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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="humble minion" data-source="post: 9824362" data-attributes="member: 5948">Finished reading this one yesterday.On the whole, it's a pretty good product.  The art is excellent (especially the big vistas illustrating a region - the Shadowdale one is gorgeous in particular) and should satisfy even the most old-school.  My main quibble is too many pages spent on all the minidungeons at the start of the book - especially when there's even more small adventure-lets embedded in each region description, and then there's the larger Lost Library.  Just seems a bit out of proportion.  If the single-dungeon session is your jam or you['re looking for a pickup game, these will be golden, just not my style.I thought the Dalelands part was very solid.  Lots to do, you've got Zhents and Sembians and lycanthropes and all sorts of other bad guys roaming around, there' the leftovers of the Shades, undead Aencar, Moander's back.   Smart decision to just have Elminster mysteriously disappear and make finding him a PC problen, rather than having him haunt the place solving all the problems (they really should have done this in 4th ed rather than all the Spellplague rubbish and saved everyone a lot of trouble...).   Big section on Myth Drannor and how to adventure there.  Very classic Realms, lots of familar names and places, hail-fellow-well-met kinda adventuring here.  A little bit of everything from megadungeons to mysteries to politics.  The Dales have always been your FR generic starter area, and this works the same way but still has enough to work with for more experienced players.Icewind Dale is heavily influenced by the Frostmaiden module and (I think) the leftovers of some of the later Drizzt novels that I haven't read.  Tonally much more survival-horror, darker and nastier, bit of body horror, nasty cults, unhappy endings, hostile locals, brain-eating aberrations, the apparent complete destruction of Clan Battlehammer, and so on, and a big scary gestalt lich-thingy as a pretty serious end of campaign BBEG (althout it needs more spellcasting variety in its stat block).  Lots of GOOD plot hooks here, there's lots to do, you could wind parts of Frostmaiden in to it if you wanted.  I thought this one had a lot of potential, though wasn't really a fan of the suggested campaign structures - things seemed to easy to solve.  No Drizzt novel big name NPCs in sight, for what it's worth.  Calimshan has a lot of Zakhara in its DNA.  Not just the obvious 1001 Nights inspiration material, but the way in which a generally respected and benevolent ruler manages the place competently, keeps the genies in line, etc etc.  In fact, it probably goes a bit too far that way - it's all a bit too smooth-running, there's not really all that much wrong here that PCs need to involve themselves in fixing.  There's a lack of hooks here - the big campaign structure suggestion is all about the Calimemnon crystal, but that's about all there is.  The other settings do much better to establish their respective regions as adventuring locales with loads to do - Calimshan and Calimport in particular is an interesting setting to visit, but it lacking somewhat in adventure.Moonshaes take a lot of inspiration from Witchlight, lots of fey here, and potential diplomatic rather than violence-driven solutions to many problems.  This is specifically called out as a setting that could be used for younger players, you have a free-spirit young princess running around having fun and going to parties with fairies on her magic windsurfer, pet blink dogs, eeeeevil bad guys ruining the environment Just Because They're Bad, and so on.  But it could also be run perfectly seriously as a regular 'adult' D&D setting and wouldn't require much tweaking.  You'd need a stronger explanation of the origin of the curse (why would a vampire choose to rust things?) and some sort of quasi-mythical explanation of why the suggested method of raising the curse would work, because it just seems very arbitrary.  But it could perfectly well work, and the craft involved in making this potentially usable for both types of group is impressive.Baldur's Gate is presumably inspired by BG3 which i haven't played.  Very urban, lotsa moral ambiguity, emphasis on humanoid enemies, everyone's a bad guy, cults and corruption and greed all over the place, brutal slums and gaudy mansions, don't expect many long-term lasting wins, etc etc.  Shades of dark grey, cults of the Dead Three  all over the place, casual brutality by the forces of authority and devil take the hindermost.  Vast amounts of plot hooks here, especially if your group is into trying to actually do good, but the whole business seems a bit more aimed at morally grey parties who'd join right in with the politicking, backstabbing and assassinations and gang violence etc.  But it's doesn't quite paint this as the ONLY way to play here, which I think is smart.  It's probably my least favourite tonally of the five, but it's certainly not badly done - it's just a personal preference.THe Library of Lethchauntos seemed (at a quick glance) to be a perfectly functional introductory adventure.  I'm not sure an introductory adventire was entirely required for a setting as D&D-generic as Faerun where almost any plug-and-play introductory adventure would do, but some people might get use out of it.  The monsters and magic items covered a few FR classics and big deals from lore.  I would have liked a higher-level phaerimm though, and maybe a sharn?  And while I'm not terribly familiar with their previous edition mechanics, if there's every a perfect opportunity for a dragon's breath attack to cause thunder damage, surely the song dragon is it?All in all, if this is the new model of campaign setting that WotC intends to try out for Dark Sun etc, then I'm all for it.  Stratospherically better than the debacle of Spelljammer and the not-much-better of Planescape, while Strixhaven and Dragonlance hardly bothered being settings at all.  This is clearly a superior way of doing things.  My disagreements with it are probably a matter of degree and emphasis rather than fundamental conception.  Too many small dungeon maps (they could almost have included an entire new region by trimming those out) and maybe a bit too much time spent on the mechanics of renown etc, which I'm not personally a big fan of.  But in general, a product that is a pretty solid lore product and a genuinely useful game resource.  Thumbs up, on the whole.</blockquote>

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