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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tha Black Hand" data-source="post: 2597418" data-attributes="member: 36494">A Touch of Evil:  Antagonists In Your Campaign, vol. 1:  OrcsA Touch of Evil:  Antagonists In Your Campaign, Vol. 1:  Orcs is a very long title to a very concise and simple concept.  That is, providing needy GMs with NPCs that will provide a challenge and add to a campaign.  Reality Deviant accomplishes this with 6 interesting concepts of, as they say, "our freinds, the Orcs".David Jarvis and Chris Swenson lead off in their introduction by stating how overused and abused the orc has become in DND campaigns and propose that new life can be breathed into the orc by introducing interesting NPCs that reflect an intelligent species.  As good as their writing style is, I think the introduction could have been cut back to make room for information on advancing the NPCs or maybe adding an adventure locale such as Zurl Blacktooth's church.As for the 6 orcs that are contained in the pdf, Jarvis and Swenson have avoided, very thankfully in my opinion, the "misunderstood race" route and instead have created, as the book's title implies: antagonists.  Not all are pure evil, such as Grauk Splintershield the Orc Ranger who has shrugged off all orc society to enrich himself by seeking out a lost dwarven treasure, but they are all antisocial. Some have even become a scourge to their own race like Zurl Blacktooth, an evil half-orc cleric that has fled his people to build a church to a rival god.  The descriptions for each NPC vary in length, but all include plenty of information that can be used to flesh out any encounter PCs may have with them.  If the NPC's backstory isn't enough, hooks for the GM are also provided.One weakness that becomes apparent in the NPC descriptions is there is little information on making any of the antagonists a recurring villain.  Some of these certainly have potential--especially Lurkuul Shogra, a druid who has command of a small tribe of orcs for his own ends, but the DM will have to do the work at advancing the creature.  Even an abbreviated stat block could have helped here. Despite that, the stat blocks are very well done and everything is well organized.  The artwork includes an illustration of each orc.  These are very well drawn in a Warcraft-y style and complement the text.In all, Orcs is a simple, easy-to-use collection of NPCs that can add to campaigns and breathe new life into, as Jarvis and Swenson say, "the potato of the fantasy RPG".</blockquote>

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