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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010636" data-attributes="member: 172">RelicsRelics is one of AEG's one-word title "topic" books for d20 System fantasy games. The book is a catalog of artifacts for use is such games.The book's writing contributors include Steve Crow, Andrew Getting, Gareth Hanrahan, Andrew Hudson, Mike Tesca, and Patrick Younts.A First LookRelics is a 128-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $24.95 US. This is a reasonable price for a d20 System book of this size and format.The cover of the book has a burgundy background with brown piping similar in style to that used in other books of the series. The cover illustration is a painting of a woman wielding a glowing yellow staff standing in the midst of a number of fiendish looking creatures, illustrated by Kari Christensen.The interior of the book is black-and-white, with one illustration for each artifact. The interior artists include Shane Coppage, Cris Dornaus, and Lisa Hunt. The quality of the illustrations is generally good, though most illustrations are simple pencil sketches.The interior uses a conservative but readable body text font, and paragraphs and lines are single spaced, providing a fairly good text density. The layout is nice and simple, with one artifact being depicted per page in most cases.A Deeper LookMost of the entries in Relics take up a page of text, in most cases defining a single artifact-type item. Each item has an illustration and three text section. The first text section is an expisitional background or history explaining a little backstory of the item. The second is a game statistics section containing all the necessary d20 System statistics for using the item, including powers and other effects and important details like caster level and weight. The final text section is entitled "Legend." The Legend section varies in approach, but generally has the function of providing the GM with game ideas for integrating the artifact into the game. For example, so "Legend" section contain stat blocks and details of the current owner and their activities, while others have tables of rumors on where the item may be located or obtained.Some items that appear in these pages include The Book That Never Was, a book has a number of contrived histories that have never been. By inscribing things in the book, the user can cause other historical facts to not have been. The Cloak of Life is another interesting entry. By plucking a thread from the cloak, the user can sacrifice a year of her life to grant life to another. Overall, the items are generally powerful, and primarily suitable for a high-level campaign.ConclusionThe concept of Relics is fundamentally similar to that of Fast Forward Entetainment's various "items of power" books, presenting the background and abilities of a number of artifacts. The fundamental difference between this book and those by Fast Forward seems to be that a smaller amount of background is devoted to each item and the game statistics follow d20 System conventions much more closely.In the d20 System, artifacts are primarily defined as items that simply do not follow normal item creation rules; they need not be excessively powerful. This book could have followed that principle and included intriguing items more suitable for lower level games, but does not. The items in here tend to be fairly powerful. A side effect of this fact is that you will probably only ever use a small fraction of the items in this book.Overall Grade: B--Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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