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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2009545" data-attributes="member: 1129">Gaming Frontiers Volume 3Edited by Robert J. WilliamsPublished by United Playtest144 b & w pages$19.95Well, we all knew it couldn’t last forever.  Gaming Frontiers #3 is the first volume to not only lose the color but suffers a price increase as well.  What’s worse, this issue is late and several of the articles inside aren’t quite as useful now as they’d have been a few months ago.  Does this mean that Gaming Frontiers is no longer as useful and full of goodies as it has in the past?  In a word, no.Now I’m not a true d20 coinsurer.  I like D&D.  There might be times when I try out something like Spyrcraft and I’m looking forward to picking up Silver Age Sentinels D20 to compare it against the tri-stat version but for the most part, I’m a D&D fan.  Gaming Frontiers manages to capture my interest again with some very useful articles.To me, one of the most overlooked roles in the campaign is characters deaths.  Now I’ve been guilty of glossing over the burials and deaths of characters without much interaction in the campaign and for many characters, it’ll stay that way.  When the need does strike however for more detail burials and funeral information, Grave Thoughts by Bryan Fagan will help me set the pace and provide details based on historical burials.Now another article, Aliens from the Dinosaur Planet, normally wouldn’t have too much room on my plate but the stat blocks for the Shamburu Neonate Warrior can help fill out the ranks of some creatures while the technology can easily be explained as foreign magic items that require different style feats and abilities to craft.  The Karnatt Slavers, ‘chimp-sized omnivores’, can make for excellent planar raiders whose technology includes slave boxes and skull rippers to make some great villains.For those like me who occasionally delve past the GM shield and play a wizard character or for those GMs who’d like some more ideas on how magic item creation rules were first thought of, the section Making Magic Items by Monte Cook provides a lot of details that help player and GM come up with methods of making magic items while helping to clear the thought process behind the prices in the DMG for magic items.When I want to add something a little different to my campaign involving the Fey, Beyond the Fields We Know by Richard Thames is an article that supplements the Valdan Wilds, a sourcebook for the Sun & Scale campaign.  The article provides details on the Fey Realms, new magic items, races and details on the Fey Race.  While the section does a nice job of putting the races into monster blocks, it fails to present them as character races so hopefully we’ll get some more details as Gaslight  Press evolves.In terms of something different, Monsters from the East brings in a few monstrous treats like the Possessed Boar.  If you’ve seen Princes Monoke, then you know what this large creature is, a shadow worm ridden large board whose powers enable it to crush almost any opposition.  The Children of Kodomo-no-Inari are small fey creatures that are fox like in appearance.  The Funadama is a water elemental that looks like a dragon turtle and the Mogura-ninja, a ‘mole-ninja’ that hires itself out for assassinations.  The section closes out with the Te-No-Me, an undead that hunts down those who do evil to the blind.In a vein right alongside the Monsters from the East, the Role of History showcases the Era of the Warring States and here, Andrew Hind provides lots of details about this timeline in China and provides the GM enough information to get his juices flowing.  The only bad thing is that there’s no list of recommending reading to help further a GMs knowledge of the timeline.  Still, GMs can use the racial stats for the people of the time, along with the notes to start off some interesting ideas.For those who hunger for more traditional monsters, the Trottigen Giants might not meant your needs.  These powerful creatures are native to the pathways between Erde and Inzae and possess great power despite their (hopefully typo) low challenge rating of 1/10th.  More useful, to me at least, is the section, There is More Under the Bridge, which presents troll varieties from Mongoose that were left out of the Slayer’s Guide to Trolls.  Now in some ways, I find it ironic that this is the 2nd time I’ve thought the material in Gaming Frontiers has had some real value that could’ve been perfect in the Slayer’s Guide itself.  I enjoy the different troll subspecies here, Bog, Deep Cave, Eldritch, and Shadow.  Each one has background information, illustration and full stat blocks for ease of inclusion into a game.  I’ll probably throw an Eldritch Troll into my own campaign as these creatures can be non-violent and are often on the search for magic and mastery over arcane abilities.There’s a lot of other good stuff within the book that’ll make it’s way into my own campaign sooner or latter.  Take adventures for example.  Can you ever have enough of them?  Now I’m not a Deadlands fan so the Outlaw of Kumeyaay Canyon isn’t going to cut it for me, and while I’m not playing a Sovereign Stone campaign, The Scorpion’s Tail has some elements I can pull whole into my own campaign.  In Pursuit of Magic however, by Guildhouse Games, fits right into their new module/sourcebook, A Mage’s Tale, and The Lost Crypt of Shizaraht by Wil Upchurch fits just about into any campaign.  Darkspyre and The Burning Tiger may see some use in my campaign but it’ll be a while.The various sections on Uncharted Territory include some PoIs for Bluffside by Thunderhead Games, There’s No Business Like Sail Business by Living Imagination, Herbs, by Atlas Games, and the Order of the Crimson Aba by Andrew Hind.  Now the PoIs can be used in almost any campaign setting and I’ll be adding them to Mithril in the near future as I’m always in the need for more places for characters to go to.  The section on There’s No business Like Sail Business provides a lot of detail for those wishing to make money on the sailing business.  Numerous charts help the Gm determine the price paid, price earned, type of good and what ocean encounters can happen.  Herbs is another extension to Occult Lore by Atlas Games so when one of the players decides to take up the role of herbalist, between this article and the ones on D20 Weekly, I’ll be set.  The Order of the Crimson Aba is a collection of spellcasters that’s more set to an Arabian era so it’ll be a while before I introduce these villains to my own campaign.One section that’s tricky, On the Horizon, fails a little here as it covers Oathbound and the Banewarrens, both of which have been out and have numerous reviews and supplemental material available.  I’m hoping that we’ll see some more ties into other books and perhaps even upcoming series in the future.  It’d be interesting to get to see in print something like a preview of Mongoose’s Slayer’s Guide to Winter Wolfs or other publications that are normally only PDF.For those who’ve hated the fiction section and the review section, cheer on.  Both are gone in this issue and the reviews have gone to the web page so more space is freed up.  However, there is still some quick looks at useful items that d20 players should find useful like the various Weapons books that Palladium has resurrected.Gaming Frontiers is still going to have a struggle ahead of itself but this issue is a good step in the right direction.</blockquote>

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