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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 2011544" data-attributes="member: 59">Note: I received a review copy of this book.Lost Prehistorica is a 109 page PDF from Dark Quest Games, and the primary authors are Steven Cook & David Woodrum.  The PDF is bookmarked extensively, making it very easy to read in multiple sittings (almost every single header topic in the book has a corresponding bookmark), and the table of contents page links to the rest of the book as well.  It uses two columns of text in a clean, readable font with normal margins.  The artwork, including the cover, ranges from poor to respectable -- sometimes I felt as though there wasn't enough art in later sections of the book, particularly for the races and monsters.  Having pictures of all of these would have been more useful to me than random pictures of hunting and gathering and the like.The book aims at being a toolkit to allow DMs to run adventures in a "land-that-time-forgot"/quasi-prehistoric area, either as a part of an ongoing campaign or as an entire campaign unto itself.  Since this is the stated goal of the book, I'm going to try to judge it mostly on its use as a toolkit -- that is, how much can I or would I consider cherry-picking from it if I were to run D&D in a prehistoric area.The first chapter, more or less an introduction, suggests ways in which a DM can think about the material presented in Lost Prehistorica to introduce it to his game world and what sorts of geographic elements (things that make the lost world unique, like beds of amber or fossils) should be present.  Chapter 2 covers diseases and hazards.  From there, we're more or less done with the environment and move onto a string of chapters that cover the peoples -- chapters on cultures, tribes, items, characters (including feats and new races), and religion.  The last chapter, chapter 8, covers the monsters of the lost world.  Although all topics are proper and expected -- the book didn't lack anything important, as far as I could tell -- the organization felt a little haphazard to me.  Chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7 (culture, tribes, characters, and religion) would have better served me coming earlier.  Although part of the fun in this type of campaign would be in interacting with the environment, I think the inhabitants are going to be more prominent in many campaigns -- especially in a campaign set in an entirely primitive world.  Of course, if the goal is to be a toolkit, then does it really matter how the book is set up?  Not necessarily.  In fact, one thing I did find was that the book suffered from being read cover to cover, which is partially a function of the organization, but also a function of its aims.  It isn't necessarily meant to be used whole cloth, so reading it as though it is, doesn't really make a lot of sense.  Aside from these organizational issues, the writing is solid, if a bit dry at times (the only point where I really felt it got off the tracks was when the authors referred to cannibalism as an “unwholesome act of dire evil” -- I'm not disagreeing, but that was a little much, as I didn't think that anyone would accuse them or Dark Quest Games of promoting it as a lifestyle -- it's kind of a given that cannibalism is a bad thing).Overall, I found it to be worthwhile, if only for the options presented and the modular nature of these options.  Things that I could see using right away, without any alterations, included the fossil and natural treasure tables in chapter 1, the natural (but not exotic) hazards in chapter 2, the mandrillions and ancient races from chapter 6, and all the items and monsters presented (chapters 5 and 8).  Between the critters (minor inhabitants of the lost world, like trilobites and the exotic geckolisks, that can be used to flesh out the way tribes interact with the world around them) and the section detailing how to use the standard monsters in a lost world campaign, I found the bestiary particularly useful.  I don't agree with every choice about using standard creatures, but the effort's appreciated and I can easily modify the authors' suggestions to my taste.  These things alone, to me, make the book worthwhile, and I recommend the book if any of those things seem like they'd be useful to you because they can be plucked out and used easily.A good chunk of the rest of the content, however, is a mixed bag.  The diseases are good for the most part, but I'm not always sure what makes them particularly prehistoric -- the authors may have been better off whittling the list down to a few really good, appropriately flavored choices (cannibal fever over blue giggles, for instance).  Some of the hazards seemed a little vicious, such as blast crystals, which, at CR 2, do 4d6 damage with a DC 18 Reflex save to avoid.  In my experience, this would kill a lot of 1st or 2nd level characters without question, especially if the characters haven't found out that they can avoid them on a DC 10 Move Silently check (and, assuming the PCs are not natives of the lost world, they probably wouldn't have this information right away).  Other sections were on the bland side.  For instance, the chapter on tribes, including the guidelines for creating tribes (which are probably too loose to be useful), basically presents a number of premade tribes.  This is good, in the sense that they can be used immediately and without revision, but the tribes themselves are not terrifically inspiring.  For me, they suggested real world analogues too closely (for example, the Coyotarru have hints of South American Indian culture and the Feather Dancers vaguely resemble Northern American Indians).   Finally, the section on deities was simply boring -- I could see using Simius (god of apes) in a world, but the rest of them could be replaced by gods more appropriate to the world I was using (for example, a prehistoric aspect of a god like Kord or Hextor, to use the PHB/Greyhawk gods).  It's certainly useable and could be pulled right out to use as a pantheon of gods for a lost world campaign, but as a whole, it doesn't do anything that couldn't be done with gods in other sources or in an extra half-hour if you were only going to spend a few sessions in the lost world.The only two places where I felt the book really missed the mark were in chapters 3 (culture) and 6 (characters).  I'll cover chapter 6 first, as my problem with chapter 3 gets at a major issue, I think.  Firstly, the feats in chapter 6 use even attribute scores as prerequisites (generally 12+), which is, as far as I've known, fairly unorthodox -- feats generally use odd attribute scores as prereqs.  This, though, is easy to fix.  The real problem with most of the feats is that they're so specific that they're not really applicable to most characters (Primanid Advocate, which grants a +2 to Cha-based checks when dealing with the various monkey people presented in the book) or they offer too little, as though they were afraid of being wildly unbalancing (why take Cannibal’s Cunning for a +2 to initiative against members of your own race when you can take Improved Initiative and get +4 across the board?).  A good bulk of the chapter is presented as how to insert character classes into the lost world, such as "if I'm playing a bard, how should I react?"  This could be useful to some players, but the presentation of it (with advantages and disadvantages presented) really jarred with my sensibilities -- I just felt that it was information that I didn't need.  A more problematic area in this chapter was the new races, which included a new elven subrace, three types of monkey men, two types of cat-people, a few amphibious/reptilian races, homonids (pre-Humans), and three ancient races.  My main problem with most of these races is that they don't really fill a necessary niche in a world, with maybe the exception of one or two of the primanids and the ancient races.  The amphimids (bipedal newts) are nice, but bland, and the others are too much of the same thing.  I'm not sure that I need two races of cat-people, but more importantly, I'm not sure what make cat-people fit in this supplement.  On top of that, the races are mechanically unexciting and similar -- they all have different ability score modifiers, but they all seem to have low-light vision or darkvision, and very little in the way of special abilities (usually +2 to a skill check or somesuch).  It's not a power issue I have here, it's just that the races feel slapped together.  None of them are terribly unbalancing, but none are, as I've said, exciting either (except for the ones noted above, particularly the mandrillions, which could be wickedly cool in a "planet of the apes" scenario or circumstance, and the ancient races, which could be fun here and there as a change of place).Chapter 3, on prehistoric culture, is interesting, but extremely dry and covers a lot of material in very little space.  It gives notes and descriptions of four cultures: hunter-gatherer, pastoral, horticultural, and agricultural.  Although useful, these descriptions could cover civilizations and tribes starting with cave men and working all the way up to the Aztecs.  And, on some levels, that brings the scope of the book way too far off the mark -- adventures in a world similar to the historical New World might be cool (and I always liked TSR's Maztica), but I don't consider them to be prehistorical in any sense of the word or to have any sort of lost world vibe.  This kind of gets to my biggest problem with Lost Prehistorica, and the only truly damning one, in my opinion: in this chapter, which should be the central piece of this book, the authors aim to include too much, and in so doing, includes too little.  It covers a lot of ground and none of it as thoroughly as I would like.  Sacrificing the material that doesn't feel prehistoric (as the rest of the book does a generally good job of sticking to its theme) in favor of material that does would be an excellent start here.  I'm not looking for the Aztecs or other Native Americans in this book, but dinosaurs, cavemen, monkeys, lizards, fossils, and bugs trapped in amber.Given all this, how successful is the book at what it tries to do?  In aiming to be a toolkit, I feel that it is reasonably successful in that it provides a variety of options for the DM to choose as he creates the campaign and/or adventures, some of which are wicked cool.  At the same time, it isn't as successful as it could be because of sections with mechanically awkward or uninspiring material (chapter 6) and a lack of focus in a critical chapter (chapter 3).  For me, though, it was worth it for the sections I've outlined above.  If you're looking for a prehistoric toolkit, you could do a lot worse than Lost Prehistorica.  And in PDF format and at the listed price, Lost Prehistorica is a great value.Score: 3.75, rounded up to 4.</blockquote>

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