Convince me to buy NPC Essentials and/or St. John's Academy!

[blargney]

I have a thread over in Plots & Places where I'm asking for help coming up with adventures for kids in a wizarding school.

First, I've come across NPC Essentials in my browsing travels, and I'm trying to figure out if this is a product I need, based on the campaign I want to run. Bear in mind that this is also my first time DMing. Can anyone give me some good reasons why I should buy this PDF?

Second, a couple of people have recommended that I look into St. John's College of Abjuration. Is there information in there that I will find directly applicable to the campaign I want to run?

Finally, are there other products coming out that might help me more? I'm running with Canadian money, so if I can keep my costs to a minimum, they're still going to cost me 1.6 times as much! *wink*

Thanks in advance!
-blarg

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I gave this advice on the other thread, but I'll weigh in here with a two thumbs up for:

Malladin's Gate Press' Academy Handbook I: St. John's College of Abjuration and defence against the offensive arts.

Very well done product, great flavor, and quite a lot of potential for "Harry Potter"-esque adventures.




Full review available soon from d20 Magazine Rack!

 

[Joshua Randall]

NPC Essentials is a good product, but it might be overkill for what you want to do. If you want to put lots of time into detailing your NPCs - their motivations, families, and in general, their lives outside of when they are interacting with the PCs - then NPC Essentials is a good buy. However, if you'd rather gloss over most of that, then as I said, it's going to be overkill.

 

[HellHound]

I really like both books you mentioned, and would also point my finger towards our own NPC product "Everyone Else" which is the exact opposite of NPC essentials - it provides blanket stats for all sorts of standard NPCs such as scribes, bartenders, soldiers, sages, and so on.

Very nice for populating and stating the minor characters around your game environment.

 

[haiiro]

I've actually been considering picking up St. John's as my first PDF ever, so I'm quite interested to see what people have to say about it. It sounds like a neat product, but with no preview up yet and no browsing option...

 

[blargney]

Is St. John's Academy specfically usable for very young PCs and NPCs? The Glantri university was more of a college for adults than for apprentice wizards. The comment that it's good for Harry Potter-esque adventures is very helpful, and would seem to imply the youth of the students.

Considering I'm a first-time DM, is which NPC guide will help me more with conveying all the details to my players?

Thank you all for your excellent responses!
-blarg

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Well, SJA isn't specifically designed for young wizards (it has a slightly more adult feel), but that is just a matter of DM spin.

For the wizarding campaign, it does provide: houses of the college (each with unique spells and game mechanics), lists & stats of faculty, ideas like "house points" and recommended awards and penalties thereof, adventuring ideas that include competing for a house cup (not in Quidditch), that sort of thing. It has very much the British public school feel to it that HP has, IMO.

The review is coming, I promise! (which means it is complete and into d20 MR, just not posted to their webpage yet).

 

[blargney]

Well, I bought all three.

St. John's is 41 pages at $6.50 (USD)
Everyone Else is 70 pages at $6.00
NPC Essentials is 84 pages at $8.95

195 pages for $21.45 seems like a decent price to me! Now.. I just have to find some time to print this ream of stuff off at work... *wink*

At first blush, they seem to be very complementary. Everyone Else provides rules information that fits fairly nicely with my interpretation of a fantasy medieval society. NPC Essentials is all about portraying memorable NPCs, and determining their motivations and interactions. I think I'm going to be happy.

St. John's is really quite cool. There's a fair bit more splat included than I'd anticipated, but at least it looks like splat that's fun to play, and it's not at all devoid of context material! I'm actually thinking of plunking the Academy whole into my campaign, and I'll revise my basic assumptions in order to make it work. There's something about having paid for something that makes me want to ensure that I use it...

Thank you everybody for the excellent input!

-blarg

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Glad to be of service!

 

[Ace]

I really like both books you mentioned, and would also point my finger towards our own NPC product "Everyone Else" which is the exact opposite of NPC essentials - it provides blanket stats for all sorts of standard NPCs such as scribes, bartenders, soldiers, sages, and so on.

Very nice for populating and stating the minor characters around your game environment.

That looks like a great book and something I could use for my lower magic game.