BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
These aren't in-depth, but they're quick-n-dirty.
Requiem for a God - Malhavoc/Sword and Sorcery
Malhavoc's currently got a sale going on and I took advantage of it to buy "Requiem". I'd had my eye on it for some time, but never got around to getting it. Monte Cook has continually written and released quality products and this is no exception.
The book is an "event" book about the death of a god. In other words, it takes a campaign-changing event and gives advice on how to procede with it. Campaign ideas, adventures, PrCs, feats, monsters, spells, and assorted suggested background material are provided. What I liked most about it is that it addresses a need I've come accross in more than one campaign: the DM has a story arc in mind, but it doesn't get fleshed out because of time/resources/scheduling/whatever. The event occurs (in this case a god's death) and suddenly the players really get into their characters and don't want to restart. Monte suggests that level 17+ would be those present a god's death, but I've played in and heard about far too many campaigns where things moved "too quickly" and could easily envision a scenario where this happend much earlier. This book is ideal for proceeding from there and it's also a fun read ... and the layout is dreamy. It's very easy to reference things from page to page.
A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe - Expeditious Retreat Press
Jaw-droppingly good. When I designed my homebrew, I read a hella lotta books because I like a degree of reality in my fantasy. This purchase could have shaved six months off the process. I regret that it was not avilable earlier and I regret that I didn't buy it sooner.
This is NOT a game book strictly speaking. There are no feats, skills, or PrCs. This is a DM tool to build a manor, country, society, etcetra with a degree of versimilatude. What should be an incredibly dry read is spiced up in places where the author has a little fun with the excution of the ideas (e.g. an example of cathedral construction has an unexpected twist at the end when a lusty bard makes a minor addition while using a lyre of bulding).
And, yes, there is a quiz at the end.
Potent Portals - Creative Mountain Games
$5. 100 doors, windows, skylights, knobs, and more. This isn't so much something you read as it is something you flip through. A great big book of magic items dedicated to specific purpose. After going through it, I really got turned on to the ideas of PDFs. I mean ... A BOOK ABOUT DOORS! That's like reading through an issue of Dragon and geting caught up in an article and wishing they had explored it more ... only they do!
All of the portals are written up as proper magic items. This is very nice as it makes it easy to figure out the challenge rating of the room you're planning to add it to or what to charge the players if they decide they want a Quenching Gate or Faerie Window.
... you'll note that I'm not giving ratings to any of these. That is intentional. All of these documents are all highly specific to a given topic. They all cover that topic very well and leave few -- if any -- questions remaining.
Happy gaming!
BG
Requiem for a God - Malhavoc/Sword and Sorcery
Malhavoc's currently got a sale going on and I took advantage of it to buy "Requiem". I'd had my eye on it for some time, but never got around to getting it. Monte Cook has continually written and released quality products and this is no exception.
The book is an "event" book about the death of a god. In other words, it takes a campaign-changing event and gives advice on how to procede with it. Campaign ideas, adventures, PrCs, feats, monsters, spells, and assorted suggested background material are provided. What I liked most about it is that it addresses a need I've come accross in more than one campaign: the DM has a story arc in mind, but it doesn't get fleshed out because of time/resources/scheduling/whatever. The event occurs (in this case a god's death) and suddenly the players really get into their characters and don't want to restart. Monte suggests that level 17+ would be those present a god's death, but I've played in and heard about far too many campaigns where things moved "too quickly" and could easily envision a scenario where this happend much earlier. This book is ideal for proceeding from there and it's also a fun read ... and the layout is dreamy. It's very easy to reference things from page to page.
A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe - Expeditious Retreat Press
Jaw-droppingly good. When I designed my homebrew, I read a hella lotta books because I like a degree of reality in my fantasy. This purchase could have shaved six months off the process. I regret that it was not avilable earlier and I regret that I didn't buy it sooner.
This is NOT a game book strictly speaking. There are no feats, skills, or PrCs. This is a DM tool to build a manor, country, society, etcetra with a degree of versimilatude. What should be an incredibly dry read is spiced up in places where the author has a little fun with the excution of the ideas (e.g. an example of cathedral construction has an unexpected twist at the end when a lusty bard makes a minor addition while using a lyre of bulding).
And, yes, there is a quiz at the end.
Potent Portals - Creative Mountain Games
$5. 100 doors, windows, skylights, knobs, and more. This isn't so much something you read as it is something you flip through. A great big book of magic items dedicated to specific purpose. After going through it, I really got turned on to the ideas of PDFs. I mean ... A BOOK ABOUT DOORS! That's like reading through an issue of Dragon and geting caught up in an article and wishing they had explored it more ... only they do!
All of the portals are written up as proper magic items. This is very nice as it makes it easy to figure out the challenge rating of the room you're planning to add it to or what to charge the players if they decide they want a Quenching Gate or Faerie Window.
... you'll note that I'm not giving ratings to any of these. That is intentional. All of these documents are all highly specific to a given topic. They all cover that topic very well and leave few -- if any -- questions remaining.
Happy gaming!
BG
