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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: 2142254" data-attributes="member: 264">Now here we have an anomaly.As anyone who has read my reviews here will quickly deduce, I am something of a “Setting Whore”. This is to say that unless a ruleset has done a truly exceptional job modeling a licensed setting (and barring incredible balance issues or mechanical catastrophes) I mostly think of them as a means to an end, and consider them a neutral element in the review. RPG Argon if you will.Yet in Blue Rose we have a finely detailed, lovingly crafted setting so simpering and precious that I find it almost a laughable read; paired with a set of rules so robust, so flavorful, so packed with utility and flexibility that I am tempted to replace the stock D&D rules with them for the foreseeable future.The world has gone mad. Flee to your shelters! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Allright. It is safe to say that “Romantic Fantasy” as it is outlined in the opening chapters of the book, the authors who inspired the product (Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradley and their ilk), and the presented setting itself are all pretty far outside my tastes. As such, I will preface my comments about the fluff in this product as I do the fluff in any product: [bq]The opinions I offer are simply my opinions, and if they stand in contrast to yours, that’s fair on both sides.[/bq]Mechanically, the presented setting gives a terrific amount of well-written detail on the gods, the countries, and the histories and the peoples of the world.There are gods of light (good), gods of twilight (neutral), and the gods of shadow (evil). We are given a creation myth (reality?) and enough descriptions of facets of the world to more than get a handle of everything necessary to GM.The game focuses for the most part on the country of Aldis, the “good” kingdom. We are given a lot to work with like education of the populace, functions and selection of government, law-enforcement, crimes and justice, customs, the function and acceptance of Magic in the society, religion and holy days…it is very complete.And it is very, very chipper. It is described as a Monarchy, but comes closer to being a meritocracy where those with proven ability are promoted to the nobility. Everyone is presented as being “just fine” with most of our societies common sexual taboos (from homosexuality to transvestitism) and indeed with just about everything, including a dissolution of the common gender roles. Reading through the extensive lists of terminology that people use for homosexuals, and descriptions of how everyone wears pants in day-to-day life, and wears gowns at festivals I get the feeling less of a faux medieval magical kingdom and more of an extremely modern and socially progressive leftist/feminist utopia (complete with an evil, neighbouring socially intolerant Theocracy as “The Enemy”), which—to be fair— I’m told is part and parcel of the “Girl with a harp on the cover” class of fantasy novel. Certainly not to my tastes, but the care and craft used to create it is evident. It is an extremely well-done example of something I don’t care for.Now, on to the ruleset. Firstly, the character generation is a marked departure from, a great improvement over, stock D20.Attributes are strictly bonuses (like in Ars Magica), so +0 is average +1 above average etc., instead of the standard 3-18 that D20 commonly makes use of to determine the bonuses (where odd numbers do nothing to affect the stats). Players get 6 points to distribute between their stats, and again, much like Ars Magica, they may lower stat bonuses to get more points. So to add a +2 to Intelligence, one may either pay from their pool of 6, or decrease say Wisdom by -2. In a final nod to Ars Magica, no stat may be purchased above +5 or decreased below -5. All good. It’s small, but it makes things tidier. I wondered why they kept the 3-18 model for stats when D&D3.0 was released, and couldn’t think of one reason other than it was a sacred cow. I’m glad someone finally took the bull by the horns here. Backgrounds are up next, and are a combination of what stock D&D calls race, but includes a variety of human nations and cultures, intelligent animals and the magical and long-lived “Vata”. All provide some benefits and detriments in much the same manner as D&D races.Next up are the “Roles” (classes) .There are only three classes, which are very adaptable to player concepts. The three base classes are simply Adept (Magic User), Expert (Skill User) and Warrior (Weapon User), but the book gives examples of how to make use the many choices you are presented with to create such concepts (amongst others) as the Ranger, Bard, Thief, Scout, Noble and a variety of “Flavours” of Wizard. I love this flexibility.To my absolute delight, a lot of rules systems were lifted directly from the Author (Steve Kenson)‘s other famous work, Mutants and Masterminds, and added into this where appropriate.Hit Points have been done away with in favor of the very fun Damage Save mechanic that M&M introduced. The M&M Hero Point system has been included and renamed “Conviction”. Conviction points allow players to act heroically when necessary in a variety of ways (including extra half-actions—which used to be a feat in M&M, and one which everyone took—nice to see it included in the Conviction point mechanic instead).The skills and feats are where the PC’s get the lion’s share of their abilities. The skill list has been trimmed down to twenty five skills and still (thanks to more flexibility and customizability) manages to cover all bases.The feat system is where the character’s real power lies.. There are feats for combat, skills, magic, psionic abilities and a category called “general”…a lot to choose from. There are some familiar feats like Precise Shot, Power Attack, and the brilliantly renamed Defensive Fighting…which is the old (and confusingly named) Expertise. The Magic and Psionic Feats are the simple magic system I have been waiting for for ages. There are no spells or spell levels, no spell lists to waste time poring over and organizing, and no mana point system (the usual “fix” presented for D&D Magic).Magic-wielder’s powers are kept in check by a simple fatigue system which works beautifully. The magic system itself is skill and feat based. The effects have a difficulty and that difficulty rises depending on the familiarity the caster has with the target of the effect (“Arcana”). A target in visual range imposes no modifier to the check, but spells cast with out the target present (or well-known) can truly daunt the caster.One of the truly innovative bits in the book (in my experience at least) are the rules for Corruption. It takes a bit of explanation, so please bear with me…Firstly, all characters have personality traits called “Natures”. They are basically flipsides of the same quality, on positive (“light”) and one negative (“shadow”). So if you have a character whose light nature is, say, Bold, then his shadow nature would be Boastful (or somesuch). Light nature Exacting would give your character the shadow nature Petty…you with me?These are important because Conviction Points (mentioned earlier) are incredibly useful and are recovered by acting in accordance with your nature...Either Nature.And as we all know, it is a lot easier to behave poorly than well.  So the temptation is there to act Greedily, rather Generously to recover your Conviction points.But characters who behave in certain evil ("Shadow", remember from earlier?) manners, or who mess around with Sorcery and dark powers, start piling up Corruption Points, and they are both difficult to divest your character of, and screw him up pretty badly.But the option exists for your character to just embrace his corruption, giving in to the dark side, and turn the Corruption Points into a useful resource...at the cost of becoming permanently evil. Hmm. “Giving into the Dark Side”...The more I think about it, the more I think this looks like the best Star Wars RPG I have seen. Slap some Spaceships, Blasters and Droids in there and the corruption rules start looking a lot like The Force. Interesting.The game uses D20 Modern’s wealth system, which I don’t really like, but the equipment listed is largely identical to that in the D20 Core rules, so slotting out the Wealth System in favor of Currency would be trivially easy.Anyway. This is an excellent simplification of the rules for D20 fantasy (which were always more complex and non-intuitive than I would have liked) with a lot of its own charm and flavour. The setting—though not to my taste—is true to its stated goals and well-crafted.Green Ronin has belted another one out of the park.</blockquote>

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