Simon Collins
Explorer
This is not a playtest review.
The Ultimate Games Designer's Companion (UGDC) is the fourth of Mongoose Publishing's supplementary rulebooks making use of OGC, this one compiling rules and ideas for the d20 system.
UGDC is a 256-page mono hardcover product costing $34.95. There is little wasted space. Art is generally (though not always) appropriate to the text and the quality is overall fairly good (though with 26 artists, style and quality obviously varies). In the same manner, the style and quality of writing varies, since the rules and ideas are taken from 40 different sources and about a dozen different publishers. The description in the introduction reads: "Drawn from the best Mongoose Publishing has published in the last year, also including Open Game Content from the Core Rulebooks and many other sources" and this sums up well the division of Mongoose vs. OGC content from other publishers. Editing seems good.
A summary of the contents is as follows:
* Chariots - ruleset taken from the Celtic-style Slaine RPG, also useful for Ben Hur-like chariot races. Includes rules for movement, combat, collisions and upgrades.
* Chases - covering vehicular chases taking into account terrain and with a six-step guide to resolving chases including possible manoeuvres, obstacles, and the result of collisions.
* Nautical Travel - rules for navigation, pursuing ships, ocean hazards, food supplies, disease, and mutiny.
* Vehicles - design guidelines for vehicles along with a ruleset for movement, manoeuvres, terrain, collisions, weapons and damage, upgrades, and a few sample vehicles.
* Alchemical Elixirs - costs and times for some examples of alchemical mixtures.
* Dwarven Craftsmanship - taken from Badaxe's HOHF: Dwarves, this section offers various enhancements that skilled dwarven craftsmen can add to armour, weapons, and other items. Craft DCs are given for this, and for blacksmithing and working stone.
* Poison Manufacture - a step-by-step guide to creating poisons including gp cost and a Craft (Poisons) DC based on cost.
* Savage Craftsmanship - taken from Badaxe's HOHF: Half-Orcs, this provides Craft DCs for making items out of natural materials.
* New Skills - twenty non-Core Rulebook fantasy and sci-fi skills, from Boating to Technical.
* New Uses For Old Skills - variant uses for existing skills, from using Alchemy to craft poisons, to using Wilderness Lore to cover tracks.
* Trap Construction - guidelines and ideas for creating traps. Includes the Craft (Trapmaking) skill, and spell matrices, magical glyphs and sigils that tie spell effects into a trap, using the Use Magic Device skill.
* Aerial Combat - rules for speed, positioning, aerial manoeuvring, magic, and combat modifiers for aerial fights.
* Arcane Duels - actually just friendly competitions between arcane spellcasters - arcane chess and spell performance competitions.
* Called Shots - a variant to critical hits, called shots can replace additional damage after a successful second roll following a critical threat, to give a small amount of damage plus a limited-time penalty to the victim.
* Cinematic Combat - a slew of advice and rules for making combat more exciting whilst relinquishing some reality - speeding up combat and gameplay, luck, tough PCs, weapon improvisation, and high speed running up walls, and over water.
* Firefights - rules and advice for running combats with pistols, rifles, and machine guns.
* The Grim-N-Gritty Hit Point And Combat System - a system that attempts to bring more realism to combat, this ruleset is designed to work with a setting where magic is rare but powerful and death is a constant concern. Hit Points are equal to Constitution plus bonuses from class, level, and size, whilst Defence (no AC) relies on a class/level progression, Dexterity and dexterity modifiers, and size. Armour negates a certain amount of damage. Damage causes wound traumas once it goes beyond half your hit points and also has some variant rules for called shots and critical hits. Finally, there is advice for altering the damage from magic if it is to be less deadly with these rules changes, and there are a few character examples.
* Jousting - a short section giving rules for jousting including possible injuries sustained when falling from a horse.
* Nautical Battles - rules for ship-to-ship combat taking into account ship type, manoeuvres, crew and morale, damage and repairs, and fire aboard a ship.
* Open Mass Combat System - taken from the Quintessential Fighter (but also used in Slaine and Judge Dredd), this system uses Units of soldiers but otherwise resembles standard combat in many ways, with advice on altering the effects of magic and special abilities to reflect the larger numbers. There is also information on unit morale, recovering casualties, the use of war machines, and the effect PCs can have on unit tactics, morale, and experience.
* Merchants And Trading - a ruleset governing availability of goods and price modifiers for selling goods in different environments and times of year.
* Panache - adding cinematic flair to your attacks earns points that can be spent on skill checks, saves, or gives the ability to gain temporary feats, at the cost of a penalty to the attack roll. The bonuses depend on the number of witnesses to the attack and the CR of the opponent. Panache is taken from Avalanche's 'Black Flags' sourcebook on historical pirates.
* Personality Traits - personality flaws earn an extra feat and virtues can be taken instead of a feat and are much like feats - the Adaptable virtue allows avoidance of the effects of being flat-footed once per day, for example. Most must be taken at first level.
* Reputation - a system for gaining and losing reputation(s), which in turn can enhance some social skill checks such as Bluff and Intimidate, or can be used to see if the character is recognised. The reputation also applies to a location so the character can gain different reputations in different locations.
* Social Combat - a five-phase system for measuring social and political influence through interaction. Social skills are used to 'combat' another character to get them to change their view or perform an action, using such methods as blackmail, flirtation, and threat. Rules for taunts and insults are also given.
* Books And Libraries - rules for determining size and organisation of a library, which in turn determines how easy it will be for a character to find the information he is looking for and the virtual ranks of Knowledge that can be found within it.
* Combat Locations - covers slipperiness, slope, close quarters, obstacles, glare, gravity, and fighting while climbing.
* Hideouts And Secret Locations - guidelines for designing hidden locations - an enemy lair or a PCs secret stash, for example.
* Planet Creation - some random tables for generating a planet's general physical make-up - e.g. size, gravity, geology, atmosphere, and technology level.
* Environmental Hazards - looks at the effects of raging fires and radiation.
* Tournaments And Tourneys - this section looks at tournament size, etiquette, types of competitions, and their rules (including jousts, grand melee, archery, drinking competitions, and duelling).
* Town Guards And Policemen - some basic guidelines for defining the level of law enforcement in different areas, the components of the force that might arrive to quell trouble, and different levels of punishment depending on the severity of the crime, the nature of the region, and the corruption of the judicial system.
* Underwater Adventuring - the effects on characters underwater, looking at sight, sound and travel, as well as a section on underwater combat (particularly magical combat).
* Damage Reducing Armour - another variant to AC, using a Defence Value based on Ref save bonus and size, with armour reducing damage rather than reducing the chance to hit. There is also a short discussion on armour-piercing weapons.
* Drinking - a short section on the effects of alcohol, recovery from hangovers, and drinking games.
* Fishing - a 1/2-page discussion of fishing and its rewards.
* Training Animals - advanced ruleset for training animals to perform specific tricks such as 'Hide', 'Patrol', or 'Retreat'.
* Terrain Adaption - this final section gives some advantages to druids who have adapted to their chosen terrain, replacing certain class abilities that standard druids receive - for example, arctic druids gain such abilities as cold immunity, ice movement, exposure immunity, and ice familiarity instead of woodland stride and venom immunity, etc.
The book ends with a 4-page index.
High Points
There is such a wide selection of rulesets and advice for unusual situations in UGDC, that there is likely to be something here for every GM. I felt the mixture of rules additions to cover such things as mass combat, underwater, and aerial adventuring, with optional significant rules changes such as the Grim-N-Gritty Hit Point And Combat System, Reputation, and Damage Reducing Armour worked well.
Low Points
Several sections were weak in terms of the aim of the book, such as the planet creation random tables, examples of alchemical mixtures, and personality traits, seemingly adding little in terms of new rules. Others seemed a bit boring or irrelevant to me such as Fishing and Arcane Duels. There was some repetition of rulesets (Jousting and Tournaments and Tourneys, Panache and Cinematic Combat) though this did provide choices and options for the GM. I found several of the sections to add unnecessarily to the complexity of running a game, though I tend to run things fairly fast and loose as a GM so this colours my opinion.
Conclusion
Though little or none of this information is likely to be essential for a GM, it makes interesting reading and provides a plethora of ideas for those GMs who find themselves needing rulesets to cover unusual situations or like playing with the standard rules a bit. Though by no means all of the information in the product is good, there is a paragraph in the book's introduction that sums up its best usage: " The rules and ideas presented in the Ultimate Games Designers Companion are by no means replacements or definitive. They are presented as optional. Feel free to adopt those you like and disregard those you feel serve no purpose in your games." Potential buyers should be aware that, much like the previous supplementary rulebooks, only a percentage of the information within is likely to be of use in their games.
The Ultimate Games Designer's Companion (UGDC) is the fourth of Mongoose Publishing's supplementary rulebooks making use of OGC, this one compiling rules and ideas for the d20 system.
UGDC is a 256-page mono hardcover product costing $34.95. There is little wasted space. Art is generally (though not always) appropriate to the text and the quality is overall fairly good (though with 26 artists, style and quality obviously varies). In the same manner, the style and quality of writing varies, since the rules and ideas are taken from 40 different sources and about a dozen different publishers. The description in the introduction reads: "Drawn from the best Mongoose Publishing has published in the last year, also including Open Game Content from the Core Rulebooks and many other sources" and this sums up well the division of Mongoose vs. OGC content from other publishers. Editing seems good.
A summary of the contents is as follows:
* Chariots - ruleset taken from the Celtic-style Slaine RPG, also useful for Ben Hur-like chariot races. Includes rules for movement, combat, collisions and upgrades.
* Chases - covering vehicular chases taking into account terrain and with a six-step guide to resolving chases including possible manoeuvres, obstacles, and the result of collisions.
* Nautical Travel - rules for navigation, pursuing ships, ocean hazards, food supplies, disease, and mutiny.
* Vehicles - design guidelines for vehicles along with a ruleset for movement, manoeuvres, terrain, collisions, weapons and damage, upgrades, and a few sample vehicles.
* Alchemical Elixirs - costs and times for some examples of alchemical mixtures.
* Dwarven Craftsmanship - taken from Badaxe's HOHF: Dwarves, this section offers various enhancements that skilled dwarven craftsmen can add to armour, weapons, and other items. Craft DCs are given for this, and for blacksmithing and working stone.
* Poison Manufacture - a step-by-step guide to creating poisons including gp cost and a Craft (Poisons) DC based on cost.
* Savage Craftsmanship - taken from Badaxe's HOHF: Half-Orcs, this provides Craft DCs for making items out of natural materials.
* New Skills - twenty non-Core Rulebook fantasy and sci-fi skills, from Boating to Technical.
* New Uses For Old Skills - variant uses for existing skills, from using Alchemy to craft poisons, to using Wilderness Lore to cover tracks.
* Trap Construction - guidelines and ideas for creating traps. Includes the Craft (Trapmaking) skill, and spell matrices, magical glyphs and sigils that tie spell effects into a trap, using the Use Magic Device skill.
* Aerial Combat - rules for speed, positioning, aerial manoeuvring, magic, and combat modifiers for aerial fights.
* Arcane Duels - actually just friendly competitions between arcane spellcasters - arcane chess and spell performance competitions.
* Called Shots - a variant to critical hits, called shots can replace additional damage after a successful second roll following a critical threat, to give a small amount of damage plus a limited-time penalty to the victim.
* Cinematic Combat - a slew of advice and rules for making combat more exciting whilst relinquishing some reality - speeding up combat and gameplay, luck, tough PCs, weapon improvisation, and high speed running up walls, and over water.
* Firefights - rules and advice for running combats with pistols, rifles, and machine guns.
* The Grim-N-Gritty Hit Point And Combat System - a system that attempts to bring more realism to combat, this ruleset is designed to work with a setting where magic is rare but powerful and death is a constant concern. Hit Points are equal to Constitution plus bonuses from class, level, and size, whilst Defence (no AC) relies on a class/level progression, Dexterity and dexterity modifiers, and size. Armour negates a certain amount of damage. Damage causes wound traumas once it goes beyond half your hit points and also has some variant rules for called shots and critical hits. Finally, there is advice for altering the damage from magic if it is to be less deadly with these rules changes, and there are a few character examples.
* Jousting - a short section giving rules for jousting including possible injuries sustained when falling from a horse.
* Nautical Battles - rules for ship-to-ship combat taking into account ship type, manoeuvres, crew and morale, damage and repairs, and fire aboard a ship.
* Open Mass Combat System - taken from the Quintessential Fighter (but also used in Slaine and Judge Dredd), this system uses Units of soldiers but otherwise resembles standard combat in many ways, with advice on altering the effects of magic and special abilities to reflect the larger numbers. There is also information on unit morale, recovering casualties, the use of war machines, and the effect PCs can have on unit tactics, morale, and experience.
* Merchants And Trading - a ruleset governing availability of goods and price modifiers for selling goods in different environments and times of year.
* Panache - adding cinematic flair to your attacks earns points that can be spent on skill checks, saves, or gives the ability to gain temporary feats, at the cost of a penalty to the attack roll. The bonuses depend on the number of witnesses to the attack and the CR of the opponent. Panache is taken from Avalanche's 'Black Flags' sourcebook on historical pirates.
* Personality Traits - personality flaws earn an extra feat and virtues can be taken instead of a feat and are much like feats - the Adaptable virtue allows avoidance of the effects of being flat-footed once per day, for example. Most must be taken at first level.
* Reputation - a system for gaining and losing reputation(s), which in turn can enhance some social skill checks such as Bluff and Intimidate, or can be used to see if the character is recognised. The reputation also applies to a location so the character can gain different reputations in different locations.
* Social Combat - a five-phase system for measuring social and political influence through interaction. Social skills are used to 'combat' another character to get them to change their view or perform an action, using such methods as blackmail, flirtation, and threat. Rules for taunts and insults are also given.
* Books And Libraries - rules for determining size and organisation of a library, which in turn determines how easy it will be for a character to find the information he is looking for and the virtual ranks of Knowledge that can be found within it.
* Combat Locations - covers slipperiness, slope, close quarters, obstacles, glare, gravity, and fighting while climbing.
* Hideouts And Secret Locations - guidelines for designing hidden locations - an enemy lair or a PCs secret stash, for example.
* Planet Creation - some random tables for generating a planet's general physical make-up - e.g. size, gravity, geology, atmosphere, and technology level.
* Environmental Hazards - looks at the effects of raging fires and radiation.
* Tournaments And Tourneys - this section looks at tournament size, etiquette, types of competitions, and their rules (including jousts, grand melee, archery, drinking competitions, and duelling).
* Town Guards And Policemen - some basic guidelines for defining the level of law enforcement in different areas, the components of the force that might arrive to quell trouble, and different levels of punishment depending on the severity of the crime, the nature of the region, and the corruption of the judicial system.
* Underwater Adventuring - the effects on characters underwater, looking at sight, sound and travel, as well as a section on underwater combat (particularly magical combat).
* Damage Reducing Armour - another variant to AC, using a Defence Value based on Ref save bonus and size, with armour reducing damage rather than reducing the chance to hit. There is also a short discussion on armour-piercing weapons.
* Drinking - a short section on the effects of alcohol, recovery from hangovers, and drinking games.
* Fishing - a 1/2-page discussion of fishing and its rewards.
* Training Animals - advanced ruleset for training animals to perform specific tricks such as 'Hide', 'Patrol', or 'Retreat'.
* Terrain Adaption - this final section gives some advantages to druids who have adapted to their chosen terrain, replacing certain class abilities that standard druids receive - for example, arctic druids gain such abilities as cold immunity, ice movement, exposure immunity, and ice familiarity instead of woodland stride and venom immunity, etc.
The book ends with a 4-page index.
High Points
There is such a wide selection of rulesets and advice for unusual situations in UGDC, that there is likely to be something here for every GM. I felt the mixture of rules additions to cover such things as mass combat, underwater, and aerial adventuring, with optional significant rules changes such as the Grim-N-Gritty Hit Point And Combat System, Reputation, and Damage Reducing Armour worked well.
Low Points
Several sections were weak in terms of the aim of the book, such as the planet creation random tables, examples of alchemical mixtures, and personality traits, seemingly adding little in terms of new rules. Others seemed a bit boring or irrelevant to me such as Fishing and Arcane Duels. There was some repetition of rulesets (Jousting and Tournaments and Tourneys, Panache and Cinematic Combat) though this did provide choices and options for the GM. I found several of the sections to add unnecessarily to the complexity of running a game, though I tend to run things fairly fast and loose as a GM so this colours my opinion.
Conclusion
Though little or none of this information is likely to be essential for a GM, it makes interesting reading and provides a plethora of ideas for those GMs who find themselves needing rulesets to cover unusual situations or like playing with the standard rules a bit. Though by no means all of the information in the product is good, there is a paragraph in the book's introduction that sums up its best usage: " The rules and ideas presented in the Ultimate Games Designers Companion are by no means replacements or definitive. They are presented as optional. Feel free to adopt those you like and disregard those you feel serve no purpose in your games." Potential buyers should be aware that, much like the previous supplementary rulebooks, only a percentage of the information within is likely to be of use in their games.
