Surprised no one else has talked about this!
Today, I found on my doorstep Level Up! magazine, the Goodman Games produced 4e magazine (which cost me $4!).
I've merely flipped through it, I haven't really digested it fully. So far, it looks like a lot of crunch, along with some discussions, some mini-adventure/side quests/skill challenges, and a few odds and ends.
This issue has:
Natural Born Killers Blackdirge puts out a Creature Cache for Dinosaurs, basically, and here we see an excerpt of some dinos - Raptors, the T-Rex, and the Triceratops, to name a few.
Gem Gems, Fiendish Foes. Basically, hell/demon infused monsters; a Knight, a Troll, two templates, and interestingly a giant dire boar.
What else it looks like: Power Skins; reskinning the fluff of At-Will powers to fit with a certain theme (in this case, grim and gritty descriptions). Enworld's Jack99's Ultrashort Reviews (three paragrahs to review the product, and star rankings). A mini-dungeon (a map, a detail of the rooms, and a single enemy/encounter area detailed). Some Weapon-specific feats for each tier. Paragon paths for specific Weapons (in this case, Axes, Maces, and Heavy Crossbows, a new item they present). An interview with a guy who runs a tournament every GenCon, which he has slain 135 characters. On the last page, a random name generator for monsters (Basically, Prefix Suffix, like 'Gore - Biter'.)
The first thing though that caught my eye, that I really dug? "A Picture is worth a 1,000 words", where they take a single fantasy picture, and write an encounter around it. This one consists of a skill challenge (namely follow this one guy unseen) and an encounter.
However, looking at the magazine, I found some errors. I'm mentioning these in part so the editor might read this, but also in part because it's a peeve of mine.
The biggest of which is actually the area I liked the most: A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words.
[sblock=Tangent]They have a battle map presented, and the placement of the enemies is rather significant. They then list the enemies in the encounter. On the battlemat, are tokens.
And they don't have a key to tell you which token represents which character.
It literally took me three minutes scrutinizing this battlemap to figure out who was where.
The problem comes, in part, because you have multiple enemies with the same letters. Let me explain. You have:
Rage Drake.
Dragonborn Soldier.
Human Lackeys.
Dwarven Bolter
Lord Reyes.
The tokens? D, DW, R, S, and five Ls..
Lord Reyes position (and his involvement in the encounter) is very important. But, I couldn't figure out which of his tokens was him. Obviously L isn't Lord Reyes, because there's 5 of them. So, what about R? Well, that could be Reyes or it could be the Drake. The S? I couldn't even tell who the S was - there's no one who starts with an S! And it took me a moment to realize the DW was the DWarves.
In the future, guys, put the letter representing the token right beside their stat readout. So it would look like:
Dragonborn Soldier (D) - Level 5 Soldier.[/sblock]
Everything else was very minor. For instance, on the page after the table of contents, there's a breakdown of what each regular column's purpose is. But, they left off one (the Interview column).
Another would be tables to easily sort crunch. If you're going to present an article with feats, have a table with the Feat name, Pre-requisit, and little description somewhere in the article, so that it's easier to glance at that table and say "Oh, those feats are in THIS article" instead of looking through it to realize that a feat is missing from this article (since for instance, there are TWO Weapon-based articles in the book). A table at the back of the magazine that mentions all monster statblocks (like you find in the back of the MM) would be useful (Groglug - 6th level Brute - Page 66), so I don't have to flip through the thing if I just want to reference Groglug's stats (This will be very useful if you say, have several Level Up magazines and you're looking for a specific statblock).
Bottom Line
Despite my minor complaints as above, I really like this magazine. It's small, durable (the same sturdy cover/firm pages that 3e modules were made of), and you can't beat the price of $4.
I'm definitely levelling up to Level Up! Issue 2.
Today, I found on my doorstep Level Up! magazine, the Goodman Games produced 4e magazine (which cost me $4!).
I've merely flipped through it, I haven't really digested it fully. So far, it looks like a lot of crunch, along with some discussions, some mini-adventure/side quests/skill challenges, and a few odds and ends.
This issue has:
Natural Born Killers Blackdirge puts out a Creature Cache for Dinosaurs, basically, and here we see an excerpt of some dinos - Raptors, the T-Rex, and the Triceratops, to name a few.
Gem Gems, Fiendish Foes. Basically, hell/demon infused monsters; a Knight, a Troll, two templates, and interestingly a giant dire boar.
What else it looks like: Power Skins; reskinning the fluff of At-Will powers to fit with a certain theme (in this case, grim and gritty descriptions). Enworld's Jack99's Ultrashort Reviews (three paragrahs to review the product, and star rankings). A mini-dungeon (a map, a detail of the rooms, and a single enemy/encounter area detailed). Some Weapon-specific feats for each tier. Paragon paths for specific Weapons (in this case, Axes, Maces, and Heavy Crossbows, a new item they present). An interview with a guy who runs a tournament every GenCon, which he has slain 135 characters. On the last page, a random name generator for monsters (Basically, Prefix Suffix, like 'Gore - Biter'.)
The first thing though that caught my eye, that I really dug? "A Picture is worth a 1,000 words", where they take a single fantasy picture, and write an encounter around it. This one consists of a skill challenge (namely follow this one guy unseen) and an encounter.
However, looking at the magazine, I found some errors. I'm mentioning these in part so the editor might read this, but also in part because it's a peeve of mine.
The biggest of which is actually the area I liked the most: A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words.
[sblock=Tangent]They have a battle map presented, and the placement of the enemies is rather significant. They then list the enemies in the encounter. On the battlemat, are tokens.
And they don't have a key to tell you which token represents which character.
It literally took me three minutes scrutinizing this battlemap to figure out who was where.
The problem comes, in part, because you have multiple enemies with the same letters. Let me explain. You have:
Rage Drake.
Dragonborn Soldier.
Human Lackeys.
Dwarven Bolter
Lord Reyes.
The tokens? D, DW, R, S, and five Ls..
Lord Reyes position (and his involvement in the encounter) is very important. But, I couldn't figure out which of his tokens was him. Obviously L isn't Lord Reyes, because there's 5 of them. So, what about R? Well, that could be Reyes or it could be the Drake. The S? I couldn't even tell who the S was - there's no one who starts with an S! And it took me a moment to realize the DW was the DWarves.
In the future, guys, put the letter representing the token right beside their stat readout. So it would look like:
Dragonborn Soldier (D) - Level 5 Soldier.[/sblock]
Everything else was very minor. For instance, on the page after the table of contents, there's a breakdown of what each regular column's purpose is. But, they left off one (the Interview column).
Another would be tables to easily sort crunch. If you're going to present an article with feats, have a table with the Feat name, Pre-requisit, and little description somewhere in the article, so that it's easier to glance at that table and say "Oh, those feats are in THIS article" instead of looking through it to realize that a feat is missing from this article (since for instance, there are TWO Weapon-based articles in the book). A table at the back of the magazine that mentions all monster statblocks (like you find in the back of the MM) would be useful (Groglug - 6th level Brute - Page 66), so I don't have to flip through the thing if I just want to reference Groglug's stats (This will be very useful if you say, have several Level Up magazines and you're looking for a specific statblock).
Bottom Line
Despite my minor complaints as above, I really like this magazine. It's small, durable (the same sturdy cover/firm pages that 3e modules were made of), and you can't beat the price of $4.
I'm definitely levelling up to Level Up! Issue 2.
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