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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="Teflon Billy" data-source="post: 2011786" data-attributes="member: 264">Given my long, long freakishly-long involvement with RPG’s, I was kind of shocked that—given it’s status as the first D&D campaign setting—I really had no useful experience or opinions on old school Blackmoor.I mean, certainly there was an awareness of it. I recall the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module quite fondly, and was peripherally aware that Dave Arneson was the “other guy” who invented D&D with Gary Gygax.[imager]http://www.goodman-games.com/images/GMG4500minicover.jpg[/imager]But all things being equal, I was coming to this product fresh. I had virtually no preconceived notions about what to expect. For good or ill, Blackmoor wasn't going to coast on its reputation here. The book starts out with a preface by Dave Arneson himself, which is nice. Too often I would expect something like this to be licensed and re-written without the input of the original creator. But not only is Mr. Arneson listed as the lead designer and head writer, he was working the booth at Gen Con in support of this product!Safe to say, the originator is involved here, and from what I can see that’s a good thing (with apologies to the incarcerated Martha Stewart).The First chapter launches right into the meat and potatoes: the races and classes for characters in Blackmoor. A list of the races unique to the Blackmoor setting presents us with…<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cumasti: Basically High Elves</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Docrae: Sort of Warrior-Halflings</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">High and Low Thonians: Low Thonians are the “everyday folks” of Blackmoor, while the High Thonians are the ruling class Humans.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Peshwah: Another brand of Human, coming closer to many of the tropes of “Nomadic Horse Folk” than anything.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Westryn: Closer to Wood Elves than anything.(though I wonder is the Scent feat really worth a +1 to ECL?)</li> </ul>They are all well-detailed and have nice, meaty writeups on general personality traits, relations with other races, lands, culture, and what have you. The authors have also included all of the races available from the D&D core books, though there are no “Setting specific” dwarves, gnomes, Hal-Orcs or Half-elves. There is a lot of stock stuff tweaked for the benefit of the setting. It’s a feature I love in any published setting and in this regard, Blackmoor doesn’t disappoint. This brings us to the Classes which are specifically tailored to the setting. The new core classes include…<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Arcane Warrior  (Seems roughly analogous to Wizards in the manner that Paladins are roughly analogous to Clerics)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Noble: A Noble class which is significantly more playable and interesting than the NPC class presented in the D&D Core rules)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Wokan: Blackmoor’s “Arcane Druid” for want of a better term. A very interesting class, based around learned people who are fed up with civilization.</li> </ul>Prestige classes are mentioned next, including brief descriptions on how to implement the prestige classes described in the D&D core rules intot he Blackmoor setting. Also included are several which are  setting-specific, including…<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Docrae Outlook: A setting-appropriate and vastly superior reworking (or so it looks) of the ill-conceived Halfling Outrider presented in Sword and Fist. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Dragon Knight:  An awesome knightly order devoted to defending the people of Blackmoors from all depredations. It’s actually a lot cooler—and a lot less “standard”—than it sounds.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Inquisitor: A truly cool and setting-specific PrC. A “Mage Hunter” charged with the Wizards Cabal to bring in Sorcerors.</li> </ul>The next section, on magic, includes rules for the use of “Spell Foci” (items that conduct magical energies) rather than standard spellbooks by Wizards. Several new Divine Domains for Clerics are presented, all of which are appropriate to the themes of Blackmoor (No “Celerity” domain is presented. That one always irked me. A god who cares about…going fast??? That merits worship? But I digress…). Spell lists are presented for both the Arcane Warrior and the Wokan.A Gazetteer of the setting comes next, and the prose really starts to come into its own.It opens with a somewhat short timeline of the kingdom’s history. Details on the government, day-to-day life, education of the populace, the calendar, trade, and much more are presented here in a very readable section. I really liked the bits on the holidays. I’m not sure it has much utility in my game, but it was a fun read, and gave me a much better “feel” for the tone of the setting in general (pretty much the definition of “useful fluff”). The equipment section is fine, but for the fact that it includes weaponry that is far and away the “best” available (the Sickle Sword and the Bullova for those who like their games unbalanced <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />).Also included are brief sections on both Steam Technology and Clockwork. No hard rules are provided for either, but interested parties should take a look at another product from Goodman Games: Dragonmech (which I have also reviewed) for a really well-done, functional set of Steamtech rules. Major geographical features listed and detailed, including…<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The City of Blackmoor</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Castle Blackmoor (which, even with my ignorance of the original setting I had heard of)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The ComeBack Inn (Might this be the first “Comedically named” tavern? The progenitor of all Comedically Named tavern clichés that followed? I am in awe <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></li> </ul>…and a variety of towns and other locations pertinent to adventuring: Archlis, Boggy Bottom, Booh, Bramwald, Cloudtop, Dragonia, Erak, Glendower, Jackport, Kenville, Lake Gloomy, Maus, Newgate, Old North Watch, Ramshead, South Pim, The Coot’s Watch, The Wizard’s Watch, Vestfold, and Williamsfort. The quality of prose remained high in all of their descriptions. Fun reading throughout.The chapter on religions is fairly standard stuff: listings of gods and domains appropriate to each of the races who revere them. Each Deity is given 2 paragraphs of description and his or her symbol is depicted.The following section, Rogues, Regents and Rascals; is a collection of what I suspect is people’s PC’s from Mr. Arneson’s  personal games (Edit: No suspicions necessary, I see that the author say this exactly in the introductory paragraph). The writeups are well done, and most of the characters presented here get more actual wordcount devoted to them than the Gods of the previous chapter!I find this both hilarious and charming, a real departure from most settings I’ve come across, where the Deific Cosmology is presented as something whose minutiae is integral to play (whereas in my opposite experience, setting-meshed NPC’s play a far greater role in the game, Gods merely serving to provide PC’s with their spells).The monsters section is functional and uninspiring. The creatures presented dovetail nicely with the setting (and in the case of the elementals, the new magic options), and that is to be commended, but in the final analysis they were simply “fine”.So in closing? At 240 pages this thing is a beast (and I mean that in the best sense of the word). While the binding, layout and typography are nice...the art is outstanding.Seriously. It’s a black-and-white book, but the sheer variety of styles never lets the viewer get bored. On any other day, this could lead to a real “Mish Mash” of art that lent nothing to the enhancement of the product, but art Director John Hood seems to have ably kept all of the contributing artists “on the same page” so to speak (That’s a bad analogy/pun, but it’s staying in). The result is a book that is packed with art that ranges from “Cartoony”(Marcio Fiorito) to “Brooding”(whoever did the inkwash stuff: sign your work) without stepping outside of its goals: enhancing the tone of the product.The cartography is drawn by hand, which I love, rather than computer-generated, which I do not love. Nice work Is this a capable update of--and a worthy homage to--the first D&D setting ever? I literally have no idea.I know it is a good contemporary setting for D&D.  Go with that.</blockquote>

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