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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010129" data-attributes="member: 172">Foul Locales: Beyond the WallsFoul Locales is a series of "location books" by Mystic Eye Games designed to be dropped directly (and quickly) into a game. Beyond the Walls is the second book in this series. The first, Urban Blight detailed encounter locations within a city, whereas this book covers more rural locations.Beyond the Walls is written by Bret Boyd, Charles Plemons III, and John White, with additional material by Becky Glen and IanThompson.A First LookBeyond the Walls is a 128 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $19.99. This is a competitive price for a d20 System product of this format and size.The cover of the book depicts a pair of armed adventurers with some mountains and buildings in the distance. The cover art is by Jason Engle, perhaps best known for his work in Dugneon magazine.The interior is black-and-white and includes work by Scott Purdy, Marcio Fiorito, Chad Sergesketter, and Brad McDivitt. The art is of average to good quality.The cartography is by Ed Bourelle, and as with the work in the previous volume, his maps are very high quality, both usable and attractive.The interior font is a bit larger than perhaps necessary, and double paragraph spacing is use. Futher, a sans serif font is used for body text, which impairs the readability of the book.A Deeper LookBeyond the Walls contains 13 different rural locations for you to drop into your game. To ease dropping such locations into your game, each is defined by a brief list of statistics including encounter level as well as the climate and terrain appropriate to the encounter.Each encounter includes an introductory description of the location, deeper details of the location, NPCs and monster statistics, and adventure and plot hook ideas, maps, as well as a short description of how to best fit the location into your campaign. Some locations also have sidebars with background or rules material and other notes.The book both provides new rules material as well as using third party OGC. Rules from other third party publishers include spellchords from Malhavoc's Book of Eldritch Might II and alchemy rules from Bastion's Alchemy & Herbalists. As the reader may well know, I am not a big fan of BoEM II's bard rules, so that section did not impress me, but there are new spellchords for those who do. However, I find it odd that there is a section that uses psionics that provides alternatives if you do not use psionics, but do not provide alternatives if you do not use the much less widespread spellsong rules.Some rules are specific to locations such as the stones of legend, which provide a boon to one school of magic, but cause a backlash in the form of another school of magic. Other new rules include the telmaroth template, a variation of the half-fiend template that retains more the qualities of a marilith demon.The locations vary in uniqueness, adaptability, and difficulty. Some of the ones with more potential include the dead bard's run (a mountain pass haunted by weapons possessed by deceased bards), the stones of legend (which has enchanted stones that provide character with both benefits and curese), and Zander's brigand patrol (in which a hobgoblin turns over a new leaf and starts protecting people, but this may be only a temporary state of affairs.)ConclusionI don't think I liked the concepts in Beyond the Walls as much as the ones in Urban Blight or in the similarly themed En Route by Atlas. However, it does seem to live up to its promise of providing locations that can be dropped in flexibly, so in a way it meets its core goal a bit better than those books.Overall Grade: B--Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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