After my first book being lost by the USPS and my second book taking 5 days to arrive on 2-day shipping (MTA Strikes and Holiday volume I suppose), I now hold the book in my hands 14 days after I ordered it.
What can I say? I offered that I would give my totally uneducated and most likely misinformed but strikingly candid first impression of the book.
First the Physical book. $34.95 for a 210pg hardcover book. The paper reminds me of my Palladium days and their cheap paper. I hadn't realized that I havn't felt it in years until I opened the book and flipped through it. Definately a deal when you consider that it's a smaller company.
I got my book for 28.50 with Express shipping (14 days later ::grumbles:
and I feel that I got an awesome deal.
I opened it up, read through the first 3 pages, then skipped through the classes and feats and skills and put it down. I was so happy with what it was.
Basically at least the character creation method I've been looking for. Far simpler and even keeled than BESMd20, more versitile and organized better (between the feats & classes) than True20 and it's pretty much how I would have preferred the classes to be from d20Modern.
My only "gripe" or "disappointment" (if the words are even that strong) is that it uses pretty much the full d20 skill list. Hide & move silently are still seperate, for example.
[SkillRant]
Just an annoyance about games that give fewer skill points (Stong Hero 3sp, Fighter 2sp) and then give you a whole bunch of skills that you need to learn to be somewhat competent in general as an adventurer (Swim, Climb, Hide, Spot, Search, Move Silently) and some that are slight variations of each other.
At first level (with the extra skill points) you're okay at a few skills and as you improve, you're made to look like a fool because you could have 3 skills that you're good at (maxed out - and no others) or a bunch of really low skills that are pretty much ineffective.
True20 just flat out removed a lot of skills and narrowed down the list. Spycraft2.0 really made a lot of similar skills into specific checks off of 1 skill and increased characters SPs.
So you don't need to make that choice as you're trying to emulate your vision if you're going to be the "Swimming Fighter" or the "Climbing Fighter" or the "Sneaky Fighter", etc.
It's not that I'm just a fan of fewer skills. I wouldn't mind having a ton of skills if there were more Skill Points so that the lesser skilled classes could achieve some margin of skill in the basics and maybe 1 skill that you're good at.
[/SkillRant]
But with skills, it's easy enough for me to just insert the skills from True20 or Spycraft2.0 or do my own hybrid of the skills lists.
I was rather impressed that I saw using Action Dice for confirming Crits/Failures on attacks AND skills. I'd only seen critical skills in Spycraft2.0.
As it stands right now, without fully reading it, I have a wishlist for future versions (I heard there was a possibility) that would include Backgrounds like in Spycraft 2.0, at least an option for reduced skill list (sorry if there is one that I havn't found yet) and a greater feat/talant selection like Spycraft2.0.
So far this is my favorite purchase since Spycraft 2.0 (August) and that makes these two books my favorite purchase in a year or so.
