Toolbox

[Psion]

Toolbox

Toolbox is a book in AEG's one word titled series of supplements for d20 System fantasy. Toolbox is essentially a collection of tables for use in quickly generating details for a fantasy campaign.

The book has writing contributions by Dawn Ibach, Jeff Ibach, Jim Pinto, Edgar Rosero, James Sharkey, Cheryl Van-Mater Miner, and Phillips Van-Mater Miner.

A First Look

Toolbox is a 192-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $26.95. AEG is the only d20 System publisher that I own any softcover books by that are this large, so I can only compare the price of the book with AEG's other books of the same price. The book is has fewer pages for the same price than AEG's Mercenaries and Dragons, though the text density in the later AEG books is higher than the earlier books like Dragons.

The cover of the book is a light gray textured background with piping in a similar style to other books in the series. The front cover (by Hugh Jamieson) depicts and armored man wielding two knives against the backdrop of a stone wall.

The interior of the book is black-and-white. The interior is illustrated by Jonathan Hunt and Beth Trott. The book is sparsely illustrated, but the illustrations are generally good.

The text used in generally small and I didn't notice any table gaffes in the flurry of tables. The text density is generally good. However, some of the tables have entries in some columns that are significantly longer that in other columns, producing a bit of whitespace in some tables that might have been avoidable if the table organization was tweaked a bit.

A Deeper Look

As mentioned, the majority of the book is tables covering a variety of topics. Every last one of the tables uses a d20. In some cases, there are more than 20 possibilities for a given topic, meaning that some topics have multiple d20 tables devoted to them. This wouldn't be a problem except that there are no "steering" tables to randomize between these tables for quicker result. The DM is left to pick or come up with his own randomization. This isn't a huge omission, but such tables could have served to make the book better live up to the ideal of quick random results.

There are four major chapters in Toolbox, corresponding to major categories that need details in a d20 Fantasy campaign: Wilderness, Dungeons, Cities, and People. These topics give good general coverage, and there is only one general category of things that needs detailed in a typical campaign that doesn't get its own chapter here: organizations.

The Wilderness chapter includes a rather wide variety of topics, including such things as local flora and fauna, hunting results, settlement details, castle composition and activities, and encounter tables. The NPC and encounter table contain game statistics. The NPC encounter tables come in categories like wilderness NPCs, bandit NPCs, war parties, druids and druid attendants, and villains. Some of these tables have bare statistics and some have complete statistics block.

The monster encounter tables, by way of contrast, have statistics, but they are arranged into columns instead of statistics blocks. As some columns (mostly the special attacks and qualities column) are longer than others for many creatures, this creates a bit of white space. Further, important statistics like HD and CR are omitted, which means that the encounter tables fall a little short if the point of the statistics was to prevent you from having to refer to the Monster Manual.

The Dungeons chapter includes a flurry of tables to define dungeon details. Unlike the random dungeon tables in the classic AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, the tables here aren't really suitable for building a dungeon from the ground up. Rather, they appear more to "fill in the blank" about details of a dungeon. Tables include such sundries as the general type of a dungeon, what the entrances, details of walls, floors, doors, and corridors, room shapes, and dressing details like room contents, sounds, personal effects, lighting, and more detailed and specific tables like captives and interesting corpses.

Of course, what dungeon would be complete without traps and other means of hiding and guarding treasures?

Have you ever had players scour that wizard's laboratory for something useful? Well now you can fill in the details with a variety of tables devoted to the topic, including tools and book titles.

Again, there monster encounter tables for dungeons, sorted by type. The tables have the same problem with whitespace due to the SA/SQ column, and the lack of CR and HD entries which make it difficult to decide if you really should toss the encounter at the players and to handle magical effects that depend on HD without referring to the MM.

The Cities chapter provide a great menagerie of details for fleshing out settlements. Details such as the size of the settlement, architecture, government, coinage, and trade goods are all handled, as well as street names, businesses, churches (and the associated religions) and other sites of interest in the city. A diversions table provides a little spice to players visiting a city. The nobility tables describes families and individuals that may hold sway in a city.

Other tables delve into further details that some adventurers may need to know, such as taven names, menus, and patrons, and the results of a pick pockets roll.

As with the Wilderness chapter, there are encounter tables including NPCs (some merely by name/description, some fully statted out). There is a monster NPC table arranged similarly to those in prior chapters, but it is understandably briefer, having only a single "sewers" category.

The People chapter includes a lot of tables to flesh out a PC or NPC. There are names for males and females of a variety of races, as well as names of groups and honorifics. Extensive tables provide character concepts and motivations, quickly generate possessions, encounter conditions, and some game statistics. Again there are NPC tables, both brief descriptions and detailed NPC adventurers.

There is a brief appendix with quick excerpts from other AEG books (mainly Mercenaries), including equipment, weapon qualities, typical tactics by class, a brief critical hit chart, and monster quick reference forms.

Finally, the book has a fairly thorough index, essential for finding the table you need in a hurry.

Conclusion

AEG's expressed intent of their one-word series of books is to create books that will be long-term staples in d20 System games. This book succeeds more than any to date. In the short time I have owned this book, I have already made extensive use out of it at every game, quickly generating details such as the personality of an intelligent weapon in the game, a familiar, names of nobles, and the type of animals in an area.

The book does seem to achieve it's intended purpose of being a useful collection of tables during a game. If you frequently run off-the-cuff or have players that ask odd questions which you cannot satisfactorily answer quickly, or if you just need a little help "filling in blanks" in your campaign, I think this book is a very good purchase.

As mentioned, I think it could have been better in a few small ways. The monster encounter tables could have been a little better organized. Further, I found the obsession with just using the d20 a little strange. Yes, I know this is the d20 system, but the d20 part is modifiable resolution rolls. None of these table rolls are modifiable (would that they were) and a cursory glance at the DMG should show that the intent of using d20s doesn't extend to tables.

Sections of the book that feature multiple tables could have used more in the way of "steering tables." Finally, some of the tables could have been a bit more situation specific. For example, weather tables might have accommodated modifiers for climate, and the encounter tables might have been arranged by power level and used modifiers to tweak it to the power level of the party.

One last note. The ad copy you see on the product page indicates that Toolbox can be used in a variety of genres. This is not so. With a few minor areas of overlap, this is primarily a fantasy supplement.

Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

If you've ever been stuck for an encounter, a piece of dungeon terrain, or other details that can make a game come alive, you need this book. A compendium of useful idea generators, this book is full of lists and ideas to inject excitement and color into your game. Hundreds of tables allow you to generate all the details and texture your game needs. Whether you use them on the fly to improve your adventures or as the starting point for your creations, Toolbox is guaranteed to become a valued assistant for any DM who builds his own worlds and adventures.
[*]Hundreds of idea generating charts, all designed to fire a DM's imagination and ease the creative burden of building worlds, NPCs, and adventures.
[*]Adventure building tools all organized for easy use during a game.
[*]For d20 fantasy games, science fiction adventures, espionage RPGs, and a whole range of gaming genres.
[*]Includes vast selection of detailed NPCs with complete lists of spells, possessions, and combat statistics all ready to be used at a moment's notice.
[*]Designed and organized for use during play, allowing DMs to produce encounters within moments without slowing down the game.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Is there an easy way to find what tables you are looking for quickly? I don't like to interrupt the flow of my game by flipping through books, especially if it's for a detail like the name of a book or item on a lab desk. But if it's organized well then I might like to have this book.

Wil

 

[Psion]

The index is, as I said, pretty complete. That's the best tool, I think.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Toolbox is a 192-page offering by Jeff and Dawn Ibach from Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) that retails for $26.95. It is softcover, with a fair number of illustrations from Jonathon Hunt and Beth Trott and a cover by Hugh Jamieson.

First Blood
It happens sooner or later to every DM. The well runs dry. Normally, your font of ideas can scarcely be contained, but for whatever reason, tonight you’re lacking for a plot. Maybe it’s the fight you had with your girlfriend earlier today, or the exam that looms next Friday, but whatever it is, you’re stumped and tomorrow evening, six rabid gamers will be at your table, ready for a night of adventure. What do you do?

The answer is at your fingertips. Reach for Toolbox, the new DMs’ aid from AEG. Toolbox, and that’s as fitting a name as any, is a collection of charts and tables, all designed with the intent of making your life as a DM a little bit easier. Need a plot? It’s a die roll away. Want a master villain? Toss a couple of 20-siders and you’ve got the beginnings of a good character.

Ah, but Toolbox doesn’t stop there. It’s an in-game aid as well! A quick roll will give you the local weather, an encounter suitable to the terrain, or a name for that gnome that was supposed to be part of the flavor text whom the players are convinced is a major plot point. There are charts and tables for nearly every imaginable instance (and a few that are unimaginable). It’s almost enough to make you want to run a game just so you can roll to see what comes up next!

The book is divided into chapters grouping like tables together. For example, in Chapter One, The Wilderness, one can find a collection of tables for determining the weather, local geography, flora and fauna, phases of the moon, disasters, civilizations, castles, and encounters. Chapter Two, Dungeons, includes tables for architecture, dressings, sounds, traps, interesting corpses (now there’s a table that’s seldom detailed in DM supplements), treasures, magical weapon histories, potion smells and tastes, and yet more encounters. Chapters Three and Four give the same loving detail to Cities and People, respectively.

A small appendix finishes the book, which does include a few tidbits like new types of armor and weapons, some new weapon properties, and battle tactics for typical NPC classes that may be encountered during an adventure. A set of hit location tables (and resultant game effects) are also provided for those who wish to add a little more detail to combats. Finally, some half-page monster quick reference sheets could be useful to DMs. Just fill out the relevant details (and that’s all that’s on here) and you have them at your fingertips, ready to access at a moment’s notice.

Critical Hits
The best thing about Toolbox is that there are a lot of tables here. I mean a lot, probably well over a hundred (though I haven’t counted). That’s a world of possibility for the effort of a few die rolls. And a lot of the tables are very well-done, with some solid information.

Take the Mundane Road Diversion, as an example. Say your characters are walking along a path and seem to be getting antsy. “When do we get there?” they ask. You toss a d20 and consult the table.

“Derek, make a Spot check.” If he succeeds, he notices a black-shafted orcish war arrow sticking out a nearby tree. It seems to have weathered well or else has only recently found its mark. What does it mean? Well, that’s for you (and your PCs) to worry about. The point is that a simple roll on the table has added some excitement to an otherwise dull journey.

Several of the tables are even more useful. Take the Interesting Corpses table (you thought I was kidding, didn’t you?). Using this table, you can generate exactly what the title implies; interesting corpses. Not just another dead human, but a human skeleton that sports an extra pair of arms and small, pointed canines. Again, no details are filled in, leaving the GM plenty of room to expand on the possibilities or to leave it as a mystery for the PCs to worry over.

There are even tables that provide an encapsulated magical weapon history and sites of ruins that establish not only a brief description, but a name and history as well. Now how useful would that be to your campaign? The encounter tables provide full stat blocks for NPCs (including spells and possessions) and vital statistics (AC, HP, saves, etc.) for creatures. Just browsing the book can spark some adventure ideas (oh, and there is a plot generator as well).

Critical Misses
First, the tables are great as far as they go. There’s the rub, see. The tables are designed to be rolled against using only a d20. Yes, it fits the system theme, but that means that, on average, a table will have only 20 entries. There’s a lot that could have been expanded on that wasn’t. There are some great ideas, but they’re limited in number. I’d like to have seen more tables of unique corpses, or magical weapon histories, or roadside encounters. I could do with less encounter tables. I can roll these up myself; give me something original, like the castle descriptions or the exhaustive list of governments.

Along the same lines, you cannot, as the product claims, generate an NPC in ten minutes. You can get a good jump on creating an NPC in that amount of time, but the book does not randomize skills or feats, nor even spell selection beyond a small degree. In short, it’s a tool, not a replacement for your DM. You won’t be able to play solo just by having this book, though it will give you a step up on adventure design.

Then there’s the description of the product. They say that its usefulness isn’t limited to fantasy games. I have to say that, in some ways, they are correct. The weather table and some of the NPC tables could certainly be used in any d20 System game (or even a non-d20 game with a little reworking), but by and large, the tables are geared towards a fantasy milieu.

Some have said that the disorganization of the encounter tables is a flaw, but I disagree. It has never made any sense to me that an encounter table should be tailored to the level of the PCs. Instead, it should be tailored to the terrain (as is the case here) and the PCs should realize that there are things out there than can hurt them. After all, if you visit Africa, you don’t expect not to see lions simply because they are more than a match for you.

Finally, I have to say that I don’t like the hit location tables. Don’t misunderstand me; it’s nice to have something like this for those players who insist on knowing exactly where they hit the creature, but the accompanying game effects seem just a wee bit overpowered. For example, a hit to chest implies a -2 penalty to Con until healed. They do note that the effects are for flavor, but I’ve a few players who wouldn’t mind seeing them instituted as mandatory rules. Maybe using them as the results of criticals (in place of the extra damage) wouldn’t be too bad.

Coup de Grace
For DMs, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Despite it’s flaws, if you are running a d20 fantasy campaign, this work will be invaluable to you. It provides a wealth of ideas and many of the tables can be easily expanded on (especially if placed into a computer program designed to draw random results). Players won’t find the work nearly as useful, but there are a few tables that might aid them in developing their characters (such as racial names and distinguishing characteristics), so I can’t dismiss its value to them outright.

By its very design, there isn’t much to offer in the way of Open Gaming Content here. That isn’t a flaw; it’s the nature of the beast. Still, they rule that anything with the exception of product and character names is pretty much open game. Where applicable, the book does adhere to the d20 standard.

As stated above, DMs will get a lot more use out of the book than players will, but there’s a little something for everyone in here, so don’t be afraid to let your players borrow it once in a while. A $25 price tag for a book of tables is a little steep. I’d have liked it more if the price were less or if more unique tables (and fewer encounter tables) had been included. Still, if you can swing it, it’s definitely a worthwhile purchase.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[King_Stannis]

I love this book. Much, much utility - and a great friend to the harried DM.

By the way, to facilitate finding things, I use a few of those "post it" flags on the tables I use most - Tavern food, pick pocket results, names, etc. I've found that this helps immensely. As Alan said, too, the index is pretty solid.

 

[Mr. Patient]

I recently purchased AEG's Toolbox on the recommendation of Monte
Cook, and I wanted to take the opportunity to address some issues that weren't covered in previous reviews.

Toolbox is a GM's aid. It is a 192-page, softcover book containing hundreds of tables of setting details, ideas, and encounters. This is the sort of book you turn to when you are out of ideas, when you need to add a little flavor to your game, or when you are put on the spot and have to come up with details quickly. The book retails for $26.95, and uses the 3.0 rules.

Virtually all of the book is in the form of tables. Most of them are meant to be rolled with a d20, which is occasionally a bit limiting, but usually appropriate enough. The good news is that many of them are original and useful, and sometimes they are even witty. They cover subjects such as: random NPC names broken down by race, random town names, castle and room contents, interesting corpses, bridge descriptions, pick pocket yields, different types of secret compartments, magic item histories, tavern menus, local flora and fauna, and many others. These will be of tremendous help both in-game, when time is of the essence, and when preparing for games, when these lists will help get the creative juices flowing. Many of the topics are not covered anywhere else that I'm aware of, although my library of d20 products is admittedly small.

In addition to the tables and a little supporting text, there is an appendix which includes new armor and weapon qualities, NPC tactics, and hit location tables. Aside from the hit location tables, which I personally have no interest in, these seemed fairly useful. The artwork in the book is limited, but generally very good. The cover illustration by Hugh Jamieson is quite nice.

Unfortunately, there are some serious problems as well. The editing of the NPC stat blocks is extremely poor. For spellcasters, they are often wildly and jaw-droppingly mistaken as to preparation and casting requirements. Many of the bards in the book have a Spells Prepared section, in addition to Spells Known. One even has a spellbook. Many wizards have a Spells Known section, but no Spells Prepared. It seems that no two stat blocks even use the same terminology: sometimes a caster will have Spells Per Day, while other times it will be Spells Prepared, and other times Prepared Spells. The inconsistencies even manifest themselves in different entries in the same table.

The stats block problem is not limited to casters. Sometimes aristocrats are called by their proper name (e.g., male human Ars2; this should be Ari2, but that's another matter). Other times they are called nobles (male human Nob5). Class abbreviations vary from table to table (Drd vs. Dru, Bbn vs. Brb). Several commoners seem to have proficiencies in more than one weapon, without the requisite feats. Some appear to be proficient with improvised weapons, as their attack bonuses do not reflect a penalty. Sometimes skill bonuses reflect armor penalties, and sometimes they don't. There are a great many errors in skill and attack bonuses overall. Ever since the 1e Rogues Gallery, I've wanted a book with lots of generic, no-frills NPCs. This book has them, but the stat blocks are so generally untrustworthy that they don't provide what they set out to provide: off-the-shelf characters that DMs can throw in a game without forethought or work.

I also find that the encounter tables are not terrifically useful, and they take up an awful lot of real estate that could have been used more productively. Encounters-by-terrain lists already appear in the DMG, and there are several more here which don't seem to be a significant improvement. Toolbox also contains tables for encounters by creature type, so that one can roll a random magical beast, or a random construct. These I think are particularly unhelpful. There are very few situations where I can imagine needing an aberration and not any other sort of monster, and then wanting to randomize which aberration I get. And as Psion points out, the tables merely recapitulate a portion of the Monster Manual entries for these creatures, so they don't eliminate the need for other books. I think it would have been considerably more helpful if Toolbox provided a variety of pre-templated creatures, particularly those on the various Summon Monster lists.

The strengths of the book are in the unusual and clever things it brings to the table, and which don't require a lot of rules adherence. When the book goes beyond these areas, it is weaker, in my opinion.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

"Ever since the 1e Rogues Gallery, I've wanted a book with lots of generic, no-frills NPCs. This book has them, but the stat blocks are so generally untrustworthy that they don't provide what they set out to provide: off-the-shelf characters that DMs can throw in a game without forethought or work."

Perhaps you should check out Everyone Else from the hosts of this site for a book of no-frills NPCs. It certainly has a lot of them, and the statblocks are dead-on.

 

[Mr. Patient]

Thanks, I will.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

One fun thing to do with this book, if you're not too familiar with it yet, is try to think of some kind of useful list that you might want and you don't think it has. *chuckle*