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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011581" data-attributes="member: 1129">Modern Backdrops is part map-sourcebook, part adventure seed sourcebook and part idea generation in one product. It clocks in at 96 pages for $19.95. The interior covers have full color maps and full color maps are available from the website for the interior black and white maps.The problem I sometimes have with material like this, is that I have certain expectations from reading other books. For example, Champions Battlegrounds has five mini-adventures in it with locations that can be reused. It’s well illustrated and has some great details on the characters in the various scenarios.Modern Backdrops doesn’t. This is a collection of six “towns and cities”. The introduction does an excellent job of showing how things are broken down as follows; Introduction, Character Suitability, What Every School Kid Knows, Rumors, Important People, Other Information, Community Calendar, Time Line of Important Events, More Important People, Places to Go, Organizations, Official Reports, Places of Power, Things to See, Supernatural Residents, and Dark Secrets. The book does break things into different levels in the Plot Hooks to let a reader quickly see what level of FX is necessary to run the adventure seed.My problem would be in the methodology used here. For example, there are no illustrations in the book. Does this mean there are no maps? No, the maps by Jeremy Simmons are all okay.  I say okay in part because I’ve lived in Chicago a great deal of my life and find some of the scale on these maps a little off. Nothing too crazy mind you, but when I look at something like The Secret Garden and see tables/seating booths that are a little less than ten feet across with five foot tables with them…well, it doesn’t look right.Without art, the book is lacking in personality. No overview shots of the town, no illustrations of the residents, no pictures of things lurking in the shadows. That means to me, the writing better be crisp, concise and exacting to provide the reader with a great breakdown of the places in the book.Looking at the break down above though, you’ll note that it’s not easy to spot. For example, in most standard D&D town stat blocks, they give you a break down under the population field. This allows you to see what’s in the town at a glance. In a real world book, it would be helpful to see the racial background broken down so that characters can use their heritage in different areas. In some cases, I can’t figure out how the location survives. Let’s take the start of Delora Valley for instance. “There are rumors of mafia involvement, shady deals, and things that might not be considered ‘nromal’ in other towns…” and then, let’s look at Rumors. “Many of the citizens of Delora Vallye have deep mafia connections.” Let’s cut redundant material eh?When looking at the characters, I find that it’s not enough information. Even the most important people are mixed into others like Mario and Geneva Giovanni, each detailed with one another. Other characters have a sentence or two to flesh them out. I have a hard time giving these shadows personality. For example, Desmond Grant just moved into Delora Valley and is an up-and coming actor. Does he have a tainted past with an underage girl? Does he hide homosexual tendencies? Does he just want to move up in the world and make all the right contacts? Is he really a loner by nature and moved to Delora Valley to get away from it all?The material is also split up too much for my taste. For example, in Delora Valley, they have The Secret Garden.  We have it listed in “Places to Go”, “Places of Power”, and under “Things to See”. If the authors had just put everything into one section, it would reduce page flipping and increase utility.The plot hooks are little more than adventure seeds thrown out with some notes for the GM. Fashion Police pus the players as employees on a lower level of Department 7 and sent by their commander to perform recon on the mafia activity in Delora Valley. That’s it. Some note about there being supernatural problems but just keep to the recon. That’s a pretty shallow plot hook.Overall, I found it to be a good idea, but it needs much more focus. Material needs to be in one spot. Perhaps use different shades of grey to indicate what one bit of information is from another. Cut out all redundant material and provide plot hooks that go beyond, “See the planetarium and insure that no evil is around!” For those looking for maps and pregenerated characters with little background and details, for those who are “Fixer Uppers” if you will, this is perfect. For me, it’s going to be used for mapping purposes and that’s it.</blockquote>

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