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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="Teflon Billy" data-source="post: 2713645" data-attributes="member: 264">Allright!  A Game of Thrones!With the long, long, loooooong overdue release of A Feast for Crows—the latest volume in the series— having finally occurred in England, I couldn’t think of a better time to give all and sundry a quick “heads up” on this, one of my favorite RPG supplements to ever hit the shelves.A Song of Ice and Fire (the series of which A Game of Thrones is the first volume) is one of my favorite series of books of all time (and far and away my favorite series of fantasy novels…yes Lord of the Rings included), and I have tried on several occasions to run a D&D game reminiscent of these books since they came out.And…I have not met with much success.Generally speaking, D&D—as written—is a superhero game where ultra-powerful and ultra-prevalent magic subs-in for technology, despite its medieval/early renaissance trappings, and power levels of PC’s scale up to the point where it is perfectly feasible for them to stand off entire armies of conscripts, fall hundreds of feet, dine on poisons and return from the dead with about as much ado as changing a pair of pants. It is very difficult to use the ruleset to run a medieval-setting game that doesn’t involve a ton of magic since, as has been discussed ad nauseum on these very forums, the stock D&D character and ECL balance falls apart if you aren’t loading your PC’s down with magical equipment and giving spellcasters a level of rarity roughly the equivalent to that of carpenters in our world (and equating them about as much mystique).Fortunately for some, it’s pretty easy to “fix” stock D&D into a game that can model the novel in question: everyone plays a Fighter, Rogue or Expert, and the DM handwaves magic while completely setting aside the ECL system.The bad news on this front is that when I say this works, I toss “works” into quotation marks; because what it does is make for a very boring game. Fighters in stock D&D—particularly when bereft of their magical gewgaws—all start looking the same after awhile, and while Rogues and Experts can make some headway defining themselves mechanically, it still makes for a pretty dry experience for those who like a little bit of game mechanic with their role play (and though it is an unpopular view these days, I count myself amongst those that do).This—despite some pretty impressive art previews—is pretty much what I was expecting from this product. I knew it would be pretty, and I knew it would be well-written, but I suspected there was only so much you could do with the standard D20 ruleset for modeling low magic. This is categorically not what was delivered. What Guardians of Order have done is take D&D’s “ultra-high-magic required” superheroics and used that familiar engine to create a credible ruleset for modeling a low magic/late medieval setting. As I’ve pointed out above, this in itself is no great feat. Lots of people have done this. Hell, I’ve done this.What is magnificent about this particular attempt is that the authors managed to make such a setting incredibly fun and varied in play, included great depth in the character generation, great variety in the physical combat (which in the absence of Magic Missiles and Fireballs makes up most of the “battle” in these stories) and made the whole package not only a pleasure to behold, but easy to use as well.Plus it delivers the aforementioned beautiful presentation and quality writing. It is, quite simply, one of the best RPG products I’ve ever seen…and this copy I’ve got apparently isn’t even the upcoming Deluxe Edition. That concept staggers the mind.Now that, gentle readers, is how you write a long intro <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The list of contributors is big, as is to be expected in a 500-ish page book, and includes such industry luminaries as [imager]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/Teflon_Billy/Sturrock.jpg [/imager]Ian Sturrock of Conan D20, The Red Star, and Slaine fame. I couldn’t find a picture of him, but did manage to find a picture of British Bodybuilding legend, Ian Sturrock…so I’ve made do.Also present on the list is Wil Upchurch; D20 Stalwart and—would you believe it—1997 United States Air Hockey Association World Champion. I kid you not. Google it yourself. This isn’t like the Ian Sturrock thing a second ago, Wil “D20 Dwarf” Upchurch was honestly a World Champion at air hockey.It would seem our young Mr. Upchurch had a whole other level of demi-fame before the one he currently enjoys in the RPG field. Air Hockey and Dawnforge both! My admiration for Wil just kicked up a notch. At the end of this review, I will include a picture of Wil accepting his trophy in 1999 as the California State Air Hockey Champion. A pretty girl is involved as well.Stay tuned.Anyway, back to the subject at hand…The art director managed to include industry vets like William O’Connor as well as young guns like Jim Zubkavich’s Udon Studios to great effect. Most of the full color 2-page spreads are excellent treatments of scenes in the book and though I have a few gripes with some of the choices made (Viserys Targaryen with short, brown curly hair rather than the white blonde locks that the novel takes great pains to point out is the Targaryen calling card?) I have almost nothing but praise for the entire book’s art.***EDITORIAL UPDATE*** GoO's own Jesse Scoble has contacted me about the above piece of art, and has corrected a misconception I had. It's apparently not Danaerys watching her Bloodriders shitcan her brother for manhandling her, but is rather Danaerys watching the men ride down one of the "Lamb People" in a different section of the book.Mea Culpa, and thanks for hte heads-up Jesse. ***EDITORIAL UPDATE*** But anyway, back to the review...I am not alone in my aprreciation for the art. I passed the book around at one of my wife’s “Art Functions” and got a variety of responses. All positive…[bq]Jim Thurwen (Tattoo Artist): “These guys understand proportion and movement well…”Dale Ray Fedoruk(Art Director, Terminal City): “Man I loved these novels. The work here looks good. I’m wondering if they were painted from photos. …”Marla Spider (Performance Artist): “These guys have a great ability to do facial expression…"Genevieve Buechner (actress) (referring to the picture of Syrio and Arya being confronted by Ser Meryn Trant of the Kingsguard) : “…what’s up with the way that guy (Trant) is holding his sword?..."[/bq]And what is up with that? Judging by the way the blade is pointing, it looks like the sword hilt veers off at 45 degrees.It was pretty much agreed that the near-photorealistic work by Mark Evans stands out as the best in the book. Particularly his full color two page spreads. The one on page 162-3 of this edition in particular—of Ser Loras “The Knight of Flowers” Tyrell jousting—has drawn my 13-year old daughter’s attention on more than one occasion, causing her to comment that Ser Loras is “Pretty” and that he is her “Favorite”. Given that this is how 13-year old girls in the source material react to Ser Loras, I’m not certain I can give higher praise to a piece of art claiming to model him.No need to take my word for it though, take a look for yourself <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/Teflon_Billy/joust_for_jeff.jpg" target="_blank">by clicking here</a>.The character generation is really interesting, fun and well-executed as—despite it’s marked deviation from the standard D&D format—we had almost no trouble following the process right from the get-go. In the grand tradition of good OGL usage, they kept enough of D20 so that it is easy to grasp, but definitely made their own game.The reader is presented with a lot of different ways to model characters specific to the setting, most of which are Feat based. The things they’ve done with feats here are really pretty great.First off, they ditched the abominable “+2 to two skills and give it a name”-style of feat that became epidemic in a lot of product. Gone. In fact, on page 164 they announce that it’s gone. Hurrah and good riddance I say.Secondly, they added a whole ton of “Background” feats that allow the characters to have the archetypal benefits of membership in the various Noble Houses of Westeros, birth in the various geographical regions, blood from the various racial stocks of the world and suchlike. Coupled with a whole boatload of feats that affect the way combat now works (more on that to come) the reader is presented with a whole pile of feats.The character classes presented for the setting are about as complete as one could imagine, including all of the “Bog Standards”, as well as the more setting-specific interesting ones (Water Dancer, Maester, Knight of the Kingsguard) etc. Again, this is nothing particularly new on the surface—piles of new featsand character classes are not exactly rare in the world of D20 supplements— until you realize that virtually all of the new feats have and their basis solidly placed in the setting of the novel (remarkable for feats more so than Character Classes), or in the new combat system.Speaking of which…it’s brilliant.One of the big issues I have with using D&D to model a low magic setting is that there is just not a lot to do in combat other than roll to hit and record damage. Without a ton of magical options, it can get a little dry.The combat system that the authors have cooked up is, and I’m getting as tired of writing this phrase as I’m sure you are of reading it, brilliant.The mechanics of it are, again, similar enough to the d20 fantasy core rules that newcomers won’t be reinventing the wheel, but the differences are where the system really comes into its own. Armor now provides DR (a rule we’ve been experimenting with for some time), and AC is determined by class-based defense bonuses, dexterity, shields, and miscellaneous situational modifiers.I was expecting to be disappointed with the level of lethality the game would deliver, but A Game of Thrones goes quite a bit further than D&D in terms of combat deadliness. This is done through a stat called Shock Value, equal to half of their Con score. Damage that exceeds this amount can stun the character (yowch) and cause continuing damage through bleeding. The system also, thankfully, does away with Attacks of Opportunity (though I wonder—though it hasn’t come up in play yet—how characters in such a Battle-heavy setting will be able to “Hold the Line”. I may update this review later with a playtest of that.) The book is understandably a little sparse regarding Magic. Though it is present in the novel, it is very much a poorly-understood lost art…in this case best left to NPC’s. Out of the 500-odd pages the PRG is long, 2 pages are devoted to magic. That’s about right in my estimation. This means that when we start rolling characters I am going to get four players who want to be Wizards. That’s they cross we bear when we try and run gritty low-magic games. I’m not sure why, but players see the words “gritty” and “low magic” and immediately seem to think that a Wizard is the best character choice imaginable.It makes my head hurt.But anyways…the review.  The final two chapters are the ones I keep going back to, as they are the “setting bible” for not just the RPG, but the series of novels as well.They detail the world of Westeros, and the major (and not so major) characters in the stories. They are very well written, and manage to convey the information necessary without coming across as a dry academic read. A couple of gaffes kind of threw me (the example given of Ned Stark’s honor being that he rode back to save Jory Cassel…when in fact it was Jory who rode back to save Ned), but all told they are all great reads.The characters chapter is split into two sections. First, a well-illustrated (which is “par for the course” in the product) front section—without much in the way of Stats and Numbers—that provides much of the prose background details from the story, and secondly a Stats and Numbers section with full statistics. I would’ve preferred each of the sets of stats to be included with the prose, but it’s certainly not a deal-breaker.So in closing, buy this book.Seriously. If you ever liked the novels, this is magnificent setting bible. It’s beautifully done, and the price point on it is very reasonable given the quality of the product. It has enough fine-tuning evident in it’s ruleset to lead me to believe that the extensive playtesting we heard about paid off in spades.I’m half-tempted to pick up the Deluxe Edition just on general principles.I worry that my reviews of Guardians of Order’s products are beginning to look like an unbroken string of 11/10’s but they almost literally seem to outdo themselves with each successive release.The intro to the book is by GoO stalwart Jesse Scoble, and—toward the end— reads as follows…[bq]…it’s a strange time for us at Guardians of Order. Most of us have moved or are moving on, as life’s courses take each on his own way. But no matter how much, or how little, we continue to work for Mark and GoO, I feel quite privileged to have led this crew and have my stamp upon this tome…[/bq]Now if that’s not bittersweet I don’t know what is. If the crew that put this book together has scattered to the four winds, then the gaming world is the lesser for it.And, lest you think your Old Uncle Billy forgot his earlier promise….Ladies and Gentlemen,WIL “THE JUGGERNAUT” UPCHURCH; KING OF AIR HOCKEY<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/Teflon_Billy/upchurch.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

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