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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9704125" data-attributes="member: 8461">I just finished reading <a href="https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/529485/fox-fires?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">Fox Fires</a> (affiliate link) from NUELOW Games, and my immediate takeaway is that it's a decent product marred by poor editing.Written by TSR alum <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Miller_(game_designer)" target="_blank">Steve Miller</a>, Fox Fires follows the format of a lot of recent NUELOW products, in that it's a work of narrative fiction with an appendix of new game rules. Whereas many NUELOW products have been public domain stories (or, in quite a few instances, public domain comics), this one is an original work by Miller himself.The story is a paranormal romance, of all things, telling the story of a chance encounter between Alyssa Fox—a werefox girl of nineteen years old who chafes at her reclusive mountain-dwelling family's restrictive rules against having contact with humans—and Erik Blake, a park ranger who's recently transferred to those same mountains and is investigating a meth operation in the area, even as he contemplates how isolated his job has kept him. At that point, the story pretty much writes itself.The appendix at the end has new d20 rules for werefoxes, though when I say "d20 rules" what I actually mean is d20 Modern. Miller and NUELOW Games have long been holdouts for that particular game system, making d20 Modern-based products a staple of what's released under their banner.The story is likeable enough, if somewhat predictable (and ending perhaps a tad too abruptly; this story is admittedly very much not my usual genre of reading, but even the budding romance between Alyssa and Erik seems to barely have begun when the tale wraps up), and the game rules are okay (more on that below), but as I said before, it's the editing that kills this product for me.Take a look at the following example sentences, and see if anything odd jumps out at you."Something his rational mind rejected even as the memory burned itsHuman into his consciousness.""Alyssa moved before she could talk hersHuman out of it, darting across the open space between the trees and the shed.""Erik found himsHuman studying Alyssa—this impossible woman who had turned his understanding of the world upside down in a single night."Yes, that's right. In a find-and-replace error worthy of the infamous "dawizard" goof of TSR's old Encyclopedia Magica product, someone went through and replaced every instance of "elf" in the story—forgetting to put a space before the first letter—with "Human," nor did they perform a final read-through to catch the error. I say "someone" because the book lists both Steve Miller and someone named L. L. Hundal as the editors; so I'm not sure if this is on one or both of them, but either way it's quite the face-palm of an error.Nor is it the only one. For instance, later in the story, Alyssa pleads for her father's acceptance of Erik; as part of her case, she mentions an instance of him putting himself in danger to save her...except the incident she refers to doesn't actually happen until a few pages later in the text. This isn't her predicting the future or guessing what will happen at some point; the story simply has her referring to a future event as though it's already happened.In another, somewhat less egregious, scene, Alyssa somehow opens a padlock to a shed where Erik is being held captive with just her hands; the text calls out that she's does a partial transformation, being in fox-form and changing only her hands back, but doesn't specify how she undoes the padlock.Like I said, bad editing.As for the d20 stats themselves, I was a bit disappointed again, for two reasons. The first one is something which I can't really hold against the product, which is that I was really hoping it would bring back the stats for the AD&D-style werefox. I really liked that particular iteration of fox-based lycanthropy, simply because it was so different from all of the others. Female-specific, it eschewed the dichotomy between "natural" and "infected" lycanthropes, as all werefoxes were sterile, and so could only make more of themselves through their bite even as it presented all werefoxes as being in control of their powers once they had them (at least, as I recall).(I'll note, for the sake of completeness, that we did get an official 3E version of the werefox in Ravenloft Gazetteer Volume I.)Ironically, the d20 section of this book does reference that kind of werefox, differentiating them from the werefoxes found here and noting that the two different strains hate each other but generally avoid conflict.The second reason for my discontent is that what's here is, unfortuantely, fairly generic. It's a rather standard template for a lycanthrope, with a few fox-specific elements thrown in. While the DC to resist being infected with this kind of lycanthropy matches the flavor text in how weak it is (as the text notes that being a werefox is hard to pass on via injury), it contradicts itself in how it says that werefoxes have no special resistance to injury, specifically citing that silver does nothing to them...but while the template lacks any special rules about damage, the example character has DR 10/silver for some reason. Likewise, the full text of their Regeneration ability says "All signs non-lethal wounds might leave, vanish within one week from the incident." What does that mean?Okay, I'm being slightly unfair with that last one, because I can clearly see that (despite what the text says about these not being the AD&D-style of werefox) this is a reference to that old monster entry, which notes that scars and other visible injuries fade away fairly rapidly. Likewise that this template grants a bite that deals 2d6 points of damage (which is unusually high, but matches the bite damage of the AD&D werefox), or how it greatly increases speed for the hybrid form, and even more for the fully-transformed fox form, also like the AD&D werefox.In another context, these might be considered callbacks or sly indications that the two strains of werefox have a common ancestor. But as written it comes across mostly like someone tried to update parts of the older version without appreciating the finer points of the d20 Modern rules (which being derived from D&D 3.0, are a bit unpolished compared to 3.5 and PF1).Oh, and I suppose I should mention that while the illustrations are credited to "Karl M.," it appends this with "(using software at OpenArt.ai)." I don't know how ethically that particular AI program is sourced, but while the cover looks good enough, and most of the interior illustrations are okay, I can't help but notice that the last picture had a background character (the ranger driving the jeep) with a partially-deformed face. Another mark against the book, there.Overall, this book really needed another few passes through editing. Hilarious typos, scenes that lack specificity or refer to things that haven't happened yet, and errors in the game stats section serve to ruin what could otherwise have been a decent story with some fun game rules fleshing it out. What's here is just good enough that you can really get a sense of how much this product tripped over its own two feet, and it's really a shame.</blockquote>

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