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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="Crothian" data-source="post: 2556544" data-attributes="member: 232">Fantasy Personae Sages Spies and Informants[imager]http://icirclegames.com/Images/Product_Catalog/cov_FP_sm.gif[/imager]    NPCs in RPGs are always interesting.  There are people that stat them out completely and have ever little thing defined for the NPCs even if they serve little purpose in the game.  Then there are those that just come up with a name and basic personality and define things as they are needed.  Both ways work and serve different styles of gaming.  But perhaps the best way might be taking the NPCs presented in different books and letting someone else do the work and just using it.  That brings us to this review, a review of a book of NPCs.    Fantasy Personae: Sages, Spies and Informants is the latest PDF by Inner Circle Games.  They are the guys who brought us Denizens of Avadnu a very good and creative monster book.  However, they have yet to bring out the follow up to that the setting book so hopefully that is still coming as I am waiting for it and I imagine others are.  This PDF covers NPCs.  It is a thirty six page PDF.  The book is done in a nice full color.  It looks really good but can really be murder on the printer.  I like fully color but I really hope companies will start offering more printer friendly versions of PDFs.  The book is nicely book marked and is easy to access form a computer.  The major NPCs defined in here are all given pictures.  The art is okay, but could be better.  But it is really the NPCs that are going make or break the product.    The idea behind this PDF is quite simple.  It presents NPCs that are in the know.  These NPCs have reasons for knowing lot and lots of things.  But these are not the rumormonger or the criminal with his ear open.  These NPCs are fantastic in nature meaning they will only exist in a fantasy world.  They are magical, mysterious, and intelligent.  There are no omnipotent characters here, they all have an area of expertise and they know that really well.  And they might help the player characters for a price.  Each NPC is nicely described.  There are pictures of each of them as I said above.  Each is given a quote that helps reveal the personality of the creature.  Each has a full description and background.  Each also has attitudes for the NPC so if the players are make it hostile, indifferent or even friendly the DM knows how to role play the creature.  This is something that is rarely seen and a great addition to the NPCs here.  Each has a reputation and rumors so a Bardic Lore of appropriate knowledge check can yield certain information.  Each has a list of adventure ideas to work with the creature.  There are alternative ideas just in case the NPC as defined does not quite work for the DM.  Lastly, are the statistics for the creature and the source material.  This is a great thing as well as most companies have the source in the OGL in the back, but few say what comes from where.      The book also presents a number of cameos.  These are less defined NPCs.  They do not get pictures only a short description for them.  They do not have stat blocks but the book does list creature type and class levels when needed.  These are enough to get the creative juices of the DM really flowing and are pretty complete in and of themselves.      The PDF has a good amount of creativity in it and a nice amount of useful NPCs.  These are the people PCs seek out and run into in their travels.  They can easily have long lasting rumors and stories about them so it can fill out a campaign personnel in that way.</blockquote>

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