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Grim Hollow Player's Guide - 3rd Party Review
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<blockquote data-quote="Sparky McDibben" data-source="post: 9185884" data-attributes="member: 7041430"><p>Sorry about the delay there, friends. I've been getting into the grimdark headspace with the Magistratum Mundanus live play of Dark Heresy (link <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC0JzuNP-Dc" target="_blank">here</a>), which at one point made me laugh so hard I fell off the elliptical at the gym. It was quite painful, but I'm OK now. And by OK, I mean heavily medicated.</p><p></p><p>Alright, friendos, tonight we're going over Transformations! For those of you that missed my Campaign Guide review, a Transformation is a way to make your character a monster. So there are ways to become a vampire, a lich, or a werewolf, for example. In the original campaign guide, these were very well done, and added some unique options if that was a path you wanted to go down. The Players Guide takes an interesting approach, in that it augments the Campaign Guide material by providing additional boons and flaws for the transformations presented in that book, but also provides three brand new Transformations. You can become a fey, a primordial, or a spectre. The primordial is a way to basically make your character an elemental, and the spectre is revenant-lite. The fey comes with a variety of tricks, focusing on enchantment, intrigue, or raw magical prowess. </p><p></p><p>These are all interesting, but lack the "classic movie monster" vibe of the campaign guide material. Still, it's solid, usable material, and the presence of augmentations to the original transformations makes this book valuable in its own right. </p><p></p><p>After that, we get to Backgrounds. The normal backgrounds are fine, including such thematic additions as the Taken (someone who survived a childhood abduction), or the Lapsed Inquisitor. I enjoy having options for these kinds of very specific roles, and hats off to the team for building those! However, the keen-eyed among you noted the use of the "normal" as an adjective to "backgrounds" there. Some of you already know that there are advanced backgrounds. Some of you are about to find this out for the first time, and I'm really sorry. </p><p></p><p>So, advanced backgrounds were introduced in the campaign guide, and they are one of my least favorite things about that book. They're fiddling, involving a proficiency die to only a couple of skills, and it levels up with you, so it's hard to track. The whole system is a bit of a mess. If you'd like to find out more about them, feel free to either purchase the book or see my <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/grim-hollow-campaign-guide-3rd-party-review.699801/" target="_blank">Grim Hollow Campaign Guide (you're looking for post #8).</a> In any event, the advanced backgrounds in the player's guide are still janky as hell, so no thanks. </p><p></p><p>And now we come to the final chapter I'm going to cover tonight: Archetypes! Archetypes is a chapter dedicated to RP. It basically gives templates to characters that are wholly lacking in mechanics, but that have some RP advice, and potential goals, as well as ideals and flaws for each archetype. The entire thing reminded me of the Nature / Demeanour bit from the old White Wolf games (I don't know if anyone else knows those games), but the idea is that you can pick an adjective, and wrap your character up in that. So my character is <em>Ambitious</em>, and you get about half a page of ideas for ambitious characters (including pop culture inspiration! Yes!). </p><p></p><p>These are really good for first-time players, and it's the kind of support WotC should have offered but didn't. I really like the Archetypes chapter, despite the fact that I probably won't use it ever. </p><p></p><p>Alright, kids. Sparky needs his medicine, and probably a new kidney. But when I get back from mugging the ice cream truck man* for that kidney, we're going to go over the 42 new spells in the book!!!!</p><p></p><p>*Where I live, the ice cream truck runs all year round!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sparky McDibben, post: 9185884, member: 7041430"] Sorry about the delay there, friends. I've been getting into the grimdark headspace with the Magistratum Mundanus live play of Dark Heresy (link [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC0JzuNP-Dc']here[/URL]), which at one point made me laugh so hard I fell off the elliptical at the gym. It was quite painful, but I'm OK now. And by OK, I mean heavily medicated. Alright, friendos, tonight we're going over Transformations! For those of you that missed my Campaign Guide review, a Transformation is a way to make your character a monster. So there are ways to become a vampire, a lich, or a werewolf, for example. In the original campaign guide, these were very well done, and added some unique options if that was a path you wanted to go down. The Players Guide takes an interesting approach, in that it augments the Campaign Guide material by providing additional boons and flaws for the transformations presented in that book, but also provides three brand new Transformations. You can become a fey, a primordial, or a spectre. The primordial is a way to basically make your character an elemental, and the spectre is revenant-lite. The fey comes with a variety of tricks, focusing on enchantment, intrigue, or raw magical prowess. These are all interesting, but lack the "classic movie monster" vibe of the campaign guide material. Still, it's solid, usable material, and the presence of augmentations to the original transformations makes this book valuable in its own right. After that, we get to Backgrounds. The normal backgrounds are fine, including such thematic additions as the Taken (someone who survived a childhood abduction), or the Lapsed Inquisitor. I enjoy having options for these kinds of very specific roles, and hats off to the team for building those! However, the keen-eyed among you noted the use of the "normal" as an adjective to "backgrounds" there. Some of you already know that there are advanced backgrounds. Some of you are about to find this out for the first time, and I'm really sorry. So, advanced backgrounds were introduced in the campaign guide, and they are one of my least favorite things about that book. They're fiddling, involving a proficiency die to only a couple of skills, and it levels up with you, so it's hard to track. The whole system is a bit of a mess. If you'd like to find out more about them, feel free to either purchase the book or see my [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/grim-hollow-campaign-guide-3rd-party-review.699801/']Grim Hollow Campaign Guide (you're looking for post #8).[/URL] In any event, the advanced backgrounds in the player's guide are still janky as hell, so no thanks. And now we come to the final chapter I'm going to cover tonight: Archetypes! Archetypes is a chapter dedicated to RP. It basically gives templates to characters that are wholly lacking in mechanics, but that have some RP advice, and potential goals, as well as ideals and flaws for each archetype. The entire thing reminded me of the Nature / Demeanour bit from the old White Wolf games (I don't know if anyone else knows those games), but the idea is that you can pick an adjective, and wrap your character up in that. So my character is [I]Ambitious[/I], and you get about half a page of ideas for ambitious characters (including pop culture inspiration! Yes!). These are really good for first-time players, and it's the kind of support WotC should have offered but didn't. I really like the Archetypes chapter, despite the fact that I probably won't use it ever. Alright, kids. Sparky needs his medicine, and probably a new kidney. But when I get back from mugging the ice cream truck man* for that kidney, we're going to go over the 42 new spells in the book!!!! *Where I live, the ice cream truck runs all year round! [/QUOTE]
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