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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="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2010885" data-attributes="member: 1129">The campaign planner wasn't what I expected it to be. I'm the type of GM who has a lot of resources and appreciates material that allows me to save time. The campaign planner allows you to save some time, but isn't so much a campaign planner as it is a campaign tracker.Who needs the campaign planner? The person who needs the campaign planner is one who hasn't already written out all of his notes. It starts off with a page for campaign recording information, another page for house rules, broken up into four areas, arcane magic, divine magic, combat, and house rules. It then provides a place to write down books used in the campaign including title and publisher. Nice but how about a listing of books by publisher that way the GM can just check them off? Another section is for character races, drawn from the Player's Handbook allowing you to mark it if standard and if not, to record the differences. This is followed by sheets for the standard classes. This player section is tied up with Prestige Classes Available. Now here, the author could've grabbed Ultimate Prestige Classes Volume One and Two, and made a check list and then provided the blank sheet. That would make the job of recording the information easier. He took the opposite route for spells, providing a form for spells not available in the campaign and a section for setting specific equipment.The campaign time page didn't look too useful for the long term. It allows you to capture the starting time of the campaign and has a current year, month, day section, but no actual calendar to mark off time with. A page with a standard month of say, 7-10 day week and a 30 day month to keep track of things would've been great. Or heck, even a blank page of a calendar where the user can print off twelve pages and customize it would be highly useful.Another section is the God/Deity. This includes the standards with places to write symbol, domains, weapon of choice and other important information. I guess here I'd have to ask, why would we need this? Most books have this information in handy places and this would just give me another place to look for it. The section's too small to write out customized gods The mapping tools are nice. There are several pages with different types of grids to allow the GM to make small maps for handout or general use. These I found just as useful here as I did in the character sheet that MEG put out at Gen Con.Some of the material, like the Kingdom/County listings, are too small for anything but general information like location, capital, form of government, ruler, important government members, allies, enemies and notes. Now that sounds like a lot, but most of this has to be recorded on one or two lines.  The same is true for the listing of major and minor NPCs. There are spaces for most information, but unless you're just listing one weapon for damage, it's too small. Most good NPC blocks have to be at least half a page to get the juicy stuff. I'd consider the Major NPC blocks good for minor NPCs and the Minor NPC blocks good for walk on characters you might need once or twice.Some of the material would probably be better in a player's planner. Take Unresolved issues and leads. As a GM, I have to have more than just a one or two line entry on an item with a check box for resolved or not. Good for players who are always bouncing all over the place though.There are other listings with some of them being more useful than others. Not everyone is going to agree on the amount of space for certain items and not everyone is going to agree that this was needed or that was needed. One thing missing right off the bat is character generation. What method do you use. Another thing missing is character advancement. Do characters advance at standard rates, quicker, slower. Are optional story awards or variant XP awards used?One of my problems is that this isn't a planner, it's a recorder. One thing I'd find incredibly useful is if there were several copies of the experience point chart. Once divided by three, once by four and once by five. This covers the average amount of players I have in my campaign and would make things perfect for dividing experience points for the characters, one thing I loathe about 3rd edition. Another thing missing would be a place to record feats allowed, not allowed. Another oddity is that since Philip has some ties with MEG, perhaps they could've included Arcana Unearthed material in here and increased the appeal of the product. A table of contents, would've helped to navigate around the product if you're using a hardcopy, as I always do with PDF files. For once, I find that the format here works against itself. This product would work better as say a Word Document or an Excel Form. Having to hand write everything, even when the space is generous, is a bit awkward because some instances you'll have more to write than Philip has provided space.If you need a lot of blank forms to plan out your campaign, this product is perfect for you. Me? I'll be sticking with the old stick 'em notes, my original DMG, and AEG's Toolbox.</blockquote>

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