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Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
Alien Anthology is a manual of aliens and alien creatures for the Star Wars D20 RPG. It costs $26.95.
Presentation: Alien Anthology is a 128-page softback book. The front page is an average piece of colour artwork showing six alien species at a bar. The back cover shows an expanded view of an alien-thronged bar and includes a brief introduction and overview of the book. The first three pages are contents and credits and the final page is an advertisement. Internally, there is a plethora of pictures depicting the aliens covered. About half are still-shots from the films, whilst the rest are colour artwork - each picture takes up about one sixth of a page, though there are sometimes two pictures to a page. The artwork ranges from poor to superb. Each entry is split across pages in a similar manner to the D&D Monster Manual and there is a fair amount of white space on each page, though the text spacing itself is compact.
Whats Inside: Well, 100 aliens and alien monsters for the Star wars universe. The book is essentially split in two, with alien creatures in the first section and sentient aliens in the second section. The book begins with a short introduction, and a six-page key to the information provided in the stat blocks for the alien creatures (we are introduced immediately to the breakdown of creatures into five types - herd animal, parasite, predator, scavenger and vermin). The next two pages look at Challenge Codes with advice for modifying them including a short section on creature level advancement. Five pages are then devoted to Creating Your Own Creature, with rules for the five different creature types, and a short example - there are further examples on the Star Wars website at
http://www.wizards.com/starwars/article.asp?x=rpg,3&c=rpg
The next five-page section enhances the previous secton by detailing two Templates - a Climate Template (e.g. Swamp gives a +2 to Swim and a +2 to Survival in swamps), and a Characteristic Template (e.g. Maddened, Amored, Domesticated) - the latter of which has example creatures. The book then moves on to the creatures themselves (30 pages with 38 creatures): bantha, beldon, bonegnawer, boneworm, bordok, cliffborer worm, corellian sand panther, divto, dragonsnake, gundark, hanadak, ice scrabbler, katarn, kirithin, k'lor'slug, knobby white spider, kowakian monkey-lizard, krakana, mantessan panthac, nashtah, nek battle dog, nerf, pierceskimmer, rolk-mangir, sand tick, slashrat, slivilith, space slug, spice spider, thranta. velker, vornskr, woolly veermok, womp rat, worrt, ycaqt, and ysalimiri. Each of the entries has a stat block (which also covers their special qualities) and the text tends to focus on biology and ecology, as well as their interaction with sentient species. Next up is the section on sentient alien species. It begins with two pages on reading the entries, customizing alien species, and new alien special qualities (claws, cold-blooded, methane-breather, primitive, radiation resistance (including a table on radiation poisoning and its effects), tail, and xenophobia). The aliens covered over 63 pages are: aqualish, arcona, arkanian, barabel, baragwin, bimm, bith, chadra-fan, chagrian, chev, chevin, chiss, dashade, devaronian, drall, duros, elom, elomin, falleen, farghul, frozian, gand, gotal, gran, herglic, hoojib, iktotchi, kel dor, kitonak, klatooinian, kubaz, lashbee, mantellian savrip, morseerian, mrlssi, omwati, ortolan, quarren, quermian, rybet, sakiyan, selonian, shistavanen, skrilling, sluissi, sneevel, snivvian, spiner, squib, ssi-ruu, talz, toong, toydarian, ubese, ugnaught, verpine, vuvrian, woostoid, xexto, yevetha, yinchorri, and zabrak. In addition to the stat blocks, there is information on civilization, history, and psychology, as well as brief guidelines for using the species as heroes, if relevant. There follows a section on Specialized Alien Equipment (breath mask, visual compensator and vocal enhancer. Five pages are then devoted to 3 new prestige classes - the Big-Game Hunter, First-Contact Specialist, and the Gand Findsman. The book concludes with an appendix listing creatures by challenge code, and an alien age range table.
The Good: I always felt that the D&D Monster Manual should have contained information on designing your own monsters so I was particularly pleased to see the creature-creation section in the Alien Anthology, and this was enhanced by the examples in the book and on the web. But perhaps the most useful feature of this book is the ability to use any of the 62 sentient aliens as Heroes in your game - this makes the book useful for both GMs and players. By using one idea from the book, of mixing stats and special qualities to create new alien species, the possibilities are expanded still further.
The Bad: I found the text in each of the entries fairly dry. Though there were times in the text, when what I read sparked my imagination in terms of adventure design, the claim on the back of the book that the book has "lots of adventure seeds" is a trifle misleading since there are no formal sections for adventure ideas. I would have liked to see the creature-creation section expanded and a more intensive rules section developed for devising new sentient alien species. I would also liked to have seen each of the entries give a single page to itself.
Conclusion: As usual for Star Wars, the price of this book is fairly high due to the licencing fees, but it is definitely a worthwhile book to pick up, especially if you want to expand the range of Heroes players can use, or want to create your own creatures. Its a shame the text was so dry and there wasn't a formal section for adventure ideas linked to each entry, or this might be termed invaluable. As it is, its still Good.
Alien Anthology is a manual of aliens and alien creatures for the Star Wars D20 RPG. It costs $26.95.
Presentation: Alien Anthology is a 128-page softback book. The front page is an average piece of colour artwork showing six alien species at a bar. The back cover shows an expanded view of an alien-thronged bar and includes a brief introduction and overview of the book. The first three pages are contents and credits and the final page is an advertisement. Internally, there is a plethora of pictures depicting the aliens covered. About half are still-shots from the films, whilst the rest are colour artwork - each picture takes up about one sixth of a page, though there are sometimes two pictures to a page. The artwork ranges from poor to superb. Each entry is split across pages in a similar manner to the D&D Monster Manual and there is a fair amount of white space on each page, though the text spacing itself is compact.
Whats Inside: Well, 100 aliens and alien monsters for the Star wars universe. The book is essentially split in two, with alien creatures in the first section and sentient aliens in the second section. The book begins with a short introduction, and a six-page key to the information provided in the stat blocks for the alien creatures (we are introduced immediately to the breakdown of creatures into five types - herd animal, parasite, predator, scavenger and vermin). The next two pages look at Challenge Codes with advice for modifying them including a short section on creature level advancement. Five pages are then devoted to Creating Your Own Creature, with rules for the five different creature types, and a short example - there are further examples on the Star Wars website at
http://www.wizards.com/starwars/article.asp?x=rpg,3&c=rpg
The next five-page section enhances the previous secton by detailing two Templates - a Climate Template (e.g. Swamp gives a +2 to Swim and a +2 to Survival in swamps), and a Characteristic Template (e.g. Maddened, Amored, Domesticated) - the latter of which has example creatures. The book then moves on to the creatures themselves (30 pages with 38 creatures): bantha, beldon, bonegnawer, boneworm, bordok, cliffborer worm, corellian sand panther, divto, dragonsnake, gundark, hanadak, ice scrabbler, katarn, kirithin, k'lor'slug, knobby white spider, kowakian monkey-lizard, krakana, mantessan panthac, nashtah, nek battle dog, nerf, pierceskimmer, rolk-mangir, sand tick, slashrat, slivilith, space slug, spice spider, thranta. velker, vornskr, woolly veermok, womp rat, worrt, ycaqt, and ysalimiri. Each of the entries has a stat block (which also covers their special qualities) and the text tends to focus on biology and ecology, as well as their interaction with sentient species. Next up is the section on sentient alien species. It begins with two pages on reading the entries, customizing alien species, and new alien special qualities (claws, cold-blooded, methane-breather, primitive, radiation resistance (including a table on radiation poisoning and its effects), tail, and xenophobia). The aliens covered over 63 pages are: aqualish, arcona, arkanian, barabel, baragwin, bimm, bith, chadra-fan, chagrian, chev, chevin, chiss, dashade, devaronian, drall, duros, elom, elomin, falleen, farghul, frozian, gand, gotal, gran, herglic, hoojib, iktotchi, kel dor, kitonak, klatooinian, kubaz, lashbee, mantellian savrip, morseerian, mrlssi, omwati, ortolan, quarren, quermian, rybet, sakiyan, selonian, shistavanen, skrilling, sluissi, sneevel, snivvian, spiner, squib, ssi-ruu, talz, toong, toydarian, ubese, ugnaught, verpine, vuvrian, woostoid, xexto, yevetha, yinchorri, and zabrak. In addition to the stat blocks, there is information on civilization, history, and psychology, as well as brief guidelines for using the species as heroes, if relevant. There follows a section on Specialized Alien Equipment (breath mask, visual compensator and vocal enhancer. Five pages are then devoted to 3 new prestige classes - the Big-Game Hunter, First-Contact Specialist, and the Gand Findsman. The book concludes with an appendix listing creatures by challenge code, and an alien age range table.
The Good: I always felt that the D&D Monster Manual should have contained information on designing your own monsters so I was particularly pleased to see the creature-creation section in the Alien Anthology, and this was enhanced by the examples in the book and on the web. But perhaps the most useful feature of this book is the ability to use any of the 62 sentient aliens as Heroes in your game - this makes the book useful for both GMs and players. By using one idea from the book, of mixing stats and special qualities to create new alien species, the possibilities are expanded still further.
The Bad: I found the text in each of the entries fairly dry. Though there were times in the text, when what I read sparked my imagination in terms of adventure design, the claim on the back of the book that the book has "lots of adventure seeds" is a trifle misleading since there are no formal sections for adventure ideas. I would have liked to see the creature-creation section expanded and a more intensive rules section developed for devising new sentient alien species. I would also liked to have seen each of the entries give a single page to itself.
Conclusion: As usual for Star Wars, the price of this book is fairly high due to the licencing fees, but it is definitely a worthwhile book to pick up, especially if you want to expand the range of Heroes players can use, or want to create your own creatures. Its a shame the text was so dry and there wasn't a formal section for adventure ideas linked to each entry, or this might be termed invaluable. As it is, its still Good.
