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Fast, fluid, and simple to play, Dungeon World is an interesting take on the dungeon crawl genre. Having almost enough elements of the Most Popular RPG to be called a "retroclone", Dungeon World takes a left turn when it replaces the core engine of the traditional d20 game with Apocalypse World's mechanics. The result is an interesting hybrid that gives you much of the best of both worlds, with only a few of the faults.
Apocalypse World's engine is wonderful for it's quick and simple character creation and advancement, it's extremely solid move-based core mechanic, simple NPC design, easy and friendly structure of game plot, and the shared narrative structure of world creation where the setting starts sparse and gets richer as both the MC (or DM) and players add to it. Dungeon World does a great job of taking these elements, and melding them with the D&D atmosphere that old-fashion gamers will love. The classes that are presented are archetypal, and the use of one-sheet characters i...
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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Where to start. Verloren is a city ripped from it's place in time, moved forward or backwards no one is truly sure. It is, effectively, an urban sandbox of sorts.
The map of the city is unlabeled, and in truth, probably not needed. The city is in the midst of moral decay. The hooks, and there are many, don't coincide to places on the maps - they are linked to personalities and events.
See, this isn't an adventure and to come to it with that expectation would leave the prospective DM frustrated. It's a series of hooks and story elements that can come together as a bigger picture, but the DM and the players are going to be the ones to put that together. It's a toolkit of sorts. A very disturbing toolkit at points.
Unless the DM is comfortable running game sessions from the seat of his pants, Verloren is going to need significant prep work, not the least of which is how the players react to the shift from normal city to one quickly decaying.
The big plot hook behind this all? ...
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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Sunken Pyramid Review
Raging Swan Press
by Matthew Paluch
Let's start with the basics – while I do not know the specific background's of those involved, this product smacks of professional Printing experience. It is beautifully laid out and organized, not just focusing on art and frilly logos to impress.
The document is expertly divided into Chapters, and even has Appendices you will actually use, not skip! The table of Contents is thorough and specific, not just a few cursory entries to fulfill minimum requirements. In a nutshell, this Product is built from the ground up to be used on the fly at an actual game – the author's clearly know what it is like to GM and have to find information on the fly!
It also has something I had not seen before, but proved invaluable in a few key moments – right at the front of the book is a single page, summarizing, in order of difficulty, the CR of every encounter. It took me a moment to wonder when I'd need this, but it was indeed usef...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/06/17/tabletop-review-the-arc-
haeologists-handbook-call-of-cthulhutrail-of-cthulhu/
An archaeologist is a common NPC, antagonist, plot hook and supporting character in a lot of Cthulhu works, be they fiction, film or tabletop gaming. Yet oddly enough, there has never been a template for the occupation in Call of Cthulhu. The core rulebook? No. The Investigator’s Companion? No. Byhakee? Nope, not there either. It’s so odd considering how important archaeology and archaeologists are to the game and its offshoots, like Trail of Cthulhu, Age of Cthulhu and even other horror role-playing games. Well, author Helen Maclean thought it was about time to give the archaeologist its due and let it take center stage. Innsmouth House Press agreed, and together, they’ve put out a lovely eighty page book entitled The Archaeologist’s Handbook.
I should point out that, although I list the book as a Call of Cthulhu product, it’s actually very syst...
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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An Endzeitgeist.com review
The final installment of the FoTS-series is 25 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisement, so let's take a look!
Following my format established for the FoTS-series, I'll first tell you about the additional content herein: Template-wise, this pdf provides us with teh Worm-that-Walks-template (CR +2), the Divine Creature template (CR +1), the Hive Creature template (CR +2), the Beyondling template (CR +2) and the aquatic creature template ( CR +0). Beyond these templates, we also get the universal beastlord and mystic archetypes as well as the Blight Druid archetype for...surprise: The druid. Didn't see that one coming, now, did you?
Kidding aside, we also are introduced to the Void domain and the dark tapestry subdomain and 6 new feats: 3 of these feats allow you to create wondrous creatures and advance/augment them via the respective feats. The other feats cover the monkey style, gaining a s...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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