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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009880" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Chris Sims (aka Khur), Staff Reviewer and Editor for d20 Magazine RackSizing Up the Target RPG Objects expands the Twisted Earth with their release Metal Gods. This book can be found in a 72-page PDF ($6.95) on RPGNow, or in print format for $14.95. Ask for it at your favorite game store. First Blood Metal Gods adds flavor and crunch to a Darwin's World game with historic text, player information, "monster" statistics for robots, new equipment, and adventure material. Players can use the new android race template and prestige classes to enjoy a new form of interaction with the Twisted Earth, while the GM has a plethora of new dangers to throw at the beleaguered mutants of the wastelands, as well as a slew of adventure ideas. Both GMs and Players have new equipment to play around with, though some of it is reprinted from the Darwin's World book. (This latter fact is a virtue for those who want Metal Gods for other purposes.) Finally, there's a short adventure. Metal Gods has a great cover, but the interior art varies widely from cartoonish to very nice. The design is great, though, and Metal Gods has one of the best page borders I've seen on any d20 product. Unfortunately, that border takes a great deal of ink if one is printing from a PDF. The electronic format is used to provide ease of use. Each PDF comes with extensive bookmarks and thumbnails. The cover image is quite large in file size though, and print buyers have nothing in the way of an index that even begins to compare to the PDF bookmarks. Critical Hits The writing in Metal Gods is superior to that of the Darwin's World rulebook. For the most part, it's clean, clear, and entertaining. The history provided is great and macabre science fiction, and viable as a historic overview of Darwin's World itself. The book even gives advice on changing the history to meet your own vision of Darwin's World. The feats are good, and the use of feats for robotic features in character construction is a healthy balancing factor. Since most of the book presents robot statistics (like those in the Monster Manual), this book is useful beyond the bounds of a Darwin's World campaign, with possible uses in other d20 games. In fact, whole campaigns might center on robots, or Darwin's World could come to resemble the dark future shown in other works like The Terminator, or GURPS Reign of Steel. Most of the new capabilities added to these specific constructs work well, and definitely add flavor. Berserk robots, while pure fantasies, typify mad automatons in many sic-fi staples. They're fun. "Sputtering Death", allowing a construct to survive below 0 hit points in a severely impaired state, is a definite spark of creative genius (in addition to making robots frightening foes). Adventure hooks are presented in classifications making them easy to use at all levels of play. Some of these so-called hooks are much more than that. They are entire campaign, or mini-campaign, ideas. A very valuable resource indeed. The adventure may not be excellent, but it's a total bonus that rounds out this diverse package. Critical Misses The androids listed in the "Robotic Life" section of the book do not match the racial template very well, having incredible attributes, high HD, and so on. The author informs me that each of these droids is actually a classed character (Mostly Darwin's World classes); the worker android is a 6th-level expert, the pleasure android is a thinker 5, the scientist a thinker 7/ mech 5, and the soldier is an 8th-level guardian. Unlike most races that appear in official D&D material, the statistics for even the lowliest iconic android presented far outstrip what a player with average rolls might come up with. This problem is apparent when one sees the statistics of the androids in the adventure provided with Metal Gods. Compared to the iconic droids encounters, both of the android villains in the adventure are pathetic weaklings. Dominic Covey told me that the iconic android characters were made tough on purpose, and that's fine; the flaw lies in the fact that it's not clear how these creatures were constructed, and it's not clear that they're intended as powerful examples. Further, they're presented in such a way that they look like they're intended as an average monster statistics block. This can lead to some real confusion, as it did for me. While ample examples are provided in Metal Gods, there's no real help when it comes to creating your own robots with these rules. While the robots ostensibly follow the rules for Constructs, some of their statistics seem mysteriously high. For those robots with skills, it's unclear how the ranks were determined. The book would have been more successful if ambiguities such as this, and the one above, were not left in. Even with Metal Gods, it'll be more difficult than it should be to create your own artificial intelligences, besides androids, that mesh with these rules. Perhaps RPG Objects will provide some insight and errata on their Darwin's World site. The adventure presented in the book is shallowly executed, and it's very high-level. This is especially true when one considers that the CRs for the ultimate villains are in the teens, but fail to take into account an android's +3 level adjustment. In fact, all none of the androids in the book include this CR modifier. Coup de Grace Metal Gods, like the game for which it was created, is a great idea with lots of potential. A GM can use these rules as is, and they'll still be fun. Caution is recommended, however, because some of the robots certainly have bonuses that they shouldn't. The content is best left under the sole purview of the GM, and most of the mechanics that one could use for original work are generously left as Open Content. With some time and effort, Metal Gods can be of service beyond the confines of a Darwin's World campaign. All of these factors combined place this product squarely above average. Yet, the Metal Gods themselves would certainly expect better. To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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