John Cooper
Explorer
50 New Ways to Blow Things Up - Starlanko the Magnificent's Big Book of Evocations
By Matthew J. Hanson
Silven Publishing product number SP1003
44-page PDF, $8.00
50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is one of the most entertaining PDFs I've ever read. It's also one of the most frustrating and disappointing. (I suppose that makes it, what, "enterpointing?" Or perhaps "disataining?")
I suppose I should explain that a bit, huh? Matthew J. Hanson has an incredible talent for writing entertaining prose. 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is one of the few PDFs - actually, one of the few d20 products at all - that made me literally laugh out loud while reading it. He does what he sets out to do - create 50 new evocation spells for d20 fantasy games - but he also fills his work with behind-the-scenes comments on each spell and its creator by a hilarious fictional wizard, the "Starlanko the Magnificent" whose name appears in the PDF's subtitle, and does it in such a humorous fashion that Starlanko has jumped up to the very top rungs of my "favorite D&D characters" list. With 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up, Matthew demonstrates a fantastic imagination, excellent grasp of d20 mechanics, and pleasurable writing style.
Unfortunately, he also demonstrates an abysmal understanding of the basic concepts of grammar, spelling, alphabetization, and attention to detail. Not every writer is detail-oriented enough to catch their own mistakes, though, which is why competent proofreaders and editors are an absolute necessity if you wish your product to look professional. 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up has a "Content Editor," Dana Driscoll, and a "Mechanics Editor," Lance Kepner, but no proofreader at all. As such, I'm going to have to assume that it's Dana who's doing the majority of the slacking, as the proofreading would seem to fall to her. Without putting too fine a point on it, it doesn't look like Dana bothered to do even the bare minimum - a simple spellchecking run - on this product. Errors abound, ranging from simple spelling errors, missing words, extra words, poor punctuation usage, and the like - the same stuff I carp about in just about every review I write. So what makes this one so bad? 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up has a total of 44 pages, and that's counting the front cover, back cover, OGL page, and a blank page labeled "Your Notes," so really we're talking about 40 pages of material, of which 4 of them average out to a half page of text each, so it's really more like 38 pages of content. In those 38 pages of content, I counted no less than 196 errors! That's over 5 errors per page - completely unacceptable, and even a bit insulting. I admit that I received my copy free of charge as a review copy, but if you expect people to put down $8.00 for a product, I really think it's unconscionable to deliver this level of quality in return. Silven Publishing is supposed to be a professional enterprise; I really hope that this is not indicative of their overall level of quality. I mean, you'd think that a product called 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up would actually have 50 spells listed in its Table of Contents, wouldn't you? Nope, only 48. (All 50 spells are present in the PDF, but blowtorch and bombard don't make it to the Table of Contents.) How hard is that to miss? Can Dana not be bothered to count to 50? For that matter, it would be nice if at least the spell names could be correct, but no: we get chocking darkness instead of choking darkness and living lighting instead of living lightning. I can only shake my head in wonderment and dismay.
In any case, as always, I typed up my list of errors noted (and it took a bit of time, at that!), and sent it off to Silven Publishing. With any luck, they'll fix up the mistakes, and 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up will crawl its way up to the 5-star rating that the quality of the writing and artwork makes this product deserve. As it stands, I'd have to put the editing down to a "2" at best.
Okay, I suppose I've beaten that dead horse to undeath. Let's move on, shall we?
The cover to 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is a full-color painting by Tom Lavalle, featuring a rather Elminsteresque-looking wizard (complete with pointy, long-brimmed wizard's hat, long white hair and beard, and rune-covered staff), the aforementioned Starlanko the Magnificent. He's looking back over his shoulder, as a wooden structure (it looks like it's either a pier or the drawbridge to a castle) "blows up real good," complete with atomic-bomb clouds and everything. It's a very well done piece, although Starlanko's beard and hair are blue-tinged enough that they're almost straying into anime territory (a land which I prefer not to enter, if possible - at least his eyes and mouth are at normal human proportions!). Detail is nice, with intricate designs (and gems) on the band of his hat, and some really nice detail work on the staff - I especially like the way Tom did the wood grain, and the fact that you can tell that the runes are actually carved into the wood, not just painted on.
The interior artwork, though somewhat sparse, is of excellent quality as well. Artist Joe Slucher provides 8 black-and-white pieces, each with excellent shading, texture, and body proportions. I think my favorites are the two victims of the slam spell on page 32 (great poses, and I love the expressions on their faces) and the dragon experiencing the vorpal disk spell for itself (I think part of the charm for me here is that this is a very nice "generic" fantasy dragon, without any of the weird body designs of the 3.0/3.5 "reimagining" where butterfly/manta wings are all the rage). Overall, I'd say the artwork in 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is top-notch, ranking up there with the best of the PDF world, and better than a lot of the artwork I've seen in print products as well.
As for the spells themselves, these are all well though out, and many fill logical niches that are missing from the sorcerer/wizard spell lists in the Player's Handbook. (The most obvious of these is the useful second-level damage causing spell, and yes, that's the spell's actual name!) However, despite the "blowing things up" in the PDF's title, not all of these evocation spells are about causing damage (or at least not explosive damage). There's a decent range of power, with 6 0-level, 5 1st-level, 4 2nd-level, 5 3rd-level, 6 4th-level, 6 5th-level, 5 6th-level, 5 7th-level, 4 8th-level, and 4 9th-level spells. (Some of these pull double-duty as bard, cleric, druid, and paladin spells as well.) Some of my favorites include cauterize (a 0-level spell that stabilizes an ally at negative hit points but causes a point of damage in the process), ghost bomb (the perfect evocation spell to use against ethereal and incorporeal opponents), phase ray (a damaging ray of energy that passes harmlessly through nonliving matter), and smart blob (which creates a blob of matter that does damage of a random type, and then switches to a different type each round if the target is immune or resistant to the previous damage type).
However, as much as I liked reading through the spells, the real treat is the "Notes on [Spell Name]" section that follows each spell. Here, Starlanko the Magnificent points out details on the spell's history (who created it, or maybe one exceptional use in an extraordinary manner by some wizard friend of Starlanko's), or why it serves a purpose in a wizard's arsenal, or what have you. Many of these are absolutely hilarious. Matthew also does a great job getting around "forbidden" (non-SRD) names like Tenser and Mordenkainen, by referring to spells like "what's-his-name's floating disk" and also makes sly references to the "Sorcerers by the Sea." It's the playful language that Matthew gives Starlanko the Magnificent that makes him such a joy to read about. As much as I was appalled by the level of quality of the proofreading and editing, I really look forward to seeing more PDFs in this line. (I just hope Dana gets her act together or Silven hires someone who will. And, as much as I'm picking on Dana in this review, her job would no doubt be much easier if Matthew didn't have all of those mistakes there to begin with - there's definitely some room for improvement there, Matthew!)
50 New Ways to Blow Things Up would be worthy of a 5-star rating, easily. I'm dropping it down to a very low "4 (Good)," only because even with the crappy proofreading job, it's still pretty much always understandable what was actually meant, and those of you with a much higher tolerance for such things may not actually even care a whole lot if spells are misalphabetized or misnamed, or the author and editor don't know the difference between "effected" and "affected," or "complimentary" and "complementary," or "cannon" and "canon," or can even keep an NPC's name spelled the same way two times in a row. But I do, and it's only the high quality of the spell concepts, the excellent artwork throughout, and the humorous behind-the-scenes ramblings that pulls 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up up out of "3 (Average)" range in its present condition.
That said, the "50 New Ways..." series of spell-based PDFs looks to have the potential to be an absolutley fabulous series, and I look forward to seeing future works as they are released.
By Matthew J. Hanson
Silven Publishing product number SP1003
44-page PDF, $8.00
50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is one of the most entertaining PDFs I've ever read. It's also one of the most frustrating and disappointing. (I suppose that makes it, what, "enterpointing?" Or perhaps "disataining?")
I suppose I should explain that a bit, huh? Matthew J. Hanson has an incredible talent for writing entertaining prose. 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is one of the few PDFs - actually, one of the few d20 products at all - that made me literally laugh out loud while reading it. He does what he sets out to do - create 50 new evocation spells for d20 fantasy games - but he also fills his work with behind-the-scenes comments on each spell and its creator by a hilarious fictional wizard, the "Starlanko the Magnificent" whose name appears in the PDF's subtitle, and does it in such a humorous fashion that Starlanko has jumped up to the very top rungs of my "favorite D&D characters" list. With 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up, Matthew demonstrates a fantastic imagination, excellent grasp of d20 mechanics, and pleasurable writing style.
Unfortunately, he also demonstrates an abysmal understanding of the basic concepts of grammar, spelling, alphabetization, and attention to detail. Not every writer is detail-oriented enough to catch their own mistakes, though, which is why competent proofreaders and editors are an absolute necessity if you wish your product to look professional. 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up has a "Content Editor," Dana Driscoll, and a "Mechanics Editor," Lance Kepner, but no proofreader at all. As such, I'm going to have to assume that it's Dana who's doing the majority of the slacking, as the proofreading would seem to fall to her. Without putting too fine a point on it, it doesn't look like Dana bothered to do even the bare minimum - a simple spellchecking run - on this product. Errors abound, ranging from simple spelling errors, missing words, extra words, poor punctuation usage, and the like - the same stuff I carp about in just about every review I write. So what makes this one so bad? 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up has a total of 44 pages, and that's counting the front cover, back cover, OGL page, and a blank page labeled "Your Notes," so really we're talking about 40 pages of material, of which 4 of them average out to a half page of text each, so it's really more like 38 pages of content. In those 38 pages of content, I counted no less than 196 errors! That's over 5 errors per page - completely unacceptable, and even a bit insulting. I admit that I received my copy free of charge as a review copy, but if you expect people to put down $8.00 for a product, I really think it's unconscionable to deliver this level of quality in return. Silven Publishing is supposed to be a professional enterprise; I really hope that this is not indicative of their overall level of quality. I mean, you'd think that a product called 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up would actually have 50 spells listed in its Table of Contents, wouldn't you? Nope, only 48. (All 50 spells are present in the PDF, but blowtorch and bombard don't make it to the Table of Contents.) How hard is that to miss? Can Dana not be bothered to count to 50? For that matter, it would be nice if at least the spell names could be correct, but no: we get chocking darkness instead of choking darkness and living lighting instead of living lightning. I can only shake my head in wonderment and dismay.
In any case, as always, I typed up my list of errors noted (and it took a bit of time, at that!), and sent it off to Silven Publishing. With any luck, they'll fix up the mistakes, and 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up will crawl its way up to the 5-star rating that the quality of the writing and artwork makes this product deserve. As it stands, I'd have to put the editing down to a "2" at best.
Okay, I suppose I've beaten that dead horse to undeath. Let's move on, shall we?
The cover to 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is a full-color painting by Tom Lavalle, featuring a rather Elminsteresque-looking wizard (complete with pointy, long-brimmed wizard's hat, long white hair and beard, and rune-covered staff), the aforementioned Starlanko the Magnificent. He's looking back over his shoulder, as a wooden structure (it looks like it's either a pier or the drawbridge to a castle) "blows up real good," complete with atomic-bomb clouds and everything. It's a very well done piece, although Starlanko's beard and hair are blue-tinged enough that they're almost straying into anime territory (a land which I prefer not to enter, if possible - at least his eyes and mouth are at normal human proportions!). Detail is nice, with intricate designs (and gems) on the band of his hat, and some really nice detail work on the staff - I especially like the way Tom did the wood grain, and the fact that you can tell that the runes are actually carved into the wood, not just painted on.
The interior artwork, though somewhat sparse, is of excellent quality as well. Artist Joe Slucher provides 8 black-and-white pieces, each with excellent shading, texture, and body proportions. I think my favorites are the two victims of the slam spell on page 32 (great poses, and I love the expressions on their faces) and the dragon experiencing the vorpal disk spell for itself (I think part of the charm for me here is that this is a very nice "generic" fantasy dragon, without any of the weird body designs of the 3.0/3.5 "reimagining" where butterfly/manta wings are all the rage). Overall, I'd say the artwork in 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up is top-notch, ranking up there with the best of the PDF world, and better than a lot of the artwork I've seen in print products as well.
As for the spells themselves, these are all well though out, and many fill logical niches that are missing from the sorcerer/wizard spell lists in the Player's Handbook. (The most obvious of these is the useful second-level damage causing spell, and yes, that's the spell's actual name!) However, despite the "blowing things up" in the PDF's title, not all of these evocation spells are about causing damage (or at least not explosive damage). There's a decent range of power, with 6 0-level, 5 1st-level, 4 2nd-level, 5 3rd-level, 6 4th-level, 6 5th-level, 5 6th-level, 5 7th-level, 4 8th-level, and 4 9th-level spells. (Some of these pull double-duty as bard, cleric, druid, and paladin spells as well.) Some of my favorites include cauterize (a 0-level spell that stabilizes an ally at negative hit points but causes a point of damage in the process), ghost bomb (the perfect evocation spell to use against ethereal and incorporeal opponents), phase ray (a damaging ray of energy that passes harmlessly through nonliving matter), and smart blob (which creates a blob of matter that does damage of a random type, and then switches to a different type each round if the target is immune or resistant to the previous damage type).
However, as much as I liked reading through the spells, the real treat is the "Notes on [Spell Name]" section that follows each spell. Here, Starlanko the Magnificent points out details on the spell's history (who created it, or maybe one exceptional use in an extraordinary manner by some wizard friend of Starlanko's), or why it serves a purpose in a wizard's arsenal, or what have you. Many of these are absolutely hilarious. Matthew also does a great job getting around "forbidden" (non-SRD) names like Tenser and Mordenkainen, by referring to spells like "what's-his-name's floating disk" and also makes sly references to the "Sorcerers by the Sea." It's the playful language that Matthew gives Starlanko the Magnificent that makes him such a joy to read about. As much as I was appalled by the level of quality of the proofreading and editing, I really look forward to seeing more PDFs in this line. (I just hope Dana gets her act together or Silven hires someone who will. And, as much as I'm picking on Dana in this review, her job would no doubt be much easier if Matthew didn't have all of those mistakes there to begin with - there's definitely some room for improvement there, Matthew!)
50 New Ways to Blow Things Up would be worthy of a 5-star rating, easily. I'm dropping it down to a very low "4 (Good)," only because even with the crappy proofreading job, it's still pretty much always understandable what was actually meant, and those of you with a much higher tolerance for such things may not actually even care a whole lot if spells are misalphabetized or misnamed, or the author and editor don't know the difference between "effected" and "affected," or "complimentary" and "complementary," or "cannon" and "canon," or can even keep an NPC's name spelled the same way two times in a row. But I do, and it's only the high quality of the spell concepts, the excellent artwork throughout, and the humorous behind-the-scenes ramblings that pulls 50 New Ways to Blow Things Up up out of "3 (Average)" range in its present condition.
That said, the "50 New Ways..." series of spell-based PDFs looks to have the potential to be an absolutley fabulous series, and I look forward to seeing future works as they are released.
