Heroes of Hope

[Crothian]

Definition of a Hero: A mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability. A figure admired for his achievements and noble qualities. One that shows great courage.

In the aftermath of disaster, people cry out for heroes to set things right again. Now you can answer the call while expanding your game library with Heroes of Hope—a sourcebook of champions! In this book, you will find courageous NPCs from every walk of life that you can use to augment your campaigns and one-shots.

Heroes of Hope is a collaboration of character sketches from skilled RPG writers and artists in an attempt to raise money for reconstruction in the regions hardest hit by the December 2004 tsunami. With the help of RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, this work of art will provide victims of the disaster with much-needed additional assistance now that the fervor of donations has died down.

For narrators and GMs, Heroes of Hope is a valuable resource of game material, no matter where you are currently running your campaign. You will be able to introduce your players to:
* Ashen Gar—a human who survived the destruction of his own world to protect yours
* Fel’nn Brambleton—a Dark elf who has learned the true meaning of “family”
* Zord and Gazoot—two lost souls who together find they can change the course of the gods themselves
* Infernia—once a demoness with little to look forward to than a menial desk job, now she’s a modern-day warrior for a secretive government agency
* And many more!

With beautiful color artwork as well as in-depth backgrounds, equipment, and plot-hooks, this universal supplement should be on every gamer’s bookshelf. Buy Heroes of Hope today!

 

[Crothian]

Heroes of Hope is a book for a charity. The Charity is for the Tsunami victims of the Tsunami that happened last December. All the profits from this book go towards relief for that disaster. Now the good intentions of the book are not going to be weighed in for the review. Buying the book though to help out the charity is never a bad idea though.

The PDF is by a variety of people who helped on the project. There is also a list of web sites that helped in this PDF. The PDF is seventy four pages long and has some nice art and layout. But it has color, backgrounds, and will be heavy on the ink if the PDF gets printed out. It has no book marks to help using it on the screen and book marks would be a big help. Because of the heavy backgrounds and art scrolling through the PDF on screen can go a little slow.

The book consists of NPCs for a variety of genres. There a re no particular game the PDF is attached to. So there are also no mechanical information for any of the NPCs. Each has a picture, extensive personality and backgrounds. Everyone needs NPCs and this has NPCs that can work in most games especially the ones of the most common genres like fantasy modern and sci fi. Most of the NPCs are of a normal sort but there are a few odd ones in there showing a nice level of creativity. Each NPC also ha a few good plot hooks attached to it for easy use and adventure ideas. Most of the NPCs take up about two pages in the book and since none of that is game info there is a lot of good background and personality information on the characters.

The product I think tries to be a little too useful to a lot of different genres. One gets about twenty pages of each of three major genres in the book. There is more fantasy character then the others with modern characters being the fewest. It is easy to use though and I am sure there are a few characters everyone will like. They made it useful to as many different types of gamers as they could by keeping it generic and crossing over many genres. Hopefully that strategy will pay off for them.

It is nice though to see gamers trying to help out the world at large. There are just not that many different charity projects that I see involving gamers. The company has another product for the same charity as well though I am not going to be able to review that one. There is useful stuff here and knowing the money goes to help a good cause will appeal to some people and hopefully they will pick this up. This is the type of book that will not be used a lot all at once but can remain useful in many different campaigns and game genres. If you pick it, do not forget about it in a few years as this book will be useful then as it is now.