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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="DM_Jeff" data-source="post: 2009144" data-attributes="member: 3687">The Spycraft Gamemaster's Screen helps organize the new rules in a slick easy shield for Gamemasters.Spycraft Gamemaster's ScreenBy Patrick Kapera & Kevin WilsonCover art by Veronics V. Jones$19.95 32-page form bookletISBN: 1-887953-49-3Introduction: AEG is really throwing themselves into the Spycraft line. I can tell you how impressive the core rulebook is. I went in with skepticism and had all my doubts eliminated one by one as I read through the tight, streamlined rules. Now we have a gamemaster's screen with all the new modern rules collected for easy reference and a slew of character sheets and design forms. Impressive, but the price tag seems a bit steep, $20 for a GM Screen set? Unheard of in the history of the hobby, if I'm not mistaken. Still, let's see what it's got.Review: The Spycraft GM's screen contains three panels of interior charts and rules and three outside panels of slick graphics, the game's logo and a male and female agent (art from the hardcover rules). The Cardstock is typically strong and seems durable. With it is a stapled 32-page booklet loaded with every type of record sheet you'll need to play the game. The rules panels are easy to read at a glance and are well laid out. While I have not used it in play yet, the charts immediately hit me as having all the obvious items you'd need handy while running a game, including a breakdown of the new chase maneuvers, sample critical miss effects, and the disposition modifiers. There are also a plenty of "classic" d20 tables like spotting, break and hardness ratings, and difficulty class examples updated to modern examples. There are no weapons data, but considering the amount of gear in the book that would be unwieldy anyway. The third panel had some charts that might have been condensed a tad to make room for another one, I suppose some of the particular firearms rules like burst and autofire penalties would have been nice. You still have to look things up, it's just this is a really slick way to keep many of the most-used rules at your table. The record sheets are highly useful and help players ands GM's immensely. In D&D fashion each of the core classes introduced in Spycraft get their own custom-designed character sheet. Combat actions are boiled down with specific modifiers and rules next to each (why this wasn't on the GM screen too is beyond me) and special sections to fill out particular to each class. For when you advance, there are also Class record sheets from Shadowforce Archer, the Mentalist, Physical Adept, Telepath and Mystic. There's also a mastermind record sheet and minion record sheet to plot out the antagonists of an adventure or even campaign. There's also a very detailed (and well done) chase record sheet to speed up those action-packed scenes. There's also a season (campaign) design worksheet that guides the GM through all the stages of development as discussed in the Spycraft rules so you can plot a whole campaign. Introductory Adventure and Poster: This item is not for sale, nor is it included in the GM screen, but this seems like a good place to review it. If your local store is lucky enough to have a packet of these, picking one up would be a good idea. On one side is a poster of the guy on the front cover of the RPG, and on the other is a laboratory laid out in 1-inch grid format for miniatures, and eight basic PC names and backgrounds as well as a cast of bad guys to fight with the new rules set. Your store might also have a few sets of the printed Spycraft introductory rules (identical as found on their website) which is a great way to teach the rules to a novice.Conclusion: The Spycraft GM's screen is good. It does its job and you can't complain. Well, you can a little. I just have a very hard time justifying $20 for a screen and a few character sheets when the entire 288-page hardcover rules are just $14 more. So while the price is a little steep the screen itself and accompanying sheets are well done and highly useful to the game.- Jeff Ibach</blockquote>

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