shop. In essence the adventure is divided into two parts - the first a long journey filled with danger and peril while the PCs are hunted by those that also wish to acquire the map, and the second a magical journey through Albion Armitage's merchant shop where the characters will discover new weapons, armor and tools unheard of anywhere else. The product is very detailed, giving full details and even statistics blocks on even minor NPCs in the adventure, and has well-crafted background details and adventure information. The items found in the Arsenal are impressive - I particularly liked the addition of several new siege weapons, and the weapons and tools are well-designed and useful. Some good art accompanies all aspects of the adventure, particularly Larry Elmore's art.
The adventure part itself was a little disappointing, consisting mostly of weeks of pointless journey with random encounters. The excitement comes from less than a handful of special encounters that form the main part of the adventure and tie in to the storyline, but by and large it's one random encounter after the next, something which can be quite tedious. That said, between the encounters in table after table of lists there are quite a few ones that fit the story well. More could've been made of the journey itself, either by shortening it, or by making it more dynamic to give the PCs a real sense that they're hunted. The adventure also doesn't offer much advice on how the NPCs would respond to the PCs being pro-active in their actions against those that hunt them. The merchant shop and its mystical wares is far more impressive and offers several unique items, well-described and carefully designed. The product even includes some clever construct monsters that are designed well to fit the background of Albion's Astounding Arsenal. Overall, a somewhat disappointing adventure, but the merchant shop, its NPCs, wares and background details make up for the lack of adventure excitement.
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Publisher Reply: |
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Thank you for the review. |
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I've never been a large fan of fey creatures, largely because the treatment they get in the core fantasy books is often weak and without that specialness that attracts or appeals to many GMs. As a result, many publishers have brought out various books on the fey in an attempt to do them justice, and I have to say that Alluria Publishing's Fey Folio: Clans of the Fey is hands down the best treatment for fey I've yet seen on the market. This product shines - it's got fantastic production values, with mind-blowing art, and vivid and descriptive writing that leaps out of the page. But that's not all - the creativeness behind the design and implementation of the mechanics, and the unique and novel background material are top quality. I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of this book - if you're looking for a book on fey creatures you can look no further than this product.
The product details 13 different kinds of fey, and gives them the royal treatment by allocating enough page space and descriptive/background material to make each creature unique. I was very impressed by the ingenuity and handling of the fey - as twisted and dark creatures that aren't entirely evil. The fey creatures just leap out of the page and scream to be used. The interaction and hierarchy between the fey creatures creates a novel and interesting culture of fey creatures, complete with the dark and malevolent lord of the Fey, Jack-In-Irons. The product even includes an interesting campaign that builds on the material presented, and one that I suspect many GMs will itch to run as is, or with some minor modification. I thought the special abilities and attacks that the fey creatures had were fabulous, really integrating neatly and elegantly with the fey creature's personality and background. On top of that, the product also includes a handful of fey related magical items. Overall, it's hard to beat a product like this - excellent all round.
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![[PFRPG] Mythic Menagerie: The Kingdom of Graves](images/97/83199-thumb100.jpg)
![[PFRPG] Albion Armitage's Astounding Arsenal](images/2680/82101-thumb100.jpg)
