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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9184228" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002part 7/12Release Roundup: Over in Dragon, the number of 1st party D&D books has slowed from its mid 90’s peak to a mere one or two per month, leaving the Previews section looking increasingly marginalised. Over here, they can fill a full page with shrunken font and still probably only scratch the surface of the D20 boom. Unlike the old reviews column, all of these are basically recommendations, without any real critical analysis. (and since they’re future releases, they haven’t even read many of them yet, because even as WotC insiders they can’t keep track of everyone in the industry.)Anyway, Alderac Entertainment release War, another self-explanatory book with a singe word title. Atlas give us a book full of Backdrops for your battles. Avalanche Press take us off to see the Pirates of the Caribbean a good year before Disney get around to it. (and make it much harder for anyone else to do something on the same topic without copyright naughty word) Bastion Press give us plenty of both Arms & Armor, and Villains, two more simply named books that let you know exactly what you’re getting. Eden Studios are slightly more eloquent with their naming conventions, giving us Secrets of the Ancients and Liber Bestiarius. (which are once again adventure location and monster books) Fantasy Flight Games release the first books for Dragonstar, their take on D&D IN SPAAAAACE that’s quite different from Spelljammer. Firey Dragon Productions are thinking the same way as Dungeon, releasing a set of counters, only there’s is a full 450 different ones rather than just a few dozen that are appearing in the current issue. They also have a couple of adventures: Gates of Oblivion and Beyond All Reason. Green Ronin releases a big hardcover sourcebook for Freeport so you have more freedom to simply wander around in it rather than going straight to one of the adventures. Malhavoc continue to be where official WotC writers put their excess ideas, with The Demon God’s Fane, the psionic-centric adventure If Thoughts Could Kill and the Book of Eldritch Might II. Mongoose are by far the most prolific D20 company, churning out Quintessential Fighter & Rogue books, Chaos Magic, Ships of the Elves and the Slayer’s Guide to Sahuguin in just the next two months. Necromancer Games aren’t far behind them though, with What Evil Lurks, Tomb of Abysthor, Maze of Zayene II and most famously, part 3 of Rappan Athuk, for those of you who want to take the fight to Orcus (and probably die horribly doing so) after encountering him in last issue of Dungeon. You could probably run a whole campaign with just the material from these releases and not use it all.More interestingly, they have a full page preview for D20 Call of Cthulhu with stats for Nightgaunts. They’re only a CR 4 monster so experienced D&D PC’s shouldn’t have too much trouble with them, but of course CoC ones are not only weaker, but have to worry about SAN loss with every interaction and things like being dropped off a tall building or tickled for hours can be quite traumatic for them. It’s a different set of assumptions and probably not suited for a system where you wind up 20 times as tough as you started after a few years of play, but they’re going to try anyway because this is the middle of the d20 boom so everyone’s doing it.</blockquote>

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