[Open Design] Soldiers of Fortune is here!

[terraleon]

Soldiers of Fortune, the military sourcebook for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is now in print. Written by game designer and decorated veteran Matt James, this is the first Open Design product to proudly bear the Midgard Campaign Setting logo. Order it today in the Kobold Store!

Soldiers of Fortune is a guidebook to how war is waged in the fantasy world of Midgard, easily ported to any campaign. Players can build battle-savvy sellswords with the mercenary theme and new feats and powers such as Siege Engineer, precision onslaught, and lord of war. New paragon paths include the spellscourge mercenary and sacrosanct legionnaire (who can dominate minions with the divine conscript power.)

Soldiers of Fortune also offers players and GMs a tutorial on the art of war in “The Midgard Stratagems,” edicts that have guided military strategists to victory throughout the world of Midgard. You can put these teachings to the test in the adventure “The Battle of Sanguine-Crag Pass” fighting alongside (and against) NPCs built from new templates to help GMs create a fantasy army: from the jittery conscript up to the dreaded Necrolord.

Serve as a free soldier, or raise your own army to win fame and glory! Pick up Soldiers of Fortune and let your enemies despair.

***

-Ben.
--
Small but Fierce.
Kobold Quarterly's News Minion.

 

[sellars]

Great book

I wrote a review for this book on my blog.

Super short summary: I really liked the book. I'n not a 4E-player, but still I got a lot from this book for my own campaigns. I can really recommend it.

 

[Matt James]

Thanks for that awesome review, Sellars!

 

[Monkey King]

And another review, this one at Stargazer's World.

 

[ScorpiusRisk]

And there was yet a third review on Stuffer Shack.

Here's the summary from the bottom of the article, which included a playtest:

The Good: The Player Powers and Paragon Paths were big hits, as well as the idea of Siege Engines, even if they didn’t get much play yet. The templates and skill challenges were the best tools for me, the DM, and I don’t normally like templates. All of the crunch is easily transferable out of Midgard.

The Bad: I would be very happy to see this get another round of editing for a new pdf. There are just too many problems with the stat blocks for powers and monsters. In addition, I did not find much value in the Midgard Stratagem section.

The Meh: There’s a lot of fluff about Midgard in here. It’s interesting stuff, but until I have the Midgard Campaign Setting, which is going to take a little while, this is downgraded to being maybe stealable in bits and pieces.

Overall: This book gets a solid B+. Most of the things I had problems with were annoyances more than issues, and had easy fixes. A great bit of it is instantly useful in a fun and engaging way. My players liked it enough to do more work, which is saying a ton for the quality of the material. This will positively see good use in my campaign.

 

[Matt James]

The official EN World review has been put up: http://www.enworld.org/forum/en-wor...1818-review-soldiers-fortune-open-design.html

 

[JoeGKushner]

Bought this thanks to the sale.

I hate to have a formatting question right out the bat, but is there a PDF that doesn't have the gray background? I'd hate to kill my printer for this and it seems like something that would be taken into account from a PDF perspective in terms of being printer friendly.

 

[ScorpiusRisk]

If you use a PDF editor you should be able to remove it quickly. Something free like Foxit PDF Editor, will add a small water mark but that should be less ink than the background.

 

[Matt James]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u545626LyH0[/ame]