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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HellHound" data-source="post: 2584258" data-attributes="member: 3397">A big honking book!A Game of ThronesThis is the largest RPG book so far this year. Actually, I think it is one of the biggest RPG books I’ve ever owned. Initially, it reminded me of holding the old Warhammer FRP 1e hardcover for sheer thickness, but the page weight is a lot lighter, and the page count higher. Alan Kohler (Psion) has been talking about ‘the year of the big book’, and this certainly fits at 496 pages. This is wrist-hurting big, by the way - It is for reading on a table, not on the couch - within two minutes of opening this book I had to move from the couch to the table because my wrist hurt.This is a full RPG and setting in one book, a complete RPG from background and character creation, through to mechanics, adversaries and setting and material to help the GM run A Game of Thrones. This is the standard OGL edition of the game, not the beautiful deluxe edition, nor the forthcoming standard tri-stat edition. That’s not to say that it isn’t gorgeous - the layout is excellent, nicely avoiding widows and orphans, font choice generally good (although I find the primary font a bit hard to read because it is tall and narrow - however this certainly serves to increase the word count per page), art vignettes appropriate and well-placed, and the illustrations are excellent. This is a "widescreen format" RPG - illustrations are full double-page plates, something I have been enjoying in Guardians of Order’s recent releases such as Ex Machina. The font used on the cover is a little over-used in general outside of this work, but the overall package is very strong. The only thing I would have changed would perhaps be the primary interior font and including the full map of Westeros on the inside covers of the book in addition to buried away inside on page 342-343. This is a d20-based game, not an actual d20 product. It doesn’t have the d20 logo on it, but it does use the Open Game License and references the d20 SRD in the Section 15 of the license (as well, I might add, as Tournaments Fairs & Taverns and Wild Spellcraft).Before I go any further into the book, I’m going to mention that I’ve never read any of George R.R. Martin’s works, although I intend to do so at some point in the future now that I’ve read this game. My wife and I both read through this game and then the family sat down, negotiated a style of campaign to play, and made characters as a way of getting a feel for the systems involved. So this is, in turn, somewhat of a playtest review.Like other games in the new "widescreen" format of GoO games, A Game of Thrones opens with a very well written introduction to fantasy literature and RPGs through the years, types of fantasy and so on. These opening chapters have become some of my favorite readings when I have nothing else to do, and a really a huge step beyond the classic "what is role-playing" page that appears in the front of many RPGs. Finally, the book implements sidebars throughout the volume, explaining optional rules, reasons for changes to the core d20 mechanics, reminders about important themes, summaries of each chapter (especially focusing on changes from the core mechanics), designer’s notes and so on.Unlike most other d20-based games, character creation in A Game Of Thrones specifically begins with discussion on the style of game to be played, and what is expected from the players and the GM during the campaign. This discussion and negotiation is an excellent way to set up a campaign, with everyone going in with knowledge of how the storyline is expected to grow during the game, thus no one is entering into the game with confusion over his or her role or importance to the storyline. There are three styles of game that are set up in this manner. The classic "party of adventurers" style of game that most of us are familiar with from D&D play is offered as a choice, but the game also discusses how to set up and run a political game (a game of thrones, as it were), as well as a noble house game where the players are all members of a noble house, playing through the trials and tribulations of such. The noble house game immediately struck a chord with a few of us, thinking back to the adventures of Arthur as a child in The Once and Future King, or of the activities at Harper Hall or among the Dragonriders of Pern. This immediate difference in how to approach the playing of the game lends flavour to the rest of the character creation and game mechanics sections of the book, as we look at each in different ways. Playing the party of adventurers is probably the most restrictive way of playing the game as written, because it gives the least opportunity to use the influence and reputation rules that make up a fair amount of the mechanics sections of the rule book. In our case, we created a mix of the noble house campaign and the wandering adventurers, From there, we generate ability scores as in D&D proper (recommended is the point buy method, also fully explained, but my family is partial to the organic character creation method, so we stuck to that). Part of this is selecting the age of a character. Children characters are included in this character generation system much to the delight of my youngest daughter.  A noble house or political game would work well including some children in the starting group, and then aging them rapidly as the game progresses (by skipping ‘boring’ stretches of downtime, for example).Instead of race, the next step is the selection of background  from among the geographical points of origin in Westeros or perhaps even the Free Cities beyond. Backgrounds are treated essentially as races, except that they vary from the baseline human not in ability scores, but by providing a favoured skill, bonuses on some specific skill checks, and a collection of background feats to choose from. After background, a character’s house affiliation (or lack thereof) determines a character’s starting social status as well as adding some additional feats to the choices of background feats he or she has available to choose from.Social status is a new stat used in game to determine a character’s influence and reputation, as well as their wealth. An interesting touch is that the game applies an ECL to certain social status ranks, in order to balance a party between skill and prowess versus wealth and influence. For example, in our starting party, we had a level 1 child of a minor house who is in the care of a major noble house, a level 2 minor noble acting as the child’s caretaker (a knight whose family owes the major noble house a favour or six), and a level 3 swordsman and weaponsmith who is in the employ of the noble house as the child’s trainer in the arts of war.The core classes of the game reflect the change in priorities from a typical D&D campaign, with some classes specifically better at combat than others, instead of the general ‘balance’ provided within the core d20 framework. The combat oriented characters (Man-at-arms, Raider) remain well-balanced internally, without completely outstripping the skills and abilities of the Godsworn (priests), Hunters (rangers), Knaves (rogues), Maesters (experts / sages), and Nobles. Multiclassing is encouraged, as most male nobles will also have a level or two of man-at-arms to reflect their martial training, although feats can be spent instead on martial proficiencies to reflect less military-oriented nobles (such as the noble knave in our party who is more of a drunkard who is suddenly discovering himself and pushing beyond his old boundaries than a brave and noble knight). There is also a selection of prestige classes for the setting that helped me get a feel for the setting. Overall, I was quite content with the classes chapter, which is almost surprising as I am pretty critical of classes, especially when they are being used to establish the basis of the campaign style. A footnote of the classes chapter is the hit points per level system reduces hit point escalation significantly unless a character has a very high Constitution. A starting character has a set number of hit points at level 1, and then a set number of hit points at every subsequent level, between 1 and 3 points. The downside with this is that a high Constitution gives a distinct advantage at medium and higher levels, as the character can triple his hit points (or more) in this way. I would consider using half the character’s Constitution bonus beyond level 1.The skills remain generally the same as in core d20 games. However, skill synergy bonuses are applied on a case-by-case basis instead of following a pre-determined list - the only requirement is that the character have 5 or more ranks in the synergistic skill and that the player and GM agree that the synergy is appropriate. Also, the crafting skills are different in that each craft has a different stat base, and Domestic Arts is a new craft skill which covers child rearing, cleaning, cooking, household affairs and needlework. Finally, a character can specialize any skill, by choosing a single specialty appropriate for the skill - henceforth, the character gains a +1 bonus when using the skill for that specialty, and suffers no other penalties. Gaining more than one specialty in a skill is possible, but it costs 1 skill rank to gain a new specialty, so it is only worth it if the skill is already maxed out, but you want to get even better at something specific. The specialties are a simple system that adds flavour to the skill lists of a character, and were appreciated by the party. That said, Craft (Child Rearing) made us laugh; although it would actually be Craft (Domestic Arts) (Child Rearing). As a closing note, most of the character classes have a significant number (and odd number) of skill points at each level, so a character will generally have more skills in this game than in a core d20 game. Also, the character sheet provided at the back of the book only contains a short block for writing in your skills, even though the skill list in this game is at least as long as the skill list in normal d20 games. In the end, we had to print a skill sheet on the back of each player’s character sheet to be able to track skills, skill ranks, stat bonuses and so on which take significantly more room than the four half lines given on the sheet.The feats chapter is typical of a d20 based game, and they are applied in the same way. There are two major changes to the feat structure however. The feats providing +2 to two skills and Skill Focus have been removed and replaced with a short list of background feats that add two skills to your class skills (such as Able Body, which allows you to choose two from Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Move Silently, Ride, Swim, Tumble and Use Rope). The second change is in the combat feats. Because the system uses armor providing damage reduction, a selection of feats exists that allows a character to add a stat bonus either to his attack or defense rolls with a particular weapon type - if the feat is taken twice then the stat bonus applies to both attack and defense rolls. Many of the feats serve to further enhance the feel of the setting, particularly among the background feats which help drive home the stereotypes of each background, as well as feats such as Heir (which makes you the heir to your noble family), Leechcraft (to remind you of the primitive state of medicine), and feats that give you power within an organization such as Authority, Command, Head of House, and Political Connections. In the end, as with most d20 games, a large number of the feats remain combat-oriented, but they are well balanced here by a large number of background and social feats.The game mechanics remain very much true to the core d20 rules, adding the use of a defense roll in combat, removing attacks of opportunity, and making armor provide damage reduction instead of an AC bonus. The game mechanics chapter is very clearly written, and includes some other new rules that are well-integrated into the whole instead of feeling ‘bolted on’ to the system (such as rules for shock and pain that are elegant and simple, and obviously based on the Massive Damage rules). A lot of the mechanics are about the use of influence and reputation in play, which are important for a game which aims to be as much about political and social conflict as physical. Again, these systems are handled well and with excellent and clear writing and examples, making them seemingly simple to adjudicate in play. From page 290 onwards, the book becomes the realm of the Game Master, with large sections suggesting how to maintain the game’s feel through status, society, family, consequences for actions, deeds and misdeeds and so on. It also includes NPC classes and PrCs, basics on using magic (and the incredible rarity thereof), experience and advancement and a basic bestiary before moving on to the setting proper. The last two major chapters are the history, geography and sociology of the setting and then a selection of NPCs all statted up nice and pretty. In the end, my only complaints about this book are the character sheet (4 lines to handle a d20 character’s skill list? And to make it worse, there is no sheet to download from the company website yet so you have to either photocopy the sheet in the back of the book, or make your own), the location of the map being tucked into the book proper, and the fact that it relies on a set of books I haven’t read yet as the backstory. But that last problem is fixed by the excellent exposition material throughout the volume to get you feeling like you know this game world - two reads through the book and I feel that when I do read the George R.R. Martin books I will be coming in from a position of experience in the world as written. I was particularly happy with the campaign examples stretching so far from the standard fantasy classic of the party of adventurers, and look forward to running a noble house campaign. Finally, although the book contains a lot of story leads on what to use for games, adventures and story seeds, it lacks a sample adventure that would have helped tie the whole work together. This book is definitely a five-star release - not that it completely lacks in faults, but in that it is a complete RPG requiring no other resources, it is very clearly and well written and managed to maintain its tone even through the most mechanically-intense chapters. If I were not using this for an actual Game of Thrones game, would I still get this book? Absolutely.  It is a great read to begin with, and has great ideas for fantasy gaming in general. The implementation of the skill specializations is a simple change that works very well within the d20 core system, transfers easily, and adds texture to a character. Many of the new feats are excellent resources for making feats in your own setting (the blood of... feats for instance) and others can be ported over directly (such as the feat that grants a Wisdom bonus to initiative). The shock value system makes combat more interesting, bringing in the massive damage rules at lower damage totals, without the deadly consequences; however I would increase the shock value for standard D&D play (as the characters have significantly higher hit points and damage dealing capability). What really got me hooked on this book, however, is something that would work with any fantasy RPG, which is whole sections on running games of politics, diplomacy, or dealing with the trials and tribulations of a noble family. I expect I will take away a lot of inspiration from this game to my other campaigns, whether or not I use any of the rules.</blockquote>

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