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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010978" data-attributes="member: 18387">Nothing like being friendly with your local comic/hobby shop dealer. It allows for a great deal of benfits, such as being able to sample products at length before purchasing. I had such an opportunity recently when I checked in to grab my weekly comics and the store owner brought to my attention that copies of Valar's Book of Erotic Fantasy were in. We had been joking about this book for a while and I really didn't take the idea to seriously at all. Seeing the book however, I could tell Valar did take it seriously, as the volume and well produced cover showed me they weren't fooling around when the made this book.I sat down with the copy and read it in between waiting for my turn on the stores Xbox. I was able to get a good read through, and being a very casual gamer, felt I'd give the casual gamer review.Production: Valar put a lot of effort into this book, and it shows. The refined cover and glossy full color pages make this book fit in well with other high priced d20 books. Overall, I was impressed with the production value of this book, It looks like a highclass d20 book.Presentation: This is where things get a little off for me. The text is fine, and easy to read, with your usual sidebars and short stories or quotes that help explain or clarify the ideas being presented on the page. What gets me a bit is the photo pictures that make up the entire books artwook. While I liked the cover, I'm not really a big fan of the whole photo art deal, since it takes away a level of abstraction I need to enjoy a fantasy setting. Still, the pictures are well done, and combined with CG, get across the idea's needed, and are in line with the overall feel of the book. The book itself is split up into the usual catergories, intro, characters, item's, etc. The table of contents is clear and I never found the book hard to navigate. Good job here overall. (Note to the family gamer, the majority of the photos are nude and a few show sexual acts (although not very explicitly) so be forewarned when purchasing in case there are little ones around that have easy access to your RPG collection).Content: One word describes this book: focused. More than any d20 book I can remember, this book has knows what it wants to talk about and focuses on it like a laser beam. "The Book or Erotic Fantasy" is the title and that's what it's here to discuss. Not romance, or relationships, but sexual acts, the concequences and such. And this is for fantasy, make no mistake. All the new classes, items, and variant rules are aimed at a fantasy setting, and no other. Even more so it is focused on d20 DnD, so don't think you'll be able to just grab whatever you want and take it to another fantasy system, because this book is tuned for d20. That being said, it is a very thorough coverage of the act of sex in such a setting, and covers everything from techniques to social issues surrounding sex, and gives lots of info into integrating it into you fantasy d20 campaign. While there are a lot of new goodies (Prc's, Items, Spells, and the such) they are squarely focused around the main subject, and there really isn't much for those not intrested in fantasy d20 sex. The writers took a very serious edge when the worked on this book, I rarely saw any sigh that the writers were not taking this seriously. All in all, This is a very impressive coverage of a very focused subject.Value for Money/Conclusion: At 190 pgs with a hardcover the book costs $35. When weighed against the average WoTC hardcover, it comes about $3-$8 more than the usual book, with a slightly lower page count. This is of course only fair since Valar hardly has the production resources that WoTC has and were still able to produce a book of very high quality. As a third party book it stands tall, production wise, with the best the d20 community has to offer.But now we get down to it, is it worth it? For me, again speeking as a casual gamer, the answer was no. The book was just too focused for my tastes, as well as the fact that I really don't think anyone in my group is intrested in sex within the game/campaign (myself included). And that's what it comes down to. Are you intrested in Fantasy sex for d20? If so, check out this book, because I know of no other that covers the topic so thoroughly. But if your not, or your looking for a book that might have some outside utility from the main topic, then pass on this one. This is what ultimately drops the score to a 3 (I'd personally give it a 2 since, again, I am really not a fan of the photo art, but that really is personal prefrence i guess). Even more so, it focuses on a topic that the casual gamer really isn't to intrested in Role Playing. If this were a review of "d20 fantasy books dealing with sex" then 4/5 or 5/5 it is, first place and a gold medal. But this a review of a causal gamer looking at the book as a d20 product on the whole, and quite frankly the books excellent focus is ultimately it's undoing.</blockquote>

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