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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: 2011362" data-attributes="member: 1129">The Mother of All Encounter Tables pulls together information from the Monster Manual, Creature Collection 1, Creature Collection 2 and Tome of Horrors in a massive array of tables and options for GMs who love the roll of the dice and the random feeling of what’s next.For me, sometimes I think I’m too old for this type of book. On one hand, it’s fantastic that there is so much to offer GMs. The first thing I think, probably because I’m a cynical reader, is that due to the late nature of this product, why didn’t they snag the other Sword and Sorcery products with monsters in them? You know, Creature Collection 3, Warcraft Manual of Monsters and Legacy of the Dragon? If you’re going for a love fest of monsters, might as well go all the way.The second hint of cynic in me looks at the packet that game with the Forgotten Realms screen, Encounters in Faerun. This is a 32-page book that includes goods from the Monsters of Faerun and the Forgotten Realms campaign setting as well as the Monster Manual. It also breaks things down by level in many cases. Take a % roll to determine the power level. If you’re on the 1st level of a dungeon and get 99, you’ll have a 3rd level encounter divided by 1/3rd.  Not here. In addition, this booklet is a nice looking piece of black and white work The Mother of All Encounter Tables on the other hand, starts off with some background and introduction material. One thing it makes clear is that while it can help you in many things from preparation and idea generation, it’s not there to hold your hand or make sure you don’t wipe out the party. One of the reasons it mentions this is that there are no level caps. On the same table where you can encounter a giant worker ant in a temperate climate during the night, you can also encounter an aerial servant. Not a good thing for GMs using it on the fly.The tables themselves are fairly useful and easy to understand. I don’t like how the examples are worded though. They make the whole rolling seem so easy that the only GMs I know who could flow like this are those with a lot of experience under their belt. GMs that probably wouldn’t need the book in the first place. Having said that, this book is much like Gary Gygax’s Book of Names. A product that’ll see some use whenever the GM needs it.So let’s say that you’ve decided you need some encounters. You look over the index and decided that you want some overseas encounters, Table 1-4. You then decide that it’s aquatic, so that’s the creature encounter table 2-6. See, each table is broken up by type so you have creature, weather, unusual and traveler tables in addition to some miscellaneous tables.So anyway, you’ve got your area decided on. You roll out the overseas encounters, once every four hours and get travelers, notable occurrence, and after a few no encounters, a creature. So the first thing you do is flip to the back of the book for overseas encounters. You role and compare your roll to the asea column as the party is far out to sea and can’t see the shore. You get a 47, pirates. What’s worse is that there is a 10% change of a fleet of 1d4 vessels. You decide to have some fun with it and determine the race and flip to table 6-3, sentient races. You roll a 38 so that’s a roll on subtable 6-3B. You then roll a 67 and see that it’s sahuagin.  Well, that takes care of rolling up any stats for NPCs unless you’ve decided that some of these boys have levels.Looking at that, you might even decide that the party encounters a pirate ship, but one that looks like it was torn apart and that the sahuagin haven’t had time to part with their loot yet and have decided to take the player’s ship as well.Now that’s the first one. The second one gets you a notable occurrence.  Flipping to table 3-4, you roll a 23 and see that there is a cold snap that’s rolled in. This is a hazard, as per the DMG so that’s where you’ve got to look.Now lastly, after a little while has passed, you get to roll up the creature encounter. You flip to table 2-6, aquatic creature encounter and roll a 754 (that’s right, d1000!). Now this is a lake where your party is traveling and they’re out quite a ways. You then look up 754 under freshwater, deep. This brings your party to encounter quippers from the Tome of Horrors. I have no problem with encounter tables. I own Runequest Cities and still have my first edition Dungeon Masters Guide due to all of the weird things I can roll up on it. The main difference between those products and this is that I don’t get that “useful” feeling. What does that mean? Let’s say that I rolled on a City/Town Encounters Matrix (page 191 for those who still have that first ed book!) and get a drunk. It has a description of the typical drunk as well as what type of character the drunk can be. Of course no one can forget the Harlot table! To me, those books were a little more useful in helping you actually do something with the material while this one just kind of states how many you encounter and leaves the rest up to you. The book isn’t as easy to use as it could be. The text is pretty large, which makes it easy to read. However, it could be a little smaller so that tables could reference one another. For example, when I was talking about ships on encounters at sea, how about a reference to the number of npcs table and an actual entry for pirate ship? In some ways I wish that this product were electronic instead. A PDF form that I could change and augment, deleting and adding as I want, would be stellar.In some areas where the layout changes from landscape to portrait, it’s a little jarring. The art between tables by Heather Hudson is solid. One of my favorites is a group of adventurers wandering deeper into a swamp lead on no doubt by the will o’ the wisp while another solid one is a warrior facing off against the undead in a sandy environment. Price per page is about average as this is $27.95 for 142 black and white pages in hardcover format. I would especially recommend this book to a Scarred Lands fan. The inclusion of the first two Creature Collections makes it very friendly in terms of near completeness for those fans. GMs who are heavily time pressed probably won’t find the succor they need here as it’s going to involve a lot of book flipping, but GMs who keep their table a little cluttered and have easy access to their books will enjoy the thrill of running on edge.</blockquote>

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