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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tinner" data-source="post: 2439510" data-attributes="member: 19667">Campaign Planner - RevisedAuthor: Philip J. ReedPublisher: Mystic Eye GamesFormat: Black & white PDF with color coverSize: 35 pages/35 pages (Note: There are two versions of this product packaged together.)Price: $5.00If you are at all familiar with PDF gaming products, then the name Philip Reed will be well known. Reed is well known for producing smaller products that deliver a lot of bang for the buck. Campaign Planner - Revised is no exception to this formula. Campaign Planner is not the kind of RPG product the market is used to. There are no prestige classes, no new spells or magic items. Instead, Campaign planner is a DM’s workbook, full of ready-to-use forms that will assist even the least experienced gamer tighten up a 3.5 campaign design. The full Campaign Planner package is composed to two nearly identical PDF files. The first is a collection of ready to print blank design forms, while the second is those same forms modified to be typed directly into on your PC. If you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat you can save all your typed data directly to disk, but even with nothing more than the free Acrobat Reader you can print your typed data without saving it. Campaign Planner opens with a color cover by Alberto Moreno - a brooding archway over a fantasy door. It’s a moody evocative piece, which is good, since it’s the only artwork in this brief PDF file. But that’s not a criticism. I would be hard pressed to figure out another place to put artwork in this product. Don’t buy CP expecting it to be a great read, or a full of eye candy. This is a working product, designed to be used, not just another book to thumb through for pretty pictures or some light reading.The next 33 pages are a collection of forms an aspiring campaign builder can use to flesh out his game in as much detail as could be desired. These pages are adequately bookmarked, and it’s easy to find exactly the section you are looking for. These pages are presented in workbook style – blank forms waiting or a designer to fill them out and flesh out a campaign world. These forms cover nearly every basic aspect of fantasy campaign design. There are pages for detailing what classes and races are used in the campaign, as well as any modifications being made to the standard core rules. There are sections to detail important NPC’s, locations, a calendar, events and holidays.Each page offers several leading headers, and plenty of room to add in your own custom details. The pages are divided up well, and since they contain no artwork, it is a simple matter to print out as many or as few pages as needed for your campaign. The one issue I have with any of the forms really only applies to the location forms. These forms contain a section of graph paper for drawing a map. I feel that these areas might be a little small to accommodate some of the areas. The town and dungeon map sections in particular would probably be better handled by just drawing a map on a separate page. Additionally, these same graphed areas are present in the digitally editable version of Campaign Planner. It might have been better to leave room to digitally insert a computer generated map or picture file right into the PDF. These complaints are really just a matter of preference though, and do not in any way diminish the general usefulness of Campaign Planner.Conclusion: If you are the type of gamer who relishes fleshing out very detailed worlds, or you have always wanted to design your own campaign world, but never knew where to start, then Campaign Planner will be a great help to you. This is doubly so if you have the full version of Acrobat, and will be able to digitally edit your files. If you favor a more seat-of-the-pants, “winging it” style of campaign, this product will be less useful. Additionally, it’s only fair to point out that Campaign Planner was released in 2003, and has since been followed by Campaign Planner 2, 3, and a Deluxe version that combined several CP’s into one. Combining the original with these later refinements would undoubtedly add value to each of them.</blockquote>

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