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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="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009852" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Steven Creech, Exec. Chairman, d20 Magazine Rack Sizing Up the Target Common Ground I: Churches, Inns and Merchants is written by Jeff Colledge and is the first book from Bard’s Productions. At 32 pages in length, this book retails for $11.95. Common Ground was created as a tool to help GMs generate quick encounters for when players decide to visit unexpected locales. First Blood The intent of the book is to allow GMs to quickly draw up a needed locale during game play in as little as 5 minutes. Through the use of worksheets, all a GM need do is go through the steps and he should have a ready encounter – in theory. The book comes with ready-made maps and character stats along with some other miscellaneous statistics like traps and inn prices. Critical Hits In practice, the 5-minute promise holds up. I was able to generate the necessary information using the worksheets in less than that amount of time. It should be noted that these are “workable” generated characters meant to be used in a quick encounter and note really meant for planned combat. Everything is available should you need it, including known spells, but in the case of combat, you the GM, are going to need to be on your toes or else take a little more time to prepare. Critical Misses The maps. The maps are all done nicely and professionally in color, but they are rather small. An ideal situation would have been to generate floor plans to scale (1”=5 ft.) that a GM could lie on the table and place his miniatures. Coup de Grace Common Ground I delivers exactly what it promises, a method of generating a quick encounter should the players choose option C rather than A or B (which were presented). I can see this being a solid asset to less experienced GMs and those who are not good at flying by the seat of their pants. My biggest criticism is the maps and the need for them to be larger. One hopes that future offerings will change that.To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to Fast Tracks at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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