Fast Forward Entertainment: Best Books? (Updated: August/2012)

I don't own any books by FFE but I'm curious to find out if there are any diamonds in the rough. FFE books are incredibly easy to get and are usually dirt cheap; however, I have resisted because I've heard so many bad things about FFE game design.

I realize that almost all of the FFE books are v.3.0, but I'm wondering if any of them has good "fluff." I'm most interested in learning about Demon Wars and Dungeon World; although, I have considered other books such as Green Races, Sundered Reaches, and the two Encyclopedias of Demons & Devils.

All suggestions (and dire warnings ) are greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Knightfall

This thread should likely be moved to the D&D Legacy forum. Just a suggestion. -KF

You sound a lot like how I was a few years ago, when tons of old WotC and 3PP d20 stuff were in the bargain bins.

I went on a binge at the time, and picked up all kinds of d20 bargain bin stuff. I mostly picked up modules and some campaign setting stuff. I largely skipped over the crunch heavy player's option books.

With that being said, I didn't bother picking up any of the FFE stuff. FFE didn't produce many modules.

I own Dungeon World and bought it on a whim as it was, as you say, dirt cheap at the time. The concept of Dungeon World is pretty cool with a really good lead-in idea on how PCs wind up in Dungeon World. It's a fully realized campaign universe that can be tied into any mythos.

There are plenty of maps and stocked dungeons and the details make it easy to run a small adventure from the get go. I actually ran a few sessions in Dungeon World and it was pretty good.

The idea is that one of the pcs dies and his spirit is sent to Dungeon World for some unknown purpose known only by the caretakers.

Where FFE falls is their creative license in the monster area. There are allot of monsters in this book but they just don't make a whole lot of sense. I know they're trying to be inventive and diverse but gawd they are bad.

The writing certainly needs polishing and there are some really cringe-worthy sentences that are in need of a complete re-write.

The art is meh. Typical of the D20 books of that time.

There are certainly ideas to mine here however and given that it's super cheap, grab it! I think you'll be glad you did.

I have looked them over many times, and I've never been able to see anything worth having. Underpowered prestige classes (like caster-oriented ones that give up caster progression entirely), pretty bog-standard fluff in Green Races, etc.

Knightfall said:

All suggestions (and dire warnings ) are greatly appreciated.

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Here follows a review of the adventure Temple of the Troll God that I wrote a good five years ago I think.

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Temple of the Troll God

Publisher Fast Forward Entertainment. Released Fall 2001. Format Softcover. Game system d20. Setting Green Races. Levels 4-7. Pages 48. Price $12.95.

Designer Timothy Brown.

Once in a lifetime, there comes a roleplaying product so grand in scope as to put all other competitors to shame. It shatters our conceptions of what a roleplaying game can be, and it shows us new ways of looking at our hobby. It is balanced, has innovative new rules or interesting takes on existing mechanics. It has a riveting plot which allows great freedom for the players' PCs to get involved and change the outcome of the story.

The Temple of the Troll God is the anti-thesis of that product.

Released in fall 2001, this product hasn't aged well. Heck, it got hit by a ghost's aging touch the second it hit the shops. I know it's very much too late to review this adventure now, but I do so for several reasons. First, I had already written a review years ago so I might as well use that again now that I'm launching FAL. Second, it will help you all to start figuring out what I like and what I don't like.

The Temple of the Troll God is part of a trilogy (made up of Fortress of the Ogre Chieftain, Temple of the Troll God and Slave Pits of the Goblin King), but can be played by itself. It is set in the setting of the Green Races, on a world called Elara. The layout is simplistic, the maps are under average and the illustrations of low quality. The structure of the text is incredibly confusing and freely mixes text on the adventure, the rules and the "unique" setting. All in all it feels like a train off the rails; it lacks direction and is heading towards a train wreck.

A premise for the adventure doesn't exist. There is no plot, no reason for why the PCs would be where they are, there is no logic to what's going on or why anything happens. Somewhere among all this is a temple dedicated to a god worshiped by trolls, and this is where the PCs are going to ... do something, I suppose. No one knows what, not even the DM.

These kinds of setups exist in other adventures as well, basically offering the DM a framework to use with his players' PCs. I find many modules with that premise interesting, but The Temple of the Troll God was merely frustrating. It seems as if Brown wrote an adventure that was supposed to be both framework and a linear wilderness plus dungeon romp, but that half of the text got chewed up by a hard drive crash.

The execution of the rules is also a catastrophe, and there are many gigantic mistakes regarding monster stats and abilities. In addition to this, the writer consequently breaks the terms of the d20 license throughout the text. In addition to this, the amount of treasure placed in this adventure borders on the ludicrous.

What makes this offering so crushingly disappointing is the fact that several of the old AD&D guard were involved in its creation. I admired Timothy Browns work on Dark Sun, and always figured that Jim Ward had a lot going for him. But these illusions were backstabbed and disintegrated and then cast into the abyss. Temple of the Troll God feels like a quick hatchet job to cash in on the, at the time, very profitable d20 trend. I wouldn't be surprised if it was revealed that the adventure was simply some discarded or even rejected notes from the AD&D era, dressed up in a tutu and brought to the prom, without Brown ever reading the third edition rules or the licenses attached to it.

Harsh? Yeah, maybe. I have read a rave review of this adventure on RPGnet, so there are people out there who disagree with my assessment. So should you buy it? Hell, yeah! If you can find it for a dollar, pick it up. There are several lessons to be learned from The Temple of the Troll God, and having it in your possession will give you new faith in the products offered for D&D and d20 today.

/M

There was one FFE (technically) product I really liked.

I really enjoyed the Inning A Minute Baseball dice game FFE put out (under Minute Sports). Still do. I played the hell out of that game with any takers I could find. One of the designers was William W. Connors, who also created my all-time favorite TSR Setting Masque of the Red Death.

Oh, and just prior to 3e/d20 era, those guys - Jim Ward, Bill Connors, Tim Brown and a few others - were putting out this really cool (but now defunct) indy RPG magazine called Shred. It was pure awesomeness in a can back in the day.

After that, I got nothing.

But I don't care what anyone (including myself) says about their 3e products - those FFE guys are still living legends in my book.

I purchased a "lot" (grouped package) of various FFE books on eBay because, as others have mentioned, the price was right. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed with the content and layout of each... so much so that I tried to sell them to my local used book store (who didn't want them) until I just gave them away to my local Value Village. Seriously, I wish I had that 20 bucks back.

jaerdaph said:

I really enjoyed the Inning A Minute Baseball dice game FFE put out (under Minute Sports). Still do. I played the hell out of that game with any takers I could find. One of the designers was William W. Connors, who also created my all-time favorite TSR Setting Masque of the Red Death.

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Dude, that game sounds awesome! Right up me and my buddy's alley. Unfortunately, I can't find it for sale anywhere on the internet. I'll keep looking, but if anyone knows where I can pick this up, please let me know!

I'd suggest caution. I picked up a couple of books and was disappointed. Poor art, shonky statistics, a lack of ingenuity and creativity. I forget the titles (long time ago), but they were two hardback books related to the Lower Planes (devils, demons, etc). Read through them once, then chucked them in my trade/sell pile. I got the impression (rightly or wrongly) that they were a quick "money grab" knocked out by the company to take advantage of the Open Gaming License.

I'm not a big fan of 3rd party sources in general, but a few weeks later I picked up Green Ronin's excellent 3e series on a similar topic (Legions of Hell, etc) and was blown away. Better art, better ideas, better stats.

The first Dungeon World book (it was a series) was okay. It presented some neat ideas and the fluff was evocative (although it verges on "Gyagaxian" purple at times), but the system bits stunk (as previously mentioned by another poster). I picked up the rest of the Dungeon World series years later (in a bargain bin) and was horribly disappointed. They were awful, both in terms of mechanics and fluff.