Reviewer's Bias: I received a review copy of this product.
Gatekeepers: Lords of the Gateways is a six-page PDF from Ancient Awakenings Publications dealing with a type of teleportation magic — gateways. Included in the PDF are a new prestige class (the titular Gatekeeper), a new skill (Gateway Formula), three new spells, three new magic items, and a new feat for d20 Modern and d20 Fantasy campaigns. There is no art, and the layout is simple and clean. Each page has a border that vaguely resembles a PDA or notebook (my first thought was the latter, but I think the former's more likely, although in the end, neither view of it is particularly important). Finally, most of the PDF is open-content: "All game related text, rules, and fiction are OGL, and free to be copied in any way your black little heart desires. Lucky you, huh?" Normally, I wouldn't repost this joke/easter egg, but today it made me laugh, which was enough for me to include it here. And it's nice to see someone having fun with a part of the text that is usually pretty standard. Overall, the text is free from errors, too, although I did spot a few typographical errors in my reading (such as a few references to a non-existant Gateway skill, which I assume is the Gateway Formula skill).
Organizationally, I think I would've liked to have seen things organized slightly differently. The new skill, a requirement for the Gatekeeper PrC, appears on page 3, one page after the new class has been introduced. I know that new skills aren't particularly exciting to open a product with, but on a functional level, it would be easier to have that appear first. When I saw the requirements for the PrC, I wondered what this new skilll was instantly. I have the same concern with the Craft Gateway Device feat — it appears in a sidebar on the last page of the text before the OGL, but I'd really like to see it in the beginning of the PDF.
As regards the content, the difference between a gateway and normal teleportation magic is a concern. Ultimately, what gateways seem to end up being are similar to the portals in the Forgotten Realms and Planescape campaign settings — large, stationary magical items that allow the passage of people and things across great distances. This type of stuff is a fairly common fantasy trope, at least in terms of the fantasy I'm familiar with, and it seems to pop up a great deal in CRPGs, too (thinking of the moongates of the Ultima series here). The question is — is this presentation different enough to justify the new rules (whether or not we need the rules to cover it is another question, but I would say that codifying this sort of thing in case players would like to create gateways seems like a good thing to me)?
I'm concerned about the need for a new skill and a new feat. The Gateway Formula skill seems too focused to be of much use in most campaigns, as it just applies to making gateways. I think I'd use Knowledge (Arcana) with synergy bonuses applied from having ranks in either Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) to represent mathematical knowledge and Knowledge (The Planes) to represent knowledge about the actual workings of the gateways. I just don't see the need to reinvent the wheel here when existing skills will work fine. The Craft Gateway Device feat looks fine as is, although, again, it is highly focused and the only advantage it offers over Craft Wondrous Item, which can also be used to make gateways, is that the devices made by someone with the new feat cost half as much in terms of XP and gold. It's a great idea, but perhaps some sort of Gateway Crafter feat would be more appropriate, with that feat offering this benefit, plus some other bonus related to casting teleportation spells (caster level +1 or some such thing). I like the idea, but couldn't see burning a feat on it. I found the spells and magic items more interesting, especially the master gateway item, which connects one gateway to a number of different destinations via a dial on the portal. Good stuff and potentially very fun.
Finally, the prestige class — it's a neat idea and generally well-executed. I particularly liked that, instead of offering the usual "+1 level in existing arcane class" feature, it allows the caster to cast some spells (dimension door and the three new gateway spells) as lower level spells. For instance, dimension door becomes a 2nd-level spell for a 2nd level gatekeeper. It's a nice touch. My only real concerns are that the granted abilities are a slight bit weak — again, we come back to the problem of having too tight a focus — and that the spellcaster that takes this class might be sacrificing too much for the gained benefits. The spell-casting pre-requisites are a little wonky — in order to take the class, you must be able to cast spells of a spell level equivalent to your proposed Gatekeeper level (that is, you must have 5 levels in Wizard to take the 3rd level of this class, to use an example from the book).
So, then, is the presentation different enough to justify the new rules? Yes and no. I do think that Ancient Awakenings has something interesting going on here, but I do question the desire to reinvent the wheel completely with the Gateway Formula skill and am concerned about how tightly focused the new material is. Mind you, I want to be clear that I do not think that the product itself is too narrowly focused — I like short and lean PDF products — so much as I think that about the material itself. Although I would definitely use it in a game, particularly the gateway items and spells, my desire to revise and tweak the other mechanical items makes it less useful than it would be otherwise. As an idea mine, it's a 3.5 or 4, but as a stand-alone, drop-in product, a solid 3.
