JoeGKushner
First Post
Women of the Woods is a bit different than the standard d20 product. At 48 black and white pages on slick glossy paper, it's fairly priced at $20 even though it details only ten characters.
The book provides the GM with characters, all women, who are often mysterious and unknown to the common folk, wielding unusual powers and abilities that set them apart from others. Each section opens up with a short story, often two pages, followed by Elmore's art. Most characters have two smaller pieces, one for each page, and a full page illustration.
The characters run the gamut from the evil undead like the Wailing Woman and the evil fey known as the Deadly Child, to the neutral Yoke of Justice and Dark Harmony, to the goodly Avalyne the Life Giver and the elemental Naia.
The method of using short stories to describe the characters, especially from an outsiders point of view, isn't used too often in RPG books. The stories help illustrate the nature of the characters and provide the GM many ideas on how t best to incorporate them. Unfortunately, they don't include any actual sections on “Using this in your Game” style so the GM has to be ready to be inspired by the reading.
Now this is often an easy thing to do. For example, the Yoke of Justice is a female who goes around with a book that has the deeds of all men and she judges them. Her deity provides her with power so she often doesn't have to worry about being overcome. Now those who are judged to die do so at the nooses of Aard, a massive human with a yoke carried on his shoulder, each end dangling a noose. Depending on your crime, he'll either snap your neck for a quick, clean death, or rise slowly so that you suffer and die a hard death. Now that's a cool character. How would you use it though?
Or how about Dark Harmony? Another neutral character who saves lives by using a form of empathy to drain vitality from the dying and pass it on to the injured, gaining a portion of the life force in the process herself.
As far as the actual stats themselves, they're good but not perfect. For example, they have little runes and symbols to represent the stats as well as having the actual stats themselves. The problem is that the runes are occasionally wrong. Take the Yoke Woman who has a 10 Strength but is listed as having a +3 bonus to her strength. In one case, with the glistron, an undead variant vampire spawn, it had d10 hit dice, but undead have d12 hit dice. Fortunately, there is no con score.
The real issue with NPCs is the utility. While these are all very imaginative characters and told in a style not often done in an RPG, without direct story hooks and plots, they force the load of the work on the GM. I can understand where the publisher is coming from however as they probably don't want to make the game stats too large with things like spell list, magic item creation rules and other non-essential material.
The layout of the book is simple. Unlike standard d20 books, the stories are told in one column format with several illustrations of the woman described in the text, in addition to a full page illustration. These aren't simple black and white line drawings but look to be much more detailed, probably pen and ink. The full page illustrations are very inspiring in and of themselves and on this basis, I suspect that they'll get the majority of their purchasers. The slick heavy paper and hardcover format almost guarantee that even though the price, at $20 is fair, that it's a little outside most NPC book ranges.
As an art book, I've got many friends who already want to buy it. Elmore hasn't survived in the business as long as he has without talent and drive. As a D&D book, despite the 'cool' factor, it suffers a number of minor issues that make it useful to mine for ideas, but not a great investment for those looking for NPCs with ready to use ideas, full spell lists, or expanded stat blocks.
If you love Elmore's art or are looking for a unique product that combines art on quality paper and format with some unique NPCs, then Women of the Woods is for you.
The book provides the GM with characters, all women, who are often mysterious and unknown to the common folk, wielding unusual powers and abilities that set them apart from others. Each section opens up with a short story, often two pages, followed by Elmore's art. Most characters have two smaller pieces, one for each page, and a full page illustration.
The characters run the gamut from the evil undead like the Wailing Woman and the evil fey known as the Deadly Child, to the neutral Yoke of Justice and Dark Harmony, to the goodly Avalyne the Life Giver and the elemental Naia.
The method of using short stories to describe the characters, especially from an outsiders point of view, isn't used too often in RPG books. The stories help illustrate the nature of the characters and provide the GM many ideas on how t best to incorporate them. Unfortunately, they don't include any actual sections on “Using this in your Game” style so the GM has to be ready to be inspired by the reading.
Now this is often an easy thing to do. For example, the Yoke of Justice is a female who goes around with a book that has the deeds of all men and she judges them. Her deity provides her with power so she often doesn't have to worry about being overcome. Now those who are judged to die do so at the nooses of Aard, a massive human with a yoke carried on his shoulder, each end dangling a noose. Depending on your crime, he'll either snap your neck for a quick, clean death, or rise slowly so that you suffer and die a hard death. Now that's a cool character. How would you use it though?
Or how about Dark Harmony? Another neutral character who saves lives by using a form of empathy to drain vitality from the dying and pass it on to the injured, gaining a portion of the life force in the process herself.
As far as the actual stats themselves, they're good but not perfect. For example, they have little runes and symbols to represent the stats as well as having the actual stats themselves. The problem is that the runes are occasionally wrong. Take the Yoke Woman who has a 10 Strength but is listed as having a +3 bonus to her strength. In one case, with the glistron, an undead variant vampire spawn, it had d10 hit dice, but undead have d12 hit dice. Fortunately, there is no con score.
The real issue with NPCs is the utility. While these are all very imaginative characters and told in a style not often done in an RPG, without direct story hooks and plots, they force the load of the work on the GM. I can understand where the publisher is coming from however as they probably don't want to make the game stats too large with things like spell list, magic item creation rules and other non-essential material.
The layout of the book is simple. Unlike standard d20 books, the stories are told in one column format with several illustrations of the woman described in the text, in addition to a full page illustration. These aren't simple black and white line drawings but look to be much more detailed, probably pen and ink. The full page illustrations are very inspiring in and of themselves and on this basis, I suspect that they'll get the majority of their purchasers. The slick heavy paper and hardcover format almost guarantee that even though the price, at $20 is fair, that it's a little outside most NPC book ranges.
As an art book, I've got many friends who already want to buy it. Elmore hasn't survived in the business as long as he has without talent and drive. As a D&D book, despite the 'cool' factor, it suffers a number of minor issues that make it useful to mine for ideas, but not a great investment for those looking for NPCs with ready to use ideas, full spell lists, or expanded stat blocks.
If you love Elmore's art or are looking for a unique product that combines art on quality paper and format with some unique NPCs, then Women of the Woods is for you.
