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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="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2008680" data-attributes="member: 9860">Beware! This review contains major spoilers.This is not a playtest review.Price: $9.95Page Count: 40Price per page: About 24 cents per pageDesigned for character levels: 5th Level Ogres, 10th Level PCsExternal Art: A reasonably good piece of colour art showing a group of ogres, fronted by a glowing skull.Additional Page Use: The back page contains an introduction and overview to the two adventures, as well as a small cartoonish colour picture of a group of PCs. The back inside page contains ads, the front inside cover has a challenge table (a summary of ELs, CRs and stats), and an Alert  Factor Tracking Chart, where the GM can keep track of the inhabitants readiness for combat in response to how quiet the characters have been. The first page contains credits and contents. The OGL takes up one page within the module.Internal Art: The internal black and white art is . There are also a set of square cardboard counters for the relevant monsters stapled to the centre of the module - the quality of the pictures depicting each monster is average to good.Maps: The maps are basic, clear, scaled, and keyed to the adventures.Page Layout: The text density is good and there is little white space. Margins are not large.Writing Style: Both adventures are written in a clear and entertaining manner. I was unable to find any typos.The Adventures: In the first adventure, players get an opportunity to play Ogre characters who, on returning from a trip to bribe some giants, discover that a precious artifact has been stolen from their caves by a group of humans. The humans have now returned to their keep on the borderlands. The ogres are encouraged by their clanspeople (and the personality backgrounds of these pregenerated characters) to retrieve the artifact, the magical skull of the title, from the humans. They must attempt to enter the keep through force or stealth and the success of any attempts at stealth is measured by the aforementioned Alert Factor Tracking Chart. Each location has a note on factors which could affect the Alert Factor, bringing guards running, or rousing sleeping soldiers to action.In the second adventure, players's standard PCs set off in search of the Giants Skull in the ogres' caves - this can be played either as a precursor or an aftermath to the 'first' adventure. Either way, they are sent by the lord of the keep to retrieve the artifact. Some background is given on the lord, a zealous humanoid-hating paladin, who is running into disfavour with his order due to his racist ways - indeed, a possible replacement has been sent to assess his fitness for duty, and to replace him as necessary.The High Points: A good idea, to run the players through as the ogres bedevilled by a racist human lord who steals their skull, before playing their standard characters who are sent to retrieve it. Similar has been done in WotC's 2nd Edition Reverse Dungeon, but it still gives the players an interesting opportunity to view the situation from both sides. The Alert Factor system is a useful one and could be used more generically to measure the success of any attempt at stealth in other settings. The pre-generated Ogre characters are well-documented with interesting personalities, and the situation as a whole provides plenty of food for thought. Stats and game rule material seems particularly well-documented, with a good feel for combat and tactics, and traps.The Low Points: There were a number of possibilities such as the ogres failing to retrieve the skull from the keep, or the PCs taking sides against the fanatical paladin that were not explored in enough detail and could potentially lead to the GM needing to do some extremely quick thinking on the fly to deal with these possibilities and where they might lead. Apart from the ogre characters, and perhaps the lord, there was a distinct lack of personality depth in the rest of the NPCs. The generic setting has its advantages in its easy integration but genericism often leads to blandness, and the setting suffered a little from this. The adventure focused on combat and tactics, and failed to explore and expand on the roleplaying possibilities it raised in its initial concept.Conclusion: A great idea, which may run into some hard work for the GM unless his group is combat-orientated due to some possible gaps in the plot logic. Both adventures offer plenty of 1st-Edition style dungen adventuring and the useful Alert Factor System could be used in many other circumstances. The NPCs and the setting were weak, whilst the game rules and concept were strong. As has been mentioned already, not very suitable for campaign integration, better as a once-off.</blockquote>

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