Roleplaying Books

I am a longtime gamer who probably has spent more on rolegaming then I can afford since the late 1980's. My shelves are filled with books for dozens of game-systems but Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) remains one of my personal favourites.

This superlative product was originally published by Games Workshop as two separate books: Power Behind the Throne and Warhammer City - Middenheim. This Hogshead version has the full material from both books in one handy volume. The first section of the book, Power Behind the Throne details an extremely intricate conspiracy by the forces of Chaos in the city Middenheim.

A distinct contrast to the wimpy plots so prevalent in the fantasy roleplaying industry, this is a grade-A, master-level investigative scenario for the veteran player. The huge cast of characters each playing a part in the adventure, yet having motivations and plans of their own, make this adventure a real challenge for players and gamemasters.

This book should be on every gamer's shelf, regardless of which game system you play as an example of how it should be done. Be warned though, the deep roleplaying and many conversations required will bore the combat-oriented player to tears. Real roleplayers who fancy themselves as the fantasy equivalent of Poirot or Holmes will have the case of their lives to unravel.

CROWN OF SHADOW is a campaign for low-level characters that is set in the world of MIDNIGHT. MIDNIGHT is a dark world where the forces of evil have won and the heroes are the hunted. Both the use of magic and reading are capital crimes, as is the possession of weapons or armor. Even food is scarce. Orcs are the elite fighting forces of this world and the only clerics left pray to a dark god enthroned in his dark tower. Humanity is being ground into the dust, halflings are universally enslaved, the dwarves are losing a war of attrition and even the elves are being driven back. In short, it is a world in need of heroes.

The world of MIDNIGHT differs from standard high fantasy sufficiently that players would benefit from a campaign that would take them across the entire world, to see how each group under the Shadow is resisting and what price they pay for doing so. They should meet all of the surprises that MIDNIGHT has in store and get a sense for the corruption of their world, the better to motivate their struggle against it. CROWN OF SHADOW is that campaign, a story arc that takes the PCs through the lands of the dying dwarves, crushed humans, subversive river gnomes, and the vanguard of the elves. The PCs will experience almost all of the twists of MIDNIGHT and see all the major locations; in that sense, it serves almost as a gazetteer for the players. I'll admit that the "crown of shadow" is quite the macguffin, but the campaign is about the journey not the destination.

CROWN OF SHADOW is designed for 1st level characters and can run them as high as 5th level. This campaign is designed for the 1st edition of MIDNIGHT and uses 3.0 rules, but I didn't find any problems using this with MIDNIGHT 2nd edition or 3.5 rules. There are 7 chapters of action, plus an epilogue which follows the conclusion fo the story. The booklet itself is very readable - I particularly appreciated the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter to keep track of what should be happening. Each chapter also has subsections to keep all the information organized.

I thought CROWN OF SHADOW was a well presented campaign. In fact, it should be indispensable as a resource for any MIDNIGHT campaign even if the material isn't directly used. The challenges seem well designed, with some good combats, some puzzles, and social interaction. I would highly recommend it.

One thing I like about the 3E core rulebooks is it seemed like WotC play tested the hell out of them. Nearly everything is fairly well balanced. Overall, I really like 3E and consider it worth buying. Unfortunately, like many, I feel this was -not- the case with the 3E Psionics Handbook. Fortunately, along came Mindscapes to right all the wrongs thereof. Let's take a look:

VALUE: More affordable than WotC's class books (and this one happens to be exceptional among that breed).

DESIGN: The art in Mindscapes is some of the best yet from Malhavoc press. The layout of the book is intelligent, making it easy enough to find what you're looking for.

CONTENT:
Mindscapes was written by the same guy who wrote the Psionics Handbook, so, like, who could know the material better, right?

1) Mindscape Psionic Combat
In general the 3E Psionics Handbook (hereafter called the PsiH) benefited greatly from the (at that time new) d20 system. However, there were some issues that were, for the most part, universally acknowledged. Among these problems, psionic combat was one of the biggest.

Mindscapes comes at psionic combat from a completely different angle. It's beyond the scope of this review to go over Mindscapes combat in detail, but trust me when I tell you, it's brilliant, has mega cool points, and eliminates virtually all the problems with the original system. There are also rules for converting characters from the original system to this one.

Note: Mindscapes combat may seem complicated in writing, but plays out in-game really smoothly. Try it if you don't believe me.

2) Prestige Classes (PrCs)
First of all, Bruce redid the four original PrCs from the PsiH (considered by many to be weak), and they are -much- better. In addition, there are a slew of new PrCs for psions and psionic warriors. IMHO, these PrCs range from good to brilliant. The chakra savant, chronrebel, ghostbreaker, and lucid cenobite were my favorites. If you're interested in adding to- or replacing- divine healers, there are even a couple PrCs that allow for psionic characters to fill that role.

Note: There's a variant (more favorable) power point progression for the basic Psion class in this book, too, which patches another issue from the PsiH.

3) Feats
Great stuff here. Some build off feats from the PsiH, some have to do with Mindscapes combat, and others are brand new. Definitely check the errata though, as there were some fairly substantial tweaks that went in afterwards.

4) Powers
Here we find a fairly saucy assortment of new powers for both psionic classes. Generally these powers are a welcomed addition, and balance nicely against the core powers. (You'll also find the psionic attack/defense modes as powers because Mindscapes combat eliminates combat modes.) An area of some contention with the PsiH was how the damage dice of powers didn't scale with level advancement like arcane- and divine- caster's spells do. The variant power scaling rules fixes this, allowing your characer to pump up their powers as they increase in level.

5) Psionic Items
Loved these. This isn't a huge section, but it just exudes cool points. Many of the items are... scalable too. Check 'em out to see what I mean.

CONCLUSION: I consider Mindscapes -the- essential psionics accessory to right all the wrongs from the PsiH. Combine Mindscapes psionic combat, the new psion power point progression, revised psionic PrCs, and power scaling, and you have psionic classes that balance oh so nicely against the core classes. Check out Monte Cook's website for errata and enjoy!

Mithril is an excellent first sourebook from Sword and Sorcery. It gives a good overview of the city itself (although the city map is of at best average quality), provides details of the church of Corean (with new rules for paladins and monks as well as one new prestige class), and includes excellent regional material for the northeast portion of Ghelspad.

Specifically, the book gives us a map and description of Mullis Town (as well as a few adventure hooks), and shows a map detailing the human, titanspawn, and orcish areas of influence in Lede. The adventure hooks are well done, as they incorporate sufficient detail to make "filling in the blanks" easy, but remain concise. The descriptions of the various orcish tribes and their political/social environment is a great jumping point for a campaign that could treat orcs as more than faceless cannon fodder.

Equally important, Mithril itself, despite its lawful good character. has a wide variety of options and tensions within that can lead to all manner of adventures - ranging from exploring the ancient catacombs beneath the city to ethnic human/half-orc conflict to political and religious intrigue.

Overall, a good book and a great buy. Although, like most S&S products, the art is all monochrome (and frequently not up to the standards of Wizards of the Coast products), this is a minor complaint because the content is great.

The positive things one can say about this work are both numerous and obvious, just leaf through the sturdy hardbound tome and I guarantee you'll stumble across at least three things you'll enjoy.Starting again from the outside cover, the first thing those who pick up the book are sure to notice is the fantastic cover art, a partially mechanized undead (possibly an iron lich, which would also happen to be my favorite creature inside) clawing through the depicted metal cover. From this you see just what you're getting into if you start reading, a savage assortment of creatures that, even if they seem familiar for a moment, have been augmented with the sadistic genius of Privateer Press's talented designers and made part of their award winning setting. The worst I can honestly say about the cover art is that the artist isn't directly noted in the credits so I can't compliment them directly. Moving from the actual art, Privateer Press doesn't make the mistake of company egotism that has cluttered so many otherwise fine book covers. Their symbol is tucked neatly into an upper corner, noticeable yet still stylishly out of the way, drawing the attention to the title and art, not to some kind of out of place advertising. The same can be said about the Iron Kingdom's logo, though appropriately larger, it too is eclipsed by the artwork and only adds to the cover's attractiveness. Also, an observant reader will note the most inspiring and exciting element right on the cover and spine, Monsternomicon being followed by the words "Volume I," and where there's a volume one, there's sure to be a volume two (to five-hundred).

This final note about the cover deserves to be focused on and should be noted by all other designers. Anyone who buys this book or any other gaming supplement is not going to read it in a void or force their players to wear gloves while using it. Quite the opposite in fact. Game books (noting the stress test I've put my Monsternomicon through in the past week) will be put in satchels, on chairs (and thusly sat on), near water and near fire; they will be exposed to grease, weather, wildlife (damn dogs), orange snack dust, and a variety of other dangers. Though the owner may want to keep their books in mint condition, no one else cares, and thus, wear and tear, throwing, bending, scratching and smudging will occur. To anyone who has been playing third edition for the last few years, pick up a core rule book and I guarantee it will not look like it did two-years ago, or even like it did before your last gaming session. The Monsternomicon however, does. I don't know what this cover is made out of, but I've had it by my side since Gen Con last month and I'm not even seeing a finger-grease smudge on it. It's really quite amazing. This may mean nothing to anyone else, but I personally like to think I'm going to make my books holdup forever and at the moment, it looks like my Monsternomicon will.

Moving to the inside, pages are not wasted with a long-winded and needless preface, introduction, or discussion of how to use the text. Instead, above the table of contents is a brief note by Viktor Pendrake adjacent to an impressive picture of the good professor. After this, the descriptions simply begin. Each new creature is presented in a manner unique to this work, which adds several new and exceedingly useful elements to the traditional monster write-up as well as more of the unnecessary coolness that seems to be Privateer Press' trademark. Every monster has at least two pages and two pieces of art adding to its description (not counting the awesome gargolyed dividers like those seen throughout the Witchfire Trilogy). They are also each discussed in a first person narrative by the "author" Professor Pendrake, whose witty, informed, and realistic monologue runs throughout the text. This makes each entry more like a short story then mere game stats and makes the entire book a true pleasure to read. But longer entries and a pity narrator are not the most revolutionary aspects of the Monsternomicon.

First off, the designers have made the most simple, helpful, and just overall bloody awesome addition to the standard monster format by adding comparative size silhouettes to each creature, showing how big they are compared to... well... you. For those gamers (like myself) who have absolutely no perception of space or measurement descriptions like "Large" or "Colossal" mean little, but seeing that speck next to the dragon silhouette on page 44 really drives the point home (They're friggin Huuuge!).

Another fantastic addition has been a whole area dedicated to what type of treasure a monster might have. While I know that most of us (*cough* BS! *cough*) know innately that a CR 1/6 kobold has Standard treasure which equates into an even 3.50 gp, many are not so gifted (If anyone e-mails me with the correct treasure for a kobold I will be forced to see you burned on a pyre of DMGs). Fortunately for them, this section goes into detail about what treasure there might be, what parts of the monster maybe useful, other interesting facts about the creature's habits, and even allows the writers to drop in new items. Overall, another great idea!

The last two additions standard to each entry are their "Legends & Lore" and "Hooks" segments. The first section, (divided into "Common, Uncommon, Rare," and "Obscure") allows both PCs and DMs to scale what their characters might know about a particular beastie and gives the reader an idea of how common the creature might be. Often, this area also hints at ways to defeat creature, other ecology points, or just other unnecessary coolnesses that weren't mentioned in the larger text. Right after this follows the "Hooks" section, which adds one or two ways the creature could be used in or as a basis for an adventure. Though a relatively standard idea, the sheer number and variety of hooks is enough to fill dozens of campaigns with exciting and unique scenarios.

Of the eighty plus new monsters included in the Monsternomicon, I wanted to mention a select few that struck me as being exceedingly clever or having a cool twist. The "cask imp" embodies the concept of unnecessary coolness perfectly, what sane mind would think of a creature with powers like "Inebriating burp" or "Drunken domination!?" The "boatman" is an awesome Charon like creature who lends himself to a short but memorable encounter nearly anywhere. Dragons, gobbers, and iron liches are old ideas made new and a thousand times better, I'm both excited to use them... and a little scared. And lastly the totem hunter, it's cool, it's obviously the Predator, and no one's done it before for just that reason. A daring take on an available idea. These are just a few I really liked and I could mention several dozen more, but all of them are awesome and are defiantly going in my games.

But it's more then just text that brings a book like this to life and makes it a real success. A description of a monster, no matter how detailed, can never invoke the same feelings of fear and revulsion that actually seeing it does. Throughout the work black and white art is used in the way a truly skilled photographer uses it over color, to depict new creatures, characters (pages 2, 133, 229), items (pages 32, 65, 116, 182), architecture (pages 81, 131, 184), and whole dynamic scenes (pages 27, 85, 157, 196). These pieces get away from the standard, "Here's a monster, now look at it" depictions seen in most bestiaries, going much farther, not just showing the creatures but also illuminating the world they live in. One also sees the book's defining piece of artwork on page 223, Professor Pendrake smiling over a thoroughly dead creature, with his two slightly apprehensive aids looking on. Creative work is also presented in the form of runes (page 113), measurements (pages 58, 116) stylized text, and whole pages of "handwriting." Though some have said that these elements detract from the book, I personally think that they add to the text, forcing you to pour over the writing like it truly was a journal or ancient tome, adding an element of the game even to the work's reading. Also, no hand written text holds rules or game information, thus anyone who doesn't want to spend the time reading them isn't missing anything integral.

But monsters aren't the only things one will find in the Monsternomicon. New items (pages 96,116), diseases (page 13), poisons (page 111), weapons (page 218), templates (pages 17, 55, 115, 201), anything and everything both players and DMs love is in this book. The text concludes with 9 new "Quickplates," monster templates that can be added to anything in mere seconds and without major calculations or changes to the base creature (Just for that street-smart urban gorax you always wanted). There are also 3 new prestige classes, the adventuring scholar (finally a non-magic user educated character you'd want to play), the bone grinder (a very hands on alchemist/magic item creator), and the monster hunter (with lots of traps and a Big gun). There is also the full stats for Victor Pendrake, his assistants, allies, and enemies, a teaser of the Iron Kingdom's cosmology and infernal society, and terrific stats for dwarves, elves, gobbers, tollkin, ogurn, and nyss as playable races in the Iron Kingdoms (who would want to play a gnome, halfling, or half-orc with choices like these anyway!).

With a book of this amazing caliber, credit needs to be given where credit is due. Rob Baxter, Colin Chapman, Andrew Flynn, Brett Huffman, J. Michael Kilmartin, Joseph Miller, Doug Seacat, Matt Staroscik, Jon Thompson, and Matt Wilson have done a great job creating an unbelievable variety of new creatures and rules, writing with a clear, informative, and captivating style that has made the Monsternomicon a true pleasure to read. Doug, Joe, Brett, Colin, Jon, Joseph, Andrew, and Rob are all freelancers so keep your eyes open, I'm sure you'll be able to catch more of their writing from other designers looking for those with real talent. Brett, Michael, and Jon also did double duty as editors to an impressive level, throughout I didn't see a single typo or misplaced punctuation mark. The book's fantastic artwork was produced by Brian Snoddy, Matt Wilson (both of the Witchfire Trilogy fame), Brian Despain, (the illustrious) Tony Di'Terlizzi (though I couldn't precisely pick out which pieces were his), Chippy Dugan, Scott Fisher, Gerald Lee, and Ron Spencer. A great deal of design, layout, and miles of text wrapping (I hope this is what a "Visual Design Architekt" does) was performed skillfully by Mike South. And finally, Matt and Etien Staroscik get credit for seeing this masterpiece through to its completion and for assembling such a great crew (also, condolences to them on the loss of Professor Staroscik (p 133), I hope he wasn't a close relative).

Despite all the praise I've given both Privateer Press and the Monsternomicon some may still be hesitant. I've heard far too many people say things like "I put it down because it doesn't fit my game" or "Its all constructs" or "I don't like Steampunk." These are invalid excuses, mainly because they're wrong or don't apply to this book. This book has an amazing variety, if one creature or item doesn't fit your game I assure you a dozen others will. Also, the book has so much more then just new golems. Though there are a few mainly aimed towards the Iron Kingdoms (hence it being an IK's book) in actually there are only 8 creatures noted as constructs in the whole work. And lastly, this book is not just "steampunk," Privateer Press has been far too creative to allow the Iron Kingdoms to be described that simply. Yes, their world does have steampunk elements, but overall, it's a fantasy setting just beginning to clash with technology, a concept completely new yet accessible to both fantasy and steampunk fans. Overall, your only valid argument for not owning this book is, "I didn't want to rob a convenience store to get the money for it."

If you don't already know, the Monsternomicon is a work of art, impressive on dozens of levels, inspiring to players on both sides of the screen, and enjoyable to both view and read. This is everything we've come to expect from Privateer Press and, like the Witchfire Trilogy, it has succeeded in raising the bar for all future works like it. Clever, accessible, and dynamic, this book embodies the core virtues of the D20 system and, quite frankly, it's for books and experiences like this that we started, continue, and love to game.

This is also an expansion pack for dwarves. It goes into extensive and loving detail into the history, characteristics and abilities of the '7 Houses' of dwarves.

The neat part about the information they give is that you can choose to set your 'Chronicle' (as they put it) in almost any time-period of Middle Earth. In fact, they suggest that you make a multi-generational saga, where the sons and daughters (or other family members) carry on the quests and adventures. It's a neat way of making a character death more palatable (including carrying forward experience and knowledge, so the next one won't be *as* likely to croak and all your hard work won't be in vain:).

On a side note, I wish there could have been a *little* more detail about the Mines themselves, but I'm sure I can use my imagination and fill in the details. Also, I can get more ideas from other RPG sets that I own... it's not like 'dungeons' are underrepresented in roleplay games in general...

I won't review this fully as there are lots of reviews of the Mutants and Masterminds main book. (As a GM I got tried of always fighting my players for my copy of the main book. So bought one of these.) It's basically the 1st half of the main manual. All you are missing is the GM sections which talk about running a campaign, and include some NPC stats. I highly recommend it for people who aren't running the game. The one thing to keep in mind is that it's a pocket guide, and the print is smaller than the main book. It's readable for anyone who can read a paper back novel. Other than that it's word for word the same as the main manual.

If your a fan like me of the Mutants & Mastermidns gaming stuff, then you will LOVE this book. It really puts into perspective "arrays", and adds a few more flaws and extras. And breaks down into more detail how to make your own powers. There are expanded explanations on the progression charts, and how to better use concentration with power use. A few powers have been altered in costs, and each power has suggestions for AP's and Extras to make the most of each power.

This was another very challenging and insight-provoking puzzle adventure from Usborne. They have done a great job with all of their books, and this is no exception. The story goes like this: After reading a comic book in his uncle's attic, Tim finds himself mysteriously transported to Mainsville- a 1950s town inhabited by strange people, including a powerless superhero, a "pack"(read the book and you'll get the joke) of evil villains, and a friendly biker gang. On the way, you get to go to the Barber Shop, the Mainsville Hop, the sewer system, and some very other interesting Mainsville places. Of course, the book centers around the Hypnostone. Once its two halves are reunited, the possessor will have the power to rule the universe. This showdown reaches its climax at the Main Street Carnival procession. A must read for anyone who likes to be challenged.