In designing our fantasy cities, we generally think about merchant districts, where the rich live, a docks, maybe a slum or two, where the temples are and where whoever is in charge lives. This book suggests that, just as real world cities might have a Chinatown or a Little Italy, people of the various fantasy races might well choose to live in districts of their own; and presents five ready-made racial neighbourhoods for you to use or at least mine for inspiration.

The first is the Dwarf Burrow. These dwarves prefer, even in a city, to live underground. Their homes are accessed down a flight of steps situated in the middle of what looks like an empty field (why, I wonder, hasn't someone else appropriated this real estate?). But it's not just homes down there, dwarves also practice their trades - especially smithing and ceramics - and it's the best place to go to purchase weapons, armour, jewellry and other such items. They also maintain warehouses, train their militia and hold worship in temples to their gods. Some dwarves never bother to visit the surface at all! One nice touch is that the history of the typical dwarf burrow is recorded as carvings on the corridor walls. It tends to be dark in all but the places frequented by other races - odd, just because dwarves have darkvision, they do not have to use it all the time! - and can be prone to flooding, although dwarf miners are generally good at avoiding the sewers built by surface-dwellers.

Next comes the Mithril Heights, home to elves, providing an eclectic mix reminiscent of student quarters and retirement homes to the casual observer. It tends to be older - and wealthier - elves who live there, younger ones are more inclined to mix with other races. Many of these older elves are scholars, and any younger ones you encounter are likely to be their students. They often accept students from other races as well, many making a living as educators of the young. Art and music are well-regarded, and it's a good place if you enjoy the arts, or want your work to go on display or to perform. Narrow streets and tall buildings make it a complex place to navigate, and there's plenty of magic about.

This is followed by Halflingtown, quaint and picturesque home to local halflings. They value peace and quiet, a nice place to relax... and public bathhouses are popular. Other attractions include good restaurants, facilities for dogs and ponies, bandstands and at least one festival a week. Larger folks need to remember, though, that most buildings are halfling-size!

The next area to explore is Gnomelight, a sort of fantasy Las Vegas. Characters wishing to gamble, to seek that really special item, to take in a spectacular show or attend a flamboyant party will head here. There's loads of magic, mostly illusions or otherwise part of a show. Crime is low, especially where the gnomes themselves live (but outsiders are rarely welcome there). There's even a few rules for popular gambling games if your characters wish to try their luck.

Finally, you can drop by the Orc Trough. It's a slum neighbourhood, inhabited by the poor of all races, not just orcs. Still, there's a good animal market and other items may be cheaper than elsewhere in town. It's also home to slaughterhouses and other smelly crafts, a good place to find a fight and somewhere to hide. The city authorities rarely come round, so you will be on your own in terms of personal safety and protection from theft, though. If your city has any particular race - or other grouping - that's officially downtrodden and disenfranchised, this is where they live along with anyone else who is down on their luck. People who do have work are generally animal handlers, slaughtermen and butchers.

These five districts hang together well, with some interesting ideas. There are minimal plot hooks for each one, and some sidebar suggestions including ways of making your character a native of that district and how this could influence a city-based game. It's a good way of ensuring that the humanoid races are properly represented in your city, whether you use these districts as-is or mine them for ideas to inspire your own designs.

This is the best FREE product I have encountered on rpgnow. Since this product is FREE, it is a 4.5/5 star. Only thing I would question is.. Why are there a few blank monster image pages, when they likely have images for them. Enjoyed this! Jay from DragonWizards

Very pretty, easy to read, D20-light system. The magic system is not stock D20, and is the primary flavor difference, tho' the races could easily be ported. • Pros: [+] Short, to the point D20 core book. [+] Minimum rules clutter [+] Beautiful renders. [+] 3 unique races, plus humans, dwarves, and orcs [+] most of the weirder of the 20 monsters have a beautiful render. [+] Price: $0.00!!! • Cons: [–] White text on black bakground; ink hog. [–] only three classes: Warrior, Mage, Thief [–] No setting information

Great game. I really enjoyed it. The book was well written.

Of all genres, science fiction is one of the hardest to do “generically.” There are certain basic themes and tropes to all genres, but in regards to science-fiction, these are so many and so varied that it’s really hard to consider any particular brand of sci-fi to be normative. Just look at how different Star Trek is from Star Wars, for example, and you’ll see how no two types of science fiction settings are really the same. The Galactic Edition of RPGObjects Blood & Space line, however, attempts to walk that narrow line of being generic enough for any Future d20 setting, while still having enough flavor to be interesting and appealing. Let’s see how they do.

The Galactic Edition of Blood & Space is basically an updated repackaging of a half-dozen previous B&S products. Unfortunately, I never got any of the previous books in this product line, so I can’t speak to what changes were made. However, this product contains six PDFs, along with a single PDF which is a compilation of all of the others. The filename makes it clear that this seventh PDF is meant to be a printer-friendly version, but it keeps pretty much all of the interior illustrations, which seems to defeat the purpose. Worse, the printer-friendly PDF doesn’t have bookmarks the way the other PDFs do, which is unforgiveable since the printer-friendly PDF is 170 pages in length.

Aside from that, though, the six individual PDFs each have a theme regarding what Future d20 materials they offer. The first PDF, High Flyers and Ground Pounders, gives new character-building options including not only advanced classes, feats, and skills, but also discussion of ranks and promotions within a space navy, among other things. The second half of the book gives a detailed set of rules for running starship combat.

Merchants, Pirates, and Smugglers is the second book. Whereas the first PDF focused on military themes, this one focuses on economic-oriented subjects. New character options are presented here, as in the first one, along with a wealth of new items that are commodities in the future, such as new mecha components, starship equipment, futuristic drugs, and rules for boarding ships and new options for buying and selling things.

The third PDF is the Starship Construction Manual. Shorter than the others, it walks you through the various steps of creating a starship, along with presenting a new variant system for building a new ship (utilizing “invention points”), and talks about what it means to have a prototype starship before presenting new advanced classes and new starship components.

One of the largest PDFs in this group is the fourth PDFs, the Prometheus Rising campaign setting. Set in our solar system several centuries in the future, this book spends roughly half of its page count giving new mechanical options (e.g. a feat system for psychic powers and abilities), while the second half of the book covers the future history of the solar system – which goes over several centuries divided into a number of epochs – along with a gazetteer for various worlds and moons during that time; interestingly, each location also has notes on what it’s like to be there during each period, so you can set your game during any of the major points in time over the future history.

Cosmic Fury, the fifth PDF, is perhaps the most thematic of them all, as it focuses on futuristic martial arts. People who’ve read the Blood & Fists line of products will see a great deal of similarities here, as the PDF uses the same combinations of feats, advanced classes, and masteries to denote martial arts, here for esoteric styles such as “beam sword.” A few NPCs are given almost as an afterthought at the end of the book.

Finally, the last PDF is aptly titled Space Monsters. A short book, it details several alien races that could be used for PC characters, along with other creatures that could only be used for threatening your PCs. There’s also a brief section on new diseases and, interestingly, a short discussion of new starships and NPCs to use in the Prometheus Rising campaign setting and bring it out of the solar system, where they’d likely meet the things detailed here. This was really a nice extra to help bring these monsters to a human-only campaign.

So how does all of this rack up in terms of how helpful it’ll be to your futuristic campaign setting? Again, it’s hard to say because it largely depends on what kind of setting you’re running. However, if you have anything that remotely resembles “classic” sci-fi, in that it has elements of space opera and starship combat, you’ll definitely find something, and more likely a lot, that’s worth your while here. The diversity of material lends itself to a wide variety of applications, even having a campaign setting if you’re in search of one. Blood & Space: Galactic Edition is almost a must-have if you’re seriously interested in Future d20, whatever way you run it.

It’s a long-held truism that the military is one of the most fertile grounds for RPG gaming in the modern world. By this, I don’t mean that military groups are more likely to play RPGs (though that may be true also); rather, if you’re playing an RPG set in the modern day, using the armed services as a backdrop for your PCs and/or the campaign gives you almost infinite possibilities for adventuring. In this regard, Blood & Guts 2, from RPG Objects, provides an incredible wealth of material.

I just want to note that, as you may have guessed by the use of 2 in the title, this is an update from the original Blood & Guts. Unfortunately, the original material wasn’t in my collection; given that, I can’t address this review in terms of what’s changed from previous versions. There are occasional sidebars in that regard, however, which makes it plain that some things have indeed changed. Beyond that, Blood & Guts 2: General Edition consists of nine PDFs (the last one being a printer-friendly compilation of the other eight), which I’ll try to go over in some detail here.

The first PDF is the Military Training Manual. Meant to serve as the introductory volume of the series, this covers the history of the American armed services, as well as their organization and breakdown. Already, this is incredibly interesting, even despite this being information that’s readily available elsewhere – I’d always wanted to know how the upper echelons of the military were organized, and now I know (and knowing is half the battle!). After this brief introduction, a series of new advanced classes are introduced, along with new uses for old skills (not new skills, which is nice) and a swath of new feats, including Military Occupational Specialty feats and Advanced Training feats. The PDF closes out with new rules on earning ranks and medals, and what those mean for your character.

By itself this PDF was enough to blow me away…and it was just the first of eight.

Now, a canny player or GM who’s been reading this review will be thinking “Okay, it all sounds cool, but military command has a lot of structure and procedures. That doesn’t lend itself to actual adventuring.” Fair enough – the answer to this is found in the second PDF, Special Operations Command. Basically, this PDF covers the special operations units that are small groups of soldiers sent in to accomplish a specific task in a specific location; the sort of thing that’s right of the alley of an adventuring group. A new advanced class lays the groundwork here, but the listing of a few dozen such groups, along with the benefits for being members of them, are what rounds out this book.

Combat Procedures, the third PDF, is shorter than the other two, but no less packed for what it contains. It starts off with listings for weapons and armor (including armor inserts and armor piercing rules), along with associated feats. But it quickly shifts gears to showcase various optional new rules. These are labeled as being “modern” “gritty” or “true grit,” which are meant to indicate escalating levels of lethality for your characters (and those around them). From hit locations, to mental strain from the horrors of war, to special options regarding vehicular combat, there are a great number of optional rules here that you can use to customize your modern military game. The PDF even ends with a discussion of three campaign options, noting what optional rules they use and what kind of campaigns they are.

The fourth PDF is the Battlefield Unit Combat System. This is exactly what it sounds like, being a short but nicely detailed set of mass combat rules. Surprisingly, this is fairly rules-light, largely being focused on what kind of unit each unit is, how experienced they are, their equipment, and the conditions they’re operating under. The rest of it is unit versus unit combat. I’m oversimplifying, of course, but the rules here do a fairly good job of allowing combat between groups of individuals, with even a sample combat being given at the end of the PDF.

The next three PDFs are all of a piece, so I’ll mention them all at once. On the Ground, Deep Blue Sea, and Wild Blue Yonder all deal with vehicles and vehicular weapons and equipment on land, sea, and air respectively. These books really have everything you’ll ever need in this regard, and quite honestly I doubt you’d ever be able to use all of these even in a full military campaign. I’m not complaining, as I think it’s great to be able to check the hardness and hit points of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, or know how much damage a Tomahawk cruise missile does. Nothing is ignored here.

The final PDF in the series is War on Terror. The natural concluding piece to the series, this PDF is to give GM’s a listing of people that their PCs can fight. Giving a brief overview of terrorism and terror alert levels, this book lists over two dozen terrorist organizations (which are, like the rest of this book, from the real world), noting their size, usual theater of operations, and what groups they usually target (and thus get bonuses against). It was a bit startling to learn that there are this many terrorist organizations still active across the world, and in so many different countries. Interestingly, larger organizations that have achieved some degree of international legitimacy (such as the Palestine Liberation Organization) are not listed (though they are mentioned in the context of other groups).

If it isn’t obvious at this point, I was pretty well blown away by everything in this product. Between the sheer volume of material presented here, and the quality and diversity of what’s given, this is hands down the best book for a military Modern d20 game. Everything you’ll ever need for any sort of military-themed campaign can all be found here, with expert translations of various real world procedures, items, groups and more given d20 stats. In this regard, Blood & Guts 2 is sets a new standard in terms of what it offers, and nothing else even comes close.

There is a reason why the Golden Age of comics is still a fan favorite among Mutants and Masterminds players. A lot of the age takes place around the time of the World Wars. The lunatic writings of Hitler and Nazis laid a foundation of speculation for fantasy writers and now game authors. This has led to a flooding of the market on Golden Age Supplements related to WWII Heroes.

The Eugenics Brigade: Villains of WWII by Charles Rice is an inexpensive PDF that produces a team of superheroes working as a special regime for Hitler. Its extreme barebone production prevents it from reaching its full potential, despite being one of the better written WWII villain books.

Fans of alternative WWII fiction will be quite impressed with the brief revamp in history that makes the PDF come to life. There are eight members that are apart of the squad. Rice kept the cheese factor to a minimum, instead creating functional villains that are designed to provide a real challenge for a party, though there is no real innovation in the power uses. The books biggest downfall was the lack of art, which is a staple of a superheroes supplement. It just does not say comic book if there is no art.

For the Gamemaster

Outside of the Eugenics Brigade, there are several other brief additions in the book. The author designed two minion units for the PCs, the Flying squad and the Verhexte. Both provide adequate support for their predecessor. Fans of comics will also enjoy the strong design of the “anti-Captain America” Uberkrieger.

The Iron Word The Eugenics Brigade is a nicely written book full of solidly designed Mutants and Master Mind characters with one fatal flaw, a lack of art and expert layout work.

This was an entertaining look in to the world of Zombies, with plenty of useful bits. Good for collectors of Zombie junk like myself, and also useful for a modern weird campaign with zombie apocalypto mixed in.

Everything was orchestrated by a maestro, you and your friends are manacled and sitting on the transport bus looking forward to 30 year of hard labour that to some creative police work (not that you were angels to begin with). When an unexpected accident frees you, will you clear your name or will you become the type of person the courts believe you to be. This is the central question of Modern Mayhem20, the first full-adventure path for the Modern20 system. This 47 page PDF product was written by Charles Rice and published by RpgObjects.

I was caught off guard a little by this adventure path because of preconceived notions I have about adventures, experience and levelling with other OGL games. There are basically 5 or 6 main objectives in this adventure path and for completing each major objective your characters will become more powerful. The format is also a bit different that what I expected, each adventure has an objective with complications and opponents but its written more as a framework for the GM to breathe life into then a scripted story. I think out of the six adventures only three occur in a required order and not all of the six are necessary to develop the story with your players. I think this gives the book a very sandbox-like appeal similar to some objective or non-linear videogames; the encounters allow the players to define their character, establish their humanity and establish themselves within the criminal world. For all the freedom this represents, the author has provided lots of ideas and plenty of opponent stats to cover most situations.

About ¾ the book is dedicated to adventure options and the last ¼ provides additional mechanics for the "core" Modern20 system by RpgObjects. There are new rules for influence contact, information contacts and contacts who would prefer not to be contacts. There are additional occupations, feats, npc and equipment appropriate for a criminal campaign. To make this product a quick pick up and go type adventure, pregens are also included. The two most interesting additions to the Modern20 ruleset are the Humanity Meter and Heat (Pursuit) Meter. The Humanity meter is a devise used to track the behaviour of the group, based on the player character's actions. Unlike alignment it doesn't restrict player action but instead shapes the format of the ending (uplighting, mercenary, depressing) almost like a karmic adjustment. I think this mechanic (which is OGC) is exportable to many other games and genres. The Heat meter is an abstract chase/pursuit mechanism to track how close the player characters are to getting caught by the police.

Overall, Modern Mayhem20 provides well-developed and supported adventure for gamers looking for a Rocknrolla or GTA type experience. It is further supported by a sample modern map pack from the fine guys at 12 to Midnight and Fabled Environments providing the "All Saint's Church", "Argent National Bank", "The Marguerite Apartment Homes" and "Joe's Diner".

It’s all too often a staple of fantasy communities that they all tend to look alike. While some famous NPC may live in this city, or that one’s sewers lead to the Dungeon of Even More Doom, for the most part, they all seem to be copies of each other. This is especially true in regards to their demihuman populations. Sure, elves live in forests, and dwarves live underground, but why is it that when you put these races in a human city, they’re living in houses just like everyone else? Cities of Fantasy 2: Racial Neighborhoods presents demihuman populations as having their own ethnic districts in existing cities, shaping them to be more like their natural homes.

The book is divided up into five sections, one each for elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and orcs. Each section goes over the role the district plays in the larger community, a description of the general appearance and architecture found there, the history of such an area, some of the inhabitants you’d find there (these are described in terms of roles, rather than individuals: e.g. “instructor” rather than a specific NPC), magic (this is just a brief listing of some existing spells and items with one-sentence descriptions of what they’re used for in the community), special rules (the crunch of the book; this has things that grant small bonuses or penalties, new equipment, etc.), and plot hooks. Most pages also have small sidebars covering a related topic in a few sentences.

Overall, the book does a good job of making each district have its own feel, while still making them easily referenced by using the same format for each. Dwarves, for example, tend to create an underground community that often grows into a city in its own right over the centuries, whereas orcs tend to be pushed into the slums, creating a “ghetto” area that’s often the target of harassment from law enforcement.

However, the book isn’t perfect in what it does (and doesn’t do). Many of the mechanical aspects of the book – the “crunch” – felt tacked-on, offering bonuses or penalties seemingly so as to make sure there was enough of that present overall. PCs take a -2 circumstance penalty to “gambling checks” involving mechanical gambling devices built by gnomes? That seems a bit…specific. Also, speaking of mechanics, it would have been nice if there were bookmarks here; weighing in at almost forty pages, something to make navigation easier would have been helpful. I won’t mention the lack of a printer-friendly version, as there is a decent amount of art to be found here.

Despite these little things, however, I found myself liking the book for what it presented as a whole. After all, while cities do tend to be melting pots, they shouldn’t all look so similar, despite the different races living in them. Presenting racial districts that “feel” elven, halfingish, etc. is a great idea, and this book does a nice job in making that apparent in what it presents.

An Original Grand OGL Wiki Review! http://grandwiki.wikidot.com

“Fantasci20” is a fantasy campaign model with science fiction elements added much like the Final Fantasy video game series. This campaign model is designed for use with the Modern20 system. There are three releases in this line of products: Characters, Creature Creator and Gazetteer. All three products are written by Charles Rice.

Smaller than Fantasci20: Characters, the Fantasci20: Creature Creator is 16 pages of crunch focused on building non-human opponents for your Fantasci heroes to fight. The nicest thing about monster creation in the Fantasci20 system is that it uses the same rules as your characters.

There are a couple exceptions to the monster creation such as monsters are not restricted from feats based on their class. They also have additional monster feats. These monster feats all you to adapt to particular environments, carry disease, resist elemental damage, gain natural weapons, gain natural armour, have monster type traits(elemental, ooze, spirits, undead), or alter their size.

There are several sample creatures groups presented like animals, elementals, oozes, spirits and undead. Some of the creatures are represented are multiple power levels. Some of the beasties included are fire bats, horses, winter wolves, air elementals, fire oozes, spirit bear, soldier skeleton and infected zombie.

I really like Fantasci20: Creature Creator. It is a solid foundation for creating monsters for the Fantasci20 or the Modern20 system. My only complaint with the book is that I want more, more monster feats and more monsters a veritable Modern Menace20 book. Something to allow me to add an urban arcana spin to Modern20 or a populate a dark heart of space setting with oodles of alien menaces and undead horrors. But in the meantime, below is the my Fantasci20 Otyugh. Fantasci Monsters: Otyugh

Typical Base Ability Scores: Str 14, Dex 10, Con 18, Int 6, Wis 12, Cha 6

Otyugh, Large (Tank 6): HD 6d12+36; HP 75; Init -1; Spd 20 ft.; Defense 13, flatfooted 13 (-1 Dex, +4 Class, -1 Size); BAB +4; Atk +9 (1d8+6, blunt slam); SQ DR 2/ballistics & blunt, Resilience; AL None; SV Fort +11, Ref +2, Will +3, Rec +5; Rep NA; Str 22, Dex 8, Con 22, Int 6, Wis 12, Cha 6

Skills (perks): Perception 9 (+10), Unarmed 9 (+13)

Feats: Disease (4x; DC 16; 1d2 Con), Improved Grab, Natural Resistance (DR 2/blunt), Natural Weapons (blunt), Size Increase (2x, Large)

Character Disadvantages: None

Description: Otyugh are creatures of filth and rot. They live on the excess and waste of other races. In the world of Aurianis, the otyugh are an invasive species. They arrived on Aurianis when the Horde's airships crashed. Perception is always a class skill from Otyugh.

Original Posted at http://grandoglwiki.wikidot.com

“Fantasci20” is a fantasy campaign model with science fiction elements added much like the Final Fantasy video game series. This campaign model is designed for use with the Modern20 system. There are three releases in this line of products: Characters, Creature Creator and Gazetteer. All three products are written by Charles Rice.

Fantasci20: Characters is the longest supplement weighing it at 32 page plus licensing and covers. There is no table of content in this supplement, but it is well bookmarked. The entirety of this supplement is dedicated to providing players with the options needed to make characters for the Fantasci20 setting. Topics covered include new races, occupations, skills, feats and equipment.

The world of Aurianis is the home to all Fantasci20 stories. It a whole touched by both magic and science and this has led to the development of many intelligent races beyond humans. There are three non-human races detailed in this book and four human subraces. The first non-human race presented is the Baubles, who are small, capricious elemental characters with magical affinity. The second is the Ferals, a race of jungle cat humanoids who live in harmony with nature. The third non-human race is the Horde, they are the default villains of the setting and alien conquerors. The human races include the desert dwelling Merkosa, the giant-blooded Nyr, the minature Proud Folk (part says they are Tiny, part says Diminuitive so I’m not sure how small they are) and the winged Sky Folk.

There are thirteen new occupations for the Fantasci setting. They are additions to the occupations avaiable in the core Modern20 book (though I expect that when I set-up character creation rules for my players I may want to limit some from the Modern20 book that don't feel right like paramedic or reporter). The occupations added in this book are artificier, bard, black magician, bladecaster, bonder, gunslasher, gunner, mage gunner, monster trainer, necromancer, swordsman, theif and white magician. The white magician is more of what I would consider divine magic while the black magician is more arcane.

The next chapter called Skills and Feats adds two skills and a host of general and magic based feats to the game. Art is a skill that first appeared in the core book but in this tome it has a perk that allows you to generate a bardic music like effect. Magic is the other skill which provides you with arcane lore, monster lore or further access to magical feats. The general feats available allow you to train creatures, mix with the undead, craft magic items, recruit humanoid monsters or enhance magical powers. There are twelve feats associated with Bardsongs of the Star class type such as soothing song. There are eleven feats associated with Necromancy and the Star class such as disrupt undead. The black magic section has fourteen feats that involve elemental forces such as the brainiac's elemental strike. The red magic section has thirteen spells for empaths that weaken or strengthen opponents. The spirit binding magic section has six shaman oriented feats such as spirit transformation for empath characters. Even though there is a section on red magic, there is no red magician occupation in the previous section.

The last section of the book clocks in at about six pages and deals with equipment. Here the setting adds costs for alcohol, airships, gunblades, alien weapons and magical equipment. The magical equipment takes up the most of this section and provides you magical armour to protect you from elemental damage, potions of healing, staffs of poison, and consecrated weapons. Among many, many others. There are no "wondrous items" that are typical to the genre in this section.

Overall I'm sort of mixed on this supplement in the Fantasci20 series. There are some logistical errors in this product (Bauble size, lack of Red Magicians) that is not typical in RpgObjects releases. I get the impression that Fantasci is a setting with roots in the Final Fantasy RPG series where magic and gunfire coexist, but something about Fantasci's character book just doesn't hook me the way the FFRPG did.

Evil organizations aren’t a new staple in fantasy games. They’ve been around for a while, and we all know that they work very well. They fulfill the same function in your game that they do in narrative fiction. They’re basically an excuse to have multiple villains ready to stand against your heroes, which is the bare bones of a campaign right there. Need a new bad guy? No problem, The Evil Organization has yet another member! This first product in the Cities of Fantasy series introduces such an organization: The Gravedigger’s Guild. Let’s peel back the skin and see what this new group is all about.

A relatively brief product at fifteen pages in length, The Gravedigger’s Guild is about the organization of the same name. While ostensibly a charitable company dedicated to helping the deceased and the downtrodden, this is actually a front for a cult of the evil death god [insert name here]. The book goes over the cult in fair detail, describing their works (legitimate and otherwise), goals, organization, locations of activity, general appearance, what their magic is used for, initiation, slang, and more. The last few pages cover cemeteries in terms of what and who you’re likely to find there.

On the whole, the job that the book does covering the Guild isn’t a bad one…but I found myself less than impressed. The problem here isn’t what the book presents, but how it tries to present it. This is most clearly shown with the divide between fluff and crunch given here. This book clearly wants to be a universal supplement, but can’t seem to bring itself to fully slip away from its 3.5E d20 rules. Over 90% of the book is fluff text about the Guild, but it introduces two new skills and mentions various things that present modifiers to skill checks, as well as talking about d20 System spells (though there are no new spells or magic items here). I can understand why this was done, but it really seems to me that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It seems like d20 hold-outs will be unsatisfied with how little crunch there is in the book, while those who want it just for the fluff will find the repeated d20 statistics annoying.

Far more dichotomous, however, was the book’s treatment regarding the level of secrecy regarding the cult that the Guild front for. When describing it, the book’s presentation is that this cult is unknown to most members of the community, secretly manipulating things from behind the scenes. And yet, they have several hundred members in the average community (though it does say that these can be spread over a region), its membership garb is quite recognizable, and its tactics and initiation methods seem heavy-handed at best, and outrightly brazen at worst. If this cult is supposed to be a secret, it’s going to be a rather open one.

Ironically, the above disparity resolved itself for me when I realized I was looking at this book’s cult in the wrong light. This isn’t a group of unseen puppet-masters pulling a town’s strings; rather, it’s a radical organization of religious terrorists that have taken over a community. Seriously, that seems to fit much better with what the author has written here. This is a group that’s apparently taken over all affairs in an area by offering the carrot of free and low-cost infrastructures that range from extremely-important to vital, but also carries the stick of eliminating the (relatives of) people who speak out against their extremism, all of which lets them use the town as a base to carry out the dark goals of their organization. To put it another way, the Gravedigger’s Guild is the fantasy version of a small Syrian village that’s run by Hezbollah. This clearly wasn’t the author was trying to evoke, but it’s what honestly seems to work best here.

There were also some technical absences that I consider standard for a PDF product. While not vital in a book this short, bookmarks would have been helpful; really, every PDF should have those to make navigation as easy as possible, especially since that doubles as a table of contents (which this product didn’t have). Similarly, there was no printer-friendly version. Again, that’s not a big deal, but considering that there are several black and white illustrations, including a large page border on the left side of each page, it would have been nice.

Overall, this product wasn’t a bad resource, but it didn’t seem quite sure how to present itself. Some parts of the book, like the method of indoctrination into the cult, were great for providing vivid details that suggest adventure ideas. Others, like the two page listing of standard spells and magic items, each of which had a one-sentence description of what the Guild used them for, seemed less than inspired. It’s telling that the role I thought best fit the writing about the Guild isn’t what the author apparently intended. Still, the book did intrigue me in that regard, and that’s never a bad thing for an RPG product to do.

Living in a major city, you experience the significance of a multicultural environment. That feeling of diversity is often void in the fantasy world. Too often are a population’s denizens all human or all of one race with various racial NPCs sprinkled in to show a faux bit of diversity.

Cities of Fantasies Volume 2: Racial Neighborhoods incorporates another depth of realism into your campaign world by presenting several neighborhoods to introduce into any village or city. This product could have taken a simple route by presenting a few descriptions and NPCs. However, the authors and RPG Objects infuses a great amount of detail into each community, making them incredibly believable and far more useful than most city supplements.

The book is 37 pages and presents 5 communities. There are community descriptions for Dwarf, Halfling, Elf, Orc and Gnome. The descriptive fluff is well written and adequately encompasses the nuances of the race within the atmosphere of the community. Surprisingly, however, there is more to the communities than just nice descriptions. Each contains a thorough amount of mechanical simplicities and a handful of adventure seeds. The General Role section of each community notes purposes for the communities existence within a city. The Description portion describes architecture and notable places. The author does a balanced job of being vague enough to place these boroughs in multiple cities in your world while still giving enough detail to guide the dungeon master. The History section provides a history of the community. The Inhabitants section contains the same balance as the Description portion, not naming specific NPCs but general roles you would find in such a community. The Magic and Magic Items section not only lists common spells in the community but how they are utilized. Finally, the Special Rules section establishes mechanical changes in the environment of the community. Though the mechanics look as if they lean toward 3.5, they are again vague enough where any system could be used with them. There is also a list of plot hooks at the end of each of the communities.

For the Player Racial Neighborhoods feels like an extension of the racial descriptions in the core rules book. Players interested in enhancing their characters racial heritage would find the magic and magic items sections very useful from a mechanics point of view. Also, the well-written descriptions would be good inspiration for background.

For the Dungeonmaster Racial Neighborhoods is a cornerstone tool for dungeonmasters who like city building or need a city on the fly. You could easily take two or three of these and form a city out of them. You’ll find all of the communities as different as the races themselves. My personal favorite is Gnomelight, which contains all of the uncanny shenanigans I expect from gnomes. Illusionary magic for no good reason, illegal casinos set up in basements and street performers.

The Iron Word Cities of Fantasy Volume 2: Racial Neighborhoods is an inspirational plethora of building blocks for creating realistically diverse cities. The bountiful amount of information packed in each community description for just one neighborhood could motivate two or more campaign arcs.

Use them as is, or take what ideas you want for an elven quarter, an illegal shantytown, a tanners' and stockyards district, and so on. Plenty of interesting development. The timelines of changes in each quarter by age are a particularly nifty idea.