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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 2011777" data-attributes="member: 59">Because of a Grimm play-by-post campaign that I'm starting, I've recently re-read the book, which has reminded me of two things — (1) how incredibly good and innovative the work in it is, and (2) that I felt this way when I first read it, but before any reviews had been posted, and had resolved to write my own.  I let both thoughts slip away as I got caught up in various other books (the Eberron releases from Wizards of the Coast are the primary culprits here), but, with Fantasy Flight's impending release of a non-d20, full-length version of Grimm, my attention has returned to the d20 mini-game.  In dealing with fairy tales and their ilk, Grimm takes source material that's perfect for a role-playing game but rarely visited by companies (if I recall correctly, White Wolf's Changeling might have done something similar, but I'm not familiar with that game to say so definitively, and I think there's two AD&D modules that take off from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, although they aren't intended as serious adventures that I can remember — I know that the Ultima series of computer games had fairy tale easter-eggs and references throughout, particularly to the Wizard of Oz).Grimm is a 64-page book, softbound, with full color covers and a black & white interior.  Sixty-two pages contain the text of the game, with one page devoted to an ad for Paizo's magazines and the other to the OGL.  The inside covers, both back and front, have ads for other Horizon mini-games.  The cover, by Larry MacDougall, depicts two kids and, presumably, Little Red Riding Hood wandering through a forest, as a malevolent tree raises its head from the ground and leers at them.  It's a nice cover and fits the flavor of the text presented.  The interior art is also excellent, although I do question the incusion of a few illustrations — on page 28, the drawing of a long-haired girl with a feathered hat, claws, and what appears to be cat's ears (based on her rather feline features), which I can now only assume to be a rendition of Puss in Boots because of my interpretation) doesn't quite fit, nor does the drawing on page 37 of a girl with hoop earrings and her pet werewolf, although again, I'm beginning to see this as a subtle interpretation of Dorothy and Toto.  Mind you, I like the art in these two pictures (James Ryman does very nice work), but I feel that contextually these pictures didn't work as well and required a lot of my interpretation and thought to make them fit into the text as well as the rest of the pictures.  Layout and editing are clean and professional.  I've noticed few, if any errors, and none that I felt strongly enough to take note of and mention specifically.  As a side note, I find the layout work in Fantasy Flight softbacks to be superior to the work in the hardbacks (such as the Dawnforge and Midnight campaign settings), as the former tend to make better use of the space — there's less white space and the smaller font works better for me.  A quibble, surely, but one that I thought I'd throw out there.Mechanically, Grimm streamlines and condenses the meaty character generation of the d20 system quite a bit, with classes and races combined into archetypes, a shorter skill list, and a more focused list of feats.  The base archetypes — the Bully, the Dreamer, the Jock, the Nerd, the Normal Kid, the Outcast, and the Popular Kid — work well both mechanically and as flavor-text; in essence, the whole idea of the archetype gives a player shorthand on how to play that character in a broad sense.  My one complaint about the archetypes is that the Normal Kid might be a touch better than the other archetypes, especially at 6th level with the Mantle of Responsibility power, which to me seems better than any similar power granted by another archetype at that level.  The nice thing about the condensed skill list (although some things are expanded — Home Ec and Industrial Arts take over certain aspects of the Craft/Profession skill, depending on how you look at it, as does the Art skill and its subsets) is the intuitiveness of it, particularly in the case of Notice, which combines the functions of Listen, Spot, and Search into one skill, and Sneak (Move Silently and Hide).  It maintains the depth of the normal skill system while making it simpler — because of this and the archetypes, I've thought that a pretty decent introductory d20 game could be made from Grimm (hell, Grimm could be used).  Options are good, but, speaking from experience in playing with new players, too many options can be overwhelming to a new player.  Like the skills list, the feats list is more focused (although I don't, in this case, mean shorter necessarily — it's close to as long as the list in the core rules with the addition of origin feats and other new feats).  I particularly like the Inedible feat (the character is hard for a Grimm Lands monster to eat) — it's evocative, funny, and fits the game really well.  As far as straight mechanical changes to the other parts of the game, there are few: archetypes grant AC bonuses (due to the deck being stacked against the PCs a bit), the elimination of alignment and weapon proficiencies, changes in the grappling rules, new rules for being swallowed whole, the introduction of imagination points, and the overhauling of the magic system.  I'll cover the last two in the following sections, but these changes are simple enough to implement, and, ultimately, probably not as drastic as I'd make in my game.  For instance, I'm not sure about the need for tactical combat using a battlemap or the use of attacks of opportunity in a Grimm game and would drop these items from any game I ran despite the base assumptions in the book.  It just doesn't seem to be important for a fairy-tale game.Equipment in the Grimm Lands is similar to that in D&D's core rules, but, again, it's streamlined — a much shorter list of mundane equipment exists and really special equipment (magic items and the such) are covered very quickly, encouraging story needs over mechanics.  Really special equipment can include everything from fairy wands to enchanted weapons and armor to gizmos (the Grimm equivalent of wondrous items).  Also included in this category are crux items, designed to exploit the flaws of monsters (and all monsters have flaws to exploit); for instance, to use an example in the book, an acidic ooze roaming the countryside might be weak against dairy products — a bottle of milk could be a crux item here.  Finally, each player character receives a focus, an item special to her that she's brought into the Grimm Lands; as the text presents it, a focus functions as a security blanket for the character, giving her hope (I would actually dovetail this concept with the rules for Despair presented — kids caught alone run the risk of despairing, losing hope and imagination points — if the character lost her focus).  Neat stuff, and a lot of fun. For me, the two drastic changes in Grimm are the introduction of imagination points and the overhauling of the magic system.  Imagination points, without getting too deep into the actual suggested rules for them, function like action points, except they allow for far more drastic changes in the campaign world, allowing characters to, in essence, rewrite things, based on how many points they spend.  This can as simple as creating a sword or some rope to changing the weather patterns in your section of the Grimm Lands for a few hours.  Imagination points can also be spent on class abilities (in the case of the Normal Kid, most any ability has to be bought with imagination points) or on spellcasting.  The spells presented in the core rules can be used in Grimm (although Evocation and Necromancy are barred schools for PCs), but they take more time to learn and more time to cast, requiring an expenditure of imagination points to actually take effect.  This makes spells, as the book asserts and has done with really special equipment, more of a story concept than a cool power.Finally, this brings us to the setting — the Grimm Lands, a twisted fairy tale kingdom ruled over by the insane and evil Rotten King (Humpty Dumpty) and his retinue (his wife Cinderella, the Ugly Duckling, and Mother Goose, among others).  As presented, the setting's exactly what the cover says it is, "a world of twisted fairy-tales" — Cinderella has a bit of a dominatrix vibe, Mother Goose enjoys dropping kids from great heights, Little Red Riding Hood's a vampire, and so on.  Even the Sun and the Moon delight in attacking and abusing the peoples of the world.  If I have one complaint about the world, it might be that, as presented, the NPCs and environments are too threatening to characters — it's a wonder any PCs would ever survive in the world, as few things would ever help them.  I mean, Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue run a human slave trade, the Three Little Pigs are tyrannical usurers, and so on.  Even Grimm Dwarves have an ulterior motive (they need a human girl to mate with).  Ultimately, the GM will have to insert some sort of support network (the Wee Folk could work, as presented in the base rules) for a longer campaign (and maybe even in a shorter one) to keep the players from despairing; after all, in some ways, this world's as dark as Midnight is and the players are playing children.  The rules presented in this chapter include game information for a number of NPCs (including every one I've named above) and templates talking animals and upright animals and the introduction of the villain creature type.  The villain type, in particular, is a great little system for making opponents in the Grimm Lands quickly and easily.  Other items covered include hazards such as Rapunzel's Tower or Sleeping Beauty' Bower.  This chapter, to me the highlight of the book, gives enough information to run a short campaign and then some — using all of this in a game could be overwhelming, meaning there's enough to run multiple campaigns without ever having to cover the same ground twice.In conclusion, if you're looking to run a game with fairy-tale elements, you couldn't do better than Grimm, especially at the price.  Mechanically, it's sound, and the setting is evocative and imaginative.  It's not a game you'll be able to cannibalize much from for use in a normal d20 game, but it really stretches the ends of the d20 system to create a fantastic, yet different world.  Score: 5</blockquote>

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