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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="diaglo" data-source="post: 2769859" data-attributes="member: 2885">A Grognard's Review with addendumHeroes of Horror ReviewCover:CrunchArtist: David Hudnut.. Front: Alhandra (PHB 2000 pg 34), Eberk (PHB 2000 pg 90), and Nebin with Raven familiar (PHB 2000 pg 53) Back: Excerpt on content. Vadnais with wolf companion (PHB 2000 pg 34). ISBN 10-7869 3699-1 ISBN 13-978-0-7869-3699-1 Retail US $29.95 CAN $42.95. 9780786 936991 52995 EAN 885227200 Printed in USA. visit our website at <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd" target="_blank">www.wizards.com/dnd</a>  FluffAs a child I remember being told never judge a book by its cover. So let us look at the cover. From a beginner's perspective it is busy. All these wonderful new sights. Things to explore and find all about. Enough light to make things clear and eye-catching.  As I got older I found covers to be tricky. From a novice's perspective we see familiar faces. Characters from the core books. Possible tie-ins to things known in other media like the Blair Witch project movie, The Fog movie, Friday the 13th movies, Excalibur movie during the Grail quest, An American Werewolf in London movie.And now that I have a few more years and miles under my belt it makes me realize just what can be discerned from careful scrutiny. So from a veteran's perspective the perspective is all wrong. The cover gives the impression of cut and paste images inserted into a grand collage. An almost joke like appearance with ghosts as sheets. Or the fact that Nebin and his Raven forefront are too large in comparison to the trees, rocks, and other PCs. Alhandra is way too small unless the artist makes a better effort to show perspective at least if we take Eberk as the measure of what a gnome, dwarf, and human should be.  So too is the lighting all wrong for the scene when we take in the fact they are shrouded in  fog especially Nebin's lighting.So why so critical of the cover? For me it played an important role in comparison to the rest of the content. It made me remember what it meant to be a beginner, a novice, and what it means as a veteran of numerous campaigns.Inside:CrunchInside Cover page BlankInside page Blank front and backPage 1 Title Page: Heroes of Horror by James Wyatt, Ari Marmell, and C.A. SuleimanPage 2 Credits. No OGContent. A list of books as resource: 2edADnD Complete Necromancers, Domains of Dread, 3ed UA, OA, BVD, LM, Lords of Madness: The Book of AberrationsThe Gygax and Arneson disclaimer. and 3.5 version.First printing October 2005Page 3 Table of ContentsPage 4 Introduction, etc...Page 158 WotC advertisementPage 159 Customer SurveyPage 160 Last page. Paizo publishing AdvertisementBack page Blank front and backInside Back Cover page BlankFluffHeroes of Horror (Oct 05) by James Wyatt, Ari Marmell, and C.A. Suleiman follows Heroes of Battle (May 05) by David Noonan (who I beat at the Miniatures game demo Gen Con 03), Will McDermott, and Stephen Schubert and future Heroes of X Happenstance to be named later (if these first two do well enough) in the next series of optional supplements for the revised edition of 3edADnD.  So what is inside this book? The Table of Contents plus Introduction state fairly clearly all of what you can expect to find inside in a very abstract way. Abstracts written for scientific papers are similar. They give the highlights of what happened. This is a very good approach for both the beginner and the novice. It lacks the crunch many veterans crave. However, this changes soon enough. On page 9  we see our first real crunch a table of "creepy things." Tables are always good crunch. This one is full of fluff. More ideas than real data or numbers or mechanics.More hard and true crunch surfaces on page 13. This is where the book starts to get to head away from a beginner's needs. It is about right for the novice. Still too much trite for a veteran. Many of these are tried and  true or probably overused scenarios for a veteran campaign. They use enough jokes and outside of game myths and lore to make them seem interesting for a novice. A why didn't I think of that approach. They leave enough for a novice to add their own too. To experiment a little with the recipe without spoiling the broth.The gods aren't left out. Page 19 we find revised demigod stats. Real crunch. By Chapter 2 we are almost leaving the novice behind. Still enough flowery words for why to use the book, nice imagery with examples to use, and an overall good direction.The book starts to come apart around page 36. Samuel Amad. First error I noticed (and I suck at the rules so there may be more) was in his stats. 9th level character. If given default array he needs 1 more stat point for level 8 gain. The error isn't the glaring failure. The character is. This book becomes an adventure. A 160 page adventure (lacking 5 of those pages to ads and credits) with new deity, new abilities, new classes, new yadda, yadda, yadda. The Dread Necromancer is not a PC class IMNSHO. Sure it is great that it gives examples of how to use all this new stuff. But it is too tightly wound. If it comes off its post.. Boing... the spring is sprung.OverallCrunchOn a scale of 1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent). I'd rate this as a solid 2 for a beginner, a 3.5 for a novice, and a 2.5 for a veteran who uses the revised material. Personally for a grognard it lacks anything new or useful for me so I'd give it a 1 for seeing use in my OD&D campaign.FluffFor the beginner, someone who has never played before and got this as a gift or picked it up in a store because of the brand name,  it really is a bit much. The language pulls away rather early in the book. And never steps back. With some help and guidance or use of message boards. They can get some use from the material. For the novice, someone who has played the game (either an earlier edition and converted) or who is making taking the leap to behind the screen after years of playing, this is about right. It has been 5 years since the 3ed game was introduced and 2 since the revision. But it still smacks of something missing. Possibly it is because of the shrinking size of the hardbacks and not cost. This should be a soft cover book with a price of $15 to 20.For the veteran, someone who has refereed or seen many campaigns, this needs a little help. The veteran will pick, pick, pick until the scab bleeds. This is the case with this book. It doesn't have enough separate material. The nature of the adventure example will cause the veteran to pick until the spring comes undone. More advice on how to run this game after you have run it numerous times needs to be added. Many veterans have gone thru the Keep on the Borderlands. But each time can be different if handled by someone of like mind. This book needs that. Someone to pick, pick, pick until something new makes them say AHA.So in conclusion you can, in fact, judge this book by its cover.</blockquote>

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