Masque of the Red Death

[der_kluge]

Here is a review I managed to find on the product. He gave it an A.

http://www.d20zines.com/html/module...=article&sid=1376&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

 

[Stormborn]

I picked it up in a "buy one get one" sale otherwise I wouldn't have bought it. I was disappointed, even for a free product. It has far to many classes, a system that would have been served much better by using D20 Modern with a few rules additions. The book is largely setting, though, so if thats all you want its OK. I still wouldn't pay full price for it. You can come up with a setting that does what you want better by cobbeling thigngs together on your own.

 

[TerraDave]

A Guide to Transylvania was the best campaign resource (for me) TSR released in the 2nd edition era.

White Wolf (and its "cubs") seems to have a mixed record in updating classic old TSR producst.

 

[Klaus]

IIRC, Arthaus weren't allowed, contract-wise, to use the d20Modern engine, they had to stick with D&D-style Ravenloft.

Guide to Transylvania is nice, but Gothic Earth Gazeteer was a wellspring of adventure hooks! Too bad they misspelled the name of the first Brazilian president ("General José Deodoro da Fonseca", not "de Fonesco").

 

[Master of the Game]

Thanks for the help finding a review. Though the general lack of reviews for this product kind of speaks for itself.

The review was very possitive, but it doesn't touch on the missing rules, which to me is a huge issue.

[rant]

Take for instance Dark Inheritance by Mythic Dreams (I use this example because it is a product I own and am familiar with). The Spycraft Version of this product was something that I waited for, and loved. Then I got to reading it, and found that large portions of text are missing, as well as a complete lack of rules for equipment, which is important because all casters need foci at very least, and one of the rules that was left out was for buying more powerful foci.

Stupid editing errors like that really nag at me, but usually aren't enough to drive me away from a good product. So long as they are erratad within a reasonable amount of time. Mythic Dreams, however, hasn't updated their website since before the book came out more than a year ago, and their forums shut down several months ago without anyone ever bothering to answer peoples questions about the foci and other matters. That complete lack of responsiveness or effort to correct their errors is more than I can take, so I put the book aside and haven't used it since. Nor would I concider buying from them again.

This is what I see from Arthaus, and I'm not really interested in getting burned again. There is no official errata, the product itself doesn't have a website, just a clone of White-wolf's standard d20 webpage, and one that doesn't even feature Masque on it anywhere.

I guess that's what has made me decide to cancel my order. I'm a big fan of third-party books, and some of my favorites are by Malhavoc, another group published by white-wolf, but one whose writers care about their work, but I'm tired of throwing my money at second rate publishers who don't bother to support their products.

[/rant]

Sorry.

Anyways, since it looks as though no one is really happy with anything in this product other than world info, I'm going to just use my second edition books (which were fantastic) and convert to d20 Modern.

Thanks for all the input.

 

[Wraith Form]

Hunh. Funny.

I have it, and I kinda liked it. Admittedly I'm not an expert at the original version (I have the products but haven't made a detailed analysis of them), but I thought the update was pretty cool.

If you can find it cheap (like on eBay where I got it), you might be pleasantly surprised....

If you have specific questions, please feel free to PM or email me.