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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010697" data-attributes="member: 18387">Midnight d20 by Fantasy Flight Games is a beautiful 254-page hardcover book that describes a Tolkien-like setting. It also includes many new interesting rules. Though the book seems, at times, a bit too much like "Middle Earth after Sauron won", it has some concepts that are different, too.  The cover image gives you an idea of the dark atmosphere of the setting in which a dark force called Izrador reigns supreme over all others. The setting is a somewhat oppressive environment where PCs must constantly struggle to hide from and then fight against Izrador's agents of evil. Midnight is not a happy place to be if you're a goody. I don't know if I'd personally want to play a PC in a place where there is virtually no hope, but it might be fun for at least a few game sessions.  The interior is very good with some pieces, especially by Andy Brase, being excellent. The book starts with a few full-color images, but then goes entirely black and white. I don't mind though because this is one of the few d20 books I've found that has little, if any, objectionable art. I particularly liked the illustration by Brase on p. 202 of an evil lord commanding a dragon. The text is generally very well-written. Of course, there are some editing mistakes, but nothing glaringly erroneous. It is easy-to-understand and yet stylistically pleasing at times, too. The history parts were quite interesting and I liked reading about the various lands and their people. You'll find new sub-races such as sea and snow elves or dorn and sarcosan humans. I counted eight core classes: channeler, defender, legate, wildlander, druid, freerider, insurgent spy, and wizard. Each seem well-balanced and fun to play. What I liked more, however, were the heroic paths. You can choose to be one of 20 paths: chanceborn, charismatic, dragonblooded, earthbonded, faithful, feyblooded, giantblooded, guardian, healer, ironborn, juggernaut, mentalist, mystic, naturefriend, philosopher, quickened, seer, shadow walker, steelblooded, or warg. Each provide unique abilities at every new level attained by the PC. For example, a PC that is feyblooded can cast the spell bless once per day at 1st-level, protection from evil once per day at 2nd-level, aid once per day at 3rd-level, divine favor once per day at 4th-level, and so on.I think these heroic paths allow players some added flexibility in creating their characters and making them more multi-dimensional. I would definitely be interested in playing a PC with one of these attributes though perhaps not in such a dark setting. There is some setting-specific information such as a few pages on the barter and trade system (Midnight does not use coins much) as well as some text on the various languages. I love this type of stuff and it fits well with the rest of the book. Much of the rest of the book contains information on the various parts of the world. You'll also find new monsters in Chapter Twelve. In addition, there is a sample adventure at the end called "On the Run" which gives an idea of how to run an adventure in the setting. That is always a good idea.I liked Midnight very much and would recommend it to anyone. Even if you don't use the setting directly, there are many ideas that you could implement in your own game. It is a wonderful book overall and could quite possibly be the best D&D-like setting out there right now for d20. Grade: A</blockquote>

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