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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ghostwind" data-source="post: 2269623" data-attributes="member: 3060">Campaign Planner Deluxe ReviewPosted on behalf of John Grigsby, d20 Magazine Rack Staff ReviewerInitiative RoundCampaign Planner Deluxe is a role-playing supplement from Ronin Arts. This 93-page booklet by Phillip J. Reed features a color cover, but no other artwork and can easily be printed in glorious black-and-white. Campaign Planner Deluxe retails for $15.00 and is available in print or as a PDF.Campaign Planner Deluxe is a compilation of Campaign Planner, Campaign Planner 2, and Campaign Planner 3. This review assumes that the reader does not own any of the previous products.Campaign Planner Deluxe is exactly what the name implies; a collection of forms designed to help you better organize your campaign setting. A gaming veteran, I’m old enough to remember both the Dungeon Master’s Design Kit (for 1st edition D&D, waaaaay back in 1988) and its descendant, the World Builder’s Guidebook, released in 1997. Both of these products came with dozens of forms to assist in campaign design, and in many ways, this product is quite similar.There are forms to help you remember what published adventures you have used and what changes you have made to a published setting. The session history form tracks not only events, locations, NPCs, encounters, and experience during a game session, but also who showed up. There’s a form for books used in the campaign, as well as a form that outlines key events that you have scheduled and planned adventures. There’s a form that you can use to outline an adventure, as well as forms for site-based encounters (including a small grid for mapping it out) and event-based encounters (complete with timeline). Another form prompts you to build a calendar for your campaign, and also has a timeline for tracking significant historical events. More recent events, campaign holidays, and economics are found on yet another form.There are several forms devoted to the development of kingdoms, including one with a small hex map for designing the lay of the land. Major cities are given several forms of their own, including services, limits on available goods, annual citywide events, key historical events and legends, and an urban event template that lets the GM design a momentous happening in the city. For the world at large, there is a polyhedral world grid, hex grids for regions of the world map, and hex grids for individual areas. The trade route form makes designing trade routes simple and quick.There are forms for taverns and inns, shops, guilds, and rumors that you’ve given to your players. One form even tracks unresolved issues and leads that they have yet to follow up on. There’s a page of random encounter charts, numbered 1-20. For dungeons, there are several blank grids, along with vital details. One sheet is designated for traps and other goodies for use in any dungeon (just jot the idea down as it comes to you). A concept worksheet helps you flesh out an idea for a dungeon, and the riddles form insures that you won’t forget that keen riddle you came up with two weeks ago. There are also forms for campaign artifacts, custom treasure tables, and your own magical items.For monsters, there’s a master monster listing (for tracking what monsters exist in your campaign world), a monster template form, and a form for truly legendary creatures. The Adventure/DM Review form is great for getting feedback from your players. There’s also a template for designing sailing ships.Weather forms are a welcome addition, providing space to record a full 24 hours of weather effects, along with tables for quick-and-dirty weather generation. One form exists for each type of climate; hot, temperate, and cold. If you use planar gateways in your campaign, there’s a form for recording those, as well as one for documenting entire planes.There are forms for major and minor NPCs, deities, clerical domains, campaign religions, and house rules for magic, combat, and other details. The spell form allows you to create brand-new spells or to record existing ones that aren’t in the Player’s Handbook. Metamagic components (ala Unearthed Arcana), supplementary spell components (described in Ronin Arts’ 101 Arcane Spell Components and 101 Divine Spell Components) and power components (from the pages of the Dungeon Master’s Guide) all have forms for recording them. And there are forms for psionic powers as well. Naturally, there are forms for creating new core classes, prestige classes, feats, and skills. Finally, there’s a very useful little form for tracking starvation and thirst and suffocation/drowning during play. That one will, no doubt, see quite a bit of use.So, in short, just about every form or template a GM could ever need for developing their campaign and making play easier can be found here. Critical HitOverall, the idea is a good one. For me, this product would have every bit as valuable (with a few exceptions) as a guidebook for campaign development, rather than a stack of forms to fill out, but that hardly means I won’t get any use out of it. Not everyone tries to put their campaign to print all at once, and if you aren’t one of those people, then this is certainly a worthwhile investment. For that matter, it’s a worthwhile investment even if you are one of those types. Several of these forms will be useful to have on hand for everyday play (such as the weather forms), and it’s always nice to have one of the site-based encounter forms handy if your players suddenly decide to chase down a retreating ogre, tracking it to its lair.Critical FumbleOne thing that I don’t like about this version is the lack of forms support. The previous versions had forms, which meant that if you owned a full version of Adobe Acrobat, you could type directly onto the pages and save them. If you don’t have the full version of Acrobat, then you probably don’t realize just how useful this feature is. But since it was present in the products that were compiled to produce this one, why not offer a forms version of the Campaign Planner Deluxeas well!? I would tend to believe that most serious GMs have a copy, and it would be oh-so-helpful. (I could for example, make up the weather for a month at a time and print it as needed.)Coup de GraceAt $15, and with the capability to print individual pages as you require them, I have to say this is a product that every DM should have. Though it is obviously targeted for D&D 3.5, many of these forms are useful for any fantasy role-playing campaign (and probably some non-fantasy). Even if you’re like me and are trying to build a “campaign guide,” there are some things here that serve both as reminders of “must haves” and jump-starts for good ideas for inclusion. Final Grade: A (I’d have gone A+ if a forms version had been included)</blockquote>

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